"Killed- Uhm..." Yu suddenly started coughing. Had Yurine just said in cold blood that she had killed all the demons?
"Yu! Are you okay?"
Yu could not answer her as he kept coughing in surprise. Yurine again began her healing spell without waiting for an answer.
"I'm fine, I'm fine."
He was still trying to get over his surprise as he lowered Yurine's hand to stop the spell. Yurine was good at defeating normal people, but Yu had imagined demons to be very strong opponents.
Was Yurine strong enough to kill them all? Or were the demons not as powerful as Yu had imagined them to be?
"Yu, if you're not well, say so. I'll cure you."
"I'm really fine. Tell me what happened after you killed the demons."
"Then I fainted trying to heal you."
"Like in Redchapel? Why are you practicing magic now then?"
He didn't want her to get hurt for him. That was one of the reasons he wanted to learn to fight.
"Yu, it's been five days since that day. I'm completely fine."
"Five days? I've been asleep for five days?"
He didn't feel like he had slept for five days. He had never slept for five days before, so he didn't know how a person who sleeps for five days feels. He was not hungry or thirsty and his legs were not numb.
"Not really. There were many times during the day when you woke up, but you had a high fever, you weren't yourself. We barely got you to eat and put you back to bed."
"I don't remember these things."
He couldn't remember anything Yurine had said, but if that was the case, he couldn't go to bed any longer. Sivina and Ana must have been getting more worried every day they lost time.
He wanted to stand up, but the tent was shorter than his height, so he could not stand up here. He wanted to crawl out of the tent and looked for something to put on.
"Yu, you need to rest."
"I'm fine, I mean, I'm probably not fine at all, judging by the thing on my shoulder, but I feel fine now. Let's get past that, we're too late. We're going to beat the deadline we gave the girls and at the rate we're going it could be early January before we get there. With the winter weather on top of that, we're going to be even later. They will be very worried and there is nothing they can do but wait."
The snow would slow them down too much. The mountains between the Mora and İlonya were already dangerous, and adding the harsh conditions of winter would only add to the danger.
"Why am I worried about them worrying... Oh..."
The complexity of his emotions naturally confused his mind.
"What about the village? Are the roarons well? Did Kigaro find the children? What the fuck happened here?"
He put on some clothes and went outside, his mouth dropped open when he saw the huge space with dozens of tents.
Yurine spoke as the rain continued to fall. "It's kind of my fault, it had to be this way."
They were in a big void like a crater and there were no houses or trees around. The whole space was covered with tents.
"I've seen the state of the village, so..."
He was about to continue his speech when he saw Yurine coming out of the tent and the two roarons, who were outside stacking logs, bowed their heads in greeting.
"Did they just greet you?"
"No wonder they have to behave this way towards a superior being."
She didn't say it with her usual arrogant air, instead she spoke in a flat and lifeless way. She didn't seem to believe what she was saying herself.
"The children Kigaro is looking for?"
"Only two survived, the demons killed the others." Yurine read his mind and spoke before Yu could ask his next question. "Kigaro and a few roaron have gone hunting. There is a shortage of food."
There was food in their wagons, but he had bought it by calculating the rinos, and looking at all the tents in the field, he didn't think there was enough food for all of them. Maybe for one day they would be full, but the rest of the days they would be hungry.
"Yu, the demons have attacked other villages. There are two hundred roaron survivors and they have nowhere to go. More than half of them are children and now that winter is coming, they won't find food."
"Don't say you want to take them with us…"
And now this was happening to them? They had already taken one person with them, they couldn't carry two hundred people and travel between countries. They would move too slowly, they wouldn't find food, and even Yu couldn't predict when they would reach Andromedia, not to mention the winter conditions.
In any case, they would certainly have kept Sivina and Ana waiting too long. Yu had sent some of the gold he had earned in Rolderhelm with them to lighten their load. If they thought Yu and Yurine were dead and ran off with the gold, they would make an incredible loss.
He didn't think that either Sivina or Ana would ever think of such a thing. In fact, if there was the slightest chance that they would do such a thing, he would not have taken them with him. He was absolutely sure that those two would remain loyal to him.
"If we leave them here they will die, can they come with us? But it won't happen if you say no, Yu, I promise it will be whatever you say."
"Speaking of which... You're putting psychological pressure on me."
Yurine gripped Yu's hand tightly. Her cat ears were covered by the robe she was wearing. As the rain began to beat down lightly, he wondered how he had managed to take care of bathing and toileting if he had been lying in bed for a week.
"Lan! Lan! Seriously, if I've been in bed for a week, how did it happen? Was it when I woke up? Or did they put a diaper on me and wipe my ass?"
He had never experienced such a humiliating situation before.
"Did a man wipe my ass? How old are we lan? Who wiped my ass?"
He had his ass wiped by a roaron? No way, the great Yu Valarfin couldn't have his ass wiped, especially by a man!
"We have to reject it."
"I understand, Yu. That's what we'll do."
Yurine was visibly upset, Yu put his free hand on her shoulder.
"But they can be useful."
"What do you mean?"
"I will not take them with us because it is the right thing to do. I will take them because you saved their lives and now you will take care of them and give them a new home. After that they will be completely loyal to you. We will have two hundred people who will die for us when we need them."
Yu could only take them in for that reason. He placed little value on their lives as living beings, but they could be useful as pawns ready to die. He had read in books about the roarons' value of loyalty and honor. What he expected of them was to die for Yurine.
"It doesn't matter whether they live or die, because when this world ends, the future will have not happened, but if you want them to live so badly, I can take them with us on condition that their lives have meaning. And that meaning is that they help us turn back time and die for it when necessary. I'm sorry, I know I'm not a very good person, but I won't help them just for the sake of helping them."
"It's okay, Yu. It's good that you're focused on getting my mother back."
The reason behind what he was going to do was not to make a daughter admire her father, but in the end it would be what they both wanted. The roarons would live on for a while longer and serve Yu and Yurine.
"Well... Car, no, where's the gold?"
"I apologize."
"Why are you apologizing? Please don't tell me we lost the money."
"We got the money back, but the wagon was a bit..."
Yu took a deep breath, it was bad that the wagon was damaged, but it was enough that the money was there.
"We just bought that one... Did it burn or what?"
"They tried to fix it, but it wasn't very good."
She took him by the hand and led him to a garage where a junk wagon stood, obviously built in a hurry by the roarons. Actually, the wagon was made of wood, so it couldn't be called junk, but that was the best way Yu could describe it. Maybe he could have used the word garbage instead of junk.
"I've heard it said before that a man should treat his car the way he treats a woman. That's not something I want to do a woman."
The wheels were somehow taken care of, but the wagon... Yu had trouble describing it. Pieces of bark had been nailed to the outside of the wagon to hold it together. Instead of glass windows, there was bark and leaves, and the wagon was now more brown and gray than white.
"I'm sorry, but I couldn't take care of the wagon while I was fighting."
"It's enough that you're okay." Yurine's life was worth more than anything else. "Is the gold in it? I hope we're not short."
"Yes, and I healed the rinos in the meantime."
"Were they even hurt?"
The rinos were lying next to the wagon. Yu opened the wagon door to check the things and looked inside. Next to the gold crates, there was something else.
"Is the sword there too?"
The black sword Kigaro had given Yu was also in the wagon. He wanted to keep his distance from him because he had the same sword stuck in his shoulder. He was also hesitant about carrying the sword with him.
That sword must have belonged to a demon and who knows what curse it had? What had Kigaro been thinking when he gave it to Yu? Yu now realized how illogical it had been to take the sword.
Perhaps there was a spell on the sword that would tell its owner where it was, but since Kigaro had taken it, he must have killed its former owner. Assuming that the sword did not have a spell that cursed its wielder, and ignoring the bad impression he had in his mind because of the sword in his shoulder, the sword was pretty cool.
It was similar to Sivina's rapier, so it suited her style.
"There are other swords. Many wanted to destroy them, but I wanted to wait for your decision, maybe they are worth a lot of money."
"Do you sense curses in them that could harm us?"
"Bad things can happen if we are cut by them, but right now they are not hurting us. Still, they have hurt you, Yu. I think we should destroy them."
"You killed the owners, didn't you?"
"Every single one."
"Don't talk like a cold-blooded killer, please."
When a small child said such things, he found it hard to take them seriously, and he shuddered because he knew she was telling the truth.
"Let's show them to Sivina first, maybe she will want to use them, or maybe she will put a value on them. Then we can sell them or throw them away."
He couldn't imagine how rare the swords of demons were, maybe he could find maniacs who would pay a fortune for them.
"But before that, I need to talk to and meet your new crusaders."