"How long is this going to take? I feel like I've been in this carriage my whole life."

"You know, if you shut up, I heard the carriage will go faster."

Eris and I have been going back and forth for the past day because she can't keep her mouth closed.

"It's really troubling being in such a confined area with this brat. She acts like she's never been on a long carriage ride. All she does is complain. I'm going to throw her out of the carriage and speed off."

"Why did I agree to go on a trip with you?"

"Because you're stupid. I thought you figured this out a while ago. How dumb are you? I thought my teaching made you a little smarter. I failed as a teacher."

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"

Eris tried to jump on top of me and beat me up like she's done three times this ride.

"Sigh, Eris, I've held you back so many times. I'm getting tired of you two going back and forth. Why not just duel and get it over with?"

"That's because Eris could never touch me in a duel. She's just a spoiled brat with a sword."

"You know rudeus your starting to act like eris."

"Hey everyone, the horse needs a break, so we will set up camp here for the night."

The carriage speaker looks tired from having to listen to me and Eris go at each other's throats all day.

I jump out of the carriage to explore the forest. We are pretty deep in the forest, and with my mana eye, I can see a lot of different animals. I don't see any humans around, except…

I can practice my touki out here. I'm not good at it; I can only apply it to my sword. I'm not able to create a touki defense. I'll train with the wild animals. Okay, I see a wolf not too far away from here.

I run towards the mana signature. While running, I start to see a couple of mana signatures; they're human. What are humans doing out here? Were we followed?

I walk towards the mana signature. I look behind a tree and see a little girl resisting a bunch of bandits. She looks exhausted, like she was running.

"Oo, Darius is going to love you. He likes a little girl who has some fire in her."

"No, I'm not going with you! Nobody owns me!"

The little girl kicks one of them in the leg and tries to run away. She's grabbed by one of the bandits, and the one who was kicked starts to beat on her.

"You little brat! I should just take your innocence right here."

He starts to pummel her; blood starts coming out of her face, a couple of teeth come out, and he starts to undress her.

"Hey, you bastards, don't touch her any further!"

They all look at me. I'm holding my hand out, ready to cast a spell at any time.

"Kid, get lost before we take you next."

"No, on my name, Rudeus Greyrat, I will take all of you down and make you kneel to me."

"So you're a cocky brat and a noble. We will take you to Darius."

The group of thugs look at me with a sinister smile creeping up on their faces. They look like predators ready to pounce on their prey.

One throws a throwing knife at me, thinking it will be an easy kill. I easily dodge such a slow attack.

"Hmm, you seem trained, brat."

"Such a slow attack like that could never kill me. your best option is to kneel to me."

"Alright, your starting to piss me off I'm going to kill you."

All of the thugs charge me with their swords. They all throw strikes at me from different directions. I stand still.

"I said, kneel!"

They are all hit with my ground. Their swords crack under the pressure of my gravity, and all of them kneel under my gravity, their hands pointing to the ground. They can't move.

"You disobey my order; now you will die."

I let up on the gravity; they fall to the floor in exhaustion. I make four earth bullets and spin them. They reach supersonic speeds, and I aim them at their heads. The bullets pierce their heads, making them explode.

"I didn't expect their heads to explode."

After that, I drop to one knee, feeling the cost of what I just did. Damn, I used a lot of mana there. With that pressure, I was pretty careless. Even with my magic eye, I still let out too much mana. I was supposed to only put my gravity on them, but from what it seems, everything in a ten-meter radius felt it.

"At least I looked cool saying all that stuff. I was totally a badass, acting like I was some almighty king, god I'm such an otaku."

I see all the damage to the trees; they look like they were just stomped down, almost fully crushed. The ground was already cracking under my pressure.

I remember the little girl I was saving. I look over at her; she was looking at me with stars in her eyes, like I was the coolest thing she had seen.

"Thank you, sir, for saving me. I'm totally grateful. They were trying to give me to some dirty noble."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. I've heard about him."

"Well, forget about that! Can you tell me what you just did there! Everything around you just had so much pressure around it. It's like you were pushing them down with gravity."

"You won't believe me, but that's exactly what I did. It's called gravity magic."

"Magic? But you didn't utter a single incantation?"

"Well, you see, I've mastered this special skill called incantation-less magic. Only a few people are able to do it."

"Wow, you're so strong."

She looks at me with bigger stars in her eyes.

"I don't know where your family is, but I'll take you to them you can ride with me we are going to roa."

"No, I don't want to."

"Huh? Oh, you don't want to?"

"They tried to sell me to Darius, and I ran away. That's why I'm out here."

"Oh. Well, where am I supposed to take you, then?"

I look deep into her eyes; she looks like she is about to cry.

"I don't know. I don't have a home anymore."

I look at her with great pity thinking about her situation how her parents tried to sell her to some dirty noble

"Sigh, Eris is going to hate this."

"Who's Eris?"

"You'll know soon enough. Would you like to come with me?"

I start to scratch the back of my head and look down, knowing that Eris is not going to enjoy the company of this girl.

"Yes! I'd love to."

We start to walk, and she's following me.

"Oh, wait. I never asked your name. My name is Rudeus."

"My name is Tristian."

I do a double-take. Wait, isn't she the thief that Rudeus and then ran into in Canon? Well, now that I look, for a kid about my age, she's pretty, and her chest is developing just as much as Eris.

"If you want, you can call me Tina."

Tina starts to blush and twirls her hair a bit.

"Okay, Tina. I'll take you to my carriage. We are going to Ars for a mission."

"Okay, Rudy."

"How did she know my nickname?"

We make it back to the camp, and I see Eris swinging the sword I made for her while Ghislaine is watching.

"Hey, everyone, I brought someone. I just saved her from a bunch of bandits. Her name is Tristian."

Everyone focuses their attention on the girl behind me. She gets nervous with all the glances and holds onto my arm, hiding behind my back.

"Wow, Rudeus, are you trying to start a harem?"

Ghislaine laughs at her own joke.

Eris looks at the girl clinging to me and storms off.

"Wait, Eris, it isn't like that."

I attempt to run after her, but Tina stops me.

"I don't want you to go; I'm scared."

When did she just become all timid?

Tina and I sit by the campfire, eating the meat we prepared for the trip.

"Yeah, Ghislaine, it was like four of them. I used my magic eye to see the mana signatures, and I seen them beating her."

"Speaking of that, Tina, I never actually healed you. Don't your wounds hurt? Don't you feel pain?"

"Now that you speak of it, I'm starting to feel it, the adrenaline must be wearing off."

"Well, I can heal you if you want."

"Yes, please heal me."

I walk up to her while she's sitting down. I put my hands by her chest, and I close my eyes. I start to heal her wounds.

"Wow, you healed me without a word. I still can't believe you can use magic without any words."

I rub the back of my head and chuckle.

"Well, I trained really hard to heal without words."

"You're the best, Rudy."

She runs up to me and gives me a big hug. She knocks me over, and we fall to the ground with her on top of me.

She tries to kiss me, but I hurry up and stand up.

"Well, you know, it's getting late. I have to go get Eris and I dash off."

she hasn't been back in a while, and I can track her with my magic eye.

Searching for Eris, I've seen her mana a lot, so I can tell which is hers just by looking. She must've run pretty deep because I haven't seen her mana at all, and it's been 10 minutes. Where could she have gone?

"I can't stop thinking about that fight with the bandits. I wasted so much mana; I probably used up at least a third of my mana pool. If that was a fight against anyone stronger, I would've exhausted all my mana."

"I need to refine the control of my gravity, but it seems all I need is just more battle experience, and I'll be fine."

"Oh, I think I see her finally." I rush towards the direction of Eris's mana. As I get closer, I see her swinging with more intensity. She looks like she just sweated a whole bathtub. If you'd seen the speed and intensity of her swings, you wouldn't guess the sword is 60 pounds; she's swinging it around with ease.

"I guess it's about time I make it heavier."

Eris jumps back and aims her sword at me when she notices me and turns around, putting her head up in defiance.

"Sigh, what did I do to you? Why are you acting like this, Eris?"

"I don't know why you care. Why don't you go snuggle up with that girl you brought back?"

"Oh, I should've known. This whole time it's jealousy."

"It's not like that, Eris. She was just nervous because everyone was staring at her. You know, you and her are actually more alike than you think."

"I could never be like that girl, snuggling up to men she barely knows."

"When were you the one to care about that type of stuff?"

"I don't. I'm just saying I'd never do that."

"I'm going to get a headache."

"Well, you know, she was about to be kidnapped just like you and sent away to somewhere she didn't want to go."

Hearing that, Eris looks at me with curiosity and a little sadness in her eyes.

"Well, I don't care. She's still annoying. I don't know why you're being so nice."

"You haven't even met her yet. You never know, you might actually start to like her."

After our conversation, we start to walk back, but I can tell something's wrong as we walk through the forest. When I look with my magic eye, I can't see anything out of the ordinary. My senses are telling me there's danger, but I don't see it.

We make it back. I look around the camp to see anything out of the ordinary, but there's nothing. Probably just my senses going off because of some animals or something.

"YOU'RE BACK!"

Tina runs up to me, trying to give me a hug, but I sidestep her, and she falls on the ground face-first.

"I thought you were an enemy."

Everyone looks at me, knowing I just told the biggest lie ever.

"Well, everyone, it's getting late. I think we should put out the fire and go to bed. We need a lot of rest for the rest of our journey."

I make myself an earth dome, adding a door and making myself a bed and adding a bathtub. I make another for Eris, Ghislaine, and Tina, putting three beds in there and making a bath with hot water so everyone can clean themselves. After making their makeshift house, I go back into mine and lay on my bed.

I wonder if Hitogami is watching me now. If so, then what if he warns the Water God about me? We would all perish if so. There's nothing I can do to stop her. I wonder, by taking on this mission, how much of canon would be changed if I speak with Ariel? What do I say? How am I supposed to sneak Ghislaine into Ars?

"Rudy."

I look up and see Eris standing at my front door with a blanket, the moonlight bouncing off her back, making her look angelic, the night sky just enchanting her natural beauty. I sit there, forgetting all of my worries, and just look at the girl standing in my front door.

"Uhhh, yes?"

She walks closer to me. I get up and light a little flame in my hand so we can see each other in the dark. I can't tell if it's because I'm stressed or not, but I just can't help but get a weird feeling in my stomach. There's just something I feel when I look at her. I stare into her eyes, searching for it. I want to grab onto this feeling, but I can't. It's something so out of my depth I can't even begin to imagine what this sensation is and why, of all times now.

"Why now am I feeling like this? I've seen her face so many times. It's happening out of the blue, but I can't help but just keep feeling this way. She's cleared my mind of all my stress, and she hasn't even done anything."

None of this makes any sense. Why did I suddenly develop a crush?

"Rudy… Rudy, you're making me embarrassed."

Eris slaps my face.

"Huh, what happened? Why did you slap me?"

"You kept staring into my eyes. It made me uncomfortable."

"Ohh, I'm sorry. What did you want?"

Eris looks at me, then looks at her blanket.

"Could I sleep with you? Tina keeps snoring loudly."

"Umm, sure."

I move my body so she can sleep in front of me, and she gets into the bed with me. I feel our bodies touch. Her warmth… I freeze. This is so strange. Before, when we slept together, I didn't feel so nervous, but now my palms are sweaty because our legs touched each other's.

I sit there unable to fall asleep. I hear Eris fall asleep. I try to move away and get some sleep, but in her sleep, she suddenly latches onto me. Now my head is on her chest. I can't move. My face feels so hot. I don't know what to do.

When I talked to Sylphie or Roxy, I never felt this. I only viewed them as characters. I was so confident, but now it's hard not to see Eris as anything but a real girl. I've been in this world for a couple of years now, and day after day, this becomes my reality. Everything becomes realer. Everyone starts to feel more like people to me.

At first, I thought of Eris as nothing more than just a character I had to marry for the plot. But the more time that passes by, the more I actually start to like her, the more I appreciate the things she does. I've only known her for a couple of days, but it's just now clicking to me that she's not just a character in a light novel; she's an actual girl. I'm in not in Mushoku Tensei. This is my real reality not some book.

I wake up early the next morning and find myself still cuddled on Eris's chest. I try to leave, but she just holds me tighter. I then slowly move out of her arms and dash away before she can pull me back in.

"Well, after last night, I've resolved myself. I'm no longer going to worry about what can happen. I need to focus on now and keep everyone safe. I can't dwell on stuff that hasn't happened yet."

After a while, everyone starts to wake up. I've been running through the forest ahead, killing anything that would be in our path. We load the carriage up, and the driver packs his tent. I offered to make him a hut, but he declined.

"Hurry up and get on the carriage so we can leave."

She's talking like we just weren't cuddling last night. I wonder, why is she confirming if I like her or something? Women are weird. Probably why I didn't have a girlfriend in my past life.

"Why are you just standing there? And why do I feel the urge to laugh at you?"

I step onto the carriage, and we keep going. Nothing eventful happens. We stop to let the horse rest from time to time and keep going.

It's been a full week, and I just want something to happen. I thought some bandits would attack us or something. I'm itching for a fight. I need to fight someone. We are approaching Roa. I just want to battle something.

"I wish a group of bandits would just attack us already."

We go a few more hours with nothing happening, but I start to get that feeling again, the one I got in that forest that one time with Eris. Something's actually happening. I look around, pouring more and more mana into my magic eye.

I faintly see mana in the trees. I can tell it's an ambush. I start to smile, knowing I can finally use my gravity magic. I've just been sparing Eris for the past couple of days, and Tina has started to have an interest in the sword.

We get closer, and I see them ready to attack. I then hop out and use my gravity. Everything around me. All of the attackers fall out of the trees and into the ground. I put a lot of pressure on their backs. I let up on the pressure, and they all grab their weapons and get up. Eris charges one with her sword.

She looks like a red bullet charging at one of the bandits. I send a rock bullet at the bandit in the back, knocking him out.

"HEY, Eris, don't kill them!"

"But why? I want to. I've been so bored."

Eris looksback at me with dissatisfaction as she defended against two sword strikes. Two more bandits charged her from behind. I used Quagmire to sink them and then used scalding hot water to burn them, though it didn't do much; I just found it amusing.

They covered their heads in pain, and Eris swiftly knocked them out. I sunk the other two attackers. One threw his sword at her as a last-ditch effort; I used a rock bullet to knock the sword away. I shot another rock bullet at his head with enough force to render him unconscious and near death. Eris slashed the other across his chest, causing him to stagger back in pain and bleeding. I knocked him out with yet another rock bullet.

"Well, that was easy."

"You should've let me kill them. It would've been better."

I walked over to the bodies and began healing them. I instructed Eris to try healing one; I'd been teaching her a basic healing spell, but she struggled. After fully healing all of them, I left the one who had thrown his sword with a severe headache. Then, I tied them all up with earth magic.

"So, why are you attacking us?"

"Tch, why should we tell you anything?"

"Well, for starters, I could just kill you all, or I could beat you almost to death and keep healing you all day until you break."

They looked at me in fear, reconsidering their hostility.

"Fine, what do you want to know?"

I grinned. "Good, at least you know when you're done for. Well, first, why are you attacking us?"

"Well, I think that's obvious. We are thieves."

"Hmm."

I examined them, an idea clicking into my head.

"Well, I have a way for you to survive. All you need to do is smuggle this woman, Ghislaine, into Roa."

The thieves looked at me as if I'd just told them to slay the Dragon God.

"How do you expect us to smuggle a person in there?"

"Well, you're thieves; you must have connections to smugglers."

They all looked at me with faces of sadness and despair.

"We don't know any smugglers."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?"

"Well, my cousin is actually a smuggler."

A girl in the group of thieves spoke up in a reserved voice, meeting my gaze briefly before darting her eyes back to the floor.

"Hmm, is there any way you can contact him?"

"Yes, but it will take a day."

Hmm, do we have time to wait that long? We need to hurry before the Man-God figures out what I'm doing. This is the only way to get into Roa without suspicion; Eris and I can just walk in as we have ties to Roa and we are children, but if Ghislaine walks in, it would be a problem. After we kill Darius, all suspicion would shift to her.

"Fine, we will wait, and I'll untie all of you."

"What? Why are you going to free them? They just tried to kill us."

Eris looked at me like I had two heads.

"It's for the mission. We need to smuggle Ghislaine into Roa."

Eris walked away, mumbling to herself. I used magic to untie the earth bindings on all of them. They grabbed their weapons and stared at me, tension thick in the air. Some looked ready to run but didn't make a move.

"Thank you for sparing us."

I looked at all of them, confused. I thought they would have fled.

"Okay, onto the real topic. How can we contact your cousin?"

I looked over at the only girl in the group of thieves.

"W-well, I'm going to have to go to his hideout. It'll take a day to go there and back."

I squinted, thinking everything over.

"Well, how about Eris and I go with you, and we leave Ghislaine here with your team to protect them?"

She looked at me with wide eyes.

"I-I, well, umm, I guess you can go."

"It's settled. You, me, and Eris will go so we can protect you and negotiate. Ghislaine, Tina, and your friends will stay here."

"Well, everyone, let's set up camp early. We have a big day ahead of us."

I created three stone houses: one for the thieves, one for me, and another for the girls. I set up baths in all of them. The driver still wanted to stay in his tent; I wondered how comfortable it must be for him to prefer it.

I laid in my bed, opening a small hole at the top to gaze at the moon.

"Hmph, looks like everything is going smoothly. I never had a reason to worry; I just needed to let things happen."

I reached for the moon, as if trying to hold it in the palm of my hand, and dozed off.

A/N: Sorry for the delays; some unexpected things popped up. Write me a review on how you liked the arc and what I could add or change about it. Personally, I think his character development isn't rushed. At the moment we found out he had a crush on Eris and it was genuine, it really hit him: this is his world now, and it's not just an anime. If you're wondering why it didn't happen when he had a crush on Roxy, it's mainly because he was still looking at everything like an anime. He's now living life and talking to her as if he's in a dating sim. Hope that clears everything up.