000

Even the lightning burns vanished, leaving smooth skin behind.

Sasuke lowered the flask and stared at his restored arm.

The camp had gone silent.

Alma"s glasses reflected the potion"s fading glow as she watched from several feet away, notebook open and quill frozen above the page.

"Better?" I asked.

Sasuke rolled his shoulder experimentally. "Yes." He sounded disappointed about it.

"Try to contain your gratitude."

"I didn"t ask for your help!"

"You limped into camp looking like someone had tried to tenderize you with a lightning hammer."

"I would have recovered." Sasuke held the flask back toward me. "Eventually..."

I accepted it and returned it to storage before Alma could get any closer. Judging from her expression, she was considering whether tackling me would let her obtain a sample.

Sasuke had healed completely.

His clothes hadn"t.

The Kuoh Academy uniform Rias had given him was beyond saving through conventional methods. His white shirt had lost an entire sleeve, the jacket was shredded across the back, and his trousers had been burned from the knee down on one leg. Several bloody tears remained along his ribs even though the wounds beneath them had closed.

"Can"t you repair that with demonic magic?" I asked.

Sasuke looked down at himself. "No."

"You"re a devil now."

"I"m aware."

"Devils use magic to fix their clothes all the time. Rias does it whenever a fight tears her uniform."

He turned his head to the side. "I haven"t learned how..."

That made sense. Sasuke had only recently joined Rias"s peerage, and his approach to magic education likely involved ignoring everything that couldn"t be weaponized against an enemy.

Repairing fabric probably ranked somewhere below smiling and discussing his feelings. "Do you have spare clothes sealed in a scroll?"

Sasuke"s expression tightened. "No."

Of course he didn"t. He had come to another world to hunt giant monsters, carrying enough weapons to start a small war, but hadn"t packed an extra shirt. Freaking angsty teenage ninjas...

I opened my storage space again and searched through its contents. After moving aside several cooking knives, emergency spice containers, two aprons, a barrel of Kappa sake, and an alarming number of women"s undergarments I refused to identify individually, I found one of my spare kimonos..

I held it out.

Sasuke stared at it. "No."

"You can"t walk around camp with half your ass hanging out."

"My ass is not hanging out!"

Gemma glanced over from her forge. "A little bit of it is."

Sasuke twisted around, trying to inspect the damage to the back of his trousers. His expression darkened when he realized Gemma was right.

She grinned and returned to polishing the Hunter"s new greatsword.

I shook the kimono once. "Take it."

Sasuke snatched the clothing from my hand. "I"ll return it. I don"t want charity."

"Then consider it a consolation prize for losing your dragon."

Sasuke"s Sharingan flashed red for half a second.

I smiled pleasantly.

He took the kimono and stalked toward the Hunter"s tent. The Hunter had disappeared inside earlier to remove the rest of his damaged armor, and since it was the only private changing area nearby, Sasuke was forced to use it too.

A few minutes later, Sasuke emerged.

The kimono fit him surprisingly well. I was broader through the shoulders, but the obi compensated for the difference, and the dark fabric suited his general atmosphere of permanent brooding. With his black hair, pale skin, and severe expression, he looked more like an Uchiha heir than he ever had in Kuoh Academy"s Western uniform.

He adjusted one sleeve with visible irritation. "At least this is better."

"See? You look good."

"I"m more accustomed to these clothes. They resemble what people wear in the Elemental Nations."

"And now you owe me twice."

Sasuke glared.

"Three times if we count the healing potion," I added because it was funny.

His eye twitched again. I was beginning to understand why Naruto and Naruko enjoyed antagonizing him.

Before Sasuke could respond, Alma appeared directly in front of me. I hadn"t seen her cross the camp. Her notebook was open to a fresh page, and the earlier exhaustion from her expedition had vanished beneath intense academic excitement. "What was that potion? How did it work? What was the active ingredient? Was the light a magical effect or a visible byproduct of accelerated cellular regeneration? It repaired muscle damage, burns, blood loss, and skeletal trauma simultaneously. Did it restore the body to a previous state, or did it provide sufficient energy for natural healing? How did it know which structures were damaged? Why didn"t it cause uncontrolled tissue growth? Can it cure disease? Poisoning? Missing limbs?" Alma inhaled sharply. "CAN I STUDY IT?"

I blinked at her.

She stared back, practically vibrating.

"Slow your roll, cute glasses girl."

Alma"s mouth stopped moving. A blush spread beneath her freckles. "I— Cute?" Her glasses slid slightly down her nose. She pushed them back into place with one finger, trying to recover whatever professional composure I had just destroyed.

Gemma snorted from across the forge.

Alma shot her an annoyed look before turning back to me. "The potion," she said, considerably more carefully. "May I examine it?"

"Sorry. That one isn"t available for research."

Her shoulders dropped. "Why not?"

"It was a gift from my beloved Ranni."

I touched the storage space where I kept the flask. The Crimson Tears had saved my life before, particularly when I contained an antimatter explosion inside my own body. I didn"t fully understand how Ranni replenished it, but its supply never seemed to decrease permanently.

That alone made it too valuable to hand over for experimentation.

"And gifts from Ranni aren"t things I share without asking her first," I continued. "Especially magical ones."

Gemma stopped working. "Wait." She set down her polishing cloth and turned toward me. "Ranni is a different woman from the two you"re already courting?"

"Oh. Naruko and Kushina?"

"Yes, them."

"Then yes. Ranni is different."

Gemma slowly rubbed both hands over her face. "Do you need a gift for her too?"

My tails began wagging before I could stop them. "Yep. But technically, Ranni comes from a matriarchal society, so it"s her responsibility to give me a betrothal gift."

Alma"s quill hovered over the notebook. "A matriarchal society?"

"The Carian royal family."

"ROYAL FAMILY!?"

"Ranni"s a princess."

"YOUR BELOVED IS A PRINCESS?"

"Also a goddess."

Alma"s quill touched the paper. "Goddess..." she repeated faintly.

"Of the moon."

Gemma stared at me for several seconds.

Alma looked as if her head might explode. Then she began asking questions. So many questions. How old was Ranni? What was a physical body in this context? Was she a disembodied spirit? What were the Carians? Did I come from a matriarchal society too? How many women was I courting? Were Naruko and Kushina related? Why did both need proposal equipment? Was plural marriage common among my species? What exactly was a kitsune? Why did I have ten tails? Was each tail biologically independent? Did the number increase with age, power, or romantic partners?

I raised one hand. "That last theory is incredibly dangerous. Never repeat it around my mother."

"Your mother also has tails like you?"

"Twelve."

Alma flipped to another page. "Is twelve the natural maximum?"

"No idea."

"How old is she?"

"I enjoy being alive."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you never ask a beautiful woman her age when she can destroy a mountain."

Alma"s pout deepened. It was adorable.

I escaped by moving toward the camp"s cooking area.

The Commission had brought back a wide variety of meat from the day"s hunts. Gemma and the researchers had already separated anything needed for crafting or study, leaving several enormous cuts piled inside a cold-storage tent.

I selected meat from a heavily muscled herbivore the Hunter had killed near the caves. Its flavor profile, according to Lord of the Kitchen, sat somewhere between beef and venison, with enough intramuscular fat to stay tender over direct heat.

Perfect. I cut it into thick strips, marinated them in soy sauce, rice wine, garlic, ginger, honey, and a little Pandoran citrus, then threaded them onto metal skewers with onions and brightly colored desert peppers.

Alma followed me.

I began preparing a pot of rice.

"Where is your homeland?" she asked.

"Kyoto."

Alma wrote it down. "Where is Kyoto?"

"Japan."

She waited.

I added water to the rice.

"What continent is Japan on?"

"It"s its own Island near Asia."

Her quill slowed. "I"ve never heard of either of those!"

"That"s unfortunate..."

Gemma laughed from her forge. "He"s messing with you."

"I KNOW HE"S MESSING WITH ME!" Alma adjusted her glasses sharply and moved closer. "Are you from across the ocean? Another region beyond the Forbidden Lands? An isolated civilization?"

"No."

"Then where?"

"A different universe."

Alma stared.

I placed the pot over the flame.

Gemma"s hammering stopped again.

Even Sasuke, who had taken a seat near the cave wall and was pretending not to listen, glanced in my direction.

"A different what?" Alma asked.

"Universe."

She obviously did not know what that word meant. "You mean a different world?"

"Yes."

Her expression brightened. "Across the sea?"

"No."

"Beyond the known continents?"

"No."

"Underground...?"

"Not generally."

Alma closed her notebook. She took a deep breath. Then she opened it again. "How did you get here?"

"Through my restaurant."

"Huh... What!?" Her quill nearly tore through the page. "How?"

"Ranni did it..."

Alma let out an annoyed huff!

I brushed the skewers with glaze and placed them over the fire. The meat hissed as fat struck the flames, sending a wave of rich smoke through the cave.

Every head in camp turned toward me.

Within minutes, hunters, researchers, supporters, handlers, and Palicos had begun forming a line without being asked.

I pointed toward the skewers. "Dinner"s ready."

The camp surged forward.

Alma was forced aside by three hungry hunters and a Palico carrying two bowls at once. By the time she fought her way back toward me, I had already moved to the other side of the cooking station and begun serving rice.

She glared over the top of her glasses.

I gave her my most innocent smile.

"You"re doing this deliberately," she accused. "You"re avoiding all my questions with vague answers!" Alma"s cheeks puffed out.

Gemma accepted a plate from me and looked between us. "You broke her."

"She"s cute when she pouts."

That made Alma blush again. Her glare lost most of its effectiveness.

I handed her a skewer and a bowl of rice. "Eat before it gets cold."

"I still have questions though!?"

"I"m sure you do."

She took one bite of the glazed monster meat. Her eyes widened behind her glasses. The notebook slowly lowered. For the next several minutes, Alma finally stopped asking questions.

A good meal remained the most effective form of crowd control in any universe.

Hours later...

Thor still hadn"t returned by the time the camp settled down for the night.

I wasn"t particularly worried.

The thunder god was somewhere in the distant forest, and his divine presence stood out against this world"s unfamiliar energy like a bonfire in a dark room. If Thor encountered anything capable of seriously threatening him, I would feel the resulting explosion from across the continent.

More likely, he had found something interesting and forgotten that time existed.

That happened to warriors surprisingly often.

Sasuke had claimed a bedroll at the edge of the camp, positioning himself as far from everyone else as possible. He lay facing the cave wall with his arms folded, clearly pretending to be asleep so nobody could ask what had happened to Rey Dau"s corpse.

Alma had eventually exhausted herself.

She sat at a folding table surrounded by notes, her head resting on her crossed arms and her glasses slightly crooked. She had spent nearly two hours attempting to catalogue everything I had revealed while simultaneously constructing increasingly elaborate theories about the Fox Hole.

Gemma slept near her forge, curled beneath a blanket with one hand resting suspiciously close to a hammer. The Hunter and his Palico had taken the tent Sasuke used earlier, while everyone else had distributed themselves around the cave.

Eventually, only the night guards remained awake.

I waited another twenty minutes before slipping out.

Not because I needed to hide what I was doing. I simply didn"t want Alma waking up and insisting on joining me for "field research."

Cold desert air rolled across my face as I emerged from the camp.

The night sky stretched endlessly overhead. With no cities nearby, the stars appeared impossibly bright, crowded together in glittering rivers. Three pale moons hung above the horizon, their combined light turning the dunes silver.

I stood there for a moment, breathing it in.

This was a hunt. Just me, an unknown wilderness, and a monster worthy of becoming a proposal gift.

I could have activated Lord of the Kitchen and declared the entire region part of my domain. I could have searched every living thing within range, traced the residual energy of the white wraith, or asked Ranni to point directly at its location.

That would defeat the purpose. Aela would laugh at me for a month if I called that hunting.

So I relied on the oldest advantage my species possessed.

I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose.

The desert unfolded through scent.

Cooling sand. Dry stone. Dust carried down from the mountains. Faint moisture beneath the earth. The metallic tang of monster blood several miles away. The pungent musk of herbivores moving in a loose herd to the south.

Human scents lingered around the camp behind me.

Alma smelled faintly of ink, leather, and desert flowers.

Gemma carried charcoal, heated metal, sweat, and machine oil.

The Hunter smelled like half a dozen different monsters layered over a core of steel, herbs, and dried blood.

Sasuke"s trail was unmistakable. Ozone. Smoke. blood. Demonic energy. And the particular cold, lonely scent of someone who spent far too much time brooding dramatically in high places.

I followed it.