Chapter 14
Chapter 14
The rattling vibration of the carriage traveled pleasantly through my hip bones.
“Igripa-nim, seriously, that robe looks amazing on you no matter how many times I see it! The golden threads are sparkling—it’s so cool!”
Lupus sat close beside me, fiddling with the sleeve of the robe and smiling brightly. Indeed, the general manager had a good eye.
The combination of deep green and gold carried a sense of elegance, and more importantly, the fact that it returned to looking brand new within five minutes even if covered in dirt gave me great peace of mind.
But Canis, seated across from me, had been staring out the window, lost in thought. The deep crease between her brows showed that her worries were far from light.
“Hmm, is something wrong?”
“…What?”
“You seem a bit down.”
Canis turned her head toward me. But her eyes still seemed unfocused, as if she were looking somewhere far beyond me.
What could possibly be troubling her this much?
“…It’s just that… I really didn’t expect Lady Belial to give us a gift.”
“Hm? You mean that female Baphomet?”
“…Ah, well, yes. Technically speaking.”
At my blunt question, Canis’s ears twitched noticeably.
She seemed momentarily at a loss for words at my straightforward description, opening and closing her mouth before finally letting out a sigh and nodding.
“The truth is… they’re actually our competitors.”
“Really?”
“Yes. We only came this time because you were here, Igripa-nim. We planned to put pressure on the general manager and establish our dominance… but I don’t understand what she was thinking by coming out herself.”
Canis rested her chin on her hand, frowning. Her fluffy tail tapped against the seat anxiously.
Whatever it was, her merchant’s intuition seemed to be blaring alarms nonstop, throwing her thoughts into disarray.
“Pressure?”
“Yes. We wanted to firmly imprint the authority of our trading company onto the Baphomets who control the southern market.”
“…?”
Canis sighed repeatedly, but I still didn’t understand.
What exactly was the problem? If they went to assert dominance and the other side bowed first, didn’t that mean they succeeded?
From my perspective, Canis’s strategy had been perfectly successful. We even got the robe for free, and countless Baphomets came out to see us off as we left.
And yet, there was a problem?
…The world of commerce really was far more complicated than farming.
“…Sigh, Belial lowering herself like that just complicates everything.”
“And the fact that Asmodeus sent her…”
Watching Canis look so dejected, I scratched my empty skull.
‘Is it really that serious?’
No matter how grand the titles—“southern market,” “authority”—the Baphomet in question hadn’t felt hostile at all.
Belial, whom Canis had been so tense about, hadn’t been threatening in the slightest. If anything, she was more docile than the mandrakes growing in my fields.
Like the general manager, all the Baphomets there had been civilized and rational.
“Really? She seemed pretty nice to me. Aren’t gentle Baphomets rare?”
Back when I was human, I had hunted close to a hundred Baphomets.
They were usually muscular and violent, but Belial was slender and had a languid personality—nothing like a typical Baphomet.
“Oh! Igripa-nim, do you know a lot about Baphomets?”
Lupus, who had been listening, climbed onto my shoulder with sparkling eyes.
She said old stories were boring, but when something caught her interest, she reacted like this.
Hmm. If I wanted to keep talking with Lupus, I’d need to remember new stories each time.
“I do. Back when I was human, cups made from Baphomet horns were popular.”
Even contaminated water would be purified when poured into a cup made from a Baphomet horn.
Not just me—many people used them. But in the end, it was just a trivial memory. The water bottle Canis carried wasn’t made from Baphomet horn, but it used mana circuits to achieve a similar effect.
So this story probably didn’t matter much to them.
“Hmm, want to look at that over there?”
I pointed out the window toward a massive plaza. There stood a giant statue of a Baphomet holding a huge axe in one hand.
“Baphomets these days have rather thin horns, so they’re not great. Back then, their horns were thick—like that statue.”
“The statue?”
“Yeah. Look at the horn. It needs to be that thick—when you hollow it out, it holds a lot more water.”
One horn of the statue was missing, but the remaining one was thick—larger even than Lupus’s thigh.
Yes, about that size.
“I-Igripa-nim!”
Canis suddenly turned pale and grabbed my sleeve.
“Please watch what you say! Do you even know who that is? That’s Agron of the Iron Horn—the hero who unified the Baphomet tribes 800 years ago!”
“Really? He just looks like a normal Baphomet.”
“Normal?! Even after 800 years, he’s still praised as unmatched in strength! To the southern Baphomets, he’s practically a war god!”
Canis glanced around nervously. Even though the carriage insulated our voices, her tail was already tightly curled.
I looked at the statue again.
Then searched my memory.
‘…Agron.’
Unlike the proud figure in the statue, the Baphomet I remembered who looked just like him hadn’t been strong at all.
When I was gathering materials for a cup as a birthday gift for my father, he had begged me through tears not to cut off his horn.
He did look identical… but surely it couldn’t be the same one. Even accounting for the time before becoming undead, 800 years was far too long.
“So… this meeting or whatever—are we heading there now?”
At my question, Canis straightened up and answered seriously.
“Yes. The meeting will be held at Lord Asmodeus’s floating fortress, Iron Haven. We should arrive in about half a day.”
I leaned back into the seat.
Half a day. Even if the meeting took a full day, I’d still have time to check the soil moisture in the ant nest when I got back.
‘Once I return, I’ll check the rice growth… deal with pests… it’ll be busy.’
Going out with Canis and Lupus was nice, but a farmer is a farmer only when he farms.
What should I plant after rice?
Belial stood before an exquisitely crafted magic orb in the center of the room, her sleepy eyes half-lidded.
Bzzz—
The air vibrated unpleasantly as blue mana particles gathered in the air. Soon, they formed the shape of a massive dragon.
Though it wasn’t a physical body, the mere projection caused the temperature in the room to drop sharply.
“It seems… he has begun to move.”
“Yeah. He just left for Iron Haven with the Lycan sisters.”
“I see… then he’ll arrive within half a day. I suppose I should descend as well.”
“Mm… then can I go to sleep now?”
The voice resonating through the air was grand, like a mountain rumbling—but it couldn’t overpower Belial’s drowsiness.
She spoke lazily, and the dragon let out a low chuckle.
“To remain so at ease even before a calamity… it seems I’ve underestimated you.”
“Eh… he didn’t seem that scary. But like you said, the disappearing dragons in the South—it was him.”
“…As expected.”