The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary

Behind the door was a long passage.

It was more than wide enough for the cart, with doors lining up on both walls at regular intervals and another one at the end.

“<<<Ice Coffin>>>”.

After both Loren and Gula had gone through the door, Lapis suddenly used magic. When Loren turned around to see what the hell she used it for, he saw the carriage they had left behind being enclosed in ice.

“It’ll be troublesome if we just leave the horse like that, with its feeds and droppings and all. If we put it in a suspended state like this, we can just use <<<Dispel>>> on it when we come back.”

Lapis said with a proud face. Loren felt like he could see the horse’s eyes from within the ice lump behind her, and for some reason, he apologized to it in his mind. He just couldn’t help it; the horse was too pitiful. It had pulled a carriage full of luggage, made to come to a desert only to get swallowed by sand and in the end, was buried in ice. But since they couldn’t leave someone behind to take care of it, this was probably better than starving to death.

“Rather than worrying about that, we should finish what we’ve come here for.”

“Coming here will help us shorten the time it will take to get to the mountain range at the center of the continent, right?”

“Yes, it will. Before that, we have to deal with this though.”

Lapis said and poked at the brooch on her chest.

It was a magical equipment they received from the Guild, one that could keep track of the bearer’s journey. It was supposed to record their progress to the demons’ territory and if left as-is, it would also record their current location.

“There’s no choice but to perform some trick on it.”

Lapis said smoothly and easily, and Gula looked at her as if she was seeing something unbelievable. Loren, who understood neither Lapis’ words nor Gula’s gaze, looked back and forth between the two of them.

“Trick… Lapis-chan, you can tamper with magical items?”

“I can. I even have tools to use for that purpose here.”

Loren had absolutely no idea how amazing that was, but from the look on Gula’s face, he knew it wasn’t something to speak about lightly. Yet Lapis opened one of the doors on the wall and stepped inside as if it was something she was very familiar with.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be done in a minute.”

Lapis’s voice came out from within the room, and Loren and Gula couldn’t help but peek inside. They could see her doing something at the desk in the dimly-lit room, surrounded by various machinery, which casted an eerie light on the whole room.

“I think the item that is paired with the brooch can be used to erase the location details it records.”

Gula said to Loren as if she wanted to give him an explanation.

“But she’s falsifying data without using official equipment. It’s really unthinkable, you know? Even us Evil Gods can’t do such a thing.”

“Is that so?”

Gula raised a question while watching Lapis’ working:

“Yeah. Why’d Lapis-chan decide to get a priest qualification? Isn’t it better to just become a magician?”

If Lapis became a magician instead of a priest, she would be an exceptionally brilliant one, and would become a greatly sought-after adventurer. On the other hand, it was strange for a priest to use magic. It really was incomprehensible why she would choose priesthood as an occupation.

“Maybe she has some reason to not become a magician?”

It seemed like Lapis was still keeping an ear on their conversation when working, so she answered Gula’s question without looking back:

“A very simple reason.”

“Can you tell us, just for reference?”

“Sure.”

Lapis looked over her shoulders at the two standing outside the door and lightly pinched at the collar of her priest’s dress:

“Because the clothes are cute. Being a magician means I have to wear a robe, right? Those lengthy draggy things are not cute at all.”

Gula looked dumbfounded at her answer. Loren looked carefully at her: here was one self-proclaimed “magician” in a strangely revealing outfit of tube top and hot pants. It was true that magicians usually wore robes, and Loren had never seen anyone dressed like Gula.

“Gula also should wear robes, shouldn’t she…?”

“No way! I refuse!”

“The clothes of God of Knowledge’s priests have especially nice design. And this is a secret, but… Demons aren’t exactly religious, but the God of Knowledge is an exception. There are quite a lot of God of Knowledge’s priests among us.”

Loren had heard about this from Lapis before that demons didn’t believe in Gods, and he had believed it. Thus, this was a rather shocking revelation to him.

“Basically, there have been quite a lot of demons within the God of Knowledge’s priests since long before… And the predecessors have interfered with the design for their successors’ sake.”

“Isn’t that privatization part of a religion?”

If they could alter the design of priest clothing to suit their own taste, he had no idea how much influence the demons had over the organization of the God of Knowledge’s priests. They might even exploit the priest qualification system for their own benefits – Loren shuddered thinking about that possibility.

“This much is good enough. There’s nothing one can’t do, but overdoing things never amount to anything good.”

Lapis seemed to have finished whatever she was doing with the brooch. She picked it up with her fingers, lifted it to slightly-above her line of sight and looked at it as if admiring her own work. Loren, having no knowledge in the field, couldn’t understand what she was looking at, but Lapis seemed to be satisfied with what she saw. She reattached the brooch onto her chest with a smile:

“Our location information has been altered with no problem. It still needs some more fine-tuning, but we’ll stop by here later anyway.”

If they didn’t stop by here again, the horse and carriage, which currently were frozen in ice, would stay frozen forever. Loren was thinking that they definitely needed to come here again after the job was finished, if only for the sake of the horse.

Lapis left the room, and under her lead, they advanced forward.

“Are other rooms here also workrooms?”

“No no, this is my base, so not every room is a workroom. There’s a warehouse, a kitchen, and even a living quarter. What, do you want to stay here for a night?”

Loren shook his head decisively at Lapis’ invitation. It wasn’t that he felt staying a night at her base would be dangerous. Rather it was that he still couldn’t believe they could really immediately reach the mountain range directly from this place. It wasn’t a good idea to waste time.

“You worry too much, Loren. I told you, it’ll be alright.”

“You did, but… The mountains are at least two or three days away, aren’t they? Not to mention that there’s a desert right above my head. Only idiots will believe everything is alright just by being told so, right?”

“So you’re a skeptic…”

Lapis looked at him fondly and declared. She decided that it would be faster to just show him how to do it, so she quickened her steps a bit and walked up to the end of the passage. There was a door similar to those on the walls there. She opened it, then stepped aside as if to make way for Loren and Gula. Wanting to check what was behind the door, Loren gave the cart to Gula and stepped in.

There was a flat white scaffold inside. It was fairly large, and anchored on it was some ship-like structure made from metal. The structure was as wide as the carriages they usually rode and twice as long, so it seemed like they could all fit in. Below it there were two wires made from the same metal that extended to a cylinder-shaped pathway. He could see white light shining down from the ceiling at regular intervals in there, but he couldn’t see where it led to.

After carefully surveying the whole space, Loren went back out, where Lapis and Gula were waiting for him. He asked Lapis, who probably knew what was in there:

“What is that?”

“We can go directly to the mountains from here. We’ll board that ship-like thing, make it run, and we’ll reach the mountain range in about two and a half hours.”

Loren looked at that ship-like thing again. He had never seen anything that could travel at such speed before, but if Lapis had said so, then it must be able to.

“There are seats and a cockpit inside it. It’s linked to another base right in front of the mountain range only, so it can’t be used to go anywhere else.”

“Does it also belong to this ruin?”

“Yes, it does. Well, I’m not sure who made it or why, but I know it’ll be useful for us, and that’s enough.”

If they were archeologists or something, they would have to study who had built this facility, when, and why, but they were adventurers. Setting aside stuff like troublesome contexts and reasons, as long as something was useful to them, everything else was just a side story.

“So should we load our luggage to that ship thing?”

“We should be able to load the cart on it. Try pushing it in through the back entrance, I think it’ll work.”

“Can we depart immediately after the luggage is loaded?”

“Since Loren seems to worry a lot about the time, let’s do that. Our destination is a similar place, so let’s take our rest there.”

Loren nodded. He still found it unbelievable to immediately reach the mountains from here, he had no reason to refuse an immediate departure. Gula looked like she wanted to rest a bit, but since Loren and Lapis had made up their mind on the matter, she didn’t seem inclined to argue with them and just obediently followed their decision.

“Well, let’s move quickly, shall we?”

Lapis opened a part of the ship-like thing, inviting them to embark, and Loren walked in with a steady gait but somewhat-nervous heart.