Chapter 194: From Gathering to Discussing (1/2)

“Ah, shit, what a bad experience.”

About an hour after Loren and Lapis had visited her room only to close the door softly and leave again, Gula was released from the maids’ clutch.

The maids must have done a lot of things to her after that visit. Loren and Lapis were sitting in a guest room sipping tea prepared by maids and waiting for her when she came in, and the state of her startled them. Her long blond hair was a mess, and her disheveled clothes were slipping off her body. She was fixing them as she went.

In such a state, Gula sat facing them and watched them sip their tea with reproachful eyes.

“You guys are having tea while I’m having a hard time.”

“We didn’t want to disturb you.”

“You’ve worked hard, Gula. Thank you for your consideration.”

Loren greeted Gula with a teasing remark, but Lapis gave her a nod and some words of gratitude. Loren wondered why, but he soon realized the reason.

Gula was a being called Evil God, so she definitely wasn’t the type to be overpowered by maids, even demon ones. The maids were able to torture Gula as they wished because she had condoned it. Of course, it would have been very easy for Gula to fight off the maids and torture them as she wished instead, but she seemed to think that it was necessary to let the demons know that she was currently a harmless existence.

“It’s okay. It’s not going to diminish my power. In fact, it was pretty delicious.”

“The fire-logs… Did they stuff them into your mouth?”

“The curiosity of demons is unforgiving… I got three.”

As Gula sat down next to Lapis with a scowl on her face, the maid who had been waiting in a corner of the room immediately offered her a steaming cup without making a sound. Loren didn’t want to be in a situation where he felt like he was being watched or had a maid waiting by his side at all times, but Lapis said that this was the norm, and that he wouldn’t want to go through the trouble of calling for the maids every time he needed them.

“That reminds me, where do you live when you’re in Kapha, Lapis?”

“I’ll invite you over someday.”

Lapis answered evasively, and Loren got a bit anxious. It wasn’t about where she resided in Kapha, what he was rather interested in was where in that city people who were used to having maids waiting on them lived.

As if to interrupt that train of thought of Loren, Gula asked Lapis:

“So, what’s the situation? Will you explain it to me?”

“I’m not sure what you want to ask. Is it about accepting my mother’s request or not?”

“Mother? Whose?”

“Mine… Well, I have to start from there, right?”

And with a sigh, Lapis began to tell Gula the whole story.

But the whole story was just that, Lapis’ mother had a commission for them to do, and the reward would be the right to use the white greatsword. Explanation ended pretty quickly.

“So, Lapis-chan’s mother is a Demon King.”

“Yes, well, she is.”

Gula sounded impressed, but Lapis responded nonchalantly.

The title ‘Demon King’ tended to conjure up images of great things, but after listening to Lapis’s explanation, Loren thought that the position was more like that of a General in other countries. It was still quite impressive, of course, but compared to a sovereign, it was inevitably much inferior in terms of power and bloodline. To demons, the equivalent to a sovereign was the Great Demon King.

“And what does Demon King-sama want us to do?”

“I’ve just heard about it from my mother, more or less.”

Lapis replied, and gave some orders to the maid who was standing by. The maid bowed deeply and walked away, then returned a moment later with a round object covered with a cloth in her hand. She placed it on the table, bowed, then retreated to stand near the wall again. Lapis removed the cloth covering the object and told Loren, who was watching the maid:

“My mother’s request is, throwing this into the crater of a certain volcano.”

What appeared from under the removed cloth was a black metal helmet. There were numerous patterns carved on it, but overall it was a very plain, all-black helmet. It wasn’t even decorated – it was something made for practical use only. The helmet didn’t look like something a Demon King would go to the trouble of asking someone to transport it for.

“This thing? Dump it in a crater?”

“Can’t we just melt it down?”

Not really understanding the purpose of this commission, Loren and Gula stared at the black helmets on the table and made those comments. Lapis shrugged.

“I also thought that maybe we could just throw it into some furnaces around here… But seems like it’s not a good idea.”

According to Judie, this black helmet possessed powerful magic, and normal furnaces wouldn’t even make it lose its shape. The reason for this was not well known, but it was said to have been brought from the land of humans a long time ago.

“It seems that this helmet alone can’t do anything, so it’s been sitting collecting dust in a corner of the warehouse. But recently, the situation has changed a bit. It seems to have something to do with the man in black armor we encountered in the dwarven village.”

Judie had almost forgotten about this helmet, but a certain circumstance happened, and the warehouse was ransacked to the ground. The helmet was found during the cleaning up afterwards.