Side Story: Niku Kuroinu's Ordinary Day

A slave's morning comes early—

However, on nights when she had hug pillow duties, she would wake up with Kehma, so mornings came quite late. Last night she didn't have duties, so unfortunately, she was up early.

The first thing she did upon waking was choose today's socks. This choice was extremely important. After all, the place Goshujin-sama Kehma looked at most was her feet. Niku didn't really understand this foot fetish thing, but if her esteemed Goshujin-sama desired it, she wouldn't mind wearing the same socks for two or three days without using [Purify] on them.

… Yesterday's were light blue striped thigh-highs, but today she'd go with white. Striped ones seemed unpopular for some reason. She could only explain it as Kehma's preference, but based on Niku's experience, she felt the chances of hug pillow duties were slightly higher when she wore simpler, single-color socks.

"… Nn."

After putting on her socks, she did some light stretching first. She wore only her underwear and socks from sleeping to avoid wrinkling her maid uniform.

Once she'd loosened her body sufficiently, she put on her maid outfit.

It was a maid outfit golem that Goshujin-sama had given her. It supported Niku's movements and greatly enhanced her athletic performance… The socks she'd just put on were also golem-ified.

"… Nnnf."

With preparations complete, it was time for work. Though, since Niku's room in the village chief's mansion was directly connected to the inn, her commute time was zero minutes.

In the morning, she served in the dining room to adventurers having breakfast. The employees took turns on rotation.

Since Niku had hug pillow duties, she sometimes didn't participate in mornings, but there was a substitute shift arrangement for those cases. This was based on Kehma's normal shift schedule and refined by Ichika, known as the [Night Attendance Shift] (named by Ichika), though it had never been used for anything besides Niku's hug pillow duties so far.

Notably, there were no complaints from other employees about this. Rather, as the only one called to his bed, they told her: "Niku-senpai should focus on that and work less."

That aside, the inn served sandwiches for breakfast. Though the only other place to eat was the bar, the sandwiches were quite popular because they were delicious. Using white bread instead of cheap black bread was a secret to their popularity.

Niku ate a sandwich first in preparation for guests.

"Fuwaaah, morning, Kuro-chan."

"Ah, good morning."

The first to wake was the guild receptionist, Silia. Because of her job handling guild reception, she needed to wake up earlier than the adventurers.

Silia glanced around to confirm no one else was there besides Niku, then quietly placed her hand on Niku's head and patted her.

"… Haaah… I can keep going for a while now…"

"I see…"

Niku didn't particularly enjoy being petted by anyone besides her Goshujin-sama, but she endured it because of the tip. She saved her tips to make Goshujin-sama happy.

Receiving five copper coins as a tip, she brought the sandwich. Since Kinue wasn't working today, it was simple work — just entering the kitchen and retrieving a pre-made sandwich from [Storage].

Since time was stopped inside [Storage], it was effectively delivered fresh, but because of Kehma's policy that it would be troublesome if people knew Niku could use [Storage], she went through the kitchen first.

After a while, the staying adventurers woke up. Recently, thanks to Kehma's "investigation" determining that "going as far as the labyrinth area is safe," adventurers were coming to target Iron Golems.

Many reckless ones thought they'd be fine against such a threatening monster, confident they could at least run away. But Niku thought they'd die instantly if Rin bared its fangs at them. Still, she wasn't kind enough to bother warning anyone.

After cleaning up the adventurers' breakfast, Niku did her own training. She sometimes practiced golem operation or magic skills inside the dungeon, but usually trained outside in the village's open square. Her sparring partner was most often Ichika.

Showing the villagers their training also served as a warning of how much fighting power her Goshujin-sama possessed. Of course, she never showed all her abilities.

She knocked away the kitchen knife Ichika held and pointed her knife at her throat. Both were wooden training weapons that Kehma had prepared in ten seconds.

"… Man, I'm no match for Niku-senpai anymore."

"Really?"

Ichika also wore a golem maid outfit like Niku. Since Ichika originally had C-Rank ability, she should have had a far greater advantage over Niku.

In fact, Ichika was stronger when they first started training.

However, they became equals after two months of training, and now Niku was stronger.

The difference was their adaptability to the Golem Assist. For Ichika, who had already mastered her own fighting style, the golem only provided benefits like augmented physical strength. But Niku learned from scratch how to move with the golem, how to let it move her.

So she could detect blind spot attacks through the golem's sensors, and by skillfully using the assist, she could even perform abnormal maneuvers like dodging arrows after they were fired.

Normally, doing such unreasonable movements would break whoever was inside, but her beastkin sturdiness and recovery allowed her to adapt.

As a result, a small warrior who fought using superhuman acrobatics like street performance was born.

"Ichika is stronger without the assist."

"For now."

Ichika sensed she would be surpassed even without the assist soon. Niku had talent. Nurturing that was enjoyable for Ichika. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't a little jealous, but Niku getting stronger wasn't a bad thing. If Niku was strong, Kehma's life would be protected, and she'd get to eat lots of delicious things.

Niku continued training until around lunch.

At noon, she served in the dining room again. Recently, they'd started serving lunch due to strong demand from inn guests and villagers.

Since it also served as cooking practice for Kinue, people could eat reasonably priced, decent portions of delicious food. Since leftovers could be tossed into [Storage] and used the next day, Kinue provided food without holding back.

When the crowd thinned, Niku also ate lunch. Today's lunch was a rice ball with mayo hamburg filling. This was something she'd specially asked Kinue to make, and had recently become Niku's favorite.

Especially good was that it contained the mayonnaise Goshujin-sama had developed. It went quite well with rice and meat.

After polishing off her meal, Niku headed to the reception desk.

Afternoon was reception duty. But there wasn't much to do at reception. The work was basically putting money into the bank-like golem, then giving the customer the change and meal tickets that came out from below, along with the room key.

Niku could do simple arithmetic, more or less, but leaving it to the golem meant no mistakes. Most importantly, it was easy.

Kehma had named it the "Register Golem," but even Niku understood it was an incredible thing.

Rest was also necessary to get stronger. So when no guests came, she held a golem that had recorded Goshujin-sama's [Create Golem] incantation to her ear, listening to it intently.

Listening to Goshujin-sama's voice was soothing for Niku. Being able to hear it anytime like this, Goshujin-sama who developed this golem really was a genius.

Incidentally, this golem looked like a conch shell from Pavera, so when asked "What are you doing?" she was told to answer "I was listening to the sound of the sea."

She received keys from checking-out guests and put those in the Register Golem too.

The keychain rod attached to the key was a golem, and after being placed in the box, it would return to its original spot on its own. She occasionally checked if it got stuck, but that hadn't happened so far.

"Oi little miss, we wanna stay."

"One night, fifty copper coins. Morning comes with a sandwich. Other meals cost extra."

New guests arrived. Three male adventurers.

"Fifty copper?! And meals are separate?! That's expensive, make it cheaper."

"No."

"Come on, it's fine right? Yeah?"

"If you're not a customer, leave."

"Haahn?! There's no other inn, this is the only one! This Aasure-sama is lowering his head to ask!"

He said he was lowering his head, but he was looking down at Niku. She judged they weren't customers and decided to kick them out.

She pressed a button on the reception desk. Immediately, a Clay Golem wearing an adventurer guild armband and armed with a wooden training sword appeared.

"Aahn? What's this, a Clay Golem? Cheeky thing's armed."

Saying that, the fake-customer actually kicked the Clay Golem down.

Apparently this fake-customer either had bad eyes or a bad head.

The adventurer guild armband was officially loaned from the guild's branch head — the receptionist woman, let's call her that — in exchange for cheaper inn rates. So strictly speaking, this Clay Golem was treated as a temporary employee of the adventurer guild. Most people understood that and behaved accordingly, but… this fake-customer actually harmed the Clay Golem.

In other words, this fake-customer was now a fool who defied the adventurer guild — an enemy she could defeat.

"Nn."

Niku hopped out from behind the counter, grabbed the leg of the fake-customer who kicked the golem, and let the Golem Assist throw him.

The thrown fake-customer hit his companions and they all tumbled outside the inn.

The three were stunned by the unbelievable power from Niku's small body.

Then Niku calmly walked outside the inn, a real Golem Knife — not a training one — in hand.

"Damn, Ritaiji, Dogokib! Surround her! We'll take her on three against one!"

Perhaps with blood rushing to their heads, the three were now fully acting like robbers. There were plenty of idiots like this among adventurers.

That said, being this stupid was rare. Like when street thugs became adventurers just to get IDs for borrowing money, spent the registration fee recklessly along with the borrowed cash, then came to this beginner dungeon that was getting known as a place to earn easy money.

Though this dungeon [Cave of Desires] allowed F-Ranks in, it was questionable whether they even met that standard… Since they knew about Clay Golems, maybe they'd somehow scraped by earning pocket change until reaching E-Rank before hitting rock bottom.

"… Grey Rats are smarter."

"What'd you say?! Get her!"

Incidentally, the Grey Rats in the rat races were self-aware that what they did was entertainment and deliberately staged exciting races. They even held meetings the day before, quite clever indeed.

Niku had just muttered that to herself, but to the fake-customers it sounded like provocation.

She cut down the two slow-moving clubs swinging at her from behind with her Golem Knife, swept the feet out from under the two who'd lost their balance, and sent them rolling. They tumbled right toward the adventurer guild building in front.

"Extra."

She threw the fake-customer who'd been in front too, tossing him into the adventurer guild.

Right after, Niku panicked a little, thinking "What if I hit someone when I threw them in?" Because a slave with poor training reflects poorly on their master's discipline.

For now, she went inside the guild.

Inside were four adventurer inn guests and the receptionist.

Niku lightly bowed her head and asked.

"… Did I catch anyone?"

"Ah, yes. It's fine, Kuro-chan."

"Nn, good. These ones are the usual… but even dumber. They kicked the one with an armband, so please handle the rest."

After saying just that, she left the rest to the guild and returned to the inn.

They'd be lucky to get off with just a stern warning. At minimum they'd be banned from this dungeon, or possibly have their qualifications revoked.

Niku sat back at reception and listened to Goshujin-sama's voice.

… Sometimes when adventurers saw that Niku was a beastkin child, the stupid ones would try to intimidate her. Probably thinking they could scare the receptionist into saying they'd already paid since payment was upfront. Ichika would probably handle it more smoothly, she thought. And with that, her reception duty ended without further incident.

Feeling well-rested from her reception duty, Niku returned to the dining room when dinner time came. It was good mental exercise since she needed to remember customers' faces and match them with their order tickets.

Then, Kehma appeared in the dining room. He held a D-Rank meal ticket. Niku rushed to get the D-Rank meal from Kinue at express speed and brought it to Kehma.

"Goshujin-sama."

"Nn. Niku, huh. Good girl, good girl, you're working hard, good job."

Saying that, Kehma ruffled Niku's head. Her face almost broke into a grin… Well, Niku was fully grinning inside, but her facial muscles didn't cooperate well, so only her ears and tail showed it by flapping happily.

And she noticed his gaze briefly went to her feet… She really wanted to take off her shoes right now and show Goshujin-sama her feet, but she hadn't been ordered to. So she endured. Goshujin-sama didn't have the hobby of admiring feet in public.

"… Come to my room today."

"! Yes!"

She trotted to the kitchen and told Kinue "Pillow." Kinue replied "Understood." With that, tomorrow morning would be the Night Attendance Shift.

In a good mood, she finished serving and cleaned herself in preparation for hug pillow duties.

What she had to be careful about was only removing dusty grime from her body. Also, she shouldn't take off her shoes yet.

She took off her maid uniform, lightly wiped her body with hot spring water, and changed into her nightwear… a soft one-piece dress. Niku was the type to sleep in her underwear when alone, but she properly wore clothes for hug pillow duties. Maybe a remnant of her old life, she couldn't settle down sleeping with too much cloth, but it was different when serving as Kehma's hug pillow… Also, Ichika said being indecent wasn't good.

Then she headed to Kehma's room… She stopped by the toilet on the way. Kehma's nights were early and his mornings were late. Not just to avoid wetting the bed, but to make sure she wouldn't need to slip away during the night.

Having finished with the toilet, the fully prepared Niku took a deep breath in front of Kehma's room. This moment always made her heart race.

She knocked and entered. Kehma was already wrapped in his futon.

Goshujin-sama had work on the dungeon and inn repairs, cooking and magic, golem research, and even village chief duties. Unlike jobs anyone could do like serving tables or reception, this was work only Goshujin-sama could do. He was very busy every day. She thought he was amazing and cool.

"Nn, you came～… mm～"

"Yes!"

Niku took off her shoes. Kehma's private room was a Japanese-style room with tatami. So she had to take off her shoes when entering. No, she had to show him as she took them off — the fruits of today's efforts.

… Yes! He's peeking at my feet from inside the futon!

Niku showed off her charm, having slightly wicked thoughts about whether Goshujin-sama might make a move on her in the "Niku" sense today.

From Kehma's perspective, her tail was wagging, so he just thought "She seems in a good mood" without guessing her true feelings.

In preparation for sleep, she slowly removed her knee-socks. She planned to "accidentally forget" them when returning to her room. According to Ichika's advice, doing so would make Goshujin-sama overjoyed. Then naturally she would forget them.

… She'd also like to forget her scent-infused underwear as something with her smell, but… she hadn't been given the chance to take them off yet. Maybe she should just not wear them from the start, but Goshujin-sama said to wear them properly, so she did.

She switched the comforter for a thinner one for sleeping together, turned off the lights, said "Excuse me" and slipped in.

Then Goshujin-sama hugged her tightly. Goshujin-sama's warmth was comfortable.

… While finding a comfortable position, she mustn't forget to rub her body against him, like marking her scent. Also, her nightwear one-piece riding up couldn't be helped. It wasn't like she deliberately pulled it up to feel Goshujin-sama with one less layer of cloth between them. Right, it was an unavoidable accident.

Niku loved Goshujin-sama's scent that she smelled when rubbing against him. She had to stay awake as long as possible to enjoy it.

She confirmed by his breathing that Kehma was fully asleep.

… Goshujin-sama didn't make a move on her today either. Even though she seduced him by rubbing her legs against him, he just slept with his defenseless sleeping face exposed.

Niku wiggled her body just enough not to wake the sleeping Kehma, and gave him a playful nibble. Play-biting was a common display of affection among beastkin. The slave collar didn't react either, so there was no problem at all.

Then, having spent plenty of time play-biting him, she was satisfied and decided to sleep.

Let's do my best for Goshujin-sama tomorrow too. And may tomorrow be the day he finally makes a move on me!

With that wish, she fell asleep.