Chapter 98: The Main Character Moment That Never Happened

Uriel scooped another spoonful of broth and glanced sideways at Little Tangerine.

The cat was sitting in Galatina's lap, licking its paw. Pink tongue, in and out, completely unbothered by the fact that it had nearly punched four holes through someone's hand moments ago.

"Mom. How did you tame it?" He gestured at the round head with his spoon. "Same method as the Balance Treasure Chest? Beat it until it cooperated?"

Galatina tilted her head. A single strand of hair sprang upright from the top of her head, and Uriel's gaze immediately got pulled toward it.

Is that an ahoge. That is an ahoge.

"No, no." She gathered Little Tangerine closer. The tiger obligingly flipped onto its back and offered its stomach. "Mom found it a long time ago. It had just finished a fight with another monster and lost badly. Collapsed on the roadside, looked absolutely pitiful. So Mom healed its injuries and gave it something to eat, and it just... followed along after that. Very simple."

Uriel nodded.

Injured monster on the roadside. Healed, fed, immediately devoted. That was about as standard as monster-bonding got. For a Radiance hero, that was almost comically ordinary.

"There is one small problem, though." Galatina's tone shifted, became mildly troubled. She tapped Little Tangerine's nose with one finger. "Regular adventurers still seem frightened of it. Sometimes the braver ones go up to pet it, and when Little Tangerine gets excited it gives them a little tap with its paw —" She paused. "And then they fly away."

Uriel instantly pictured it: some poor, unsuspecting bastard running up to pet the cute kitty, only to get launched over the treeline like a siege projectile. His expression slipped before he could stop it.

"Little Uri, don't worry." Galatina read the expression and brightened. "Little Tangerine has gotten much better about it. It knows to hold back now. It can tell when someone's too fragile."

Uriel looked down at his own hand — the one that had nearly received a held-back tap — and his expression landed somewhere between helpless laughter and genuine existential resignation.

Should I feel flattered? It was absolutely about to hit me. So apparently I'm in the "won't die from one slap" category.

Little Tangerine paused its grooming routine. It looked up at him with round, unimpressed eyes and produced a single, brief mew.

Not a loud sound. But in the open chamber of the cavern, it rang out sharp and clear.

From inside the nearby tent came the soft sound of shifting fabric. Then Seraphina's voice came through the canvas, flat and composed.

"Uriel. Did you just hear something?"

Uriel's spine went rigid. He whipped toward the empty air beside him and mouthed a single, urgent don't make a sound at Galatina, then cleared his throat.

"Nope. Nothing out here. You probably dreamed it. I've been sitting right here the whole time."

It sounded perfectly normal. Just a guy on watch answering a sleepy question.

Then the cold sweat hit. Seraphina had the kind of meticulous mind that might decide the correct response to "you probably dreamed it" was to unzip the tent and verify with her own eyes. Uriel spun around to signal his mother to hide —

The stone beside him was empty.

Little Tangerine was gone. Galatina was gone. The Roundhead Tiger was gone. Not a single orange hair remained. Even the stone where she'd been sitting had cooled, as if no one had ever been there at all.

Uriel held his turned position and stared at nothing.

So she plays the ditzy mom routine all day, and then the moment it matters she vanishes faster than anyone.

No further sound came from the tent. Seraphina had probably rolled over and gone back to sleep, or simply accepted the you dreamed it explanation. The chamber settled back into silence.

Uriel exhaled.

Warm breath hit his ear. Barely a whisper.

"Does Little Uri want to go home?" Galatina's voice materialized right beside him. "Mom can take you back now and bring you here again first thing in the morning. Sleep in your real bed tonight. You won't get proper rest out here."

Uriel waved at the empty air. "I'm fine."

The voice shifted to his other ear with the persistence of a telemarketer who genuinely believed they were offering something you needed.

"What if Mom stays and talks you to sleep? You're not used to sleeping in places like this. You'll be exhausted tomorrow." A brief pause, tone going gently coaxing. "It's been a while since Mom told you a bedtime story. Want one?"

Uriel began waving both hands at the surrounding darkness. The movements grew larger and more emphatic, like a traffic conductor trying to redirect an invisible intersection.

"Go home. I'll be back tomorrow. Goodnight."

Two seconds of silence.

Then the voice softened. Just slightly. A quiet, settled kind of warmth underneath it.

"Okay. Goodnight, Little Uri."

A glowing oval shimmered into existence in the air. The golden light gate opened without a sound, then contracted and sealed itself shut in half a second, gone with a soft pop.

The cavern was completely still.

Uriel sat back down on the stone and stared into the fire for a while, replaying the last half hour. Then he slapped his knee.

He'd forgotten to ask when she'd actually tamed Little Tangerine. Given how comfortable the cat was with everything, it probably traced back to the era when she was still carrying a holy sword around and single-clearing Demon Kings.

He yawned, stood, and pushed into the second tent. His sleeping bag was already laid out, the moisture pad beneath it flat and even, it had that clean, sun-dried smell of freshly aired bedding. He kicked his shoes off and dropped face-first inside, rolling onto his back and lacing his hands behind his head, staring at the canvas ceiling.

The day played back in pieces.

Crawling through a tree hollow to escape. Hanging off a cliff face doing improvised acrobatics. And now sleeping underground. Somehow, every ridiculous turn of the day had worked out.

Honestly not bad.

This was what being an adventurer was actually supposed to feel like. The real thing, not the classroom version.

Maybe this was what another world was supposed to be like, too. Not the kind of story where you show up to school and immediately get caught in a terrorist attack within the first week.

He shifted onto his side and closed his eyes.

A thought surfaced that had nothing to do with cliffs or cavernous tigers. It belonged to a different layer of the day entirely.

Alone in the wilderness with a girl his own age. By all laws of romance manga, this should have led to shared body heat, late-night confessions, or at least one accidental tent collapse.

Instead, they had spent two hours discussing bug repellent and logistics. Not a single scene you'd expect to see in a romance manga. They'd spent the whole evening talking about gathering materials, alchemy, monster rankings, who was taking which watch, and how much bug repellent to use.

Uriel let out a long, slow breath, closed his eyes fully, and delivered his verdict to the darkness. Honest. Mildly self-deprecating. Mostly at peace with it.

"I'm really not the main character here. I don't have a cheat skill. I don't have overwhelming power. It's fine."

Little Tangerine had kind of sealed it, honestly.

I didn't even get a monster-taming moment.

Uriel's face scrunched with wounded dignity.

He lay there for a moment.

Come to think of it, Mom was the one actually living the isekai protagonist life.

Young hero. Picked up a monster companion on the road. Probably had the whole dramatic party-disbandment arc, too.

Then she found me and started raising a kid.

Yeah.

Her life was basically a light novel.

He turned over one more time and fell asleep.