My Reincarnation as a Chicken

Chapter 317 The Conference Begins

Day 120

The early bird, gets the worm! Or whatever it is that morning people say.

I was already out of the South and back in the West before Zana could wake up. Mostly because I didn’t sleep and I was very interested in how the setup for the conference was going.

Fortunately, most of the work was done, as the setup didn’t require much. I’d have to teleport to the various parts of Larm to bring in the leaders that could leave, as well as to set up the device or magic spell Akkun and the Agent were cooking up.

As usual, Reiman was hard at work. I decided to inquire about the progress with the city. I expected that we were still quite far from being able to actually start building, but clearing the land happened quite quickly with the aid of magic and the cyclopes tirelessly working on it.

Some Earth oni were used to speed up the entire process, paving up the ground and dividing it up into sectors. Originally what Reiman had intended was to make up different living settlements for the different races. I didn’t like this idea of his so much and decided to mix it up a little bit. As an experiment, the races would live together unfiltered, in order to see how well they could co-exist.

If that failed, I didn’t have a problem breaking down and starting again from the very beginning. After all, I wasn’t the one who was going to be breaking it down or building it up. That’s what the monsters were for! Haha… crap, I sound like a slave master now.

I received some reports from the patrol guards that a couple of humans had entered the West. And that they were stronger than most normal adventurers. For now, I had them monitoring the humans from a safe distance. If they ended up growing too close to our location during the ceremony, I didn’t mind having to go stop them personally.

Moving on, I went to the venue of the conference. It was being held in an open field, with a massive table set in place. Wild flowers spread as far as the eye could see, but only a few chairs had been set up and guards had been placed within a 100-meter radius of the meeting place.

A massive throne had been placed, obviously for me, with other less impressive chairs around it in a square formation. Most likely this was set up to represent the North, East, South and West. There was a centre part of Larm, though it mostly wasn’t considered and technically Amethyst was its new ruler, so she could stand in place for them.

I’d helped the mages with portal creation to the necessary leaders, so they’d be able to bring them without me going personally.

The reward ceremony itself would be held in a different location, much closer to where we made an impromptu prison camp for the enemy. Reiman had some of his subordinates overseeing its production. It would seem not even Reiman was capable of performing so many tasks at once.

Before anyone realised it, the time for the ceremony to begin had come, and everyone had already been gathered.

All that was left to do was think up a grand entrance for myself. As the host, I needed to be fashionably late and the loudest person in the room. They all needed to at least know that, in a hierarchy system, I towered above them all.

While I was doing that, an unexpected face tried to sneak up on me. Unfortunately for them, I sensed them coming a mile away.

“Hm? What is it, Yokino?”

“Tch.”, She clicked her tongue, having been caught. “I wanted to talk to you about something important.”

I furrowed my brows after hearing that. It had been quite a while since I last spoke to her, and for her to suddenly bring up a topic she thought was important, it had to mean...

“Go on.”, Normally, I’d just try to avoid the topic once it involved the girls and was labeled ‘important’. But I realised it was best to talk about these kinds of topics. Of course, it couldn’t be as frightening as Kara saying she was pregnant.

“Last week, a demon tried to sneak into my cave.”

“Yes!”

“Excuse me?”

Crap. I was so relieved that it had nothing to do with something as outrageous as having a baby that I blurted it out. In fact, how would Yokino even have my kid? We were both girls when we did that thing, so from a logical standpoint, my fear was completely unfounded from the very beginning.

“Sorry. I had something of a eureka moment. Please continue.”, I cleared my throat.

Yokino glared at me suspiciously as she continued.

“I managed to work some information out of the demon. His name is Jasper, and he works for some demon noble called Bael or something.”

‘Eh? A demon? I heard from Shiroi that she fought a demon, but he escaped.’

“What did he want?”, I had my suspicions that he was on the same mission as the demon Shiroi fought. Although we weren’t one hundred percent certain on that, Reiman and I came to the conclusion that he was also searching for the Ursa Major like the trolls and orcs, although why they’d be doing that is a bit of an unknown.

“He was sent on a mission by this Bael to help Krull take over Larm. I guess he was subsequently ordered by Krull’s kid to come searching for the Ursa Major, which he assumed was in my cave.”

“Eh? Did he mess some stuff up?”

“Yeah. He killed a lot of my kids, and I’m kind of angry.”, she growled.

“K-Kids?”

“Huh? My subordinates, if that’s easier for you to hear. The actual kid is safe.”

…

“The what!?”, My voice boomed throughout the entirety of the West. There was absolutely nothing that didn’t hear my scream as I started to choke on my own words. “W-what kid? You’ve got a k- Whe- Huh!? How!? Huuuuh?”

“Sheesh, lighten up, would you? Yeah, I’ve got a kid. What’s it to you?”, Cooly, Yokino asked, brushing off the question as if it wasn’t anything.

“H-How old are they?”

“Can’t say since she hasn’t hatched yet, but about 50 days or more... I think.”, Putting her hand to her chin, Yokino started to play guessing games with her own kid’s age. “Yeah, should definitely be more. Over 2 months.”

‘Ah… then it’s definitely not mine. Phew.’, I let out a relieved sigh, then straightened my back up, a new vigor burning up inside me. I wasn’t a bastard going about impregnating people without thinking about it! There was no way I could do that!

“Is the demon still here?”, It was time to focus on better things.

“He’s at the bottom of my cave as we speak.”

“Hm? And you’re sure you can leave him to move about freely?”

“I’ve rendered him immobile. It’s not worth worrying about.”, There was a scary glint in her eyes as she said that, but I didn’t point it out.

“Ok, can we hold this off till after the ceremony? I’d like to find out more about this demon and his boss… uuuh.”

“Bael.”

“Yes. Bael.”

With that, Yokino walked off to join the audience. Unfortunately, she wasn’t one of those being awarded. She apparently took no part in the war whatsoever, which made me doubt her reliability. It was more than concerning that one of the major forces in the West couldn’t be counted on in such times.

I decided to fly over to the event in a grand display, trying to evoke awe and reverence from those present.

‘Alright then, let’s get this Monster Conference over with!’

______________________________

??? POV

“If you just stopped being lazy, you’d actually be one of the best, you know?”

“Did you even try?”

“Can’t you try? For me?”

I’d heard these sorts of things my entire life.

Academics? I didn’t even need to study to get an A.

Sports? I was one of the best, back when I was a kid.

Social life? Everyone knew me and wanted to be my friend.

I was simply good at everything I tried. That is, till I got to middle school. Then things got rough.

Academics? I was starting to fail.

Sports? I definitely wasn’t one of the best anymore.

Social life? I stopped talking to everyone.

I met this transfer student. He introduced me to anime. And in no time, I lost interest in everything else. My entire life became about anime.

No, it wasn’t because of anime that my life made this odd 180. It was more like I came to the realisation that I didn’t want to try. Sure, I was brilliant, but even brilliant people wouldn’t pass an exam if they hadn’t read or heard anything regarding the material. I hadn’t trained, so eventually, my body became average. A social life? Everybody was fake. They only cared about me because my parents were better-off than theirs. There was no point in trying at anything.

As long as I had anime to comfort me, I couldn’t care less about anything else.

Trying? That’s for people who actually cared. I didn’t.

Before I knew it, I was in the second term of my first year of high-school, still having zero interest in anything. If anything changed, it was the fact that I'd grown distant to my only friend. Different high schools and our homes being in vastly different locations, all made it hard to keep up, so we eventually stopped talking after the first term.

As the days went by, I found myself caring less and less. My parents shouting at me to produce better grades like when I was a kid so they could boast to their social groups. Constantly ruining possible friendships because I didn’t feel the need to put effort into forging any relationships with people. I’d grown fatter because I didn’t see the point in not eating what I craved at whatever moment.

My days quickly became bland and boring with the only thing ever making me feel alive being anime. And even then, slowly, I was starting to lose interest in it. Maybe, when that happened, I could just kill myself and have this tiresome existence done with.

Then something weird happened one day. A bunch of guys in suits came to the class and said something weird. I didn’t get it, but all that happened next was I was in darkness. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t do anything.

This was what I imagined death would be like. Except, I could still think. Luckily, there was an easy solution to that. Sleep. That way, I’d erased the last thing that was proof of my existence.

I slept. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. I didn’t know how long it was, but the next time I woke up, I could see a mountain terrain covered from head to toe in pure white snow. I could hear the cold wind billowing and I could feel something holding onto my hand.

I looked down to my left hand to see a little girl. The most striking feature of this girl was her veridian green hair that reached down to her feet. Her skin looked pale, almost as if she’d been on the verge of death. The girl looked up to me, and my eyes met with her veridian green eyes. She cocked her head, like a curious little puppy, bangs on her head falling to one side.

Nonchalantly, I looked from the girl, towards a direction I felt something in. The sun was setting behind me and my feelings said whatever I was looking at was quite far away. I gripped the little girl’s hand tighter, then started to walk forward.

I didn’t know where I was going or why I was going, but something told me that if I went, with this little girl in my hand, I just might find something interesting.

<A/N: I hope you enjoy the chapter!