Chapter 14: Greedy Adventurers

In the end, driven by the gnawing emptiness in her stomach, Gima managed to cram the entirety of The Sermon Guide into her brain in just under half an hour. She slammed the book shut and hurried towards the sound of running water in the bathroom, her heart pounding with tactical anticipation. The entrance was blocked only by a flimsy white cloth curtain.

The plan to sell her lewd service was simple, elegant, and straight out of a classic ecchi anime. Step one: pretend to have an urgent need to use the bathroom and loiter seductively in front of the door. Step two: "accidentally" slip on the wet floor. Step three: fall gracefully through the curtain into the bathroom. Step four: while collapsing, "coincidentally" have her clothes fly up to reveal something that shouldn't be revealed. It was foolproof.

She took a running start, leaped into the air in front of the bathroom door, and let out a perfectly pitched, surprised shriek:

“Oopsie-daisy!”

Her body fell straight towards the cloth curtain, a picture of helpless, accidental grace.

Swish.

The curtain was pulled aside with a smooth motion, and two large, strong hands firmly gripped Gima’s shoulders, steadying her.

George was already fully dressed. He held Gima upright and said with heroic concern, “Be careful not to fall.”

Gima secretly gritted her teeth so hard she was surprised they didn't crack. But she couldn't show her frustration. Pretending that this was all a normal, everyday occurrence, she said, “Wow, you finished your bath so quickly.”

“I didn’t sweat much today,” he replied logically. “I was just picking out equipment.”

You infuriating, dense, righteous idiot! But Gima wouldn’t give up so easily. When it was her turn to bathe, she deliberately “forgot” to bring a towel. Halfway through her bath, her fair, slender, and very wet arm pushed aside the curtain.

“George! Oh, George! I forgot to bring a towel! Could you be a dear and get one for me?” she called out in her most helpless, damsel-in-distress voice.

George’s voice came from behind his firmly shut bedroom door.

“I’m busy in my room. You can get it yourself. And remember to go to bed early. We have to wake up at dawn tomorrow.”

Damn it! Usually, George wouldn’t be in his room at this time! He’s supposed to be in the main room, reading his boring books!

In the end, Gima’s harvest was pitifully meager, not even enough to count as a light snack.

She lay on her bed, her soft, shiny black hair spread out on the pale, plain bedsheet. She clutched her flat little belly and lamented to the heavens, “My life is so, so hard.”

In the room next door, an alchemy lamp cast a faint yellow glow. The desk was piled high with all sorts of educational and child-rearing books.

George sat at the desk, rubbing his tired, bloodshot eyes. He had gone through a whole box of books and still hadn’t found an answer to his Gima problem.

“Properly raising a child is so difficult.”

The next day, the sky was still a dark, pre-dawn gray. The bronze bell on the Holy Sanctuary’s mountain had not yet rung.

Gima was unceremoniously pulled out of bed. Together with George, they braved the cold morning wind and disappeared into a milky-white chapel.

They were fully equipped, waiting as a white-robed mage, yawning so hard his jaw almost unhinged, slowly and sleepily prepared a magic circle.

George, meanwhile, was chattering endlessly beside her, a heroic mother hen.

“Remember, we absolutely, under no circumstances, can reveal our identities. Otherwise, the mission will be as good as failed. Ever since I vanquished the Demon Lord, the Good Masters have put a bounty of twenty thousand gold coins on my head. I hear the price is still going up.”

“Remember, our cover is that we’re traveling knights from the Kingdom of Barto. You are my squire,” George babbled on, hanging a metal disc engraved with a warhammer from his armpit. “I come from the Hammer family. That part, at least, is true.”

“Our primary objective is to go to the ‘Tinder District’ in Salem City and find our informant. He’s the owner of a humble general store.”

“And remember, whatever you do, do not expose your true nature.”

Gima yawned. She had heard the mission briefing at least ten times and could almost recite it from memory in her sleep. “I’ve practically memorized it, George. You’re so long-winded. Are all heroes this naggy?”

“Then let’s talk about combat protocols. Don’t panic. Your main priority is to stay alive…”

Gima covered her ears and buried her head between her legs, wishing the portal would swallow her whole.

Finally, under Gima’s intensely hopeful gaze, the white-robed mage managed to light up the runes on the stone slab.

“Haaa~” the white-robed mage yawned again. “Capacity is limited to two living beings. So don’t try to bring any small pets. The distance is a bit far. And with high-level magic, you know, a little… deviation in the landing zone is perfectly normal.”

“As long as it doesn’t explode, I’m good,” Gima said, shouldering her heavy backpack and running onto the magic circle as if fleeing for her life.

“What a lively child,” the white-robed mage said with a sleepy smile.

“If you don’t look at her with prejudice, Gima is more like a normal child than anything else,” George said with a proud smile, stepping onto the magic circle after her.

After some polite, perfunctory blessings, and with the white-robed mage’s final incantation, the stone slab beneath their feet erupted in a brilliant, azure light.

The space around Gima instantly distorted, melting into a swirling, nauseating mess. She lost her sense of gravity, then felt as if she had been thrown into a giant, cosmic vortex, swaying violently from side to side, her head spinning. A piercing, high-pitched sound entered her ears, and everything around her seemed to press in on her body, squeezing her tight. Gima felt like she was a baby walrus stuck in her mother’s womb during a particularly difficult, and ultimately fatal, birth.

A teleportation failure? Am I, the great and magnificent Demon Lord, really going to die here? Before Gima could properly lament her godforsaken, cursed fate…

Her vision cleared. A gray, grassy field was rushing straight towards her face, the individual blades of grass growing larger at an alarming rate.

She instinctively tried to spread her wings, but they were tightly bound by her clothes and armor.

Thud! She face-planted squarely into the grass, her face stinging with a fiery pain. The heavy backpack on her back pressed down on her, almost knocking the wind out of her.

Luckily, the ground was soft, and she wasn’t seriously injured.

“Ow… ow…”

Gima pushed herself up, gritting her teeth. She silently, viciously added the sleepy white-robed mage to her ever-growing blacklist.

Clang!

A helmet crashed onto Gima’s head. She clutched her head and fell back to the ground with a yelp. The helmet bounced on the ground. A quick glance revealed it was George’s ridiculous bucket-helm.

Gima gnashed her teeth and mentally added another grave crime to George’s already lengthy record. She lay on the grass and saw a bright blue vortex swirling in the sky above. It was pitch black where they were, and the blue light was exceptionally, dangerously conspicuous.

She quickly looked around and saw that they were in the middle of a vast, empty wilderness. Only then did she relax. If they had been discovered right after teleporting, the mission would have been a bust from the get-go.

George also fell from the vortex, which was less than three meters high, landing straight towards Gima. Although he was wearing heavy armor, his body was incredibly nimble. He twisted in mid-air, neatly avoiding her, and landed on his feet on the grass with a soft thud.

George bent down to pick up his helmet, looked at Gima, who was still clutching her head, and extended a hand to her. “Does your head hurt? Let me heal you.”

Gima opened her teary eyes and said with great difficulty:

“First, you can move your foot. You’re stepping on my tail.”

George quickly lifted his heavy, steel-toed boot. Gima grabbed her reddened tail and blew on it, secretly vowing to one day viciously kick George’s tailbone until it shattered into a million tiny pieces.

“The teleportation deviation was far too great. The original plan was to arrive in a secret basement,” George said, his resolute face illuminated by the eerie blue light of the fading portal. “I’ll heal you, then we need to leave quickly, before this light attracts unwanted attention.”

The vortex overhead gradually faded into nothingness. George gently rubbed Gima’s head.

“In this desolate wilderness, there can’t be that many—George, don’t heal me. Someone’s coming.”

Gima quickly pulled her hood up over her horns.

They were in a grassy field surrounded by a sparse, skeletal forest. It was the darkest hour before dawn, and the starlight was faint. But both of them could see perfectly in the dark. They saw six fully-armed people emerge from the edge of the forest.

Gima looked closely and saw that they were six adventurers. As they walked, they helped each other put on their armor, approaching the two of them in a cautious combat formation. They were hasty, but they hadn't abandoned their vigilance.

As luck, or lack thereof, would have it, they had teleported right next to a group of camping adventurers. Adventurers in the wild were extremely cautious, always on guard against night attacks. If something strange happened nearby, they would definitely come to check it out.

“George, they probably saw the whole teleportation process.”

As Gima spoke, she took an oil lamp from her backpack, fiddled with the alchemy oil inside, and lit it, holding it aloft.

“It’s up to your famous eloquence now,” George said.

“I’m just saying, are we really, truly not considering murder and silencing them as a viable option?”

The yellow light of the lamp fell on Gima’s cute little face, making it look somewhat cold and menacing.

George shook his head. “That would be detrimental to your ongoing moral education.”

“I’d rather copy a hundred and twenty pages of that damn book to purify my soul of the sin of witnessing a bloody scene than talk a bunch of nonsense with these yokels,” Gima complained.

“No.”

Even though Gima’s mind was filled with thoughts of murder and creative dismemberment, her master’s command was absolute. She sighed. “For the ‘moral education’ that’s about to happen, you have to cooperate with me.”

The six adventurers approached. They each had an oil lamp hanging from their waists. The one in the lead was a burly warrior. He was wearing splint mail—a cheap type of armor that added a few iron plates to a chainmail base to increase its combat effectiveness. Its weight was close to full plate armor, but its defense was significantly inferior. Its only real advantage was that it was cheap. The exorbitant price of full plate armor was enough to make many aspiring adventurers give up their dreams. And this particular suit of splint mail, despite being well-maintained, still had many stubborn rust spots.

Gima subconsciously classified the other party as low-level cannon fodder, a hint of her former arrogance rising in her eyes.

The other party stopped fifteen steps away. Gima’s cute face did not make them relax. On the contrary, they became even more nervous. Crossbows were drawn, bowstrings were taut, and the splint mail warrior’s sword was pointed unceremoniously, and quite rudely, at Gima’s face.

“Who are you people? Are you human? Or are you monsters?” the splint mail warrior asked, his rough voice thick with a heavy southern accent.

“Just passing through,” Gima said sweetly. “We don’t want any trouble. How about we just wave a friendly goodbye and go our separate ways?”

The splint mail warrior’s eyes were bloodshot. His gaze shamelessly, and quite obviously, sized up Gima and George’s bulging backpacks, staring at them with undisguised greed. In the wild, there was no law. Adventurers were more than happy to temporarily experience the thrilling and profitable life of a highway robber.

Gima, on the other hand, was very much looking forward to the other party playing the role of robbers. That way, she wouldn’t have to waste her precious breath, and George could take care of these six cannon fodder with a few easy swings of his sword.

“Pah,” the splint mail warrior spat on the ground. “In the middle of nowhere, two people with backpacks stuffed to the gills with good things. ‘Passing through’? Are you trying to fool a child? You’ve broken the rules.”

“Oh? And what rules would those be? Don’t tell me this patch of dirt is your personal territory?” Gima laughed. “Do we have to pay a toll for passing through?”

“Little brat, don’t play dumb,” the splint mail warrior sneered. “Even the dogs in Salem City know that the Demon Lord Kimi—”

“It’s Kima , not Kimi, you uncultured swine,” Gima corrected his pronunciation with a sigh.

“None of your damn business. Trying to teach me, you little smartass.” The splint mail warrior glared at her. “We’ve already divided up the land around here. Whoever finds the entrance to the treasure vault, it’s theirs. Are you trying to break the rules?”

Gima’s tail momentarily stopped wagging. She stared at the splint mail warrior. If she remembered correctly, the location of her treasure vault was a top-level secret. How did it suddenly become an open secret that every Tom, Dick, and Harry knew about?

“Who sent you to look for it?” Gima asked, her voice turning cold.

“Tsk, you’re really good at playing dumb, aren’t you? Who else but the Great Good Master could offer so much money for the location of the treasure vault entrance?”

Gima’s heart sank. Great. Now she had more competitors for her own treasure. When she was a Demon Lord, the Great Good Master was one of her drinking buddies. He had even managed to get through a nasty financial crisis with the money she gave him to buy maids.

Now, that bastard was eyeing her “inheritance.”

“Keep playing dumb. You think we’re all blind? You think we didn’t see the bright blue light of the teleportation?” the splint mail warrior said, his voice growing menacing. “Either you open your backpacks and share your findings with your fellow adventurers, or I’ll be forced to teach you a lesson about the rules.”

George’s face grew cold, and his hand tightened on the hilt of his greatsword.

He squinted and continued, a nasty grin spreading across his face. “You’re lucky you ran into someone as reasonable as me.”

A sharp arrow suddenly aimed at Gima’s face corroborated his words.

Gima turned her head and shrugged at George, a silent gesture indicating that she had tried her best. Fortunately, George was not a sentimental person when it came to bandits. He shook his head, drew his massive two-handed greatsword, and dropped the scabbard to the ground with a soft thud.

The atmosphere grew thick with tension.

“Who do you think you’re scaring with that stupid bucket on your head?” the splint mail warrior waved his hand, and his companions aimed their bows and crossbows at Gima. At a distance of fifteen steps, an arrow was much, much faster than a sword.

“Take one more step, and I’ll turn your little brat into a pincush—”

Before he could finish his threat, George was in front of him, smashing the hilt of his greatsword into his mouth with blinding speed.

The splint mail warrior’s head snapped to the side, his dazed eyes looking at the bloody teeth that were no longer in his mouth. He hadn’t even realized what had happened. Years of experience had told him that fifteen steps was a safe distance, especially since the opponent was a warrior in heavy armor.

The other adventurers hadn’t reacted either, until the second shield-bearing warrior was knocked down with a single, brutal punch. Only then did their slow brains catch up to the reality of the situation.

“Ah!”

The archers screamed in terror, frantically loosing their arrows at George. The arrows and bolts whizzed past him, missing by a wide margin.

George charged through them like a bowling ball through pins. The so-called experienced adventurers fell like dominoes. By the time the archer at the very back had managed to nock a second arrow, he was horrified to find that all of his companions were down and George was striding towards him with the inexorable pace of death itself.

The archer released the string. The arrow hit George squarely in the chest and immediately shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, splinters flying everywhere. George simply raised his fist and delivered a vicious, bone-crunching punch to his face.

Gima shook her head as she watched. George would probably give the adventurers a chance to repent and change their ways later. It would be much better, and far more efficient, to just kill them and silence them permanently. He was such a goody-two-shoes. But since George had defeated these minions all by himself, Gima wouldn't interfere.

Just then, a sharp voice called out from the forest, “Who’s there?!”

Gima turned her head and saw a dozen more adventurers pouring out of the forest like a swarm of angry goblins. They all had oil lamps hanging from their waists. Behind them, in the deep darkness of the forest, more and more points of light appeared.

“They have the Demon Lord’s treasure on them!” the splint mail warrior shouted, his mouth a gaping, toothless hole.

His voice echoed through the quiet forest like a drop of blood in a shark tank. The adventurers, stirred into a frenzy, began to close in, surrounding them.

Well, it was definitely too late to kill and silence them now.