Chapter 306: From Entering the Empire to Marching (1)

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Since Loren’s team had joined up with Luxuria’s group at the inn town, they had been walking north for about a day.

Loren wondered if some deity had heard and fulfilled his wish to avoid camping out with this group of people, when they had arrived at another town around dusk after departing in the morning.

This town was close to the battlefield, and was originally meant to be a defense base. It was built as a combination of a town and a fortress, with a deep moat and high walls surrounding the town, making it a very imposing structure.

“I am amazed at how we were able to get into the town with this group of people.”

It was wartime, and the soldiers guarding the town must be on high alert. Even if Loren’s party did not look questionable, he thought it was pure luck that someone as suspicious looking as Luxuria was able to get through the town gates. He had expected to be stopped, but for some reason, they were able to enter the town after only a single check at the gate as usual.

“I don’t think we can say that they were doing their jobs if they just let these guys pass.”

Loren pointed his thumb at Luxuria’s group, who were walking behind, without looking back at them, and Lapis and Gula nodded their heads in agreement.

“Maybe the standards have been lowered because they’re at war?”

“Or maybe they could sense the trouble they could get themselves into, so they just let it slide.”

They were a group of devious men, led by a large person who looked suspicious no matter how you looked at him. As Lapis said, if you tried to stop them, you never knew what kind of trouble you might get into. The question of professional responsibility might remain, but if you were a smart person, that was not a group you would want to be involved with.

Luxuria and his men tried to raise their voices in protest at being treated like the God of Pestilence, but Lapis and Gula both gave them cold stares. That silenced everyone except Luxuria, who proceeded to complain.

“What do you mean by that?”

“By the way, Loren, what do we do now?”

“Hey, Lapis! Don’t just outright ignore me!”

“…Payment.”

Luxuria was about to grab Lapis, but as soon as her whisper reached his ears, he became surprisingly calm and meek. Seeing that, Loren looked at Lapis with narrowed eyes, wondering what she had done.

Lapis was all smiles as always and seemed unperturbed by Loren’s gaze. But after a few moments of staring, she muttered something, as if she had given up for some reason.

“I made him write an acknowledgement of debt.”

“You… are really reliable when it comes to those things…”

Loren was honestly impressed by the fact that she was able to restrict the actions of an Evil God with a single piece of paper. However, he also wondered if someone as powerful as Luxuria could just brush it off, but Gula answered his question.

“I think they made a contractual agreement. We’re not very good at that kind of thing.”

“Is that so?”

“We’re not called Evil Gods for nothing. Well, you probably won’t understand it, but it has to do with the way we increase our power.”

“Could it be that when being under some kind of restriction, you receive something extra instead?”

“I’m sure Lapis-chan knows that… That’s where she got him. Ha, serve you right, Luxuria.”

Gula smiled at Luxuria with a malevolent smile, to which Luxuria responded by baring his teeth, yet it was the most protest he could muster. There was not a shred of cuteness in such a gesture coming from a big man with a cleft chin, and Loren turned away from Luxuria while trying to look as natural as possible.

“So, about what to do now. The most logical step to take is going to the Adventurers’ Guild, or to the contact point of the Empire who asked for help from the Guild, or something along those lines.”

“I would like to gather information, but I think those would be the safest places to do it. But Loren, do you know where the military contact point is?”

It was a place which the general population had little familiarity with. Adventurers, for their part, also had little to do with a nation’s military, so few of them knew much about these facilities. However, for Loren, it was a place he was quite familiar with.

“I used to be a mercenary, after all. I do know.”

That was where Loren used to make a living before becoming an adventurer. It was true that he had never directly dealt with them since procedures and other matters were handled by the administrative staff, but he at least had a general idea of where and in what form the contact point was located.

“If that’s the case, shouldn’t we go to the Adventurers’ Guild?”

Gula, seeing that it would be fine either way, made such a suggestion.

As Loren and Lapis looked like they wanted to know the reason for the suggestion, Gula pointed to Luxuria and the others who were walking along behind them.

“You don’t want to take these guys to a military, whose current situation we know nothing about, and where a lot of problems might happen. Not to mention the number of people you’re going to have to deal with”

“That… You’re right.”

“I think it would be less troublesome if we go to the Adventurers’ Guild and ask them to help us get in touch with the army. The Adventurers’ Guild might have a little bit of tolerance for these guys.”

At Gula’s suggestion, Loren looked at Luxuria’s group.

He would have liked to say that Luxuria was the only strange one, but in fact, the men hand-picked by him also looked and acted with a somewhat strange atmosphere around them. Taking them to the army as they were might cause unnecessary misunderstandings. The military was notoriously sensitive when it came to deviations from the norm, so it would not be a bad idea to have the Adventurers’ Guild, which seemed to have a soft and flexible approach to such things, play the middleman.

Loren decided to visit the Adventurers’ Guild and tell them that they had come to the Empire as commissioned by the Adventurers’ Guild in Kapha, but then another problem arose.

“From Kapha? Where did you enter the Empire from?”

The Adventurers’ Guild was certainly tolerant of Luxuria and his men, and there was no mayhem. But this time, rather than the number of days it took them to get to the Empire from Kapha, they were suspicious about the route they had taken.

If you thought about it, a trip from Kapha to the Empire would take about ten days even with the Guild’s special transport, so it was only natural that they would have to cross several borders. If they had used the Guild’s own transportation, the Guild would have taken care of the border crossings, but Loren’s group was traveling separately and had not gone through any border-crossing procedures.

Loren had been so preoccupied with the fact that he was being made to come to the demons’ territory that he had completely forgotten this basic thing, and he felt regret about it. But there was nothing he could do about it now, so he gave a vague, ambiguous smile to the Guild’s receptionist, who looked at him with suspicion.

Lapis slips past Loren and steps in front of the receptionist.

“The truth is, there are many ways to get around the mountainous area.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is a route that goes back and forth between the demon territory and ours which we discovered by chance, and we came here through that route.”

Of course, what Lapis said was something that Loren didn’t know, and it was probably as close to an unthinking blabber as it could get. However, if he looked at Lapis, who had said such a thing with confidence, with doubt, they would not be able to clear up the receptionist’s suspicion. So, Loren watched the receptionist’s reaction while trying to keep a poker face.

“And that route is?”

“I can tell you the route in exchange for a fee of information if you need it?”

The receptionist, perhaps judging from the fact that Lapis had not shown even the slightest hint of guilt, seemed to decide that this was a story with some credibility and called in a supervisor-like staff and began discussing something.

Loren lightly poked Lapis, who was watching the conversation with a smile on her face, in the side and asked in a whisper.

“What route?”

“Not that it doesn’t exist. Rather than that, Loren, could you please say something in advance before you poke me in the side? I almost made some strange noise.”

“None says ‘Hey, I’m going to poke you’ before poking someone. What if they really want you to tell them? Is there such a thing as a shortcut?”

If one took Lapis’s word for it, there was a route that allowed for much faster travel than the special transportation that the Adventurers’ Guild provided. This was information that the Adventurers’ Guild would consider of great importance, enough to make them pay an unthinkable amount for it. Loren thought that the Guild would not give up on obtaining this information, but Lapis answered with a smile on her face.

“I’ll first warn them that we do not guarantee their safety.”

“I see.”

There was no way that a route through the mountainous terrain and the demons’ territory would be safe. The Adventurers’ Guild was probably aware of this, but Loren realized that Lapis’ words about not guaranteeing safety had another meaning: it implied that the route would be extremely dangerous. In other words, the Adventurers’ Guild would not be able to verify the information Lapis had given them, even if they tried.

“For example, I can tell you a route that will instantly kill a silver-ranked party at the entrance.”

“Are you sure you want me to tell them a route that we can’t take?”

“If we are lucky, we will be able to pass through.”

Loren decided that it would be pointless to try to warn Lapis, who was adamant that she had not lied, and prayed that the Adventurers’ Guild would not get too invested in the matter.

Fortunately, the Adventurers’ Guild decided that a route going through the demons’ territory would be extremely dangerous and there were more pressing issues at the moment, so they did not ask Lapis for information about the route. Instead, they told their group that they would immediately send a message to the department in charge of dealing with the Imperial army.

“Basically, we are acting as a guerrilla attack force or an auxiliary force to the main force. For details, please follow the instructions of the Imperial army officer in charge.”

The receptionist offered a piece of paper with the location of the Imperial army’s contact point and the name of the officer in charge.

Upon receiving the paper, Loren urged everyone to leave the Adventurers’ Guild quickly before their cover story was blown.

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