Chapter 75 (2/2)

Of course, there was such a town near the Black Forest, and she was planning to make it their base of operations and hunt around it.

“If we have to, it can’t be helped, but I’d rather not camp outside if I don’t have to. I prefer sleeping on beds.”

“I don’t really care. Sleeping on the floor huddled together is common in my former line of work.”

“Sounds like you would be covered in dirt and sweat when you wake up…”

Lapis sounded disgusted, but Loren had woken up like that many times, so he just shrugged.

There was no use telling her that on the battlefield you were lucky if you could get any amount of sleep, and sleeping laying down was sometimes a luxury.

And even if you were covered in dirt and sweat, you would rarely get a chance to wash it off, and sometimes you would be covered in blood along with the sweat and dirt, but still being able to sleep when you can no matter the circumstance was the job called a mercenary.

“Humans are strange. They call themselves civilized, but they’re fine with going to bed without cleaning themselves up, and their homes don’t have baths. What part of them are civilized?”

“Baths?”

Loren knew of baths.

It was the name of a facility where hot water was put inside a large tub and people would go inside it, but Loren had never experienced it.

Gathering a large amount of water was hard enough, but heating it all up would cost even more time, and he would be paying a large sum of money just to wash off the dirt and grime off his body, and seemed very inefficient.

And although that was the only thing you could do, it required a large amount of space, so you wouldn’t find one in a normal inn, and Loren had only heard about such things being within castles of royalty and mansions of high class nobles.

He had also heard that in some regions hot water sprang from underground, and in those places, they used that water to make businesses that provided baths, but he had never been to those regions before.

“Most demons have baths in their homes. They’re so nice, but I’m confused at why it isn’t as widespread among humans.”

“If you’re going to clean your body, you could just dump water on yourself and wipe with a cloth.”

That’s what people usually did.

Sometimes they would heat the water if it was too cold to use plain water, but even if they did, a pail of water would suffice, and wouldn’t need enough to dip your whole body in.

“Baths aren’t about their function, it appeals to your mind and emotions. You’ll get it when you try.”

“Okay, I guess?”

Loren gave a lukewarm response at Lapis’ emphasis, but was thinking that the day where he would try a bath would never come.

“Next time when we look for a job, let’s go somewhere that has baths. I need you to know about the greatness of baths.”

“Even if you recommend it so eagerly…”

They slowly walked along the highway with such conversations, sometimes near it, sometimes far off, but time continued to pass without encountering any monsters.

Lapis told Loren that it was because quite a few adventurers thought of the same thing and did what they were currently doing quite often, so the areas around the highway were relatively safe.

“It’s a good thing you know? Travelers could use the highway without having to worry about monster attacks.”

“Feels like our pockets are still going to be pretty empty, though.”

“We won’t make a lot, but it’ll be fine since we won’t be in the red, won’t it?”

Lapis said so, but things started getting strange when the sun started to set and the sky started turning red, and night was about to fall.

From the amount of time and distance they had traveled, Lapis said that they should be arriving at the post town, but when she squinted in the direction they were travelling, she saw it.

“Huh? Something…seems wrong.”

Loren already saw what she was pointing out.

In front of them, where the highway led up to.

There was an area with no hills or trees, but even though everywhere around it was getting darker, that place was still glowing red, as if the setting sun’s rays was still shining on it.

And from that place, Loren could see numerous pillars of smoke rising into the sky, and if the highway was going in that direction, it meant that something was happening at their destination.

“It’s burning, alright.”

“I guess it’s burning, after all.”

Seeing the red among the rest of the sky changing from blue to red to the black of night, Loren and Lapis realized that something was burning.

“Is there a village or a city around here other than the post town?”

“Not that I know of.”

Loren guessed that since she had said no, there wasn’t anything else in the area.

If that were true, what was burning was the post town they were heading to, and only smelled trouble.

“Sleeping on a bed tonight might be difficult.”

“I guess life doesn’t always go the way you want it to.”

Seeing Lapis disappointed, Loren wondered if it was such a big deal.

But standing there would get them nowhere, and they decided they couldn’t turn back, regardless of whether there would be trouble or not, so they reluctantly started trudging towards the red light in the distance.

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