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Chapter 289: Prologue: A Reunion Was Recommended

In Loren’s opinion, if nothing had been destroyed, then there was no reason to spread rumors. However, the rumor said that nothing being destroyed might actually be a harbinger of something, perhaps due to the recent succession of rumors about the destruction of this and that here and there.

How much people seemed to like rumors amazed Loren. Thinking back on it, he recalled that a while ago, he had been involved in a commission in which several villages at the foot of a dragon-inhabited mountain called Mt. Fire Flute had been destroyed by the orcs that had gathered there in large numbers.

When Loren pointed this out to the gossiping adventurers, he was surprised by their reaction. While meeting his eyes head-on, they told him that nowadays, a village or two being destroyed was not even worth a rumor anymore.

It seemed that there had been a lot of stories of villages being destroyed in various places, even in areas where Loren was not involved at all, with villagers being wiped out or suffering near-annihilation. The adventurers were laughing and saying that the number of such incidents was so large that the destruction of a village was no longer a topic of gossip, which made Loren wonder if such a situation was acceptable. He parted from them with a vague smile.

“Public disorder is a good time for mercenaries to make money.”

The destruction of a village meant that the area where the village had once stood would be left unoccupied, even if only for a short time. For a country with ambitions to expand its territory as much as possible, such an unoccupied area would be something that it would want to put its hands on immediately. However, doing that would lead to war with the country that originally occupied the area.

This was a dispute occurring between countries, but in fact, even within the same country, it was not uncommon for nobles and noblemen to do the same thing in order to expand their own territories as much as possible, leading to small-scale battles.

The land held by nobles was something granted by the state, and nobles should not try to expand it without permission. But the problem here was that it was difficult to prove that a certain area from here to there was the territory of this noble.

In other words, the boundaries of a territory were very vague, and this problem was caused by the lack of detailed maps of the country.

Although there were national maps, they were made by humans using hands, eyes, and feet, and to put it bluntly, the distances, dimensions, and scale were extremely inaccurate.

This was a problem stemming from the fact that mapping technology was not well developed. Lapis, a demon girl who was working with Loren for certain reasons, had been surprised to hear that the surveying technology of the human race had stopped at that level. However, reality was reality, and there was nothing to do about it.

Thus, the territory of the nobles were not properly defined, but were determined arbitrarily like ‘From here to there is your territory’. This was why the boundaries of the nobles’ territories were so vague and unstable.

“That was how I afforded my meals, so I have no right to complain though.”

Loren believed that someone somewhere would do something about such disorders in the world. Maybe in time, a hero would emerge and unite the entire continent.

If that were to happen, the mercenary business would probably cease to exist, but Loren himself had already quit the business, and as an adventurer, he had no particular thoughts on the matter.

Rather than that, Loren looked at Lapis, who was leaning forward from her seat across the table from him, and picked up the glass of alcohol that was on the table.

They were at their usual corner of the dining hall attached to the Adventurers’ Guild. It was lunchtime, and on the table where Loren was sitting was a plate of hard bread, soup with few ingredients, and some pickled vegetables. He had originally come here for lunch.

Even though he had given most of his reward for the investigation of Mt. Fire Flute to Chuck and Nim, a recently married couple of silver-ranked adventurers, Loren still had a good amount of cash on his hands. Considering the amount of debt he owed, it was nothing more than a grain of sand, but since he wasn’t being asked to pay back the debt and there was no demand for it, he decided to eat lunch with it.

Of course, he was not thinking of not paying the debt, but the amount he owed was so large that it could stir an entire nation; it was hard to believe that his debtors were seriously thinking of collecting the money from Loren, who was only an adventurer. One of these days, they would probably use him for something when the time came; Loren wondered if it was alright to think like that.

Regardless, Loren’s mind switched to the issue at hand: Lapis, who was leaning forward in front of him.

She had shown up just as he set foot in the dining hall for lunch, and as soon as she sat down in front of him, she had suddenly said, ‘Loren, let’s go north.’

Loren looked out the dining hall window and wondered what she had just said all of a sudden.

The city of Kapha was located in the southwestern part of the continent, where the climate was mild and the temperature did not fluctuate much throughout the year. In the southern part of the continent, the climate was hot and humid all year round, but in the northern part Lapis had just mentioned, the climate was the exact opposite, with low temperature and dryness, which was not what one would consider pleasant.

Loren had no objection to going there if necessary, but he thought this might be a bit too sudden. He broke off a piece of bread and began eating.

“Loren? Are you listening to me?”

Lapis spoke to Loren, who hadn’t shown any particular reaction to her words and just began to eat his lunch instead, with just a bit of harshness in her voice.

Paying her no mind, Loren washed down the dry bread in his mouth with some bland soup, then glanced at Lapis.

“Go on? I’ll think about it after I’ve heard the whole story. It’s not something you decided out of the blue for no reason, right?”

Gula was not here. She always appeared when they had adventurer work to do, but Loren had no idea where she was or what she did when they didn’t. It was dangerous to leave Gula, a being called an Evil God created by the Ancient Kingdom, unattended, but that did not mean there was any way to limit her activities. Although they were now working together as fellow adventurers, if Gula were so much as inclined, he would end up in her stomach due to her power as Gluttony, so he didn’t want to press his luck.

“I do have a reason. It’s about the leader of the mercenary company that you belonged to, Loren.”

Loren suddenly recalled the information they had obtained some time ago. It was something brought to him by another member of the mercenary company to which he originally belonged, and although he did not know how accurate the information was, it said that the leader of their mercenary company had been seen in the northern country of Justinia Empire.

To Loren, the leader of his mercenary company was his foster parent, sword master, and comrade. He wanted to meet him again if he could. Although Loren had quit the mercenary life and become an adventurer, he still wanted to tell the leader that he had if he was still alive.

However, if asked if he was willing to travel to the Empire of Justinia in the north just for that purpose, Loren would immediately answer no. That was how far away the northern country Lapis had mentioned was.

After receiving the information about the leader, Loren had secretly checked the location of Justinia Empire on the continent, and found that it was located just north of the center of the continent. The central part of their continent was surrounded by steep mountainous terrain inhabited by the demon tribe, and in order to reach Justinia Empire from the southwest, it was necessary to make a large detour around the demons’ territory.

“It takes many days and a lot of money just for a one-way trip. Just thinking about the round trip is daunting. Do we really need to go that far?”

“Yes, we do.”

Lapis’ answer was immediate. It was so quick and decisive that Loren looked a bit daunted, and Lapis, perhaps thinking that this was where she should push, leaned forward and brought her face close to his.

“I was convinced of it during our work the other day. We must meet with your leader and hear what he has to say.”

“I don’t like it.”

Loren understood, albeit only somewhat, why Lapis was so fixated on the leader.

The door leading to the innermost part of the kingdom was locked by magic, and a word was needed to open it.

During the commission that Loren and his team accepted before Chuck and Nim’s wedding, they had explored one of the ruins of the Ancient Kingdom. The door leading to the innermost part of the ruin was locked by magic, and required a word to unlock it. While Lapis and the others tried to derive an answer from the words engraved on the door, Loren had managed to open the door as if it were a matter of course by speaking the words that he had been taught by the leader. Loren himself had heard it as a fairy tale known to everyone, and wondered why the others did not know about it, but the others had never heard of such a fairy tale.

Of course, if this was only Lapis, who was a priest in appearance but actually was a demon, then it was possible she really didn’t know the tale. However, one of the highest ranking vampires called Elders who was accompanying their party at the time, a young girl named Dia, had secretly informed Lapis that she also had never heard of such a fairy tale anywhere throughout the continent.

When Lapis heard this, she decided that she had to persuade Loren to meet and talk with his mercenary leader, no matter what it took.

“Why are you so reluctant? You don’t want to see him?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to see him… I don’t want to go all the way there just to see him.”

Though not entirely correct, one could say that the journey would mean traveling across the continent, from the southern region to the northern region. That alone was a daunting distance, but if they wanted to avoid the demon territory, they would have to travel an even longer path.

“I’m sure he won’t be in the north forever either, so why don’t we wait until we hear a rumor closer to home?”

Loren had had no information about where the commander had been or what he had been doing since the destruction of his mercenary company. The former member of the company who gave Loren information about the leader might have known more, but unfortunately, that member lost his life during a conflict that Loren’s party was also involved in.

Loren felt a little down when he thought about this, but he managed to pull himself out of his darkened mood when he suddenly noticed a little girl in a dress with wings on her back looking at him with concern.

She was the ‘King of Death’, the highest ranking undead, whom he had met in a certain incident.

[‘Onii-san, please don’t take it too hard.’]

Loren heard in his mind the worried thoughts of Shayna, the girl who had been transformed into the King of Death, and he smiled slightly to say that he was okay in response to the voice that only he could hear.

As a result of the battle with Loren and his group, Shayna had lost her material body and became a purely spiritual entity. If left alone, she would have had no choice but to disappear, but she had managed to maintain her existence by residing inside of Loren’s spiritual body. Because of this situation, sometimes Shayna was able to feel his emotions quite directly.

The conversation between Loren and Shayna was not something that could be detected from the outside, but Lapis, perhaps sensing this from the atmosphere, decided that it would be better to end her talk for the time being.

“Well… I don’t want to force you, but could you please think about it?”

She told Loren and began to order lunch for herself from a waitress who passed by behind her.