Lord of Disease (JP-GL) 495

495: EX20. A Hot Spring Inn with a Venomous Serpent

Outside the window, a blizzard was raging. Winter was deepening.

The summit of the Lital Mountains was always like winter, but in the depths of winter… the inn seemed to close for business.

As I looked out the window of my room, I was lost in thought.

—‘Lital Hot Springs.’ When I had first heard of it, I had thought it was some kind of a joke.

“Captain, is it true that we’re having Liverit sheep for dinner?”

“Wait, that’s an optional charge…”

My two subordinates were peeking at the pamphlet that had been placed on the desk in the room.

They were both dark elves, like me, and they were in the Second Army, the Dark Knights. I was a knight, and the two of them were expected to become knights eventually, but they were still ordinary soldiers.

I chuckled, thinking that it was a rather lonely thing, for three men to be at a hot spring inn.

“I’ll treat you. I was the one who invited you.”

The two of them beamed.

““We are honored to have such a kind captain!””

“…Well, it’s peacetime now. We have to use the money we saved up during the war on a peaceful facility like this…”

“As expected of you, Captain. You are a model of a Dark Knight.”

“Truly an ideal knight.”

“Your view of a Dark Knight is strange.”

“It’s just your imagination, Captain.”

“I believe it is the duty of a knight to help the weak.”

I hoped that those words were true.

These two had no experience in actual combat. Though they had been born during the war, in the year of the Battle of Itria—the year the war had ended—they had not yet reached the age of military service. So, I didn’t know how much strength they would show in a battle. But they were both serious, and for their age, they were skilled with a sword.

The sense of tragedy that had been a part of our ‘wartime generation’ was not in them. Some might have seen it as a lack of seriousness, but I did not.

Many thought that a soldier’s job was to fight—but that was not all. Especially in a country like Listrea, where the military and the government were one, the role of the Dark Knights in maintaining order was great. Patrolling the city, cracking down on crime. Guarding the trade routes. Now that the border defense had become a mere formality, the weight of the work that had always been there had relatively increased.

The Second Army… had also been greatly reduced. The heavy cavalry had been deployed to patrol the pioneer villages on the other side of the Lital Mountains, and we were even more short-handed.

Fortunately, the public order in Listrea was good. And yet, in any ideal country, not everyone could be an ideal citizen.

The details of why the heavy cavalry had been deployed had been kept secret, and the official announcement had been a vague ‘for the sake of maintaining public order,’ but it was said that there had been thieves. The opinion of the members of the Second Army had been that it was a foolish thing.

The Demon King’s army, even after that war, was still intact.

Their numbers had decreased, and their activities, centered on the border defense, had been reduced and were changing… but the fact that most of the elite warriors belonged to them had not changed from before the war.

To break the established laws was to make an enemy of the Demon King’s army. A return that was worth such a risk… even setting aside the ethical aspects, could not have existed.

…But since Bringit-sama had been in a rather bad mood when she had been talking about the deployment of the heavy cavalry, it seemed that there had been ‘something’ other than just a thief.

After she had been invited to the pre-opening of Lital Hot Springs, she had been in a much better mood, so it must have been a thing of the past.

The commander herself had recommended to some of the knights that they should go and rest, with a letter of introduction that would give them a discount. Since it was a recommendation from that strict commander, we had discussed it so as not to clash and had decided to go in turns.

“Shall we take another bath before dinner?”

“I agree!”

“As expected of you, Captain!”

I wondered if it was alright that the only ones I could think of to invite were these two… but since we were having a rather good time, even as men, I decided not to worry about it.

After we had left the bath, my subordinates, who had confidently chosen a path that was the opposite of the one back to our room, tilted their heads at a crossroads.

“Wait… we’re lost.”

“Yeah. It’s surprisingly big.”

“How can you get lost in a place of this size?”

I could see that my expression was one of exasperation. I had thought that they had wanted to go somewhere.

“Wait, you know the way, Captain?”

“Of course.”

The two of them were stunned. Seeing that, I decided to conduct a training centered on terrain verification and the memorization of routes, when we returned to Fort Litalside.

—The fact that it had been that Fort Four, even though it had been renovated, was also a big factor.

Led by the Order of Evangel, the knights and the militia of the Holy Kingdom of Etrantal had been dragged into the Lital Mountains in the depths of winter… and they had fought a holy knight in white armor, who had been resurrected with a menacing green light and had an extraordinary life force.

The ‘luring’ operation, which had been led by the Sixth Army, and which I had been half-convinced would not succeed… no, I had been more doubtful than not. But since Bringit-sama, the leader of the Second Army, had not wavered, we, her subordinates, had had no choice but to believe.

The operation had been a complete success—and the casualties had been surprisingly small. And yet, I had lost a friend. A ‘necessary sacrifice,’ which no one could be blamed for. I had also lost a comrade in the sixth battle, and in Garnalk, and in the seventh, and in the retreat, and in Itria, where everything had ended, my friends had fallen.

Ah, and yet. ‘That person’ had said, “I am proud to have fought with you.” And—“for those who have died, and for those who will die.”

The battle in the Lital Mountains had been a turning point, a battle that had made me believe that there was a ‘from now on.’

If you served in the army for a long time… you would come to understand how desperate the situation was. The death of a single person weighed heavily… and the number of humans was far greater.

It was not guaranteed that things would go so well from now on. And yet, the battle where we had defeated the Holy Knights, including the Order of Evangel, with a far smaller number, had made me think that the desperate difference in our forces… was a difference that could be overturned.

The memory of that time remained. …There was no way I could forget.

That said, since it had been renovated and there were more differences than similarities, if I were to rely on my memory, I might have gotten lost. It was a difference in our sense of direction.

And then, they did something unexpected.

“…Let’s ask a maid. Yes, let’s. Excuse me!”

“Yes, I’m coming.”

A wraith in a maid’s uniform, who had been passing by, turned, her black hair fluttering.

—A figure I had seen many times in Fort Litalside. The one who had raised a toast at the victory banquet, in the former Fort Four.

“Wait, huh?!”

I couldn’t help but open my mouth. And her ‘name’ was on the tip of my tongue.

“Lo—!”

The black-haired maid put a finger to her lips.

“You knew? But I’m the maid, Daisy, here.”

She smiled. Her figure was so natural—and so unlike her former self.

Flustered, I put a hand to my mouth, as if to hold my jaw, which was about to fall off.

“Ah, yes… That, you, who are so great, what… circumstances…?”

She had nodded, but I had been so confused by the unexpected situation.

“Circumstances… huh? Well, you could say I was looking for a job after I had retired.”

I had couldn’t help but use a polite tone, as if I were speaking to a superior, and she, too, as if to match me, had used a tone that was not like a maid.

“…Why are you working at a hot spring inn?”

For a being like her to be working as a maid at a hot spring inn… when I thought of her former self, it seemed unnatural. No, it was true that she was supposed to be a maid-lover, to the point of marrying her subordinate maid, but I had never seen her in a maid uniform. The her I remembered had always been in the same attire.

As I was waiting for an answer, the words that came back were unexpected.

“If I had to say, it’s a hobby.”

“A hobby?”

“When there was peace, I wanted to try running a hot spring inn.”

The management side. Normally, I didn’t think the management side would be working in a maid uniform.

“…Ah, I see. Please take care of yourself and have a peaceful stay.”

But… if it was her, then I could accept most things.

At the same time, I had a feeling that everything was connected. The name ‘Lital Hot Springs,’ which some had said was disrespectful. The reason that Dark Knight commander had been invited to the pre-opening. The unreadable expression that the archer captain had had, when she had been asked what kind of a hot spring it was.

“Thank you. —So, your companions, did they have any business?”

She had returned to a maid’s tone. And her figure… was, in a word, natural.

“Ah, yes. Actually, we were lost—”

“Idiot! I’ll take you! Don’t bother the… maid!”

I couldn’t help but grab my subordinate’s shoulder and stop him.

“Yes. But if anything happens, please let me know. Well then, excuse me.”

After she had disappeared around a corner, her white waist ribbon swaying, a full thirty seconds had passed before my subordinates opened their mouths.

“…What kind of an acquaintance was that?”

“Could it be that she was a former superior?”

“Ah… yes. Not directly… and our affiliations were different… but yes, I never thought I would meet her in a place like this…”

I was almost doubting my own head, wondering if what I had seen had been a hallucination or something.

—Everyone had doubted ‘that person’s’ sanity. She had been repeatedly called crazy—and that had, later, become a compliment, so much so that her direct subordinates had said it with a happy expression.

“She was cute.”

“A wraith, and a higher rank than the captain. Isn’t she quite old?”

“If you say that, then everyone is old, aren’t they?”

“That’s true.”

The two of them were getting excited.

“Let me tell you this. That person is a married woman, and she has a cute dark elf wife, and they’re in love, so there’s no room for you.”

“Ah, a cute girl has a boyfriend… wait. Just now, a married woman and a wife?”

“A dark elf?”

The two of them tilted their heads.

“Yes. That person… though a wraith, she married a dark elf maid. Recently, she retired…”

I had wondered what she was doing. In some rumors, it was said that ‘that person’ was lurking in the shadows and would reappear when an enemy of this country appeared—or something like that.

…Come to think of it, she had always been a person who had betrayed the expectations of those around her.

“I see. So they’re working at the same place.”

“Now, it’s not so unusual for people of the same sex, or for a lover to be an undead.”

“…Well, yes. That’s right. Now… it’s not unusual.”

That, too, was her achievement. It had been over ten years… since the first interspecies, same-sex wedding after the war, which I had also attended.

The image of her, with her finger to her lips, came back to me.

To think that I would see ‘that person’ again.

Had these guys noticed that she had been constantly deploying a light illusion spell? That she had had the form of a being without beast ears, or long ears, or horns, even though she was an undead. The form of a race that was now gone, a race that had once been an enemy.

“…If it’s that person, then I can accept it.”

I realized that there was peace. That the war was a distant, and a past, thing.

Because the former supreme commander of the Demon King’s army, who had borne the name of the King of Disease and Poison, was working at a hot spring inn in the Lital Mountains, where she had once made her name.