#022 Shopping
#022 Shopping
After officially registering as an adventurer at the Adventurers' Guild.
I took Lucius and headed to the next place.
We stopped by an inn to secure lodging, went to a general store, a potion shop, and then wandered through several other places including a weapon shop.
"Master, where are we going this time?"
"Wait. We just need to stop by one more place."
"...At this rate, we're going to cover every shop in this market district."
Lucius looked visibly exhausted.
We hadn't even looked around that many places yet, but Lucius clearly wanted to leave this shopping street.
"Why? Tired already? That shouldn't really tire you out, should it?"
"...I'm just worried that you might get tired, Master."
"Tired, my ass."
An undead complaining about physical fatigue?
Satan would laugh.
"Did you forget what kind of body I have?"
"That's not what I..."
"We just need to stop here. Let's look around just this one place."
I pointed ahead of us, at a shabby weapon shop.
Lucius let out a deep sigh and shook his head at me.
"Isn't this already the seventh time we've come out of a weapon shop? Master, you might be causing trouble for the shopkeepers."
"A buyer can look at the merchandise and leave if they don't like it. What trouble is that? Did we go in and disrupt their business, or break their goods?"
"...You spent thirty minutes at every weapon shop just comparing things before leaving."
As Lucius said, I had stopped at every weapon shop to check the performance of their swords.
To find a sword for Lucius to use, and a sword for me to use.
We couldn't keep using the rusty iron swords looted from goblins forever, and I needed to make Lucius use a sword that wasn't a Holy Sword.
Both as a disguise, and so that Lucius could wield an ordinary sword as if it were a Holy Sword.
Since it was a sword we'd be using for a while, I'd been trying to pick out something durable that would last, but Lucius was now openly showing signs of fatigue and wanting to go back to the lodging.
"Do you even know how important a weapon is? It's something that can save your life in an emergency. No matter how good your natural talent is, is that any way to be?"
"...I'll reflect on it."
He seemed to be reflecting, but it was true that he looked a bit tired.
He shouldn't have been physically tired thanks to the Holy Sword's influence, so it seemed I'd pushed the shopping march a bit too hard.
'Still, I have to do this.'
Mana potions, a backpack, spare clothes for emergencies, scrolls, antidotes, paralysis cures, thawing agents, fever reducers, bug-repellent spray potions, cave-escape rope, and various other odds and ends.
I'd been preparing supplies so that we could handle any enemy we encountered no matter where we went, so it stung a little when Lucius acted like this.
"A young guy whining about being tired over just this much. Tsk, tsk."
"I'm not whining, I just... haah."
We'd even eaten at the inn we'd chosen as our lodging and then moved around here and there as a walk, so he shouldn't be hungry either, yet Lucius was tired even from buying the bare minimum of necessary supplies.
"Back in my day, there were times I spent two whole days and nights preparing equipment before setting out on an adventure."
"Isn't your time different from ours now, Master?"
"Oh? Now you're even talking back?"
"...I may not know the details since I lived in the countryside, but it doesn't seem like we need to prepare enough to carry such a large backpack."
Lucius pointed at the bag on my back.
The bag, large enough to reach from my shoulders to my knees, contained all the luggage needed for travel.
"Isn't it heavy? I'm worried it might be bad for your body, Master."
"First, my body doesn't know fatigue. Second, it's an artifact bag with weight-reduction magic on it, so there's no real problem. Look, there are other adventurers over there carrying luggage bags too."
Where I pointed, five adventurers were gathered in small groups, heading somewhere.
One blond knight and three scantily-clad women clinging to his side.
And behind them, a tired-looking black-haired young man trudging along after them.
The young man was carrying a bag bigger than himself on his shoulders, but he wasn't dripping sweat or staggering under the bag's weight.
It must have been thanks to weight-reduction magic.
A mage dressed even more licentiously than me was laughing at the blond knight's words, and I could see her casting weight-lightening magic and body-enhancement magic on the pack mule.
"The world's really gotten better these days. Lucius, what do you think that party's situation is?"
"Hmm... they look like a harmonious party."
"That right now is a 'clueless male knight,' an 'inferiority-complex-ridden pack mule,' and a 'turns out all three women like the pack mule' kind of situation."
It was a case I'd experienced 500 years ago.
"There was a Hero Party out to defeat a Demon King, and I personally joined it. But it was literally that situation, and the pack mule left the party. The women realized their feelings after the pack mule disappeared, and when the women left to find the pack mule, the Hero Party disbanded."
I'd joined specifically to wreck the Hero Party, but the Hero Party was already a broken vessel.
It was a party that had broken without anyone touching it, and they themselves hadn't even realized. I'd happily tried to recruit the pack mule, who had tremendous talent.
-Who... are you?
-I am Belphegor. A Demon King.
-A Demon King... Is that so. Have you come to kill me...
-Do you desire power?
-What...?
-I can see the longing for revenge and power in your eyes. I will give you power. In return, serve me.
I'd paired him with a pure Dark Elf, and once his exhausted spirit recovered and he became a demon working for the Demon King Army, I offered the porter a chance at revenge.
-I command you in the name of the Demon King. I give you five years. Grow your strength, and I will help you achieve your revenge.
-...Fine. Then how should I train? Should I go into hell and come back? Or should I embed a Mana Stone in my heart? Tell me! I'll do anything!
-...Exercise three hours a day, and when your stamina is spent, train your mana, then train your swordsmanship. Snitpy Ring! You are responsible for turning this young man into a proper warrior of vengeance. You're the expert in this field.
-As you command, Demon King. However...
-A child of a mighty warrior and a Dark Elf would make an excellent warrior. Of course, that's only if you become a strong enough warrior to make even a Dark Elf bear your child, heh heh.
-That's...
-Submit your reports in writing on a regular basis! Farewell, then! Hahahahah!!
-Demon King...!!
He truly became a powerful demon.
The back strength and stamina he had built as a porter were second to none among warriors, and the demon I met five years later had become a major force in the Demon King Army, with combat power rivaling one of its officers and a half-elf child in tow.
'I wonder if he's still alive.'
If he was in the Middle Realm now, he might still be alive.
Or he might have been sacrificed by Zepar's faction when they tried to resurrect Belphegor, or he might have died in the subjugation of the Demon King Army remnants after Belphegor's death.
Seeing that young porter made me think of the one from back then, and I couldn't help feeling sorry for him.
"Tsk, tsk. A man is all about his back and lower body, after all..."
With weight-reduction magic doing the work for him as a porter, his stamina would never improve.
"You need good stamina to wear good equipment."
"...Ah, so that's what you meant."
"That's what I meant? You little sh—"
I kicked Lucius in the knee once more.
"Are you interested in that sort of thing, by any chance? Hmm?"
"M-Master...!!"
"Want me to teach you?"
"Excuse me?!"
I pointed at my waist.
"I may not know much else, but I know exercises for strengthening a man's back and lower body better than anyone."
Because that was how I'd once become the top dog in the Demon Realm.
If there were a top three among muscular Demon Kings, my—Belphegor's—Black Dragon Muscle Form would obviously be one of them.
The other two were equal to me or greater.
Even after returning from the Middle Realm, whenever I wasn't asleep, I would sometimes inhabit the bodies of demons with impressive physiques and spend time with them building powerful muscles and bodies.
-A healthy body houses healthy Demonic Energy.
The so-called 'Deep Dark Council.'
This gathering, named the Deep and Dark Council, was a pan-Demon-Realm organization that transcended legions and sects, created to cope through the body in situations without mana and to build healthy bodies.
And we developed it.
The ultimate technique for full-body exercise: bending the knees, extending the arms forward, and repeatedly raising and lowering the body.
"After this, I'll teach you back at the inn. I'll make a proper man out of you. Heh heh."
"......."
Lucius closed his eyes and smiled with a serene face.
It was a smile of someone who had reached enlightenment—or rather, someone who was hopeful but had already given up because the hope would surely be betrayed.
I could relate.
I felt exactly the same way about entering this smithy, the last one on the shopping street.
"Let's really go back after looking at just this place. Got it?"
"Understood."
Jingle-jingle.
"Excuse me. I've come to look at some swords."
"...Hm?"
Inside the smithy.
There, someone who looked ill-tempered...
"What?"
An elf was holding a hammer.
The blond-haired person wearing the leather protective gear that blacksmiths typically wore was unmistakably an elf with pointed ears.
"......?"
I wondered if I'd walked into the wrong place, if my eyes were mistaken.
But no matter how I looked, the woman before me was an elf.
"What? Never seen an elf blacksmith before?"
"......Aren't there usually supposed to be dwarves?"
"Ha, those dwarf bastards."
The elf pointed at the wall with a confident face.
"Every dwarf on this row challenged me at smithing, got completely crushed, and left out of embarrassment."
"...A master craftsman certificate?"
"That's right. I'm the greatest blacksmith officially recognized by Normance."
Clang.
The elf slung the hammer over her shoulder and grinned.
"'Fergus Handsmith.' That's me."
"......Ah, yes. But."
I quickly checked the price tags on the merchandise, then asked Fergus.
"Why are you speaking informally to a customer?"
"......Huh?"
"Looking at your license, you seem to be about 200 years old now."
"...Uh, um...?"
"The world's gotten better these days, hasn't it?"
She was probably still alive, right?
She had to be alive.
"Iyeluna would really love to see this. Don't you think?"
"......Um, what is your relationship with the Supreme Elder...?"
Iyeluna.
The moment I brought up the name of the most powerful elf from 500 years ago, I got an immediate answer.
'So that elf went and climbed all the way to Supreme Elder.'
What was our relationship?
-Ah, no...! Stop, to a Demon King, haah...!
-Ah, no...! Master, not here, haah...!
-You mustn't do this...! Iyeluna is, haah, being corrupted...!!
-......♡
We were slave and master.
Five hundred years ago, after raiding a group of elves, she was an elf I'd kept as a slave and attendant.
"What our relationship is..."
I swallowed the words that had risen to my throat and winked at Fergus.
"Depends on how you behave, doesn't it?"
"......What brings you here?"
"What brings me here? I came to a smithy to buy a sword."
"Who are you...?"
"Who am I?"
There was only one answer.
"A customer."