Chapter 15: Frustrating

"This should be enough..." Stelaria murmurs as she grabs some of her old clothes and heads to the bathroom. The moment she steps inside, she looks around, confused, not seeing Nio anywhere.

"Where is she?" She walks through the large bathroom until her gaze catches bubbles in the water. Then she spots Nio with her eyes closed underwater, and her entire body trembles as if she’d just seen something deeply wrong.

"!!!!" Normally, she would just wait. If her rival died, so be it. But the charm compels her to protect her. She quickly drops everything in her hands and leaps into the water, swimming desperately toward Nio. She grabs her and pulls her out, tossing her out of the bathtub.

"[Cure]" She uses healing magic, knowing every second changes the outcome of a successful healing spell, but before she can do anything to get the water out of Nio’s lungs, Nio simply opens her eyes, uninterested.

"Y-You’re okay?!!" she asks, alarmed, noticing Nio’s completely normal breathing when she’d been nearly sinking into a deep sleep, and she feels slightly irritated at being stopped.

"Oh yeah... I’m just sleepy," Nio says, closing her eyes. Immediately, Stelaria takes a deep breath to keep herself from saying something stupid.

"Weren’t you going to take a bath? What were you doing sleeping underwater?" Stelaria doesn’t even try to ask why, nor does she care how she did it. She’s just frustrated that her own clothes are soaking wet.

"Huh? Oh... do whatever you want... I don’t care, just... let me sleep..." Nio barely understands what she’s saying, running entirely on autopilot. Without enough hours of sleep, her brain literally stops working properly, slipping into this state of extreme drowsiness.

At least seven hours of sleep are necessary for her to function again. This leaves her completely vulnerable — a weakness created unintentionally, just to add realism to the lore she loved so much.

"You think I’m going to bathe you step by step? Don’t you think you’re being way too arrogant?" Stelaria complains, but Nio doesn’t even open her eyes, not even when Stelaria shakes her.

’She doesn’t look hurt or cursed... damn it... why do I have to be her babysitter?...’ Stelaria bites her lips, shoving Nio back into the water any which way, even though her fingers tremble as she does it.

"Don’t complain about how I bathe you..." she mutters, grabbing some cleansing products from a shelf and approaching Nio, who has already sunk into the water. Even though she doesn’t want to do this, Stelaria crouches down and begins rubbing a bar of soap over Nio’s body.

"Seriously? You’re just going to sleep? I could stab you, you know?" she tests, but Nio doesn’t process any information. Stelaria even thinks about what she just said, but the charm makes her abandon the idea.

Which saves her. After all, Nio is a dragon, and attacking a sleeping dragon triggers an aggressive, instinctive counterattack. Stabbing Nio would be asking for her to instinctively wipe out the entire theocracy.

"How did you even make it to adulthood trusting just anyone with your body?" Stelaria complains, rubbing soap over Nio’s legs and arms.

"If you let just anyone touch your body like this, doesn’t that make you a slut?" Although Stelaria’s criticism makes sense in terms of a girl leaving her body in the care of a stranger, Nio would never let a man touch her body. She wouldn’t let her NPCs, either. She literally only let Stelaria handle this because she’s under Charm. After all, she’s just sleepy — she didn’t suddenly become stupid.

"Really? You’re going to ignore that too?..." Stelaria slaps Nio across the face, and although Stelaria ends up with a nosebleed as a response from the commands forcing her not to do it again, Nio doesn’t even move.

"...W-Wow... I slapped you, and you’re not going to wake up?" Stelaria feels uncomfortable, because she didn’t hold back on the slap. What might normally just seem "normal" — someone in deep sleep not waking up — is not normal for a saint.

Saints have their entire bodies emitting holy magic. A slap to someone sleeping or literally unconscious can wake them from unconsciousness momentarily. This makes Stelaria wonder what Nio has been through, since if she didn’t wake up, it’s because her body got used to taking hits even while asleep.

"Tsk..." Stelaria clicks her tongue as she goes back to cleaning Nio, unaware that Nio’s wife is the real culprit behind this defense. After all, Typhon has somnophilia and used to do things to Nio while she slept, which forced Nio’s body to adapt and not wake up in order to avoid hibernation.

So now, only if Stelaria tried to kill Nio would she wake up. But Stelaria, oblivious to this fact, criticizes Nio and her way of life — because criticism is the only thing her brain doesn’t try to completely stop.

"...You have a lot of holy magic... it’s enviable... I wish I had more holy magic. If I did, I’d be even more adored than I am now," Stelaria says, touching Nio’s body and feeling like she’s an enormous holy battery.

"I wonder what your level is. Maybe 30? With luck, 40, since you seem to have more magic than I do?... But what is this?" Stelaria touches Nio’s tail, but she can’t see anything. Still, she can interact with it thanks to the holy magic.

’A cluster of magic? Maybe defensive magic?’ Stelaria rubs Nio’s tail, which stays still, letting itself be touched.

"Weird... you’re all weird. A strange girl... how is someone like you a saint like me? You look like a porcelain doll. It almost seems like if you fell on the floor too hard, you’d shatter into pieces." A truly ironic remark from Stelaria, since if Nio fell hard on the floor, it’s the floor that would shatter into pieces.

"..." Stelaria looks around, and considering Nio doesn’t react to anything, she tries to use forbidden magic to assess Nio. Stelaria doesn’t have any appraisal magic, but she learned one in the past from a book that works by activating magical circles. She draws a symbol in the middle of Nio’s chest with her holy magic.

But when she tries to appraise her, the magic fails. She gets confused and tries to activate it a few more times, then just gives up, thinking she forgot how to do it.

"How frustrating. I can’t even appraise you to see what you’re hiding in your stats." Stelaria rinses Nio’s hair with soap and water and then starts rubbing water all over her body, washing away the soap. After that, she drags her out of the bathtub and looks at the clothes she brought, wondering which one to try putting on the girl sleeping so peacefully.