episode_0035
by admin
“What were those who died at that time doing?”
As I was returning to the hideout after purchasing enough food, I suddenly remembered the people who had collapsed in the alley that day and asked Sarah.
Sarah stopped for a moment and looked behind her with accusatory eyes, asking why she was asking such a useless thing.
“He is a drug dealer from an organization that is hostile to the organization we visited today. I guess there was a fight over some kind of area.”
“So you’re dead.”
“… But why are you suddenly asking that?”
“There is no great reason. just… .”
He stopped what he was saying, reached into his pocket, took out a gold coin, and showed it to Sarah.
Gold coins were dozens of times more valuable than silver coins or copper coins, but their size was not much different.
The thickness is also thinner than expected. It was so thin that even if you stacked ten of them, it would be about 5cm.
“At a rough count, ten people were dead in the alley that day. But since it only costs ten gold coins, I wonder what kind of life is so cheap.”
“Ten coins is a lot. Because a vagrant left on the street is not worth a single copper coin.”
Human life is cheap in this world.
Adventurers risk their lives fighting for just a few gold coins, and in the dump, more people die than you can count on two hands for just a few gold coins.
I was probably aware of that fact, but I wonder if I still have any sense of normalcy left in me, so I find myself flinching every time I encounter a moment like this.
I’m not sure if I should cherish this feeling or throw it away right away.
The hideout that arrived with the gold coins, which I don’t know if were light or heavy, was a renovated abandoned house.
The gruesome corpses of vagrants who had approached without knowing were lying around the building, which was less worn out than other buildings around it.
It looks like they tried to break in around noon, as the number of corpses that weren’t there before this morning has increased.
Sarah’s hideout looked no different from an ordinary abandoned house, but the house was filled with demons guarding the hideout.
‘This is just like my mom.’
If I said something like that, he would probably get upset for a few days and not even want to see me.
In severe cases, it may attack.
As I put away the food I bought at the black market and prepared for bed, the sun was already setting.
I didn’t seem to have done much, but somehow it felt like time passed in an instant.
“Ja, lantern.”
It was difficult to see around here at night, so a light was essential to move around indoors.
Sarah handed over a lamp filled with oil and walked to the room where she had organized the food a little while ago.
Perhaps they are trying to serve dinner.
I went into the utility room used as a dining room and waited for a while. Sarah, holding a lamp in her mouth, returned with dried meat and a bottle of wine in both hands.
There were no utensils in the hiding place, so I had no choice but to eat with them on my lap.
The food she brought was mostly preserved food, so to be honest, it didn’t taste that good.
However, regardless of the taste, I felt sorry for continuing to eat it for three days.
“Sera, this isn’t a big deal.”
I took out the honey I received from Miella from my inventory and placed it in front of her.
Sarah, who saw the honey in the bottle, hesitated for a moment and then dipped a finger into the honey in the bottle and ate it.
“… !!”
Perhaps she had been starving for sweetness all this time, but the moment she took a bite of Miella’s honey, the hair on her entire body stood up and she was startled.
Seeing the delighted smile that appeared without even realizing it, the question of whether it was delicious didn’t come up.
When I laughed at Sarah’s bright smile for the first time, she noticed this and cleared her throat and immediately changed her expression.
“I don’t think it’s shameful to eat something delicious and smile.”
“… It’s noisy.”
“Why not try eating it with dried meat? The salty meat makes the sweetness stand out more.”
“… … .”
There was no answer, but her hand was reaching for the meat and honey.
I also tried it once and although the meat was somewhat hard, it was quite edible.
By the time she had finished eating all the food on her lap, Sarah’s face turned red as she drank the sweet wine in one go, as if she was choking.
Maybe he’s drunk?
Perhaps unlike its mother, it is not resistant to poison.
I also took a sip of wine and put the glass down, staggering slightly as if I was drunk.
“Sera is a strong drinker?”
“… No, not really.”
“Me too. I’m weak at alcohol, so when I drink alcohol, my mouth becomes light without realizing it.”
“… … .”
“How about Sarah? Isn’t there a tendency like that?”
“Well.. if you listen to it as an interesting story, you might feel a little lighter.”
“Hmm… I see.”
He drank the rest of the wine in his glass and continued speaking while glancing outside.
“Then shall I tell you a fun story?”
“… What is it?”
“Actually, there is a devil watching you not too far from here.”
As she was staring blankly at the glass, her eyes began to fluctuate violently.
Fear tickling my chest, I reflexively looked around, but there was no way I could see the devil far away.
“The devil’s name is the Watcher behind the scenes. I think the level is around 25? It is a demon specialized in surveillance and scouting abilities, so even though its level is high, it does not have great combat power.”
“… What are you saying now?”
“They’re watching us from a building about 200 meters southeast of here. It looks like he can’t hear sounds, but he seems to know how to lip read. I can see that he is agitated.”
“… You.”
“Think about how I got here in the first place. Didn’t you think it was strange that I found you all at once, given how large the dump was?”
“… … .”
Sarah’s head slowly begins to fall.
Although the emotions were not directly expressed on the face, the trembling hands and head that did not rise spoke more than a hundred words.
I feel like I understand a little bit why Sarah moved to the dump.
“Sera, is the reason you go to the scrapyard to avoid your sister’s eyes? Because there are a lot of Theresina’s eyes in the Academy and Noble District?”
“… … .”
“If you thought that way, it was in vain. There’s no way the devil’s minister could rely solely on human eyes.”
“… It’s noisy.”
“The watcher behind the scenes is moving chaotically. Perhaps he wants to tell Terezina about this.”
“… So what?”
“Shall I kill that?”
“… … What?”
Sarah raised her head again and looked at me with disbelief.
I did not immediately reply to Sarah, who was looking at me with trembling eyes, but gave an order to Pungjo.
And after a while.
“I’m here.”
The wind flowed leisurely past the devil guarding the hideout and returned with the head of the watcher behind it.
I said to Sarah as I placed my bleeding head on the floor.
“Then, now that the nosy lady is gone, shall we have a leisurely conversation?”
*****
An unknown girl suddenly appeared one day.
No, the boy just smiled brightly as if he didn’t know what he had done.
The small dog seemed to be waiting for praise, saying, ‘Did I do well?’, but Sarah had no desire to praise Felt at all.
Rather, it was the opposite.
I wanted to scream right away, asking what on earth he had done.
The reason she didn’t do that was because she wasn’t yet able to keep up with this sudden change in situation.
The death of a working demon is immediately reported to its owner.
If Terezina knew that the guard behind the scenes was dead, only she would know how to interpret it.
Felt, whether she knew this or not, urged Sarah to talk quickly.
conversation?
Now is not the time to do that.
I thought I had to run away right away, but when I thought about where to run to, I couldn’t move.
“Is it because you’re scared of your sister?”
“… … .”
“Don’t worry. If Fiona comes, I’ll just say it’s all I want.”
“… There’s no way those words would work.”
“If I was going to kill him to this extent, I would have killed him a long time ago. Won’t we at least keep them alive until some time comes?”
“… … .”
“It looks like there is something to be pointed out. I’d like to hear the details of the situation. Can you teach me?”
“… What are you?”
“Huh?”
“… Are you really here because that independent bitch sent you here? Actually, wasn’t he sent from the warrior faction or something else?”
“No way. Does your sister seem like such a sloppy person? If there was even one piece of evidence that it was a warrior faction, I wouldn’t have come this far.”
“… I guess so.”
“I’m not on anyone’s side. There is no one in this world you can truly trust. No matter how well you get along, you can’t look into the depths of your heart.”
Felt’s words were something Sarah could empathize with.
Ever since she saw the abandoned sisters in the basement that day, she has continued to fight alone.
It was a day of disbelief and no one could believe it.
I couldn’t close my eyes comfortably, fearing that ‘that day’ might come when I fell asleep every night, wondering if I would never be able to open my eyes again.
I thought I had finally found a place where I could relax and escape from that creepy mansion.
It was all an illusion and arrogance.
Like Son Goku, who mistook the Buddha’s finger for a pillar, she was just a foolish girl who mistakenly thought she had achieved the freedom she had never had before.
“… You said you wanted to hear my situation, right? If you hear this story, you too will be involved, is that okay?”
Was it a feeling of desperation?
Her mouth, which had been tightly closed ever since that day, began to itch.
Wouldn’t it be a little easier if I told it all here?
With that in mind, Felt looked up and spoke to Sarah with a bright smile still on his face.
“Instead of using the vague expression of being involved, why don’t you say it a little more clearly? I want you to be on my side.”
“… What?”
“It’s hard to fight alone. Actually, didn’t you want someone to be on your side?”
But I didn’t have the courage to ask him to be on my side, so I made the vague statement that you would also be involved.
Hoping the other person will say it doesn’t matter.
When she brought out her true feelings that she didn’t even know she had, she instantly felt like she was being treated like a child.
Felt, perhaps aware of Sarah’s feelings, continued as if to inflict an additional blow.
“If it were me, I would have just thrown it away and forced it. Sera is really kind.”
“… … .”
Obvious provocation.
No, maybe he was purely praising Sarah, but Sarah, pushed to her limit, had no time to think like that.
Sarah, who responded to Felt’s provocation like iron powder being attracted to a magnet, revealed all the stories she had kept inside.
“I am a homunculus with a mix of demon and human blood.”
“… … .”
“And Terezina is trying to take over my body.”
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