Noticing that Lan Ze's gaze still had not left her, Aika feigned a helpless sigh. "I know you still have feelings for her, and I want to help her too, but even I can't manage to bring a fully realized beast to Tokyo."
"So, it's better to just give up on that thought."
"Does that mean... if she could leave Uruk and come to Tokyo, you'd agree to let her stay?" Lan Ze asked tentatively.
"The premise you're talking about is impossible to begin with," Aika said flatly. "You'd better give up hope early."
"Besides, once that singularity is repaired, that game disc will most likely become unusable, so you should honestly return to real life afterwards."
"But she should be right here in our world now," Lan Ze suddenly said.
"?"
Almost at the exact same time, Aika snapped her head up, her azure pupils reflecting Lan Ze's figure.
He looked sincere, as if he wasn't lying at all.
"But we got separated when I left, and I don't know where she is now," Lan Ze paused. "So I was wondering if you could help—"
"I don't know how to do that," Aika interrupted flatly. "I'm just an ordinary little girl and I don't know how to find people."
"You—"
"I don't know, I'm just a fragile little girl and I don't know how to find people," Aika said again.
She sighed inwardly.
What a miscalculation. She hadn't expected that woman to actually have a way to leave Uruk.
...Fortunately, however, Tiamat didn't know where they lived. That was probably the only good news.
Lan Ze didn't know that several layers of magic barriers had been set up around this house by her. These magic barriers would isolate all presence within the house, making it impossible for Tiamat to find this place even if she was in Tokyo.
Still, she would have to think of something later to ensure that the woman with the astonishing chest size couldn't find Lan Ze afterwards either...
Looking at the helpless Lan Ze, Aika's gaze flickered slightly as she already began plotting her subsequent plans.
She would never allow anyone to disturb their peaceful life... absolutely no one!
Knock, knock.
A round of knocking suddenly came from outside the door.
"I'll get it," Aika said as she jumped down from her chair. This was also telling Lan Ze: the topic ends here, don't bring it up to me again.
Knock, knock, knock.
"Coming, coming."
The knocking sounded again. Aika walked barefoot across the wooden floor and arrived at the entryway.
She opened the door.
Tiamat stood at the threshold, tilting her head and blinking. "Aaa?"
Aika blinked, stared blankly for a moment, and then slammed the door shut with a loud clack.
Afterwards, the girl turned her back and blocked the doorway, looking as though she had seen a ghost.
How could this be...
How could this be?!
There were magic-isolating magic barriers in this house. Even if Tiamat appeared in this world, how could she have tracked them down so quickly?!
"What's wrong?" Lan Ze sensed the commotion and walked over to the entryway, looking at Aika in shock as he asked.
"It's nothing..." Aika quickly regained her composure, shaking her head with a smile.
Then she gave a light clap of her hands. "Ah, right, right, we should eat lunch. Let's go, let's go—"
As she spoke, she pushed Lan Ze toward the dining room. Lan Ze turned his head back while being pushed forward. "But I thought I heard someone knocking on the door just now?"
"An illusion, it's all an illusion," Aika smiled. "It was probably just some stray cats nearby making a ruckus."
Knock, knock, knock.
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
The knocking outside the door grew louder. Just as the two of them were about to return to the dining room, there was a sudden bang.
The entire front door fell inward with a crash.
A flurry of dust rose into the air as the heavy door collapsed to the ground, courtesy of Tiamat's "gentle" knock.
Amidst Aika and Lan Ze's somewhat dazed stares, a woman with flowing, soft teal hair stood at the entrance, holding a red bean pancake and taking an om nom bite out of it.
A few crumbs of the red bean pancake fell to the floor, and Tiamat still had red bean paste remnants at the corner of her lips.
She raised her gaze to look at the fallen door, suddenly freezing for a moment. She looked somewhat at a loss, finding that the red bean pancake in her hand didn't even taste good anymore as she stared blankly at the door.
Clearly, Tiamat hadn't expected the door to fall over so easily, especially since she hadn't even used any strength.
"Mother?!" Lan Ze cried out in astonishment.
He had just asked Aika for help finding someone, yet he never expected that Tiamat would show up at their doorstep on her own?!
"You, how is this possible...?" Aika muttered, staring fixedly at Tiamat, likewise wearing a look of sheer disbelief.
Several layers of magic barriers had isolated the presence here, leaving no trace of magical energy to be sensed. Even for a beast, no matter how sensitive they were to magic, it shouldn't have been possible to locate this place so easily.
Tiamat should have just arrived in Tokyo not long ago, yet she had gotten here so fast... Rather than calling it a coincidence, it was more like she had known where Lan Ze lived from the very beginning.
Just how on earth had she managed it?
"Thank you." Just as Aika was still in a daze, she suddenly heard Tiamat sincerely thanking her.
Aika: "?"
"What are you thanking me for?" she asked with a frown.
Tiamat pointed to her own head. "On you, connected to the Root."
Aika blinked.
"..."
"..."
After a brief stupor, Aika's eyes slowly widened as if she had recalled something important. "...You tracked me down by following the scent of the fireworks I set off today?!"
Tiamat nodded gently, a tender look in her eyes as she gazed at Aika.
Right after leaving the game, Tiamat had appeared directly in some deserted alley in Tokyo.
At first, no matter how she searched for her cub's scent, she couldn't find it. After leaving the alley and looking out at the streets filled with a boundless sea of humanity, her heart had been flooded with helplessness.
Just as Lan Ze had said, the city he lived in really was full of tall glass curtain walls, with towering buildings standing beneath the azure sky. Sweeping her gaze around, she could spot dating couples from time to time.
Yet, she couldn't find the cub who had logged out of the game with her.
At the time, Tiamat had been wondering whether she should cause a big commotion to signal her location to Lan Ze. But thinking of how many humans were here and that doing so might frighten them, Tiamat ultimately held back.
Right in the midst of that helplessness, however, Tiamat had caught another familiar scent.
...The aura of the Root!
It was the scent left behind by Aika.
Back in Uruk, Aika had once set off a cluster of fireworks over Tiamat's head to proclaim her victory, and those fireworks still retained the lingering aura of Aika... or rather, the Root.
Magical energy could certainly be masked by magic barriers, but the Root could not.
Following that, Tiamat had walked all along the trail of that scent. Along the way, she even ran into a kind-hearted girl with a very low presence by a cherry-blossom-lined slope, who shared a red bean pancake with her.
Afterwards, this Creation Mother Goddess had munched on her red bean pancake while hurrying in the direction of Aika's location, finally reaching this apartment after painstaking effort. As she arrived at the door, she sensed that her cub was inside this very house.
However, due to a moment of excitement, Tiamat's knocking force had seemed just a tiny bit too strong...
And she had accidentally knocked the door down.
"The Root... it was actually the Root..." Aika muttered to herself, staring at Tiamat's plump and sexy figure as she seemed to gradually turn to stone.
This Princess of the Root had never imagined that a simple spell of hers would become the crucial clue that allowed Tiamat to track her down.
First handing the game over to Lan Ze with her own hands so he and Tiamat could meet, and then setting off a cluster of fireworks for Tiamat before leaving Uruk so she could follow the scent right to their door... If someone unaware of the circumstances saw this, they would probably think this Princess of the Root was a warm-hearted girl and perhaps even award her the Best Assist prize.
Lan Ze was equally dumbfounded, but he quickly snapped out of it. He glanced at the dazed Aika beside him and gave a soft cough. "Anyway, come on in first. We can have someone repair the door later."
"Aika just happened to make lunch, so you can try it," Lan Ze continued. "Her cooking is quite good."
Tiamat raised her gentle and calm beautiful eyes, glanced at Lan Ze, and swallowed the rest of the red bean pancake in one bite. Then she licked the lingering flavor from her fingertips before stepping into the entryway.
Glancing at Aika, who was still frozen in a daze beside her, she thought for a moment and gently hugged Aika, seemingly expressing her gratitude.
The great loli was still petrified, her face pressed right against Tiamat's chest. Every time she brushed against those massive breasts, it drained a few more shades of light from Aika's eyes.
It wasn't until the two of them entered the dining room that Aika recovered from her momentary trance. She immediately turned and rushed into the dining room, only to see that Lan Ze had already scooped a bowl of rice and placed it in front of Tiamat's seat.
"Are you really planning on letting her live here from now on?" Aika asked gloomily.
"Otherwise Mother has nowhere else to go," Lan Ze said helplessly. "She won't run around, and she won't cause any trouble, so don't worry."
"That's not the problem—" Aika fumed.
"As for the rent... this place is pretty big, so having one more person shouldn't affect much. The cost should stay the same as before, right?" Lan Ze asked tentatively.
"That's not the problem either!"
She didn't care about money at all. The biggest issue right now had nothing to do with money.
After falling silent for a long moment, she spoke up. "She's a beast, you know? The hazard she poses to the world is huge."
"Aren't you one too?" Lan Ze asked instinctively.
"..."
After a brief, lingering silence, Aika took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "I'm d-i-f-f-e-r-e-n-t!"
That was indeed different; after all, there was quite a big difference in body shape between the two—one was a great loli and the other was a mature woman... Lan Ze nodded gently. "Yeah, yeah, Aika is amazing."
"Why do I always feel like I'm being placated like a child?!"
Aika was unhappy. She stared gloomily at Lan Ze and said petulantly:
"If you had to choose between me and her?"
"What you're saying is like asking whether I should save my mom or my girlfriend first if they both fell into a river..."
"But why do we have to choose?" Lan Ze sighed. "A girlfriend is a girlfriend, and my mom is my mom... Adults don't do multiple-choice questions."
"Girlfriend..." Aika murmured to herself, her shining eyes suddenly lighting up. "Does that mean... I'm your lover?"
Yet she quickly shook her head, vetoing her own words just now as her brows furrowed unhappily. "No... You guy just purely want to freeload off me."
Yes, Lan Ze only had eyes for her money, not her body.
That was why every time Lan Ze joked about marrying her in the past, she had refused.
She would wait until the day Lan Ze lusted after her body before she could agree to a confession.
Judging by now, however, that was a very distant prospect.
For according to Aika's observations, this guy Lan Ze was most likely... an older-woman-lover!
"Anyway, choices are meaningless. As for your worries about Mother posing a hazard to the world, they're completely unnecessary... She has no intention of destroying the world at all, right?"
As Lan Ze spoke, he looked toward Tiamat.
"Aaa," Tiamat nodded obediently.
"See?" Lan Ze turned back to look at Aika.
"Whether the world is destroyed or not isn't important to me!" Aika stared right into his eyes. "The most critical thing right now is that you're sharing a roof with an adult woman, and that is very unhealthy for your body and mind!"
"You're overthinking it. She's just my mother," Lan Ze shook his head.
"Hah," Aika immediately shot Lan Ze a sideways glance.
"Whether you truly see her as a mother or not, you know better than I do."
Before you continue