“Hehehe…”
The day after the team won their way through layer seventy, Hannah woke up early in the morning, grabbed the Dungeon-focused newspapers that Ollie had bought, and sat on the sofa to scan through them, looking creepily enthusiastic all the while. Hannah does not usually read the news, but today, she had gone out of her way to look at them because she had learned that a photograph of her had made it to the front pages.
She quickly rotated through the three biggest publishers’ newspapers again and again, all the while sporting a grin on her face; Tsutomu, seeing her as he came down from the second floor, turned to Ollie, who cracked a dry smile and shook her head.
“She has been like that for a whole hour now.”
“Ahaha… I see,” Tsutomu chuckled, apparently somewhat exasperated, as he accepted a cup of orange juice from Ollie.
And then Hannah, noticing Tsutomu, grabbed a few pages of the newspapers before running up to the latter, her face locked in the same joyful expression.
“Hehehe… Look, Teach! Look what says here — THE BEST EVASION-BASED TANK HAS APPEARED! Right here!”
“Yes, yes. Amazing, very amazing.”
With Hannah grinning as she spread the newspaper pages out in front of Tsutomu, it was apparent that she was too elated to listen to anyone now. Tsutomu decided to play along, patting her on the head — which seemed to only make her even happier.
“Praise me more, praise me more!” Hannah said, looking up with eyes sparkling as she stood up on the tip of her toes and slid her head under Tsutomu’s hand.
“Well, I can see the effort you’ve put in. Good job.”
“That’s right! I totally gave it my best!”
“Very good, very good.”
Tsutomu spent a few moments praising Hannah and patting her head; eventually, seeing that she had settled down, he let go of his hand, picked his cup back up, and sat down on the sofa. Hannah seemed a little disappointed, but as Tsutomu started scanning through the newspapers, she sat down next to him and took a look as well.
[They REALLY are singing her praises.]
Many of the articles covered Hannah in a positive light — so much so that it was immediately understandable why she had been on her high horse this whole morning. In some journalists’ cases, this was a complete reverse of how it had been the days before, when she had been treated by them in the news as the one holding the team back. Tsutomu was mildly annoyed by Hannah’s current childish behavior, with her occasionally pointing at her sections in the papers and demanding more praise, but in the end, he decided to simply give her what she wanted.
[Oh, so there ARE people who noticed THAT… Good on them] Tsutomu thought to himself as he read through the pages, impressed to see some of them pointing out how Amira’s <<Dragon Form>> seemed different from before.
All in all, Hannah was the one mentioned the most in this round of news, followed by Diniel and Tsutomu. A number of articles speculated about how Tsutomu had been able to survive the whole fight against all odds, and some even mentioned the mystery of Daryl’s absence during the final phase.
After reading everything, Tsutomu went to get a pair of scissors and cut out parts of the newspapers — particularly Solit Company’s photographs and reference-worthy articles. Then he organized them, preparing them for use during the evaluation meeting.
“Ah, are you gonna hang them in your room or something, Teach?”
“No, I’ll be keeping these to use as reference data.”
“Aww…”
Tsutomu proceeded with his preparations while also wondering when Hannah would settle down, seeing that she was in her own little fantasy world due to all the praise she had gotten from the news. Still, it was undeniable that the people’s main forms of entertainment in this world — those being the God Pedestals and the news coverage surrounding them — had a great influence on one’s fame, so much so that the world around them would change depending on how publicly popular they were. Thus, Hannah’s current mood and attitude were at least partially understandable.
After all, Tsutomu had had to suffer through the Lucky Boy fiasco, and Alma’s character had changed quite a lot over the course of her career. Lorena over at Silver Beast had also gotten somewhat overconfident ever since her Clan scored a victory against the Fire Dragon. In fact, the newspapers’ potential influence was so great that Hannah may end up being like Alma one day.
[Gotta make sure to bring that up at some point during the meeting.]
Glancing again at Hannah, Tsutomu then moved over to the dining table as everyone else came down for breakfast. Ollie brought one dish after another to the table, setting the table just in time for everyone to start eating together.
Tsutomu clasped his hands together before taking a bite of his butter-and-honey toast, and then took a sip of milk to balance out the sweet taste. Daryl seemed to be in good spirits now, as apparent from how he ate at his usual pace, and Amira was not about to lose to him.
After the meal, Hannah, holding some newspapers in her hands, approached Diniel as the latter was spacing out, apparently growing drowsy already.
“The news featured you a whole lot too, Diniel!”
“Cool, cool.”
“Look! You’re SO COOL!”
Hannah showed Diniel the newspapers, handing her one page after another as she nodded along without a shred of interest. Daryl, seeing himself as well as his absence during the final phase mentioned in some of the articles, closed his mouth tightly as if to brace his mind.
Amira took a few glances at the papers and left them on the table, apparently not at all interested. Tsutomu approached her to speak with her, keeping his voice down.
“Amira, thanks for yesterday.”
“What? Why thank me all of a sudden? Did I do something?”
“You helped Daryl cheer up, right?”
“…Nah, not really.”
Amira, seemingly annoyed, briefly scowled at Tsutomu before turning the other way. Tsutomu had in fact seen the whole scene of her encouraging Daryl to do better, what with them having been shown on Monitor #2.
“Keep up the good work — is what I’d like to say.”
“What? Now I’m supposed to take care of him? You’re the Clan Leader, Tsutomu — you do it yourself.”
“Aw, come on, don’t say that.”
“…Your face is looking pretty punchable right now, you know that?”
Seeing that Amira was seething and clenching her fists quite tightly, Tsutomu backed away from her and proceeded to run everyone through today’s plans. The Clan would be taking time off from Dungeon exploration, so everyone was free to do whatever in the morning. In the afternoon, they were to be interviewed by the newspaper outlets, and after that, they would be paying a visit to their sponsor, Dorren Workshop.
“Don’t worry about losing your free time — today won’t count as a day off.”
“Cool, cool.”
Diniel closed her eyes in relief. She proceeded to take a plate of sweets that Ollie had made, grabbed some drinks, and then went back to her room. Her ponytail swung around in the air each time she turned around.
“Now then, we’ll be going down the Dungeon! Would you like to come with us, Sir Tsutomu?”
“Come on, Tsutomu, let’s go get some training in.”
“Ah! I wanna go, too!”
“All right, all right. Group of four, then.”
Tsutomu calmed down the three of them, and after everyone was ready, he headed for the Guild.
――▽▽――
“Ooh! So this is what snow looks like!”
Heading down to layer seventy-one, Hannah was surprised by the expanse of white before her, and once she got to touch the snow with her hands, she proceeded to dance around happily. The region surrounding Dungeon City almost never snowed even during the winter; in fact, according to the records, the last time it had snowed was over twenty years ago. Since Hannah came from a village somewhat close to Dungeon City, this was naturally her first time seeing real snow.
“S-so cold…”
It did not take long at all for her to start shivering; she spread out her blue-feathered wings and covered her arms with them. The temperature here was a sharp drop from that of the Volcano layers, and the ground here was buried in heaps of snow. Considering Hannah’s clothing, it was only natural that she would be cold.
“But I’ll get warmer once I start moving! That’s how it’s always done during the winters back at my village!”
“I think not — You’ll probably freeze to death, dressing like that in a place this cold. Here, put this on.”
“Thanks, Teach…”
Tsutomu handed Hannah a thick coat that he had bought during his clothing shopping spree; she took it in her shivering hands and immediately slid into it. Then it was time to help Daryl out; Tsutomu walked behind him, opened up his heavy armor’s refilling tube, and threw in some neatly-shaved and processed Fire Magic Stones inside.
A few moments later, Daryl’s armor began to heat up; Hannah and Amira, noticing this, quickly approached him. Daryl looked at them as if they were campers sitting by a bonfire.
“As you can probably see, exploring the Snow Field layers requires similar kinds of precautions as the Volcano layers, so we’ll be taking some time to set ourselves up. Daryl’s heavy armor needs some improvements, too.”
“Gotcha, Teach…”
“Gotta get something warmer for you as well, Amira.”
“Right.”
Being told so, Amira put her hands on the leather armor she was wearing, seeming at least a little bit sad because she had always been her favorite red leather this whole time. Tsutomu, seeing her like that, pondered things over for a brief moment, and after the team got a good peek at the Dungeon’s seventy-first layer, he called off today’s exploration.
Afterward, the team went to be interviewed by three news outlets. Diniel had to be forced by Ollie to dress up, after which she joined the others. They went together to Solit Company’s headquarters, where all three of the interviewer groups were gathered. Hannah had also had her hair tidied up upon returning to the Clan House, while the three others left their hair as they had always been.
Once all five Clan members were seated in the reserved room within the headquarters, the joint interview with the three publishers began, with the one receiving focus first being — as one would expect — Hannah. She had previously been the least popular member of Absolute Helix, and thus the masses had expected the least out of her, but during yesterday’s Mount Golem battle, she had put on the performance of a one-woman army. And as there was so little information on her, it was only natural that the questions would go to her first.
“Miss Hannah, regarding your role as an evasion-based Tank — What are the things you think about when carrying out that role?”
“Hmm… Well, you see! Recently, I’ve been thinking about how to read ahead of the monsters’ moves!”
“I see! So that’s how you performed so well against the Mount Golem yesterday! That’s true — you wouldn’t have been that effective without being able to read ahead!”
“Y-you think so? Thank you very much!”
Following that, Hannah was asked more and more questions, and she grew more and more talkative as things went on. She was used to this, as she had been given media coverage before — but only as an Attacker. Moreover, this was the first time she had been interviewed as practically the main show, so she was quite upbeat in answering every single thing thrown at her. Tsutomu, keeping an eye on her, was worried about whether she would be all right.
Back in Live Dungeon, Tsutomu had also been a famous White Mage player, and he did feel good about being sought after by the players around him. He would always be happy whenever he was voted as the MVP at the end of Dungeon runs, and the countless praises he would receive through the in-game chat and forum posts had never failed to make him smile.
But sometimes, he had gotten too carried away and ended up in trouble as a result. At one point, his overconfidence in his tactics and refusal to accept suggestions from others had resulted in him performing far less efficiently than other White Mages during a raid battle — then subsequently failing to secure the MVP vote and getting bashed hard by the other players afterward.
[I wonder if Alma went through this kind of phase as well…]
After her victory over the Fire Dragon, she had been featured front and center in the news, like how Hannah was being talked up right now. All this quite closely resembled what Tsutomu had experienced, too, but still had one significant difference: Tsutomu’s cases had happened in a game, but now it was happening in reality. Perhaps it simply could not be helped that one would end up feeling hyped up like Hannah or Lorena, and possibly become overconfident as a result.
“Mister Tsutomu, may we ask you some questions?”
While Tsutomu pondered things over as Hannah dealt with the tidal wave of interviewers, one of Solit Company’s journalists raised her hand and called out to him specifically.
“Ah, yes. What is it?”
“Regarding the timing of your <<Raise>> spell — During the Mount Golem’s final phase, as we recall, you cast <<Raise>> as soon as you could. What was your intention behind doing so?”
This particular journalist was the same woman who had attempted to interview Tsutomu during the Stampede. Her eyes showed no particular sign of contempt, and she seemed to be asking a genuine question.
“That was–“
“That was–! Because of my mistake!”
To Tsutomu’s side, Daryl — having only been timidly answering the questions that went his way so far — suddenly spoke up, taking both the journalist and Tsutomu by surprise. Daryl proceeded to stand right up and rushed to the journalist.
“It was my fault. Sir Tsutomu knew that I could not perform well at that time. That’s why he cast <<Raise>> while he could!! It wasn’t his fault at all!!”
“I-is that so…?”
“Yes!”
The journalist nodded, her face slightly red from how Daryl rushed up to her so suddenly. Tsutomu hurried out of his seat, telling Daryl to stop and pulling him back by his shoulders. Daryl, realizing what he was doing, hurriedly stepped away from the journalist.
“I-I’m so sorry!”
“A-ah… It’s all right, Mister Daryl.”
The journalist took a deep breath to calm herself down, then she turned to Daryl again while taking notes on a white sheet of paper.
“As we recall, Mister Daryl, you were easily knocked away by the Mount Golem. Could you tell us the reason for that?”
“That was… because of my lack of skill,” Daryl said, sounding quite down.
“…Hmm,” the journalist nodded to him. Seeing Daryl like this, she figured that it would be in poor taste to pursue the topic further, so she tried to change the direction of the conversation.
But then, Tsutomu gave Daryl a pat on the shoulders and proceeded to say,
“Please, don’t worry about him. Daryl did make a significant mistake during the final phase, yes, but as the Clan Leader, that mistake was also partially on me. Besides, I see in him the potential to surpass Garm, his mentor — so I’ll be expecting great things from him going forward. Did you get all that? Please include it in the article.”
With Tsutomu locking his face in a smile and giving out such a hammed-up speech, Daryl looked at him as if questioning his sanity. The journalist, perhaps being mindful of her interactions with Tsutomu, simply nodded and noted down what she had been told.
“S-Sir Tsutomu!? W-what are you saying!?”
“I mean, I was just repeating what Garm actually said.”
“T-that’s true, but…!”
“Ah, I see. Then we’ll be sure to give him proper credit in the article–“
“NOOO! Please DON’T write that down!”
The journalist, feeling that quoting Garm would make it easier to put together the article, was eager to write the details down, but Daryl hurried to stop her. Tsutomu took his eyes off Daryl for a while, looking at how the others were doing instead. Diniel, despite being all dressed up, was doing things at her usual pace. Amira answered her questions with a high and mighty tone — as per usual coming from her.
“Oh, please do mention Dorren Workshop in the article as well, yes?”
Tsutomu took a chance to slip in an for his sponsor, and then proceeded to answer more of the interviewers’ questions.
