Chapter 9
Early morning, before the sun had fully risen.
Waking up at this hour, closer to dawn than morning, wasn't anything special for me.
The demon realm was enemy territory, plain and simple.
No matter how remote a location we chose, if we stayed too long, someone was bound to notice.
So, being the first to rise, tidying up the campsite, and erasing our traces was part of my daily routine.
Out of fear that leaving even a bit of information might reveal we were the Hero's party.
Or perhaps driven by an obsession to contribute just a little more to this party, I woke up earlier than anyone else every morning to erase traces of our camp.
At this hour, I was always alone.
The Hero was sleeping in the tent, and his lovers were by his side.
But today, I wasn't alone.
The Hero, who would normally be passed out in the tent until sunrise, was right beside me.
Next to the dying campfire.
Kim Yeomjin, drenched in dew, had apparently been here all night, his entire body wet.
Judging by his slight cough, he seemed to have caught a cold from the dampness.
Though I had resented him and probably would continue to, seeing him in such a pitiful state, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy.
I rekindled the campfire and used magic to restore his body temperature to normal.
Seeing his shivering body gradually stabilize, he seemed a bit more comfortable.
"...Let's get up."
I gently nudged him awake.
His tightly closed eyelids twitched, then slowly opened with a small cough.
"Uh, um. E-Elang...?"
Kim Yeomjin, recognizing me immediately, reflexively sat up and backed away.
Having nearly died just yesterday, it was understandable that he was frightened.
"Did you sleep here last night?"
"...Yeah."
I didn't need to ask why.
Recalling the Holy Saint's sharp reaction last night, I could roughly guess his thoughts.
"...From now on, sleep in my tent."
It's small, but somehow manageable for two.
If he caught a serious illness from sleeping rough, that would be another problem.
Moreover, the demon realm has many areas with extreme climate changes. If we suddenly encountered heavy snow during our journey, his life could be in danger.
We couldn't let him die here, if only so he could face trial later.
"Well then, I'll..."
Having said all I needed to say, and honestly finding it unpleasant to face him, I was about to leave on the pretext of tidying up.
"...I'm sorry."
"......"
The voice of apology from behind.
Without asking what it was for, and without accepting it, I turned my back and ignored it.
As time passed and the party members woke up one by one, we finished packing and began to move.
Usually, when traveling between regions, we posed as traveling merchants to naturally avoid the eyes of demons.
As merchants, we could naturally use a carriage and use curtains to conceal our numbers, rarely arousing suspicion.
Moreover, by taming swift magical beasts, we could move several times faster than ordinary horses, greatly reducing travel time.
We used to use tamed magical beasts, but recently we've been using illusion magic to make spirits appear as magical beasts to pull the carriage instead of horses.
This spirit horse, a mix of wind and earth spirits, was much faster than ordinary horses or magical beasts.
"I-I'll ride here too."
As everyone was climbing into the carriage, the Hero, who usually took up space in the back, said he'd sit in the driver's seat with me today.
I had a feeling he'd be here until the day we left the demon realm and arrived in the kingdom.
We rode on and on, until we were quite far from where we first camped.
As dusk was starting to fall, the Hero, who had been glancing at the back of the carriage, suddenly spoke up.
"Are princesses like prostitutes?"
"...Pardon?"
Momentarily stunned by this bomb of a statement dropped without preamble, I was at a loss for words.
Worried that talk like this might provoke the three women, I quickly cast an illusion spell and asked him to clarify.
It wasn't that I had misheard due to the carriage noise.
After hearing his follow-up explanation, I could finally understand his meaning.
"No, you should have led with that context instead of abruptly asking if princesses are prostitutes. What were you thinking?"
"...Sorry."
"And let me make this clear: your relationship with those three women isn't a typical one."
The marriage of a wealthy old nobleman to a young, beautiful noblewoman from a fallen house is closer to prostitution than marriage.
In such cases, even if the wife is treated like a plaything, no one would raise objections.
However, just because there are some cases like this doesn't mean the abnormal becomes normal.
I'd heard that the kingdom heavily relied on the Hero alone in this war, and because of that, the Hero's power in the military was very high.
The mark of being chosen by God.
Add to that the fame of being a war hero and overwhelming power that no one could match.
Though he wasn't aware of it himself, if the Hero had wanted to, he probably could have swallowed up the country.
"Your authority was higher than not only the influential nobles of the kingdom but even the royal family. That's why everyone flattered you and endured any humiliation."
"......"
"To be frank, from the perspective of an ordinary noble like myself, you were insane."
He boasted about his wives as if they were trophies or medals, and flaunted this to others.
I don't want to sully my mouth by specifying exactly what I mean by "flaunting," but Kim Yeomjin himself probably knows better than anyone.
Originally, this shouldn't happen.
Even between couples with significant class differences, such things don't usually occur.
If this had happened between ordinary nobles, the wife's family would have forced a divorce, even against her will.
Because saying a married woman was dishonored is tantamount to saying her family was insulted.
"Usually, it's an equal relationship. Both parties are marrying someone they don't want, after all. But in your case, it wasn't like that. This was closer to tribute than a normal political marriage."
To begin with, the idea that marrying a stranger makes princesses and prostitutes equivalent—if real prostitutes and princesses heard this, they'd scoff.
"Then when that guy said that..."
"...Let me ask the question I should have asked first: why do you even care about this anymore?"
"Huh?"
"You're no longer the Hero. Since you've lost that power, naturally your marriages will be annulled. So why are you concerned about this?"
"......"
He has now lost his qualification as the Hero.
He's lost both the right and the power to do anything for the princesses, so there's nothing he can do.
As Kim Yeomjin lowered his head, at a loss for words, I glanced at Meria in the luggage compartment, ignoring him.
She seemed to have heard Kim Yeomjin's initial comments about princesses and prostitutes, as she was looking this way.
Princess Meria Asbronze.
Always blunt and expressionless, but actually a girl overflowing with consideration, she was rumored to be the model daughter of noble families in the capital.
If such a person disparaged herself as a prostitute and even harbored such sentiments about her family's decisions, it must be either the result of education accumulated since childhood or...
Or perhaps something changed in her mindset after meeting the Hero.
Even though it was a party in name only, we were still technically comrades, yet I knew nothing about her.
It's not like I can do anything for her now.
She probably doesn't expect or want anything from me either.
But it keeps bothering me.
While she acts calm on the outside, pretending nothing's wrong, isn't her heart actually torn to shreds?
"I'm asking this just in case, but did you do anything cruel to Princess Meria?"
"...C-Cruel?"
"For example, did you do anything to disregard her personhood during intimate moments?"
"......"
"I've cast a soundproofing spell, so they can't hear us from over there."
"...I probably did."
"...I see."
I wasn't curious about what exactly it was.
Rather, if I heard it, I might involuntarily raise my hand against him, so I dismissed my earlier words with a sigh.
I'll have to keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn't harm herself.
Inwardly making this resolution, I drove on.
The demon realm is vast and full of dangers everywhere.
In our party's case, that danger was right beside us.
*****
Between the land we commonly call the demon realm and the human realm lies a sea known as the Sea God's Stomach.
It's called this because the sudden, unpredictable occurrence of abnormal currents swallowing ships looks as if the sea itself is devouring them.
In the past, heroes who set out boldly to conquer the demon realm all sank into the Sea God's belly.
This must have been true for demons as well, but they achieved the feat of sending large armies from the demon realm to the human realm using superior shipbuilding techniques.
Unfortunately, our shipbuilding skills are far inferior to the demons, so we don't have such technology.
So how did we get here?
To be honest, the method was so reckless it couldn't even be called clever as a joke.
...Thinking about it again, it was absolutely insane.
Avoiding the eyes of the Demon King's army, we stood at the border between the human and demon realms, staring at that endless sea.
We flew across this vast ocean, where another horizon likely lay beyond the visible one.
When we found islands along the way, we marked them with spatial transfer coordinates, feeling our way across the entire sea until we finally arrived in the demon realm.
It was a stupid operation where we could have easily died from a mishap in the sky.
I still can't believe such an operation succeeded.
We returned to the kingdom by a much safer method than how we came, and after observing how much had changed in the kingdom over these three years, we arrived at the royal palace.
And then...
"If that's the case...!! The Hero Coin!!! What's to become of our Hero Coin?!!"
"...Excuse me?"
We faced an issue so ridiculous, I almost wished it was another of the evil god's machinations.