Heritage (1)
The following day, the talks resumed where they had left off the night before, and everything proceeded without a hitch. It wasn't a particularly complicated arrangement, if I was being honest. I would supply the grain; the demons would pay a corresponding value in goods.
The only catch was that I still didn't know precisely how much wheat I could sell, so we settled on a price per unit of weight and agreed to work out the remaining details later.
The transaction itself followed the same protocol used among Imperial citizens: two identical copies of the contract, both parties' seals stamped across the join to prevent forgery, each side keeping one. I did wonder what good any of that would do in a deal with demons rather than my own kind — but then, formality has its place everywhere.
I tucked the documents into my coat and turned toward Pyne's shadow.
"Well, that about covers it. Is there anything else you'd like to discuss?"
"Heh. I think we've said everything there is to say for now. As I mentioned earlier, the finer points can wait until you return to your estate — you can discuss them then with someone from our side."
Pyne's shadow rippled as it answered. Isana stood beside the veil that hung across the front of the shadow, serving as proxy for the absent Pyne in drawing up the contract.
I'd been briefly startled earlier, watching her slice her own finger and press a blood-stamp onto the page. She'd wiped the blood from her thumb as if it were nothing at all, then fetched a thin strip of cloth and wound it around the wound. Apparently demons had no culture of using seals.
"That person you mentioned — is it Isana here?"
"Unfortunately, she has duties of her own. By the time you visit Palana, someone else will be ready. I'll vest that individual with my full authority, so you can proceed with them."
Hearing that, I felt a flicker of relief. I'd only met Isana briefly yesterday and again today, but she'd already left me with the impression of someone quite aggressive and impatient. Bringing a person like that along could lead to all sorts of unforeseen complications. I could only hope that whoever Pyne had prepared would be of a calmer disposition.
Sensing my gaze on her, Isana looked at me and spat the words out bluntly.
"What are you looking at?"
Recalling the courteous manner she'd shown at our first meeting alongside the surliness she was treating me with now was enough to give me cognitive whiplash. I'd never imagined that such roughness lurked beneath that demure human disguise.
"Never mind. More importantly — when can we leave for the Eastern Continent? I'd like to get this trip over with as quickly as possible."
Pyne answered in place of Isana, who was still grumbling under her breath.
"Don't worry too much, Lord Edwin. We'll have everything ready to depart before noon at the latest."
"But are you certain you'll be all right? The magi saturating our lands is extraordinarily hard on a Westerner's body. You mentioned you were looking for something, didn't you? If you tell us the location, we could search for it on your behalf."
"I've come prepared, so I'll be fine. I'm not staying long — a day or two at most, and there won't be any problem. Besides, what I'm looking for is hidden quite deep. It would be difficult to find without going myself. I appreciate the concern, though."
"If you insist, I won't try to stop you any further. I only pray you return in one piece, Lord Edwin."
When I refused to yield, Pyne seemed to give up on persuading me. The shadow shook its head from side to side.
Half a day's travel from Easthall, Isana and I reached the vast wasteland stretching between the South and the Eastern Continent.
A faint stinging crept across my skin and into my eyes — the magi was already taking hold. Left untreated, I would succumb to magi poisoning, waste away, and eventually die.
I drew a small vial from inside my coat, uncorked it, and took a sip of the liquid within.
Isana, walking ahead, glanced back at the sight.
"What's that? You're drinking it like it's something sweet."
Unlike me, struggling against the magi, she as a demon seemed entirely unaffected — if anything, she looked more vigorous with every step.
"Holy Water. It's lethal to your kind, so don't go getting curious and coming near it. You could die."
"Eck— and here I thought it was something else. Got it."
Isana made a face of pure disgust and took several extra steps away from me, putting more distance between us than before.
Holy Water was typically sprinkled on the body or poured over wounds, but drinking it directly granted a period of resistance to magi proportional to the amount consumed. The instant it went down, the stinging vanished without a trace, and a warm, gentle something began to wrap itself around my entire body.
Since I didn't know the exact duration, I figured I'd use this opportunity to measure it precisely by adjusting the dose. I had plenty of extra, and chances like this didn't come often.
"There it is. Past that river — that's our territory."
After a full day crossing the wasteland, the world beyond the horizon finally came into view.
The Eastern Continent. The Forbidden Zone. The Lost Place. The Cursed Land.
It went by many names now, but in time, everyone would come to call it the Demon Realm. And it was also the homeland of Pyne and Isana.
...It's more ordinary than I expected.
Contrary to what I'd imagined, the Eastern Continent looked remarkably mundane at a glance. There was grass. There were trees. In the distance I could even make out lakes and rivers. The only clues that this was not the Western Continent were the magi prickling against my skin and, if you looked closely, fruit that seemed somehow warped.
Isana, walking ahead, stopped me as I strolled along taking in the scenery.
"Westerner... no, Edwin. Stay back a moment."
I turned to see what was the matter, and found her fidgeting, shifting her weight from side to side. She kept glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, then finally let out a heavy sigh, as if she'd made up her mind. She stretched her arm forward and opened her right hand.
A deep whoosh filled the air. The moment Isana spread her palm, the atmosphere around us began to tremble as if vibrating, then rushed rapidly into her right hand. Only after several seconds of drawing it in did she withdraw.
"Nngh... yeah, my original form is so much more comfortable. Disguising myself as a Westerner is way too stifling..."
Isana stretched as she spoke. Apparently the form she'd shown in the village last time had only been a partial transformation.
Her hair had bleached to a pale, almost white shade, and her skin had taken on a pallid grey. The horns on her head had grown to twice the size they'd been before, and her ears stretched long, drooping down along either side of her temples. The whites of her eyes had inverted to black, her irises a feline yellow, the pupils slashed vertically into slits — the classic inverted gaze of her kind.
Isana's true form looked exactly like the demons I'd seen in the game. The original work had never described it in detail, so I couldn't be certain, but judging by the circumstances, it seemed that once the magi drained from their bodies, their appearance became indistinguishable from ordinary people. Absorbing magi like this restored them to their true forms.
As I stared at her transformed appearance in fascination, she shot me a piercing glare.
"Hey. Mind not staring so openly? It's rude to a young lady. Doesn't a noble lord know any manners?"
"Ah, my apologies. A sight I'd never once encountered in all my years, unfolding right before my eyes. I was out of line."
"Hmph... You're awfully calm for someone who just said that. So seeing our true forms really doesn't faze you, huh..."
"It's fascinating, I'll grant you, but nothing more than that. And as I've already told your master, I don't judge people by their appearance. If that's what's on your mind, you don't need to worry about it at all."
"Hey. I'll have you know I'm considered the greatest beauty in our entire clan...? Well, except for our master, of course. And plenty of you Westerners take one look at my face and go completely slack-jawed. So hearing you talk about appearance and discrimination is honestly kind of ridiculous... Maybe take a look at yourself before you start lecturing other people?"
Master? Come to think of it, in the original work the Demon King never once removed that black armor and helmet, so there had been no way to guess at their appearance. If Isana would say something like that even though he was a man, he had to be quite the handsome fellow. I had to admit, I was genuinely curious.
If I kept cultivating this relationship with them, would the day come when I finally saw the Demon King's true face?