Synopsis

Foresight's group vanished without a trace, and we, too, left Wangoi City, where we'd spent nearly half a year.

Conrad, who was staying behind a little longer, asked whether I'd write a medical paper, but of course I refused.

I'm a wandmaker, you know? I only played doctor these past five months for my friend's sake. If I write a medical paper, people will start thinking again, "Oori quit being a wandmaker and became a doctor"!

Besides, if I kept sticking my nose into things that weren't my business, we'd be delayed getting to Luci Kingdom.

One way or another, it'd been nearly two years since I came back to life. We had to reach Luci Kingdom within another year and begin analyzing Quodenenets, believed to be a relic of a magical civilization more complex and enigmatic than even Demon King Gremlin's.

Given all the madcap uproar over the past two years, I was starting to doubt we'd make it to Luci Kingdom in just one more.

From Wangoi City, we followed the Ganges west and farther west, then traded Dun, the tiger demon beast, for a steam locomotive and entered the capital, Delhi.

We got off the steam locomotive, packed so tightly that it carried passengers not only in the cars but even on the roof, shoved aside the beggars who immediately swarmed us, and headed for an inn.

As the capital of the great nation of India, Delhi was crowded. There were people everywhere, and tigers everywhere among them. It was the farthest thing from a clean, neatly laid-out planned city like Tokyo; it was cluttered and, well, had a real old-downtown feel.

The paint on the shop walls was peeling off. The fruit piled to overflowing in the street vendors' baskets was covered in dust. Monkey demon beasts with hands at the ends of their tails scratched their rumps while helping the owners of fried-food stalls cook, while elsewhere demon meat soaked in seasoning liquid was being sliced up and sold at ridiculously cheap prices...