Vol 2 Chapter 4 (1/2)

WSU VOLUME 2 CHAPTER 4: THE HERO AND THE AWKWARD JOURNEY (PART 2)

The Hero and the Awkward Journey (part 2)

We were halfway there.

The next place we were going to was a major city in the center of the country, Svalundine. Svalundine was the hub of the country, a major road for transportation. Goods flowed through there continuously, and it attracted lots of people. Large-scale carts were loaded and unloaded by workers continuously. While being the center for business, Svalundine was also a center of culture.

Entering a city was not at all like entering a town. There were many and complicated procedures, the most important being that you needed to verify your ident.i.ty. It was not easy to hide things from the gate guards responsible for questioning. Right now, our team has someone who should be dead, me, and a demon, Elan.

Because this was an extremely important city, the guards were very strict. You couldn’t use a  flimsy reason to muddle your way in, and at the very least, you needed to show your face. This was my greatest worry. From my twenty-four years of experience, I understood better than anyone that I had a face that was extremely easy to recognize. Thus, I could not go through the front gates.

“Do you really have a way of getting in?”

Mademoiselle Specter looked at me in doubt.

“It should be ok. It’s not that hard.”

“It is good that we’re going ahead, but if we separate than you will have many inconveniences.

“You just need to wait for me patiently. It will only take me a moment or so to enter.”

I looked over the very tall city gates.

“Time won’t be a problem for me. We will wait for you. Anyway, we will go in first and find an inn. When you enter, than you can come find us.”

“Got it.”

Elan and Jinwen turned to look at me. Carolina remained concentrated on driving the cart.

It would be very hard to tell Elan was a demon when she wore her hat. The tiny Jinwen was very easy to hide. Since Carolina had an inspection official’s identification, they could avoid a lot of the questioning during the verification process. The guards would only need to verify that there weren’t any other dangerous goods in the cart.

This is, in fact, a simple problem about limits. About how far you could go and still not attract the guards’ suspicion. You must be able to grasp the limit clearly. We concluded from our discussion that Elan refusing to show her identification would be the most extreme limit. If I refused to show my face, then we would expose the horse’s foot. [1]

So I needed to think of  a way to get in.

Just as we were about to separate, Mademoiselle Phantom whispered to me:

“Leon, you should know that the person we are waiting for in the end is Zhai He.”

I could only nod my head.

Living had no interest for me. This feeling of being unneeded.

Two years ago, I had been the core of the team. I a.s.sumed all kinds of responsibilities, from breaking through enemy lines to protecting my comrades. Of course, I never had made a mistake. So I was always surrounded by laughter, surrounded by the respect of many. My reputation was known far and wide. In the Expedition Regiment, I might not have been the strongest, but I was probably the most happy person.

That was when I met Ailee.

Military merit. I read these words in Zhai He’s journals. He wrote a page about his understanding and a.n.a.lysis of the country’s systems. He mentioned that this system was very similar to the system from the Warring States era of his original world. Through achieving military success, ordinary citizens could rise up to n.o.bility. n.o.bles who did not have an achievements would also decline.

This system was a new development in this world.

That is why Sheng Qiao Yi would let a princess of theirs marry an elite of the First Division of the Expedition Regiment.

To put it bluntly, an elite member of the First Division of the Expedition Regiment isn’t necessarily someone from Sheng Qiao Yi. For example, I am from Duopunuowa. To be able to have reached this situation speaks volumes about how Sheng Qiao Yi’s methods of enticing people.

As a result, the seventeenth princess of Sheng Qiao Yi, Ailee Parkdovich became my fiancée.

But the moment I became a traitor to the humans, I could not return to that life.

Even if I was travelling with companions now, they were merely waiting for me to disappear.

In their eyes, I had stolen their important person.

I had seen their expression before. It was the same expression that the family members of those who had been sacrificed used to look at me when I retired.

There wasn’t any kind of obvious hatred, but it made you unhappy to look at.

The unexpected thing was I was not unhappy because of it. I felt that those expressions were just. I felt ashamed. I didn’t know when I could return Zhai He to them, didn’t know when I would be able to disappear from this world.

I made it to a place with few other people and touched the city wall.

There were a limited number of ways to enter the city.

The first was to be an inspection official like Carolina, which would make the gate guards and other inspection officials feel a bit of camaraderie.

The second way was to counterfeit an identification but that was useless since my face was so recognizable.