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402 – A Really Sticky Bur (Strength-type)

I woke up due to someone’s uneasy groans. I felt the warmth of two people beside me. My body kinda hurts. Did I get hit when they were changing positions in their sleep or something?

“Nyunununu…… Gyununu.”

“What the heck is with that sleep talk……?”

I poked the cheek of the red-haired girl whose brows were currently wrinkled and who was crying out some weird-sounding sleep talk, then I bent my arm a bit and proceeded to lightly stroke her head. Then, the wrinkles between her brows, which had been tightly drawn together, loosened slightly. She doesn’t seem to be having a particularly good dream from the looks of it.

“Mm–……”

Unlike her older sister, who was noisy even in her sleep, the blue-haired girl was actually a lot calmer. She’s sleeping soundly with her body pressed close to mine. Like her sister, her smooth skin and warm body felt quite comfortable.

Actually, putting aside their young appearances, they were both legal adults. If that wasn’t the case, then I’d find myself in really big trouble. Well, can’t do anything about the physiology they were born with, I suppose. But if judged just based on our appearances, I wouldn’t be able to justify myself if someone called the cops on me. “That’s him officer!” or something like that.

“……Guess I should get up now.”

I didn’t have any particular reason to wake up early, but it’s also not good to oversleep. Eventually, I managed to wake up the two who were tightly holding my body with a lot of effort.

---

“Good morni–…… Eh?”

I somehow managed to get myself dressed and showed up at the break space of the Black Lotus, our mothership, but the other crew members pulled away the instant they saw me.

The bewildered girl with a chestnut-colored bob was Mimi. She was the first crew member who boarded my ship and an excellent ship operator. She was short in stature, but the fullness of her knockers that were pushing up the chest part of her clothes was battleship-class.

In fact, she actually had the bloodline of royalty, but she really didn’t care about it. Or rather, she treated it as a hindrance to being together with us, so she decided to simply ignore it. Well, it’s not like I had any intention of letting her go just because of her lineage. At the very least, I’ll keep her by my side as long as she herself wanted to stay with me.

“What’s up with that?”

The one who asked while looking flabbergasted was a beautiful woman with silver-colored hair and pointed ears. Her name was Elma. She’s an excellent starship pilot and a Silver-ranked mercenary. In addition, she had undergone body strengthening surgery at a young age due to being the daughter of an imperial viscount, so her physical abilities were akin to a super soldier despite her slender and dainty appearance.

Her chest size was no match for Mimi’s though.

“It looks like she had a bad dream.”

The red-haired girl who was clinging tightly to my torso like a koala was Tina. I was supporting her body with my left hand and patting her back with my right.

She was usually our group’s energetic mood-maker who somehow spoke in a pseudo-Kansai dialect, but she was currently behaving like a shy little girl that befitted her physical appearance. By the way, she really did look like a little girl. Or rather, her height was that of a little girl’s. However, her body was plump in all the right places, and she was heavier than she looked due to the high muscle and bone density typical of dwarves like her.

If I pointed out how weird she was behaving, I had no doubt my ribs and spine would be in danger of breaking due to her bear-like strength, so I refrained from saying anything. I’ve been working out on a daily basis, so this much weight was fine.

“Big Sis……”

Wiska looked at her older sister Tina with a complicated gaze. Unlike her sister Tina, her hair was blue in color. But apart from that, the dwarven sisters did resemble each other. Well, even if their faces looked similar, the atmosphere about them was completely different, so it was unlikely to mistake them for one another.

Compared to her older sister, she was quite reserved and usually had a calm personality, but she was prone to going off the rails whenever her intellectual curiosity was stimulated. That being said, both her sister and she were excellent mechanics, and their flaws were part of their charm.

“Would you like me to check on her?”

Kugi, whose fox ears were twitching and fluffy fox tail was swishing from side to side, walked up to me and offered her services.

She was a person, or rather, a beast girl from the Holy Vuelzarus empire that was located thousands of lightyears away, and had the status of a shrine maiden in her home country. The rest of the crew, including me, still didn’t quite get why she traveled so far to find me, and why she was blindly following me as well. But there wasn’t any trace of malice in her actions so far. Also, I couldn’t bear to leave her to her fate of being “disposed of” if I refused to let her follow me, so I eventually agreed to let her join my crew.

In fact, she was a fast learner and a hard worker. She had acquired skills as a sub-pilot in a short period of time. She was also a specialist when it comes to psionic abilities, or what you’d call psychic power. I had a relatively close relationship with psionic ability-related phenomena due to my own bizarre circumstances, so her presence was a great help to us. When she offered to check on Tina, she was probably referring to using her special telepathic ability in order to see through Tina’s current condition, and if possible, improve it.

Actually, there were a lot of things I needed to settle when it comes to her, but since there was a mountain of other things I had to do, I had constantly put the matter on the back burner. According to her, she and the Holy Vuelzarus empire have achieved their aim just by her being able to be by my side, so I didn’t really worry about the matter so much.

“Hold on. As this fleet’s doctor, taking care of the crew’s mental and physical condition is my job, isn’t it?”

The person who interjected was Dr. Shouko, a medical doctor and scientist who I had recently recruited as a crew member.

She had long black hair that was a bit messy, wore clothes that emphasized comfort instead of fashion, and had a white lab coat draped over those clothes for good measure. And when it comes to chest size, hers rivaled that of Mimi’s. She was a pretty distinctive woman.

The circumstances of her birth were also troublesome in some ways, but it was too late to worry about that now.

And besides, I’m a guy from a different dimension, and it’s doubtful if I can even be considered a regular human due to my strange abilities.

Mimi was a member of the Graccan empire’s royal family, and she can also barely be considered a princess.

Elma was the daughter of Viscount Willrose, a high-ranking imperial noble.

Tina and Wiska didn’t appear to have any special circumstances, but Kugi seemed to be a high-ranking priestess in the Holy Vuelzarus empire.

Since almost all of us had pretty special backgrounds, Dr. Shouko being a designer baby whose genes were specially modified in order for her to be born a genius didn’t seem to be that much of a big deal after all.

In the first place, imperial nobles all underwent postnatal enhancement procedures in order to enhance their brain’s processing and memory capabilities. In my eyes, there wasn’t much of a difference between Dr. Shouko and those imperial nobles other than her being born with her abilities and not needing to undergo any postnatal enhancements.

“Is not mental health outside the scope of your expertise, Doctor? Master, I shall take a look at her if you’d like.”

Mei suddenly appeared inside the break space. She was a super high-spec maidroid – that is, a maid-type gynoid. And moreover, she wasn’t just any gynoid. She was a member of the so-called machine intelligence race. In other words, she was actually an absurdly advanced AI. So advanced that she had her own distinct personality and sense of self.

In fact, even though machine intelligence had a concept of “individuals”, it seemed that they were ultimately a group of existences that was always connected through a high-level information network, or rather, they were existences close to what you’d call collective intelligence.

In any case, she was someone who showed absolute loyalty and affection toward me, who was both her designer and owner. She handled all of Black Lotus’s operations and was a super maid who possessed both electronic warfare capabilities based on her extraordinary computing power and combat capabilities surpassing those of most power armors.

When I designed her, I thought it was better to make the strongest and most excellent maid I could possibly imagine, so as a result, her entire body was made of the highest quality parts and she was installed with all sorts of different skills. She was our wildcard.

Eh? What does she look like? She’s a maid with long, glossy black hair, wore half-rimmed red-framed glasses, and constantly sported a cool and collected expression. She was about the same height as me, and her chest size wasn’t quite up to Mimi’s standard but was still fairly big. She was a maid who incorporated all of my hopes and dreams. Her range of expressions was low, but her degree of affection for me was really high. In other words, a kuudere maid. Yeah.

“I appreciate your concern everyone, but I think it’s better to wait and see for now…… Well, let’s just watch over her until she calms down.”

Actually, the strength Tina was using to hug me has slightly increased since earlier. Perhaps she finally became aware of her surroundings and was hiding her embarrassment. As evidence of that, when I tried to tear her away from me, she hugged me even tighter. It kinda hurts.

“……Well, I guess that’s fine. Tell her not to overdo it.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

I responded to Elma, who seemed to have guessed the circumstances, with a salute. For now, let’s eat something in the mess hall…… Well, I had to do something about this sticky bur first. Good grief.

---

“So, you ended up dreaming about the past and your mental stability took a dive as a result?”

“Well, uh…… that’s it, I guess.”

–An hour later. After somehow managing to tear Tina off me, I got breakfast from the mess hall’s auto-cooker, went over to Tina and Wiska’s room, and ate together with Tina.

I asked Wiska to join us, but she said her sister would probably find it easier to talk to me if she wasn’t present and declined. She really cared a lot about her sister.

“You look like you’re fine now, but I’m no psychiatrist. I can’t offer any professional help, but it does look like it wasn’t that much of a big deal.”

“Ya sure are blunt, Boss.”

Tina chuckled in response, but her smile looked somewhat forced. I guess she really was quite affected by her nightmare.

“But you’ve calmed down, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ll just say this straight out then. No matter what happens, I’ll protect you, Tina. I have no intention of letting you go.”

“……Are ya okay with sayin’ somethin’ like that without askin’ fer my circumstances?”

“Yep. Compared to the circumstances of people unrelated to me, I value you more.”

“……Are ya sure ya won’t have a change of heart?”

I shrugged my shoulders in response to Tina.

“It’s not like I’m totally clean. I mean, there’s already blood on my hands anyway. There might have still been victims inside the pirate ships I’ve blown up, but it’s not like I can let that hold me back, or else, I’d be the one getting blown up instead.”

“That’s true, but……”

Tina displayed a bitter grin. I suppose she was thinking her and my circumstances were different.

“Anyway, don’t worry about a thing. What was the name of that star system again?”

“The Reemay star system.”

“Yeah, Reemay. Anyway, it’s just a matter of selling off the medical supplies in the Reemay star system and leaving quickly, right?”

In the first place, all this commotion was the result of us deciding to head to the Reemay star system, which was Tina’s “old stomping grounds”.

After Dr. Shouko completed the official procedures for joining our crew in the Alein system, we ended up purchasing a large amount of high-quality advanced medical supplies through her. We mainly worked as mercenaries, but we also moonlighted as traders of a sort. Unlike mercenary work, the empire collected taxes from trading. But even so, who would pass up the chance to buy items for cheap and sell for significantly higher prices elsewhere?

Then, after receiving info from Mimi’s grandma, Serestia-sama, about a pandemic occurring at the Reemay system, we decided to head there next in order to make a profit.

“But Boss, have we ever successfully made it out without any incidents in the past whenever you said somethin’ like that?”

“……Anyway, let’s eat the food before it gets cold.”

“Boss?”

“C’mon. This is a delicious meal prepared by Tetsujin y’know? Here you go. Aah.”

I forcefully avoided the topic and ate breakfast with Tina. I’ve ignored it for now, but we were probably gonna get into some sort of trouble again. Anyway, Tina’s mental and emotional care comes first.

For the time being, I suppose I should check with Dr. Shouko and Mei about the disease prevention equipment and the quarantine and disinfection systems of the Lotus. It would be stupid to come to a colony where a pandemic is occurring only to let the pathogens causing said epidemic loose inside our ship.