Chapter 3 (1/2)
Chapter 3 – The Village and the Visitor＊
Seven years had pa.s.sed by since the time Luru’s memories as the demon king returned and he began his life as a baby.
He had pa.s.sed over the days when he couldn’t move, and since he had been able to move about on his own feet, you could say that Luru’s life had undergone a dramatic change.
At any rate, as an infant, the only things he could look at were his parents, the servants, and excepting his parents acquaintances who would occasionally come by, there was nothing besides that except for the ceiling and bed.
Even if they took him out somewhere, it seems that they thought that having him out for too long was bad for his body, so would immediately bring him back into his room, and so there wasn’t much time for him to observe anything else.
Compare to that lifestyle, just how were things now?
He was able to move as he fancied and pleased, and able to walk about as he pleased, and visit the places that he pleased.
Having overcome the period as a baby when he could do nothing, Luru truly felt that being able to walk was a marvellous thing.
Being able to go outside meant that there were many things he had learned, but first of all, that where Luru was living now was a residence located in a frontier village.
Though Luru’s father was a lower cla.s.s n.o.ble, he was different to common villagers in that he had greater prosperity in his property and lifestyle.
Having said that though, compared to the period in which Luru was the demon king, the difference them and the other villagers was very little, and at best they lived in a slightly bigger mansion, had one more dish per meal. It was only to that degree.
Perhaps we should say that ‘that’s why’, the other villagers thankfully didn’t have a bad relations.h.i.+p with Luru’s family, and though it wasn’t as though they didn’t show any respect at all, the majority of the villagers treated them friendlily so both his mother and father were able to live without many problems.
As for Luru himself, the villagers treated him kindly, and he didn’t feel any particular discomfort with his village life.
If you forced him to say something, then perhaps he felt that it was a little strange having all these humans treat him kindly, but he only felt that way because he compared it to his time as a demon, and because of that, this much was obvious now that he was a human.
At first he hadn’t been used to it, but as the same thing repeated, within a few years it had become a matter of course to him.
Even if his heart was that of a demon, he was able to get along this well and live with other humans.
‘Could I not have made something like this possible when I was the demon king?’ Though it wasn’t as though he didn’t have such feelings of regrets, he told himself that this was already in the past, and he strove not to get too grim about it.
Even if you regretted it, things that had already happened couldn’t be changed.
Though the village was a called a frontier village, a highway pa.s.sed through it, and if you wanted to reach another village, it wasn’t that difficult as long as you had a carriage.
Because of Luru’s age there was no way he could travel to other villages himself, but he had at least been to the neighbouring town before.
If you compared his village to the town, as expected his village was a little behind in culture, but there weren’t that many differences, and it wasn’t as though his village was extremely poor either.
Like that, after observing various things, and looking into various things, the conclusion that he finally reached was that this village was a relatively good village to live in.
It was peaceful, the people were kind, and the people were prosperous enough not to starve.
It was a tranquil enough village that he even thought that it mightn’t be bad to live out his life here until he died.
However, Luru had no intention of doing as such.
For what purpose had he been training up until now?
It was for the sake of leaving this village and travelling the world. It was for the sake of going on a journey.
Luru had decided to live as he wished, but that included going where he wanted; in other words, going on a journey.
Luru wanted to see the world.
He wanted to see with his own eyes where the world was headed after the end of the long demon-human war.
To that end, for the sake of acquiring the knowledge needed, while he was growing up, he indirectly asked his parents about the world.
Luru was the reborn demon king.
In other words, there should have been not a small amount of time that had pa.s.sed since the conclusion of the demon-human war.
There was no objection to this matter.
However, the problem was just how long exactly that pa.s.sed since then.
If it had only been one or two years then he wouldn’t have particularly cared.
If it was only of that scale, then even if the demon race faced persecution, there would have been survivors amongst his fellow demons.
If he travelled the world, he would probably be able to meet his old acquaintances.
However, the scale of time that reincarnation took was not something so little, or so it was once said.
A decade or a century was nothing more than an instant to a travelling soul.
That’s why it wouldn’t have been strange for a considerable amount of time to have pa.s.sed since Luru was destroyed as the demon king.
To confirm just how long it had been, he asked his parents.
Just when was now? Just how long had it been since the conclusion fo the war with the demon race?
What he found out was that since that day, the day that the demon king had been destroyed, it had already been some thousands of years, and the war between the demon race and human race was almost nothing more than legends and myths but now, so they didn’t know the details.
He had asked about whether the demon race still existed, but the answer was that they didn’t really know.
There was a race called the demon race, but they were a different race from the one in the myths, and the species that the human race had warred with was nowadays referred to as the Ancient Demon Race, and it was said that had already left this world.
If he tried to explain things in line with that fact, then the demon race that had been defeated by the humans had probably been completed exterminated, and disappeared from this world as a species.
However, he believe that, nor did he want to believe that.
No matter how much the humans have overpowered the demons, was it realistic for them to have wiped out every single one?
No, it’s probably impossible, thought Luru.
You couldn’t have said that Luru just wanted to believe so.
But the demon race had a long lifespan, and their life-force was far beyond that of a human’s.
No matter what, it probably would’ve been impossible to have erased every single one of them.
Hearing about this fact, Luru had managed to come up with an objective.
He would search for the demons, that is, the ones now called the ancient demons.
They were surely few in number.
However, it shouldn’t have been the case that not a single one remained.
If he believed in this, and travelled the world, he would find them.
There was still the matter of what he’d do after that, but for now, he wanted to confirm no matter what whether or not his brethren still lived to this day.
It was the responsibility of the one who had once led the demon race.
For that purpose, Luru had trained his ability to manipulate mana all these years, and had reached a fair degree of skill.
Of course if you compared it to his time as the demon king, then it was weak and rough perhaps you should say, but even so it was a large difference from when he had just been born.
At the very least, he could use magic needed for everyday life with no problem, and could use offensive magic to a certain degree.
As for large scale destruction magic, because he still hadn’t found a suitable location to practice it, he hadn’t used it even once since he had been born into this body so whether or not he could use it was an unknown, but he had this feeling that he probably could.
Even though it had been that difficult to circulate mana, he could now do it well enough.
Though it wasn’t to the extent of the heroes who he had battled as the demon king, he had reached a level where he could apply it in combat.
It seemed that if it was just low level monsters, then at the very least he wouldn’t lose.
If he continued at this rate, then the day when he could leave the village probably wasn’t that far.
Strictly speaking, he felt that if he left right now he could make it work somehow, but even if he left, there wasn’t a place where a seven year old could find work.
For now he had the goal of considering what work he would do after leaving the village, but at present he had no support[a backer, maybe a reference], so it would probably be difficult.
In other words, though you couldn’t say that the day when he left the village was far away, he had no choice but to stay in this village for a few years longer.
However, his life in the village wasn’t bad, so that was fine too.
Up until now he had been acting like a normal child, so he had managed to make a few human friends in the village.
Today he had promised to plan with those friends, and right now he was walking to their meeting place because of that.
He had left the house a little late, but it was within the margin of simple miscalculation errors.