Chapter 78: This person is my brother? (4)

I won’t talk about a grown man’s tears when he found his family, so I’ll leave it to your imagination. Everything went well… Well… most of it went well. First of all, the rescue operation had now reached its final phase.

Vast Expanse, or at least whatever was left of it, had gone to the North. Guild Master Melantha had a scourge through the West in the Begaritt Continent. We’re currently in Milis, which was the East, and Roxy and the others were heading to the Demon Continent.

While one might find one of Fittoa’s teleported victims here and there, it can be officially concluded that the majority of the rest have either been rescued, died, or simply no longer needed the rescue.

We are now moving the remnants back to Fittoa. Which led us to the next issue. Aisha. I did not have the slightest clue as to how she’s here. In fact, by the moment I opened my eyes, Pursena – not Tersena – had been on top of me.

“…”

“…”

I stared at the maroon-haired child in front of me. No words were exchanged, but she seemed extremely dissatisfied. Not at me, though. Surprisingly, it was directed towards the two idiots in the background…

I can understand the way she looked at Paul since Paul was being Paul at his worst, but why is Rudeus in the fire? Rudeus may be a bit of trouble, but he’s not dumb. Give him a few clues and he’d guessed who she was.

“Aisha, is something wrong?”

“…”

“Aisha?”

“… Nothing.”

… Okay, that’s definitely more than just nothing. No, seriously, I remember Aisha being very tolerant to even Rudeus’s shrine, and in this life my shenanigans weren’t exactly small either, so what’s up with that look?

“…”

“…”

“Laurel.”

“Yes?”

“You said that you were lacking a lot of things compared to Rudeus?”

Ah. If you put it like that, I guess I was really the problem. Overly high expectations lead to greater disappointment. In that sense, having both me and Lilia hyping him up probably made her think of him as some kind of Goliath or something.

I mean, I would be disappointed too if I knew that my overpowered older brother is just a coward being pushed by the waves. But…

“And I still do.”

After all, aside from his three major character flaws – arrogance, cowardice and perversion… Wait, that’s a lot of flaws... Anyway, aside from those three, Rudeus can be said to be very reliable. And even those flaws aren’t that bad either.

Pride is what keeps a person from breaking, cowardice keeps a person from dying, and perversion… perversion… Uh… Just-just-let’s just say it as a biological thing… No, but seriously, there’s no way to justify that. That said, he knows when to be restrained, so let’s all be a little more forgiving. Yeah?

“Did you know what he was like the first time I met him?”

“?”

I… have no idea. But knowing him, he’d surely be skilled enough to hide even his evil inner thoughts. He always was. Even if she had made assumptions, if that pervert didn’t do anything weird, then she wouldn’t have any fuel to fan the flames.

So why’s she giving Rudeus the bombastic side-eye?

“He had panties on his head.”

“A trivial matter.”

Cannon Rudeus had worn a pair of white panties on top of his head when he rescued Aisha. If he could get away with that, then he could get away with this.

“He had openly shouted his comrade’s name in an assumed enemy territory.”

“A mistake in improvisation.”

From what I know, he had been helping Rujerd’s reputation by claiming all his good deeds were Ruijerd’s doing. Thinking of it like that, it was understandable that he would do that out of habit… That said, I have no clue as to why he had to declare it in the first place.

“He declared that he was your brother.”

“Yeah?”

“With panties on top of his head.”

“… An unfortunate set of circumstances.”

“Are you serious?”

“I have to be. Please think of my position for once.”

“…”

Aisha went silent as she stared at me… In response, I kept my usual straight face, the business smile I usually wore whenever I was scamming nobles to buy cor- Hey! Hey! Oi! Don’t give me that pitying look! It’s making me more conscious here.

“Hah… I didn’t want to go this far.”

Aisha sighed, her words coming out as if she were about to throw an ultimatum. Here it comes.

“Laurel.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Do you even know what kind of pervert Rudeus is?”

“A bit.”

LOL. A panty-pervert baby that wears it on his head while crawling around, a lolicon with grooming tendencies, a skirt-flipping panty thief, a husband who prayed to his wife’s panties and even built a shrine for it and even went sniffing at it whenever he missed her.

Girl, I've seen it all. I know this trash bastard all too well. Way~ too well, even. More than you could ever imagine. Do me your worst.

“The mask panites. When he had been fighting with Vierra…”

“Uh-huh.”

“He was licking them.”

“…”

I opened my mouth and closed it again and again like a gaping fish, slightly turning my head sideways, hiding my expression that was rotting from embarrassment as I heard her describing the horrendous scene in its entirety.

“Rudeus had been leering at her boobs, slurping the panties on his face.”

“…”

“While showing a lecherous grin.”

“…”

“And proudly declaring that he was your older brother.”

“…”

“With panties on his head. I’m his older brother~”

“… Fuck.”

Argh! Fuuucking Rudeus! You bastard! Why the hell do you keep dragging me down with you, you perverse lolicon trashy mother-fucking son of a bitch? AHHH! How am I supposed to face people now, you insufferable degenerate!

I was internally screaming, but I didn’t want to let it show. I didn’t want to fuel Aisha’s sentiment. Bastard. Ah, goddamn it, Rudeus. Why the hell did you think that it was a good idea? How the fuck am I supposed to deal with this shit? Ah, fuck it. Whatever.

“Aisha.”

I said, opening my scaming smile like always.

“Let’s all agree to never talk about this bastards perversion again. Deal?”

“Fine by me.”

“So, Aisha. How’s the current situation? Is everyone in Vast Expanse doing well?”

“Ah, yes. Everything was fine. We had a little hiccup with adventuring, but we managed to integrate the Thunder Bolt Clan. Now we’re just a regular company.”

“… I see.”

It was a shame but not unpredicted. Vast Expanse was just a small A-ranked clan built on a six-month marathon. If anything, its actual power is at most a C-ranked clan; the rank was only elevated because I had soloed all B-ranked missions and above that we took.

Its foundation wasn't strong enough. Its top members, the seniors, were supposed to help the juniors out, teaching them the ropes. That position was held by me, Geese and Ghislaine as guest members. While we did our best, six months wasn’t enough time to train anyone.

Once I, the main dealer and supporter of the unit, was out of the picture, it was inevitable that the system would collapse on its own weight, leading to the end of Vast Expanse. Rather, having its members joining Thunder Bolt wasn’t bad.

“You’ve done well.”

The operation was destined to fail from the start. Still, we didn’t leave empty-handed. We had connections to a big clan, and the experiences, both in combat and logistics, were invaluable. With the core members and Aisha as the new figure head, we could restart anew.

I stared at Aisha, who was looking at me in silence. Was she expecting something from me? Was it guilt? Or was it her fear of being reprimanded? I stroked her head, wanting to console her.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Pardon?”

"It's fine. Vast Expanse was just a side project anyway. If it failed, we can just start anew.”

“Huh? What?”

“What?”

“What do you mean by fail?”

Aisha stared at me with her round, blinking eyes. Her confused gaze was also making me confused.

“Didn’t you say we got integrated by the Thunder Bolt Clan?”

“Yeah, I did. Thunder Bolt Clan is now part of our jurisdiction now.”

“… Wait. Hold up. Lemme get this straight. They were integrated by us? Not the wait around? Really???”

Aisha stared at me and then slowly nodded her head.

“HOW?!”

The oldest person in our clan is like what, sixteen? And the bunch of kids with at most C-rank abilities swallowed the S-ranked Thunder Bolt Clan?... How???

“It’s all thanks to you, big brother!”

“???”

Wut? ... Okay, it seems like the information I had was now severely outdated.