[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 26: Waterside part 1

"Are you alright?" She asked. At a second glance, without the surge of hope and the blood in my eyes blinding me, she didn't look much like Annabeth. She was five or six inches shorter than Annabeth had been the last time I'd seen her and significantly less tanned. She was obviously an adventurer, though, both because she was here and because of what she was wearing. Though her armor was very light, it stood out alongside her sword, and she'd clearly cut down the Minotaurs with tremendous ease. Given that, she must have been a skilled, experience adventurer of at least Level 3 and probably higher.

Also, she'd just asked me something, hadn't she?

"One sec," I said.

Taking a deep breath, I couldn't help but curl slightly around the pain in my stomach, the steady burn now feeling like I'd filled my stomach with acid and it was slowly eating its way out of me. With the battle so abruptly over, it was like I'd come down from a high, the adrenaline and thrill of battle no longer there to focus me through the pain, leaving it too consume more and more of my thoughts. I needed to put an end to it and I needed to do it now.

"Stop," I told the geysers with gritted teeth, on my hands and knees. They didn't listen, so I had no choice but to be harsh with them, focusing all the power I had behind the words. "Stop!"

With a sudden splash, the geysers cut out, leaving me feeling even more exhausted than before. The seawater remained as a quickly spreading pool that had already covered the entire room and those around it now that it was no long directed by my will. I'd need to handle that in a little bit, drain it away before it caused problems for other adventurers making their way through here, but for now I welcomed the presence of the salt water. The pain in my gut lessened somewhat without the steady drain of the summoned water and I released a slow breath, rolling my shoulders. There was a slight grinding sound as I did, alongside a series of pops, but then my shoulders were more or less mended.

Panting hard, I looked up at the girl, still all but on the ground.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" I asked her.

"Are you alright?" She asked again, golden eyes looking at me with concern.

"Ah," I said, slowly getting up. That's right, she'd come to help me; she must have noticed me fighting and come to give a hand. Nice of her. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks for the save, though. You really helped me out there. Sorry if I caused you any trouble."

"No, the fault was ours to begin with," She replied, shaking her head. "You have nothing to be sorry about."

"Huh?" I asked, tilting my head in confusion.

She seemed to pause for a moment, considering the words—not like she was trying to come up with a story, because trust me, I'm more than familiar with that look. No, she seemed like she was actually trying to decide on how to say something.

"My Familia encountered a group of Minotaurs on the seventeenth floor," She said at last. "They attacked us and ran when we fought back and ended up escaping to the upper floors."

"Oh," I said, blinking slightly as I realized what she was saying. So basically, those Minotaurs had been so scared of her they'd run for their lives and then just happened to find me? Then the fact that I'd been in their way was just bad luck?

...That was a new one for me, I think. It probably wasn't quite that simple—I'm betting the Dungeon had seen fit to take advantage of the situation—but if what she was saying was true, it hadn't been because of me that the Minotaurs had appeared on the eleventh floor.

I wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that. On one hand, it wasn't my fault. On the other, that meant that stuff like this could actually happen on its own. Minotaurs could appear on higher floors if frightened enough or, presumably, if something else happened. I'd never considered prowling the Dungeon to be safe, even for me, but something like that was enough to make me more than a bit worried. What if I hadn't been here—how far would the Minotaurs have gotten? Would they have found someone else? Would someone have died?

But...at the same time, I was relieved. If the Minotaurs had been there because of me, if my presence had drawn such a horde of them across so many floors, then that would have made things a lot more dangerous. At the very least, I'd had needed to break things off with Welf and Lili—I couldn't risk putting them in that kind of danger. Hell, I wasn't sure if either of them would even want to continue working with me after this, but if I'd been the one responsible? I'd have had no other choice.

"I apologize," She told me, bowing her head low. "It's my fault that the Minotaurs escaped and that they caused you so much pain and injury. I am very sorry."

"Its fine," I said, scratching my head and feeling a little embarrassed. Honestly, I wasn't used to people apologizing to me for stuff like this, much less seeming so remorseful about it. "I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to stop them all and that they might reach the upper floors, but since you got her so quickly, you must have been chasing after them, right? Stuff like this happens so let's just leave it at that, okay?"

She slowly lifted her head, but her expression didn't change much.

"Thank you," She said. "If you hadn't been here to slow them down, the Minotaurs would likely have gotten much further and endangered other adventurers. If there's anything I can do...?"

I laughed slightly, relaxing a bit.

"Like I said, it's fine. I'm just glad that no one got hurt," I told her. "My party got away safely so everything's okay. I'm Percy, by the way. Percy Jackson."

"Aiz Wallenstein," She replied. "Are you sure your friends are okay? I can go after them to make sure, if you're sure you'll be okay here. My friends will arrive shortly, so you shouldn't have to worry."

"I appreciate it," I told her honestly. "But you'd just be wasting your time—my best friend carried them, so they should have already reached the surface. She's very fast when she wants to be."

"Are you certain?" She asked me, sounding worried even as she looked towards the exit. After everything I'd heard about adventurers, especially from Lili, I'd been a bit worried, but she seemed nice. She was honestly concerned for what might happen to other adventurers and wanted to make sure everyone who'd been affected was okay.

"Positive," I told her. "I stayed behind to make sure none of the Minotaurs got through and they wouldn't have slowed her down anyway."

"...I'm sorry," She said again, sounding awkward as she did. "They must have been scared."

"Probably," I agreed, sighing a bit myself. "But that's why I'm here, I guess. Don't worry about it too much. I'll split the magic stones from the Minotaurs with them when I get back to the surface—the ones I killed, I mean. It should be pretty easy to tell them apart."

And it was. All the ones Aiz had killed were in neat little piles of pieces while I'd made more of a mess. Shaking my head at the sight of some of them, I walked towards the nearest corpse, drawing Annabeth's Dagger as I went. As I did, however, I noticed Aiz walking in lockstep with me.

"I'll help," She said. "Since it was my fault. You can have the magic stones from the ones I killed as well, as my apology."

I scratched my head, feeling embarrassed again.

"You don't have to do that," I told her.

"Please," She replied, meeting my eyes, and that was the end of that. In the end, she sat down beside another Minotaur and we both got to work in a silence that I hoped wasn't as awkward for her as it was for me. There are group activities that lend themselves well to conversations and then there's carving open the corpses of the slain to steal the shiny bits inside.

"Aiz!" A man abruptly shouted, breaking the silence—and thank god for that because I'd honestly considered asking about the weather. In the Dungeon. "Are you down here!? I went up to the ninth floor but there was nothing—oh."

The man who appeared at the doorway was a...werewolf? I'm pretty sure he was a werewolf based on the ears and the tail, but I honestly wasn't sure where Werewolves started and Chienthropes stopped. But he was probably a werewolf, with light grey hair and amber eyes. He was tall for Orario, I guess, seeing as he looked to be about my height, but he looked older than me, too; in his early twenties at least. Also, he knew Aiz, apparently. Same Familia, probably.

"Bete," Aiz said calmly, looking up from her work. "The Minotaurs are dealt with."

"Tch," He replied. "Guess I ran all that way for nothing. You stopped them here? As expected of Aiz, I suppose."

"It wasn't just me," She said.

Bete frowned slightly, looking around even as he took several steps across the water covered floor. I saw him consider several of the corpses I'd made, clearly distinct from the ones Aiz had killed. Then he frowned at me, glaring for a long moment.

"I have no idea who you are," He growled as if that was my fault.

"Same," I replied, stopping in the middle of my work to meet his eyes. We were both silent, refusing to be the first to back down or introduce ourselves. It's a guy thing.

"Bete, this is Percy Jackson," Aiz said. "Percy, this is Bete Loga. He's a part of my Familia."

Bete's eye twitched and he glared at me even more intently, looking annoyed. Whether because Aiz had interrupted the stare down or because of what she'd said, I wasn't sure. As for Aiz, her expression didn't change as she made introductions. Frankly, I wasn't sure she even noticed the situation.

"What are you doing, Aiz?" He said, seemingly dismissing me from his world and focusing entirely on her. Aiz had never stopped working on the Minotaur in front of her and seemed intent on her task even as she spoke. She took her apologies seriously, I guess.

"Harvesting the magic stones from these Minotaurs," She replied easily which just seemed to annoy him even more.

"That's not something someone like you should be doing, Aiz," He told her. "You're above dealing with scum like this."

I wasn't sure whether he was referring to the Minotaurs or me, but for Aiz's sake I didn't splash him with water. Besides, he could probably kick my ass.

"Well," Aiz said, blinking at him slowly. "It was our fault that the Minotaurs got away and we ended up causing him a lot of trouble. I wanted to make it up to him and his party."

"His party?" Bete asked, sounded even more annoyed. "There's more of them?"

"I sent them back to the surface when the Minotaurs attacked," I answered. "Aiz decided to help me harvest the magic stones; I'm going to split them with my friends when I get back to the surface."

Bete scoffed.

"I don't see why Aiz needs to dirty her hands for the sake of a bunch of weaklings who could only run," He said, growling in annoyance.

I removed the magic stone from the Minotaur and watched it turn to dust before taking a slow breath and wiping Annabeth's dagger on my pants. Sheathing it, I rose and turned to look Bete in the eye, staring at him hard. I didn't want to start a fight with a friend of someone who'd just helped me out, especially if he was anywhere near as strong as Aiz was.

But I didn't back down, either.

"Those are my friends you're talking about," I stated plainly, because it was all that needed to be said.

"And you told them to get out the moment things got dangerous, didn't you?" Bete replied, sneering at me.

"No," I said. "I didn't give them a choice in the matter—I just made them leave. If I hadn't, Welf probably would have stayed."

"But they'd just have held you back," He returned, expression unchanged. "Tell me, how many of these monsters died because of them? What would they have done but die had they stayed? You sent them away so they wouldn't get in your way."

I was silent for a moment—not because I agreed, but because I was gritting my teeth.

"You're wrong," I said, forcing myself to keep my tone calm and not punch him with a giant fist. "That's not why I sent them away—I just don't want to risk losing anyone else."

It wasn't easy saying that, especially not to some asshole I didn't even know—I'd been avoiding having to admit that particular truth since I got to Orario. I wasn't scared of fighting or danger. Honestly, I wasn't even that scared of death, or at least not as much as I should have been. But if there was anything that worried me, that scared me, it was the thought of losing any more than I already had, of failing again.

Sending Lili and Welf away had been the smart thing to do and he was probably right about what would have happened had they stayed—but I hadn't given them a choice and it had been for my own sake that I'd made them leave. They didn't deserve to be insulted for something I'd done.

Bete's mouth twisted and opened, but he never got a chance to reply.

"Bete," Aiz said, voice growing just a touch sharper. "Enough."

Bete's hands clenched into fists and he growled, but seemed to swallow whatever he'd been about to say.

"Do you even know who you're dealing with?" He asked instead.

"Nope," I replied which seemed to piss him off even more.

"You're talking to Loki Familia," He said. "One of the strongest Familias in Orario. We're returning from an expedition to the fiftieth floor. That's Aiz Wallenstein you're trying to act chummy with."

"Neat," I said. I got the feeling he was trying it impress me with something grand and impressive, but most of it was flying so far over my head that it was probably on the surface right now. I got the floor thing and that was it.

Bete grit his teeth for a moment and then took a step closer to me.

"You are an annoyance," He said.

"Yes," I replied. "Yes, I am. And my friends are probably worried about me, so I want to get back to the surface as soon as possible, before they do anything rash. So if you don't mind, get out of my way. I'll feel bad if I make Aiz do all the work."

He stared hard at me for a long moment before clicking his tongue angrily and stalking over to Aiz. To complain or to help her, I wasn't sure and didn't really care.