84 – Demon Shelter
“Uhh… Umm….”
It felt like I had just had a very long dream.
It felt like I had dreamt of the modern world I used to live in…
The time when I was trapped at home due to the hardships I faced during my school days and my unfortunate family circumstances.
There was a version of me from the past who couldn’t do anything, whose plans always went awry whenever I tried to do something, and ultimately ended up not attempting anything at all.
Back then, I was merely a human who lived just to stay alive.
There were times when I wanted to do something meaningful.
But I didn’t have the ability or the environment to do so.
How could someone like me, who couldn’t even accomplish something small, do something meaningful in this world?
So, the choice I made was an absurd option of coming to this world.
Honestly, it was an escape from reality… that’s what I still think.
Something like that would never happen to me.
Even if I studied various ways to come to this world, it was all just someone’s fabrication.
I knew that even if I died from being hit by a truck, it wouldn’t take me to this world, I would just die and that would be the end of it.
…Until I actually came to this world.
Consciousness returned.
Is it the sensation of something soft on my back that I feel while lying on the bed?
Opening my eyes became a little frightening.
What if the reality of the past that I saw in my dream continues when I wake up?
I slowly opened my eyes, swallowing a dry mouthful of saliva.
And then, a familiar face was looking at me from a distance so close that our noses almost touched.
Seeing that face, I felt a sense of relief that I was still in this world, but also a sense of confusion.
…Meruru?
“Oh! It’s Yunoa! Yunoa has woken up!”
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Meruru shouted and thumped my chest with both hands.
It’s like being hit with a soft bat, but the sound is strangely cheerful.
As I sat up, I realized that I was on my own bed.
Wait… I’m sure I was at the Bellaforte Mansion helping Mariel with something…
“Meruru? Why are you here? And why am I…?”
“Ohhh! Yunoa is such a fool! I thought you had turned into a human-shaped plant!”
“Hey, calm down. What the heck…”
Trying to calm down Meruru, who was causing a commotion beyond comprehension, I tried to recall my memories.
Ah, right. I was definitely putting my hand on Mariel’s massive magical storage device and filling it with magic.
Once I fill it with enough magic, I won’t bother her anymore, and she said she would give me magical tools for free later.
“I have to go meet my sister with you, but you’ve been lying here all the time! Even if I hit you with my fists every day, you wouldn’t wake up!”
Meruru sobbed and came to me with tears in her eyes.
“I’m going to meet Unni… Could it be that Alcott mentioned the demon sanctuary?”
How long was I lying down for, exactly…
“Meruru, how long was I sleeping?”
“For a week! You were practically dead for a whole week!”
“…A week?!”
That damn witch, Mariel.
And damn that narration too.
If someone loses consciousness for a week as if they were dead, isn’t that a serious aftermath?
I feel resentment towards the narration that simply described it as “exhausted and tired.”
I immediately got up and stretched, checking my condition.
I made sure there was no problem with the magic power within my body.
Fortunately, aside from the fact that I had been unconscious for a week, my body felt light and my condition was good.
My body is fine, but what is this unjust feeling…
“But why are you here?”
“I came to find Meruru’s Unni! Master told me! So I want to go and meet her!”
“Well, that’s… But Master didn’t tell us where she is! Yunoa knows! Yunoa said we should go together when she wakes up! But Yunoa was half-dead here!”
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Meruru weakly punched her own body again.
If Algot had told me, it would have been a story of Aruru adapting enough to be able to visit the demon shelter.
I wonder if it was Algot who put Meruru with me.
Well, it doesn’t matter since I had already thought about taking Meruru to the demon shelter once I was ready.
I immediately changed my clothes and headed to the Adventurer’s Guild with Meruru.
* * *
“……”
“Oh! You’re here! Thanks to you, my mana storage device is very full! Don’t worry, I’ll use it sparingly!”
Kubel’s office in the Adventurer’s Guild.
Inside, Algot and Marie were sitting facing each other, drinking tea.
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As soon as Meruru and I entered, Marie greeted me with a happy face.
Why is this damn witch here again?
“I heard that I was unconscious for a week because of you. I won’t do that again.”
“It’s fine for now, so please ask me again later!”
“How do you listen to human words?”
“Well… but you gave me a lot of money, and you said you would make me a magic tool! As long as I’m healthy now, that’s all that matters!”
Marie’s gaze became ominous again as she said that.
When she looks at me with those eyes, I inexplicably feel uneasy.
I deliberately ignored Marie’s gaze and turned my attention to Algot.
“By the way, I heard that I can meet Meruru’s sister.”
“Oh, yes. I explained it roughly to Meruru. This should be enough to take with you.”
Algot took out a small badge from his pocket and handed it to me.
It was a silver badge that looked similar to an adventurer’s rank badge.
“This is a delegation badge that proves you’re performing an important task assigned by the Guild Master of Kuber. If you have this, it serves as proof that I sent you to Piphnel.”
“Do I just show this when I go there?”
“Since the underground waterway is a lawless zone, it won’t have much effect. But it’s a sign for my people to recognize. And this too.”
Algot handed me a folded note several times.
Carefully unfolding it, I saw that it contained the location of the hidden demon shelter disguised as a store.
Behind the 13th pillar at the 2nd entrance of the Piphnel underground waterway, there was a restaurant called “Paprika.”
Algot had explained it to me before.
The demon shelter was hidden inside a store disguised as a double-layered operation. The hidden restaurant operated a separate gambling den, and you had to enter the gambling den again to reach the demon shelter.
I carefully kept the badge and note that Algot gave me, making sure not to lose them.
Meruru, who was next to me, was making strange noises and wagging her tail, seemingly impatient to leave.
Mariel’s ominous gaze was also burdensome. Should I hurry up and leave?
With that in mind, I turned around to leave the office with Meruru.
Then, Algot added a word from behind me.
“Oh, and please take good care of Meruru. She can be rougher than you think.”
Well, it’s a lawless zone anyway. Dealing with demons shouldn’t be a problem.
And so, I prepared to leave Kuber with Meruru.
The carriage heading towards the capital of Pifnel was comfortable.
Because they had a long way to go, they spent a little more money to ride in a good carriage.
They could see outside through the window, and there was a cushion on the seat, so their buttocks didn’t hurt.
Before departure, Mari appeared and said, “Hey! How about using my teleportation magic to get there in an instant? Sending others is still in the experimental stage, but if it succeeds, we can save time!” She proposed using teleportation magic to get there, but I declined.
If it succeeds, we can save time, but if it fails, we’ll be split in half and die.
And I can’t be the sacrificial lamb for experimental magic.
I can’t afford to let my guard down even for a moment in front of her.
Meruru couldn’t calm down in the carriage and was wagging her tail and ears, looking out the carriage window.
We still had a long way to go, but she seemed happy at the thought of seeing her sister.
“Meruru, why did your sister leave the Helvetika Island?”
Feeling bored with the long journey, I started the conversation with Meruru.
Meruru turned her head towards me and replied with sparkling eyes.
“Sister wanted to be an adventurer! She wanted to leave the small island and go to a bigger place.”
“She wanted to be an adventurer?”
Didn’t they say that the people of the Merfolk on Helvetika Island were all weak?
And yet she had such a dream.
“There were ships that often came to our island. If we gave them lots of fruits and herbs, we could receive meat in return. Sister heard stories of adventurers from the humans who came there.”
“Trading ships, huh….”
I recalled the ship that Meruru first stowed away on.
It was a large trading ship that had passed through the Helvetica Island.
It wasn’t strange for things to be influenced by the goods brought from there as the trading ship came and went.
Perhaps Aruru had come to know about adventurers and encountered information about the continent through it, which led her to leave her homeland.
Considering the characteristics of the aquatic people on the Helvetica Island, Aruru’s extraordinary physical abilities must have developed after becoming a demon.
If her physical abilities before becoming a demon were not much different from Meruru’s, it was hard to imagine how much she must have suffered.
If it weren’t for me discovering Meruru, there was a high chance that Aruru would have been captured by slave traders or become a target for bad guys.
If Aruru had come to the continent alone with just the thought of becoming an adventurer, it wouldn’t have been a smooth life.
“I will be able to meet her in a few days.”
I wonder how Aruru is doing now.
The image of her looking at me with eyes full of hostility, as if she wanted to kill me, is still vivid in my mind.
Did she really change her mind in the demon shelter, despite her aversion to mixing with humans?
“Aruru, who is both an aquatic person and a demon, was doing well in the demon shelter.
She was greatly shocked to see that there were so many ‘rejected demons’ like herself.
It didn’t mean that she started trusting humans, but she knew that at least staying in the demon shelter was safer than the outside world.”
Narrasay gave me some information about Aruru’s current state.
She still doesn’t trust humans.
Well, it’s not easy to quickly change such deep-seated human distrust.
Even if I don’t know what happened to her, if there aren’t enough good memories to offset the bad memories, the distrust won’t go away.
Still, maybe she is accepting staying in the demon shelter in a positive way.
As long as she doesn’t go around causing trouble in all directions, time might resolve things.
Meruru began wagging her tail vigorously while looking out the window of the carriage.
As I watched her back with mixed emotions…
Swish, swish…
“Epupeuwepp!”
Meruru’s full tail swept across my face, and her tail fur got into my mouth.
Meruru… you shed a lot of fur…
* * *