Chapter 59
Anxius drove very steadily, and in a little over ten minutes, they arrived at that forested mountain with the waterfall.
The RV stopped on a flat stretch of open ground, and everyone climbed out, looking around curiously.
The moment Gousheng jumped out of the vehicle, he started bouncing around happily. This was the first time he’d been out in the wild since getting injured. Before, whenever they went hunting, Yomi had almost never let him run around freely. But this wasn’t deep in the mountains, and the road was just behind them, so no wild beasts would appear. Yomi let him romp to his heart’s content.
Yomi followed Lynn and the others up to see the waterfall, while Yesi and Linda, together with Anxius and Karl, calmly stayed behind to set up the campsite.
They had brought several tents and would all be sleeping here for the night, so they first found a sheltered area and pitched the tents in a connected row.
Up by the waterfall, the boys were exclaiming in wonder nonstop.
“There are fish!” Yomi said. “If I’d known, I would’ve brought a fishing rod.”
The boys felt exactly the same and nodded repeatedly. Every time they went fishing, they always turned it into a competition to see who caught the most. Naturally, the one who caught the most would get a reward: whoever had the fullest bucket of fish got to let Yomi fish with theirs.
Then once the fish was caught, they could let Yomi “play” with it. It was honestly a huge sense of accomplishment!
Yomi: …It’s not playing! It’s practice!
After finishing their look at the waterfall, the boys all came back down to help.
Everyone had a clear role—pitching the tents, hanging the hammock beds, setting up the little camping stove and cooking tools, assembling the barbecue rack…
Yomi was too small. For things like hanging the hammock or setting up tents, his height simply wasn’t enough, so he could only spread mats and sort snacks.
Once the barbecue rack was ready, the chef team immediately showed off their specialty and enthusiastically started grilling skewers.
A whole group of big, broad-shouldered companions crowded around the grill, leaving Yomi absolutely no room to squeeze in.
Anxius finished his own tasks over there and, seeing Yomi looking around blankly, walked over in his huge original form. Bending down, he simply lifted the little one high into his arms.
“Anxius?” Yomi had only just spoken when the monster suddenly took off with him into the air. On purpose, he skimmed low across the water near the waterfall, moving at incredible speed, just like a roller coaster!
After carrying the little one in a flying circle, Anxius landed slowly and said to the dazed Yomi, “That was a roller coaster.”
Yomi: “…”
After blanking out for a moment, he started reliving the sensation from just now and only then said, “That was fun!”
So Anxius immediately gave him another round!
Some time later, the entire Little Lamb Chef Team saw a little person with completely messy hair walking toward them in a trance-like daze.
They all gaped. “Mimi, where did you go and lose your mind like that?”
Yomi had just opened his mouth to answer when Anxius, having found a comb somewhere, strode over and carried him off to carefully fix his hair.
“I can do it myself.” Yomi reached out for the comb. When the other refused to give it, Yomi didn’t insist, and instead touched his own bangs, pressing down a few little strands that were sticking up.
…Good heavens, that roller coaster was intense.
Over there, the boys of the Little Lamb Chef Team stared at them with obvious curiosity. Then they witnessed something that left them even more stunned.
After fixing Yomi’s hair, Anxius placed him into the cloth pouch he usually sat in. This time he didn’t hang it on himself, but carried it in one hand.
The monster played a moving song from his communicator and, while walking, raised and lowered the pouch up and down…
From inside the pouch, Yomi suddenly understood. “This time it’s a carousel!”
Everyone: “…”
Karl gave an awkward laugh. “His Highness is concerned about Yomi’s mental and emotional well-being. Since he was turned away from the amusement park, coming here to imitate some of the rides means he won’t feel too upset.”
Meikai, who saw through everything: “…Heh heh.”
Lynn, meanwhile, foolishly believed it. He even ran over to offer suggestions, saying there was a very deep cave up above that they could use as a haunted house adventure.
That instantly caught everyone’s interest. They put down what they were doing and all went together to the cave Lynn had mentioned.
It was pitch-black inside, and really did have a bit of haunted-house atmosphere.
Anxius carried Yomi, Yomi carried Gousheng, and the whole group walked in single file.
The truth was, there was nothing inside. The boys were a little disappointed; clearly it wasn’t exciting enough.
Only Yomi let out a sigh of relief.
Not wanting everyone to have come for nothing, Lynn decided to pull a few tricks while they were walking back out.
In the darkness, countless tentacles suddenly shot forward.
After Meikai let out the first scream, everyone else, whether they had actually been touched by the tentacles or not, got frightened by the scream itself and immediately started running out for their lives!
At first, Yomi, tucked inside the pouch, was shaking with fear too. But Anxius’s hands and wings instantly closed around him in a tight shield, wrapping him securely!
Even if a real ghost or monster appeared, no one could possibly hurt him!
With everything sealed off around him, it felt almost like hiding under a blanket. Thrill and security existed at the same time, and Yomi’s heartbeat sped up.
After enjoying the startling “haunted house,” everyone went to settle the score with Lynn, chasing him until he begged for mercy before returning to camp in satisfaction to keep preparing food.
Arlo was still young. After only grilling for a short while, he started fooling around with Lynn and the others. Along the way, several of them transformed back into their original forms and ended up rolling around and fighting on the grass, really looking exactly like a bunch of animal cubs.
The atmosphere was joyful beyond words.
Yomi was eager to join in and stepped forward to join them. But the moment he got close, the monsters who had been wrestling fiercely instantly lightened all their movements, clearly afraid of accidentally hurting him.
Lynn stopped fooling around and instead went over to massage Yomi with his tentacles. The sensation tickled so much that Yomi laughed and rolled onto the ground. Lynn kept going, and Yomi was nearly flat on his back, four limbs up in the air.
“Stop…” Yomi laughed so hard his shoulders shook.
“Hehe!” Lynn kept at it.
Yomi laughed until he was practically whimpering.
“So cute… Feels like he’s about to turn back into his little lamb form…” The other boys watching grew jealous. Stretching their hands forward, they also wanted to go give the little one a massage, only to be stopped by the low-pressure gloom radiating from Anxius. Anxius suddenly appeared with a dark face, scooped up the little one, and carried him away.
“…”
Sure enough, opportunities only belong to the fast-handed!
Then they turned and attacked Lynn in outrage—you brat, always thinking only of yourself!
Anxius put Yomi onto the swing and pushed him back and forth.
Coming back to his senses, Yomi blinked and looked up at the tall figures roughhousing in a pile not far away. There was a trace of loneliness between his brows.
The moment Anxius lowered his head, he noticed the change in him. “What’s wrong?”
Yomi shook his head without speaking.
“What exactly is wrong?”
The other kept asking stubbornly, so at last Yomi muttered awkwardly, “Good friends all wrestle and fool around like that… But when I go over, they never mess with me… Is it because I’ve become the boss now?”
Anxius: “…” If they dared mess with him, none of them would be having an easy day today!
“Their strength is too great. They only act like that because they know their limits… Because you’re their friend, they’re protecting you.” Anxius explained seriously. “No matter what you’re like, you’re still their good friend.”
“Mm, I know…” Yomi also felt he had probably been overthinking it. He normally wasn’t this sensitive. Today, he had obviously been affected by being refused entry to the amusement park, and that had made him feel all the more that he was different from everyone else. So for a moment he had become especially vulnerable. Feeling embarrassed, he added, “I brought my feelings from the amusement park over here.”
Anxius paused, then immediately said, “That was the amusement park’s problem. Your height is absolutely perfect. The ones who can’t be like you are the ones who are lacking.”
Yomi stared at him, then his whole face turned red: …Didn’t that insult even himself?
Still, he was happy. A rainbow fart was always good for the mood, and Yomi’s little cloud of emotion vanished completely.
Lunch was extremely rich—grilled skewers, meat soup, fruit juice… Meikai had even brought alcohol. Those who weren’t driving drank while happily stuffing themselves with meat, feeling absolutely wonderful.
After eating, everyone lay sprawled on the grass to rest. The little wolf cub was taken away by Lynn to play with. Taking advantage of the moment, Anxius brought Yomi to the vehicle and said he wanted to take him somewhere where he could be just the same as everyone else.
Yomi’s eyes lit up: There was such a good thing?
Once they arrived, Yomi realized it was a VR theater near the amusement park.
Anxius went inside first to speak with the staff, while Yomi waited in the car. Slowly, he began to understand why Anxius had brought him here… Anxius was still thinking about his mood and wanted to use VR to satisfy that little hidden wish of his.
Yomi felt worried. He was quite afraid they’d be rejected again. Fortunately, the matter was quickly settled over there. Anxius bought tickets and led him inside, and the whole process went smoothly without any trouble.
When they reached the private experience room, Yomi discovered that they could choose a virtual scenario to experience themselves. There were all sorts of animated and horror settings, as well as everyday-life ones. Without even thinking, Yomi chose ordinary daily life on Junk Star.
Anxius put the VR headset on him and adjusted it for a while, then asked, “How does it feel?”
Yomi lowered his head to look at his own body. After being shocked for a moment, he said earnestly, “I’ve gotten bigger!”
His body was at least four meters tall. The buildings and houses that had once looked absurdly huge now looked completely normal to him—no different from how things had felt before he transmigrated.
There were monsters walking around not far away, and some of them were even smaller than he was!
Yomi was the same as everyone else now.
Seeing how happy he looked, Anxius’s heart softened into a numb, tingling warmth. He continued adjusting things, then put on a VR headset himself.
Yomi started strolling around in comfort. He even greeted some of the virtual characters. Those NPCs were very friendly to him, even high-fiving him.
Before him stretched a commercial street. After walking for a while, he discovered that Anxius had appeared beside him too.
Anxius’s original form was now only a little taller than he was. The difference between them was no longer that great.
The monster could scoop him up completely in one embrace.
Yomi knew that, in reality, what he was hugging was Anxius’s human form. But he didn’t feel disappointed in the slightest. That hug gave him a strange sense of reality. Even knowing he was the only human, his mood no longer felt so low, because he had already formed close ties with these people from another world.
Their souls were the same.
Now that he had thought it through, Yomi stopped brooding. Happily, he began playing around in the virtual world. Before long, he found himself at a horse ranch, where the interface showed that riding was available.
“Want to try it, baby?” Anxius asked.
“…Stop calling me baby.” Yomi selected the riding option and lowered his voice in embarrassment. “Just call me Mimi.”
“Mimi baby,” Anxius said.
“…”
Forget it. Easygoing as cotton, Yomi decided to concentrate on riding the horse, and once he got on, he threw the “baby” business entirely out of his mind.
Although it was only a virtual experience, it was extremely realistic, and after only a short ride Yomi was delighted.
After all, for him, alien horses were even more absurd than elephants. Being able to experience a normal horseback ride really did give him the feeling of having gone back to the old days.
Across the great grassland, Yomi galloped off on horseback. After running a while, he turned back with a smile to share how fun it felt with Anxius—only to find that Anxius was nowhere to be seen.
Yomi froze for two seconds, then just kept riding.
Had Anxius gotten upset? Because Yomi wouldn’t let him call him “baby”?
Yomi lowered his head, but didn’t feel he was in the wrong. He simply wasn’t called “baby.”
Once the horseback segment ended, the experience time also began counting down. Yomi removed the headset himself, and in the very next instant was so startled by the creature beneath him that he nearly fell off.
Anxius, in his original form, caught him in time and asked tensely, “What’s wrong?”
Only then did Yomi realize that he had been riding on Anxius’s original form the whole time! No, more precisely, during the riding sequence, he had actually been riding on Anxius’s shoulders… And when he had been tugging the reins, he’d apparently been tugging Anxius’s wings!
This…
In his shock, Yomi’s eyes also landed on the notice nearby… It clearly said that riding-type experiences required customers to bring their own equipment!
Yomi: ???
Good heavens, so in order to let him ride a horse, Anxius had used himself as the riding equipment?
No wonder the moment the horse-riding started, Anxius had vanished…
Yomi’s face went from stunned to mortified.
Anxius, by contrast, remained perfectly calm. Gently, he helped Yomi down and asked, “Do you want to keep playing?”
“No more.” Yomi shook his head hurriedly. If he had known that riding a horse meant riding Anxius, then he wouldn’t have… well, alright, maybe that wasn’t entirely true, because riding really had been fun!
Yomi felt both ashamed and guilty—guilty that he’d treated Anxius like a horse, and also condemning himself for how much he’d actually enjoyed it, as though he hadn’t treated the crown prince like a person at all… He truly hadn’t meant to.
Anxius saw Yomi’s face shift from red to white and assumed he was simply exhausted from horseback riding. So he picked him up, tucked him back into the cloth pouch, and carried his baby out of the VR theater to rest for a while at the milk tea shop next door.
Only after sipping milk tea for a while did Yomi finally recover.
Raising his eyes over the straw, he found the monster looking down at him, his gaze full of affection.
“…”
Yomi lowered his head and kept drinking his milk tea. It felt almost like a date… but they weren’t a couple!
Fortunately, all the shops here had internet. In order to distract himself, Yomi borrowed the milk tea shop’s Wi-Fi and started reading the news from Snar Star.
Nothing very major had happened recently on Snar Star, but there was one more piece of news related to him—some movie company had actually gone and made a film based on him, titled Yomi Battles the Phizhi Aliens, and the theme song was called Unforgettable Yomi.
Yomi: ?
Once he checked the plot, it was breathtakingly melodramatic: it told the story of a tiny Snarian who saved the world, then was killed in a battleship bombardment by the Phizhi aliens, but died and revived, and kept going until he finally saved Snar Star and then retired in glory… Because Yomi’s body was too small, and the director didn’t want to use a child actor, the film had ended up using special-effects methods. The result was that the four-meter-tall actor playing Yomi really did, at first glance, look rather like a little person.
There was plenty of criticism of the movie. Some said the plot was clichéd. Others said the casting didn’t fit. But most of all, people felt the investors had no shame and were exploiting Yomi’s fame. The man hadn’t even been “dead” for a full year! They were just taking advantage of the fact that the dead couldn’t speak!
Yomi: …Well, being on Junk Star, he really couldn’t speak.
Anyway, the movie claimed to be pure fiction, so he decided to treat it as merely someone having the same name.
Legendary Yomi, already a myth on Snar Star, finished his last sip of milk tea and nudged Anxius to leave.
Before they left, they packed a few milk teas to go. Back in the forest, they handed them out to everyone. When asked where they’d gone, Yomi vaguely muttered that they had just wandered through some shops.
Back on the swing, Yomi was tired too. He played with Gousheng on the swing for a little while, then began yawning and drifted off into a nap.
The moment Yomi fell asleep, Anxius, who had been watching the swing the whole time, immediately changed back into human form. He lifted the little wolf cub out of Yomi’s arms and placed him on the grass, even throwing him a few strips of jerky as a bribe. Under Gousheng’s outraged stare, he held Yomi in his arms and dozed contentedly.
Gousheng was very angry, but he still chewed the jerky and lay down. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten his mother just because there was food. Yomi was asleep, and Gousheng was a sensible little wolf cub who didn’t want to disturb Mommy’s good nap.
Anxius, meanwhile, never actually fell asleep. He was feeling completely satisfied just holding Yomi when suddenly he noticed something. One ear twitched slightly, and his eyes instantly turned sharp as he looked into the distance.
There were people far away, but not at a level that posed any threat—easy to kill if necessary.
He stayed alert. Even so, his hand never stopped gently patting Yomi to soothe him. Fortunately, Yomi slept soundly and wasn’t woken at all. Perhaps because the swing was swaying, he dreamed he was horseback riding again, and without the slightest courtesy kicked at Anxius with his feet.
Anxius let him do as he pleased, even indulgently lowering his head and giving Yomi both his horns to play with.
At that very same time, high in the distant air, a winged Junk Star man turned and left, his face grave.
That evening, he flew back to the great castle standing at the border between the two states.
Inside the grand hall, the man seated in the highest position, wearing a black cloak, was none other than Black Feather, lord of Skull State. The moment his subordinate returned, he anxiously asked, “You really saw it?”
“A thousand percent true! It’s him—the Prison King of Evil Ghost State has come out!” The subordinate was clearly very nervous.
Lord Black Feather’s expression turned solemn. After a long while, he asked, “What does his true appearance look like?”
“Exactly like the rumors say! Extremely good at disguises. From his true face, you can’t tell at all how terrifying he is. In fact…”
“In fact what?”
“In fact, he’s unbelievably cute!” the subordinate said, blushing. “Anyone without strong endurance would be finished the instant they saw that face! They’d completely throw away all their defenses and submit to him!” He stamped his foot. “If you’d seen it—you’d know! The people over there have all been bewitched like that! One by one, fierce monsters with formidable original forms willingly let themselves be ordered around by him!”
Taking a deep breath, Black Feather gritted out his analysis. “That chaos in Evil Ghost State some time ago was probably internal strife… And at a time like this, Sheep Asura still has the leisure to come out. That means Evil Ghost State is completely under his control now… And of all times, he comes to my territory? Could it be he’s set his sights on my land?” His face became troubled. He truly had no desire to fight anyone. Wasn’t it better to just lie around comfortably? Why must people insist on battling all the time? Especially with an opponent this difficult to fathom—it was far too dangerous.
At that, the subordinate turned awkward. “Lord… h-he seems to have come out just for fun?”
“…Fun?”
“Yes. I asked the staff at that amusement park. Sheep Asura brought a lot of people there today. But because he was too short, he was stopped at the entrance.”
“…”
“Apparently, because he couldn’t get in, that Sheep Asura even… even secretly cried! At the time, not a single person there failed to feel guilty! One staff member nearly gave him a backdoor entry in a moment of emotional weakness!”
At that, Black Feather’s entire expression changed:
“…What a terrifying power of seduction.”
Against such a dreadful opponent, there was simply no possibility of resistance.
