If It's for My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord: Volume 3

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-7183-1404-7
Verlag: J-Novel Club
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 250 Seiten

Reihe: If It's for My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord

The skilled young adventurer, Dale, at last returns to his base of operations in the town of Kreuz after the long journey he took with his adopted daughter, the devil girl Latina. He feels a brief moment of relief when as he watches Latina greet Kenneth and Rita with a smile and start handing out souvenirs... but wait, what's Helmine doing here?

With the beautiful woman with a deep history with Dale visiting the Dancing Ocelot, a clear change appears in Latina.

'Latina... really does wish she could hurry up and become an adult...'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chirolu

Weitere Mitwirkende

Kei

Warner, Matthew

Leseproben

“Wah?!”

Maya showed no sign of slowing down in enthusiastically rubbing herself all over Latina, whom she’d energetically knocked over and was now sitting on top of. She was using her whole body, and it was hard to think of it as anything but her rubbing her scent on the other girl. This continued, with Latina looking flustered at having been jostled so. She didn’t seem to know how to deal with the situation. Occasionally she’d let out a strange, pathetic cry as Maya rolled her over.

“Um... what’s going on here?”

“Like I was saying, did you run across any big animals or something? We beastmen can kind of sense that sort of thing from smells. Only sort of, though.”

“Huh... So, why is she doing that?”

“How should I put it..? It’s... you know, like how a wife ends up looking like that when she realizes her husband’s been cheating...”

“Cheating?”

“It was just an example.”

Dale summed up the various things Latina did while they were staying in Tislow, from taming the dogs to petting the mythical beasts into submission. Hearing all this, Joseph gave a nod, half-astounded.

“So that’s it.”

“I see.”

Apparently, Maya wasn’t fond of the smell of something other than her clinging to Latina, and when she’d picked up that those scents didn’t necessarily belong to things weaker than her, her mood grew all the worse.

Latina sat there looking befuddled as Maya hugged her tight and then snorted in approval at her accomplishment. But she didn’t let go of Latina afterward.

“No!” Maya said clearly, shaking her head from side to side.

“Don’t say that! Come over here, Maya!”

“No! Maya wants Watia!”

“Maya...”

Joseph was unable to say anything further, and his triangular ears sunk down pathetically. It was hard to tell how many times they’d gone through this exchange, but his beloved daughter kept on rejecting him. It was eating away at his mental hit points.

Maya, meanwhile, was hugging Latina around the knees and had a burning gaze; she was ready for battle.

“Watia is Maya’s!”

“Waaaaah...”

Having been captured, Latina was in the midst of this chaos, trapped between the father and daughter.

“You sure are popular, Latina...”

Dale was watching all of this from a few steps away. He rudely slurped his tea, staring off into the distance and trying to avoid the reality of the situation. He’d learned many things while staying in Tislow, including that it was essential for people to know when to give up.

“Just try not to do anything too heartless...”

He was in the midst of escapism, so the comment he gave wasn’t really suitable to be addressed towards a child, but Dale wasn’t thinking deeply on what he was saying at all at the moment, and Latina didn’t consider the statement deeply, either.

“Watia, Maya, togetter!”

“Waah...” Latina was flustered and could only think to hug Maya back as the toddler loudly asserted her ownership.

It was then that the front door opened. Joseph’s wife Ute was standing there, with her familiar white fur and green eyes. She had a basket in one hand, filled with plenty of fresh vegetables. Apparently, the reason they hadn’t seen her for a while was because she’d been in the garden.

“Oh, so you two have arrived?” said Ute calmly, noticing Dale and Latina. Dale stood up straight and greeted her.

“Sorry for imposing on you, Ute.”

“Miss U—”

“Watia, no!”

Latina tried to greet Ute as well, only for Maya to thwart the effort. With Maya as she was right now, even Latina paying attention to someone else was apparently enough to make her jealous. It was like she was trying to say, “Don’t look at anyone but me!”

“What’s going on with Maya?” Ute tilted her head at her daughter’s behavior, knowing nothing of what had happened up until that point. After giving a hollow laugh, Dale gave a brief response.

“Yeah... It looks like she wants to monopolize Latina.”

“Her father is too soft on her, so she’s ended up spoiled, hasn’t she?” Ute said, entirely unshaken by Maya’s rampage. For better or worse, she was rather broad-minded.

“Joseph...” Dale called out to the man, who was sitting in the corner looking downhearted and utterly exhausted, his hit points seemingly whittled away. Both of their gazes fell on Latina petting Maya’s fluffy tummy fuzz.

“Did she cry herself out soon after we left last time...?”

“No...” Joseph’s gaze drifted. “It gave birth to a legend.”

“Sorry about that...”

He dared not to ask what sort of legend it was. The two men remained silent for a while.

“This time...”

“How about leaving early in the morning, before Maya wakes up?”

He may not have wished to drive out his guests, but the desperation in Joseph’s voice as he broached the subject was palpable. Apparently, he’d had to put up with quite the outburst last time. Even Dale had been overwhelmed by its power. Considering how loud it was, it wasn’t hard to imagine that it had drawn the attention of all their neighbors.

“If we fill her up with her favorite foods, then Maya will get sweepy! That’ll be our chance to separate them!”

Hearing his middle-aged relative casually mix baby-talk into his sentence, Dale wondered in the back of his mind when he’d have a kid of his own, not realizing how those around him tended to see him when he talked about Latina.

In front of those two doting idiots was Maya, lying face-down and happily wagging her tail as she was being pet. After ample attention from Latina, she seemed to have more or less calmed back down, and then she set up her stronghold on top of Latina’s lap. Separating them didn’t even seem to be an option. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if she looked away, only for some doggy to steal away all the petting! She loved her big sister above everyone else, so she needed to be Latina’s favorite, too. Young Maya’s pride and logic led her to that conclusion.

While Latina may have been embarrassed by Maya monopolizing her, she didn’t seem entirely upset about it. To have the cute, tiny Maya adore her as a “big sister” flattered and delighted her. She wasn’t able to help out Ute, but in exchange, she got to spend plenty of time with Maya. Beastmen didn’t bathe as frequently as humans, so they didn’t have bathtubs in their homes, but they did keep a basin that could hold enough water to clean yourself off. Even so, Latina let out a cheerful shout as she filled it with hot water and got coated in bubbles along with Maya, which reached the inside of the home itself. This easily brought a calming scene to Dale’s mind, and a gentle expression crossed his face.

Ute had prepared a soup with summer vegetables and plenty of meat in a stock pot. It was served alongside bread with a soft cheese smeared on top. Today’s dessert was a candied-fruit crumble. Just as Joseph had predicted, both the soup and dessert were some of Maya’s favorites dishes. Despite still being just a toddler, she soon gobbled down nearly as much as Latina. Perhaps trying to compete, Latina had unusually requested seconds, so there was still plenty of dessert left on her plate.

Like Joseph had said, Maya grew drowsy now that her belly was full. She always did everything at full force, but she had now run out of power, as if someone had suddenly pulled her plug. Joseph was her father, after all, so he knew his daughter very well.

At first, Maya insisted on sitting on Latina’s lap, but when the young girl tried to stand up for dinner, her legs had fallen asleep and she couldn’t move; the shock of the numb feeling brought about by the poor flow of blood was enough to cause her to collapse. That never happened to Latina in her everyday life. Maya, therefore, settled for sitting next to her at the table.

After confirming that Maya had started to nod off, the two men winked at one another. Joseph leaped up with a swiftness that didn’t match his physique. He scooped Maya up and started swaying with practiced motions.

“Umgh... un...” Maya squirmed around a bit, but she eventually found the most comfortable position and settled into her father’s arms. Before long, she started happily snoring away. At the same time, Dale rescued Latina, wrapping his arms around her from behind.

“Dale, it’s rude to start playing around in the middle of a meal.”

Her reprimand was sound.

She slipped out of his hug and sat back down in the seat next to the one Maya had occupied up until just now. The whole scene was so pathetic that it was hard to think of Latina as anything but an adult dealing with a child.

“Latina, we’re going to head out early tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’m worried about the weather, so I want to get out of the forest sooner rather than later.”

It wasn’t entirely a random excuse, as Dale really was concerned by the somewhat cloudy sky. He did have a plan for dealing with the rain, of course, and when it came to a long trip, you obviously couldn’t entirely avoid moving when the weather was bad. But even so, he wanted to do his best to keep Latina...