Dungeon Menagerie 2 (Patreon)

Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRai

Dungeon Menagerie

Chapter 2

-VB-

Vanessa was in Danmachi.

She was really in Danmachi.

Her eyes drifted away from the center of the road and to one of the men in a group of five she was passing by. The man was tall, lithe, and, above all, an elf. The long, pointed ears made that clear. One of his companion was a dwarfess, short and stocky but with muscles on her uncovered thighs and biceps that could pop her head between them.

She looked around again and saw a few people who were clearly magicians, but most of the people walking down the main road seemed to be either heading to or away from the tower with all sorts of weapons. 

And they stared at her.

“Caw!” 

She flinched when Judgement Bird snapped at another person who tried to approach her. He didn’t have a shirt on and only had a pair of goggles, a pair of shorts, and a belt. 

“Chill, feather brain~!” 

Vanessa peeked over Judgement Bird shyly and spotted someone unfamiliar keeping his distance from them but nonetheless trying to get close.

“What are you? Some kind of monster?” he asked as he peered all over her friend and completely ignored her. Judgement Bird (she really needed to give him a name) bristled and threateningly rose up to full height. “Oi, girl, keep your monster on a tight leash!” 

She frowned. She didn’t like how he was treating Judgement (that wasn’t really a name, was it?). “Maybe y-you shouldn’t just randomly approach someone?” she fired back.

The guy looked at her quizzically before grinning. He jostled a little in place, making his spiky hair quiver. She recognized how that bounce to his hair was natural and not a result of some kind of gel or other hair products. 

“W-Who are you?” she asked.

And to her surprise, the man immediately collapsed to his knees and looked more dejected than a Vtuber otaku who learned that his oshi was graduating. 

He immediately got back up and struck a pose that was supposed to be cool…? She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to react. 

“You don’t know who I am? But you’ve heard my voice many times before~! I am the one and the only announcer of Ganesha Familiaaaa… IBRI ACHAA~!” 

She stared at him as did Birdy (that was just insulting for a name). She wasn’t … she wasn’t familiar with most of the background characters… people. She was unfamiliar with most of the people, and the people she did know about weren’t her friends, acquaintences, or anything. She was a stranger in a stranger’s land, and encountering an exaggerating supposed “announcer” drove that into her.

… Vanessa considered this a good thing. It was better than embarrassing herself later.

Ibri huffed when she didn’t seem to react to his self introduction and relaxed himself out of his pose. “So what monster is this? I’ve never seen a monster like this before,” he hummed as he stepped left and right as he tried to get a better look.

The constant movements only seemed to make Judgy (does that work for a name?) agitated. She hesitated for a second before she raised her hands up and soothed his rising feathers, and it did seem to calm him down a little. 

“Um, he’s not a monster,” she replied hesitantly. “That’s all I’ll say.”

“Pooh. You know that I’m part of Ganesha Familia, right? I said I am. We’re the best monster tamer familia in all of the world!” he boasted with a grin and took up another pose again. “And this little birdy doesn’t even look as strong as some of the monsters we handle all of the time! Hell, the Silverback looks like it can snap this guy in half.”

She frowned. “You’re being rude to Judgy,” she chided. 

Ibri paused and shrugged. “Why? Because I’m telling you that he doesn’t look strong?”

“He’s very dangerous,” she replied firmly. “So I am fine on my own.”

“Maybe outside of Orario,” he shrugged. “Look, lady. Maybe you decided to come to Orario because you made it big outside. You look like a merchant’s daughter or something with how nice you look in your drip. But Orario’s a different beast. Whatever you -.”

“I - I didn’t come to Orario to be an adventurer,” she quickly said what came to her mind before he could continue his speal. He was starting to irritate her with his incessant talking and not taking a hint. “I’m an accountant.”

“Accountat? What’s that?” 

He didn’t know what an accountant was? … maybe the term was different. “A clerk,” she said blankly. 

He paused. “You’re here to work for the Guild?”

The Guild? That’s, um, that’s the place where … Adventurers go to sell their dungeon loot! Yeah, and that means that they had to have a lot of people who did the numbers there, right? 

But she wasn’t a guild member, and it wasn’t a good idea to lie in a city where there were many walking-talking lie detectors. 

“N-No. I’m going to be an independent contractor,” she replied. It was what she was doing before she got dropped here, but she was really only saying whatever came to her just to get this guy to leave her alone and was close enough to the truth!

“Eh? How would that work?”

“Well -.”

“YOU!” 

Ibri jolted and snapped to his left. And then he took off running in the opposite direction, raising up an honest to God trail of dust cloud behind him. 

“Get back here!!!” a woman shrieked as she chased after him. 

Vanessa blinked while following the two with her eyes for a moment before letting out a relieved sigh. That was one way to get the creep off of her. 

“Let’s hurry,” she told her friend. “I don’t want to be here when he comes back. He doesn’t look like someone who’s going to just let us go.”

Judgement Bird (still gotta find a name) crooned and followed after her.