Chapter 39 (1/2)

Usually there would be travelers and merchants.

The gatekeepers who would stop and inspect them before letting them in.

It was the first time Loren had gone through a gate with no one there at all, and the eeriness he felt was something he never felt before on the battlefield.

Lapis, who was sitting next to him, was looking around the area in a relaxed manner. Every now and then she would whip the horse but instead hit Klaus, and watching him twitch spurred the eeriness Loren was feeling even more.

“Shouldn’t we let that down?”

Putting aside the eeriness, Klaus, who was unconscious on top of the horse, in a sense was an injured person as well.

That meant Lapis was the one who injured him, but Loren decided to ignore that and gave the suggestion, but Lapis bluntly made a disgusted face.

“I don’t want to touch that thing you know?”

“I don’t want to if I could either.”

Klaus was hanging onto the rear end of the horse, and for the horse, having something twitching on its back wouldn’t be the best feeling, but Loren didn’t feel like stopping the caravan and getting him down.

That was how disgusting a person twitching while having his eyes rolled back into his head was.

“Still, there really isn’t anyone in here.”

They pa.s.sed through the gate and into the city, and now the caravan was strolling down the main street, but there was no one there, and it was completely silent.

It was like a ghost town, but it wasn’t roughed up at all but instead everything looked in order.

“Doesn’t look like it’s been attacked by undead either.”

If that was the case, there should be traces of it, but as far as Loren could see there were no signs of the citizens fighting anything in the streets.

He couldn’t see any broken windows or buildings, or even bloodstains anywhere.

“I never thought a clean city with no one in it would be so eerie.”

“Walking through an empty city with you. Doesn’t it sound very romantic?”

Compared to Loren, who was cautiously looking around with narrowed eyes, Lapis, who was holding the reins, said that with a smile on her face.

Loren couldn’t understand her sensibility, but decided that there was no need to point that out and hurt her feelings, and end up adding coldness to the eeriness he was feeling.

“Before we do anything, we should search for a hospital. You haven’t forgotten we have four people dying back there, right?”

“That’s true. Shayna, do you know where we could find a hospital?”

Asking a resident about the city was the quickest way to find out.

At Lapis’ question, Shayna poked her head out of the caravan, took a look around, and pointed in a direction.

“I think there was one over there.”

“Then let’s go in that direction.”

Lapis turned the horse towards the direction Shayna pointed out.

The caravan rolled down the ordinary looking street, minus the fact that no one was there.

The hospital Shayna had pointed to that they arrived at a while later looked like a clinic run by an individual.

There were hospitals that were run by the state itself, but the only hospital Shayna knew of was the one they were currently at.

“My father said that there was a really good doctor and brought me here.”

“Is it mistaken to think that that sounds kind of strange?”

A city doctor being more skilled than doctors in hospitals run by the state wasn’t the most unusual, but Loren wasn’t sure about the president of the state bringing his daughter to a clinic instead of a state-run hospital.

“In our current situation, I believe this is actually the better choice.”

Lapis said as she looked at Shayna, who was clinging onto Loren’s waist, while she parked the caravan near the clinic and untied the horse from it.

“I don’t want to go near a large facility while we don’t know what’s going on with the city.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing in particular. Rather than that, can you carry everyone out of the caravan? Come one, you should help too.”

Lapis called Klaus, who had been lowered down from the horse.

Although he had taken many blows to the back, he was still in way better shape than the others.

He regained consciousness as soon as he got off and sunk to the ground as if all the strength was sapped out of him.

“Can’t you let me rest for a bit? It’s pretty much thanks to me we got away from that dragon.”

“You haven’t forgotten that Loren was the one who saved Ange from the dragon, right?”

“Ugh…”

As Loren was exasperated that Klaus barely remembered after being told so, Klaus stood up and faced him, with his gaze pointed downwards, muttered in a voice that Loren could barely make out.

“U-umm, well…Thanks…for saving Ange…”

“We haven’t saved her just yet. If you have time to be saying that, use it to carry everyone inside instead.”

“Alright.”

Loren smiled at Klaus, who looked crest-fallen but replied to him honestly.