Chapter 200 - A Premonition On the Road (1/2)

Their journey was going quite well.

First of all, to Loren’s surprise, the roads, which were called highways, were quite well paved.

Roads in the realm of the humans were usually just bare earth, although the bigger ones were more-or-less maintained. However, roads in the demon realm were properly paved with stones. According to Lapis, almost all highways in the demon realm were properly maintained. Every year, the demon kings would allocate a budget to pave new roads and maintain old ones.

“I’ve heard that they don’t really maintain the roads so that troops won’t be able to move around as easily in times of war.”

“Troops on both sides? That sounds inefficient.”

“It’s mainly to hinder the enemies, isn’t it? Even if it’s at a slow pace, if your allies move in advance, you’ll be able to place the necessary troops where they need to be.”

In fact, Loren remembered that during his time as a mercenary, he was taught that it served more as an obstruction when enemy forces invaded your country.

Lapis snickered at the common sense of the human race.

“It’s meaningless in the demon realm. Of course, there are some skirmishes amongst Demon Kings, but the Great Demon King is on the top. There’s no need to mobilize large armies. Problems can be solved by the Demon Kings and the Great Demon King themselves.”

Lapis explained that rather than worrying about such things, the demons were more concerned about the delays in distribution caused by the lack of maintenance of the roads.

It was true that if only one person had the strength equivalent to a large army, then this kind of obstruction was pointless, and Loren agreed that it would be more efficient to focus on convenience in peacetime.

What surprised Loren even more was the performance of the wagon they had borrowed from Aus. The road may have been good, but the wagon itself didn’t jolt much. Lapis said that the secret was in the axle and the body of the wagon, but Loren, who was not a specialist in this area, could not understand what was done to reduce the jolting. Nevertheless, the wagon barely shook even when the horse pulling it was going at a rather fast pace, and he was so impressed that he began to seriously consider the possibility of bringing it back to Kapha.

“Maybe I can secretly ask Mother if we can use it in the human realm.”

When adventurers went out on a long trip, they usually rented a mule to carry their luggage or a wagon to ride in. But even though walking was very tiring, riding in a wagon was very bumpy and brought about its own problems like motion sickness and sore butts. However, with this wagon, the likelihood of getting motion sickness and sore butts would greatly decrease, making it worth considering bringing it back to the human world with them.

“As long as we only use it for ourselves and don’t let anyone else find out, I think Mother will agree.”

“If the commission is completed successfully, we should stop by the Demon King’s castle.”

Loren was convinced that a less-jolting wagon totally worth the trip.

“I don’t want to stop by there anymore.”

It was Gula who uttered those words.

When they left the Demon King’s castle, Gula had been loaded into the cart together with their luggage in an unconscious state, probably due to the maids’ attack. A while later, she had finally crawled out from between the luggage, squirming like a caterpillar. Her whole body was carefully bound with ropes. Loren had immediately cut the ropes with the dagger he kept inside his jacket as a backup weapon, but the experience of being harassed by the maids, losing consciousness, then being tied up left a scar on Gula’s psyche.

“I don’t want to eat baguettes and ham anymore… I want to fill my stomach with proper food.”

“The maids only fed you those?”

“They must have had a lot of leftover food that was going bad. Sometimes that happens, and all we get is that food.”

Looking angry, Lapis said that the maids in charge of stocking were quite irresponsible. But Judie, Lapis’ mother and the lord of that Demon King’s castle, was rather indifferent about such matters and didn’t really reprimand them for it. The result was things didn’t improve at all.

“Indulge yourself for tonight, then.”

Feeling sorry for Gula, who seemed to have been stuffed with nothing but meat and bread under the maids’ watching eyes, Loren suggested. The wagon was loaded with all kinds of food, so he believed it wouldn’t be a problem even if she consumed a bit too much. Lapis did not object to the suggestion, and Gula welcomed it with open arms.

They proceeded in such an atmosphere, and spent the first night of the trip camping outdoors. But from the second day on, the number of demons they passed on the road increased, and they were stopped more often.

Unlike human cities, which were surrounded by walls and moats, demon cities seemed to have a building at the center with houses and stores laid out around it, their density decreased as you moved away from the center. It seemed like they had been far enough from the Demon King’s castle that they could be considered to be out of the city now.

In other words, their encounters with patrolling soldiers had increased, and those soldiers often had their eyes on Loren, a human. But these kinds of attention didn’t develop into real trouble because Gula had reverted her red eyes to their original purple hue and Lapis, despite currently having black eyes, was more-or-less known due to being the Demon King’s daughter.

In addition, the white greatsword Loren carried on his back also served as a kind of pass.

“For something that’s been stored in a warehouse, this sword is quite famous among demons.”

Loren didn’t even know how many times they had been stopped by soldiers until now, but every single time, he just needed to show them the sword, and they would let them go. He now let it rest on his knees in case he required to show it to another group of soldiers.

“It seems so. I didn’t know that.”

Lapis said while steering the wagon. Then she seemed to suddenly recall something and started rummaging around her pockets with one hand before taking out a piece of paper. She gave the paper a shake to unfold it, then read attentively for a while.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the manual for your greatsword. Father gave it to me right before we left.”

Of course, there was no such thing as an ‘manual’ for a sword, but Aus had given Lapis a list of the sword’s properties that had been known since the time Judie used it. It seems that Aus thought it would be pointless for Loren to have a weapon that he didn’t really know how to use, but Loren tilted his head and wondered why he gave it to Lapis instead of him.