Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 4: New Destination

“If ‘my’ memory is correct, there are also dwarves, goblins, and centaurs who claim to be descendants of Saint Salaar.”

Salaar spoke in a tone that was hard to describe. “Salaar’s preferences are truly astonishing.”

The mage was unsure how “Lord Karns” felt about this. “Uh, the Karns family also has Saint Salaar’s token.”

“Oh? So a ‘token’ is all it takes?”

Salaar casually plucked a button from the mage’s clothes and tossed it to Myss. “Look, your token button. This guy is now your grandson.”

Mage: “…”

Myss, who instinctively caught it: “?”

He stuffed the button back into Salaar’s collar. “You are the grandson.”

Salaar’s neck was warm and solid, brimming with life. Myss barely held back the urge to curse him to death.

Letting Myss fuss with his collar, Salaar kept threatening the mage. “In short, you had better cooperate and throw away those unrealistic fantasies.”

The mage fell silent.

……

The bandits’ base wasn’t far from town and looked like an abandoned farm.

A single horse stood alone in the stable. The sheep pen was heaped with junk. Insects shrilled in the shrubs. The cabins were in decent repair; the largest one had a light on. The smallest served as a storeroom, and a duty roster was nailed to its door.

It was late summer turning to autumn. The night still held humid heat, and the air felt like fog even though there was none. In the clear moonlight, everything was plain to see.

Myss, however, smelled cold soup, wastewater, and rotting blood. He knew they lurked in the shadows.

The sharpest stench came from right under his nose. He tugged at his clothes, face full of distaste.

Before leaving the manor, Salaar had made him change out of the ritual robe and stripped a set of clothes from a bandit’s corpse for him.

The outfit was bulky and filthy, the fabric soaked with blood and sweat, clinging to his skin like a slug. The hat was a size too big and reeked of rancid scalp oil.

Salaar, for his part, had wrapped himself in four full layers and at a glance looked like a clumsy burly man.

The mage led the disguised pair over the fence and stopped before the storeroom. He fished a key from under a flowerpot and handed it to Salaar with shaking hands.

“As long as you spare my life, I…”

Before the mage could finish speaking, a flash split the night, and a ritual dagger was plunged into his heart.

A clean, decisive execution. The mage collapsed on the ground with a look of bewilderment still lingering on his face.

Salaar stood with his back to the moon; his features steeped in shadow. He drew the dagger back, his breathing perfectly steady.

Myss stared at the wound that kept welling blood.

Something crawled out of the mage’s chest. It was a half transparent weasel with exaggerated fangs. It twitched atop his chest, its eyes rolling, cursing feebly.

In a few seconds the weasel dissipated like mist, as if it had never existed.

“What are you looking at?” Salaar asked gently, still holding the bloody dagger.

“Nothing.” Myss pulled back his gaze. “Why the rush to act? I thought you would scout for information first.”

Salaar: “Do you want the pleasant reason or the unpleasant one?”

“Pleasant? From you?”

“All right, I will give you a buy one get one free.”

Salaar wiped the dagger with practiced ease. “First, he saw your special magic and might leak it. Second, there are many ways to get information, so why would I keep a villain like that at my side?”

He shot Myss a meaningful glance, and their eyes met.

“Fair point. One of you is trouble enough,” Myss said with a sigh.

Salaar: “……”

Smiling, he turned the key. The keyhole gave a brittle protest.

Just as Salaar had expected, the bandits’ base was well stocked.

Cash and jewels went without saying. The storeroom held plenty of everyday clothes and even a few passable old formal suits.

Food was stacked by the door, including cheese, jerky, and light wine. Myss dug into the back of a shelf and came up with sugar and butter as well.

Salaar picked up a sharply scented red rind cheese, and a hint of nostalgia crossed his face.

“What is that?” Myss had no memory of this type of cheese.

“This one is good grilled. When you eat it, you should dip it in plenty of sugar or honey. It is quite good plain too.”

Salaar sliced a piece with the freshly cleaned dagger and chewed with care.

Then he gagged and spat it out, which gave Myss a start.

“Quite good plain,” was it?

How terrifying. When this brat gets ruthless, he lies even to himself. Myss immediately backed away from the cheese as if it might launch an attack.

“The taste is a bit off.” Salaar weakly wiped his mouth. “…Maybe I remembered wrong.”

Even so, he tucked the cheese away.

His scavenging technique was unusually practiced. He stacked a large amount of supplies neatly into the packs, so tidy it was as if those shabby bags had spatial magic. They swallowed all the cash and jewels, the lighter foodstuffs and daily necessities, and several carefully chosen sets of clothing.

Unfortunately, these bandits didn’t care much for reading.

As for paper documents, aside from a world map, Salaar found only a pile of erotic novels, several of which even starred him as the lead.

Myss picked up “The Goblin Queen’s Invitation” and deliberately rustled the pages, one step short of reciting the contents on the spot.

Salaar lowered his head and dutifully played the deaf man. He patiently opened each book, read a few pages, and checked whether the cover was a misleading disguise.

Suddenly the sound of pages turning stopped without warning.

Myss glanced over on instinct and found Salaar studying a book titled “Sweet Trap”. His expression was subtle, and his eyebrows climbed higher and higher.

Did he find something? Myss hurried over to take a look, and his smile vanished at once.

In that slim booklet the author explained in two or three lines why a “pure hero” would seduce a “Chaos Witch”. Everything else was details of the “seduction”. The prose was vulgar and showy, and the content was unfit for the eyes.

Of course, no names were mentioned. Who it was about was so hard to guess.

By the time Myss realized what he had just read, it was already too late.

For a second Myss even hated the fact that the slave was “literate”. He snatched that damned book, black magic surged out at once, and “Sweet Trap” was reduced to nothing.

“What a pity,” Salaar said with a tease.

A pity? Remembering the last part he had read, Myss felt a chill over his whole body, as if that passage had taken a bite out of his mind. In three hundred years of trading blows with Salaar, he had never been hurt this badly.

“How can humans be this crazy,” he muttered, then suddenly realized something. “Hey, don’t tell me you really did it with the goblin queen…”

“If you insist on knowing, the only beings I have ever had carnal relations with are the mosquitoes of the Crimson Marsh.”

Salaar barely held back a laugh. “I must say, it was a night to remember.”

Myss shot him a glare and rummaged even louder.

Half an hour later they had gathered the necessities. In “Common Treatments for Injuries and Illnesses”, Salaar found several identification papers. The bandits had used those parchment slips as bookmarks, all tucked into the chapters “Knife Wounds”, “Snakebite”, and “Plague”.

Salaar chose two with the most suitable birth dates, uncorked a bottle of alchemical ink, and neatly altered the names.

When they left the storeroom, they looked completely refreshed.

Salaar picked a simple dark blue suit. The fabric was nothing special, yet he wore it with a hint of refinement. Myss donned an overly loose dark gray cloak with a few belts cinched at the shoulders and waist, a look both elegant and uninhibited.

Their packs bulged with essentials and their freshly minted identities—

Scholar Salaar and Ranger Myss.

“Let us swing by the manor first,” Myss calculated. “There are still plenty of things we didn’t take, and I need a bath…”

Bits of Old Aiken were still on him. Compared to that, a bath didn’t seem so bad.

Salaar slung the packs onto their only horse. The white horse snorted in impatience.

“I already burned it down,” he said lightly.

“What?”

“A little delayed magic.”

Salaar waved it off. “Have you thought about why those bandits knew I was ‘Lord Karns’ and still dared to go for the kill?

And Old Aiken knew very well what status the Karns family holds. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to suddenly murder his master.”

Myss frowned in confusion. He truly didn’t understand the complexity of human hierarchy.

Salaar saw his puzzlement. “Long story short, killing ‘me’ had to have been done with the family’s blessing.”

Kendrick Karns had been too deranged. It was no surprise if the family wanted to erase him.

From what Salaar knew of nobles, they would never leave everything to Old Aiken. They would certainly investigate afterward. So he had burned the manor to the ground and killed the mage in the bandit base’s storeroom, creating the look of a bandit raid followed by an internal dispute over the spoils.

It was only a stopgap, though. The Karns family might have other means of inquiry, and he had to prepare for the worst.

Dawn was near. Returning to town would only invite complications. They had to leave as soon as possible.

Route planning, disguise techniques, the noble way of doing things… The thoughts crashed through his head like a collapsed dam.

Amidst the faint ringing in his ears, Salaar pressed his temples.

Two steps away, Myss gave a loud grumble. The sound scattered the suggestive ringing, and Salaar turned his head.

“In short, the manor is gone, so no bath,” Myss concluded, still wearing a puzzled look.

It was the puzzlement of someone not personally concerned. The Archdemon clearly didn’t care about the schemes of human nobles, just as a giant beast of the deep sea didn’t care whether it would rain tomorrow.

“Yes, no bath. Which means we need to find the next bathtub.” Salaar patted the white horse’s newly set saddle.

Myss looked him up and down and didn’t move. “Destination?”

“The northern mountain city of ‘Rosha’, not far from here,” Salaar said. “The young lord has a pen pal there. They once had an enthusiastic discussion about how to put a human soul into a corpse.

Want to read the letters? I have them on me, since you know how to read.” He couldn’t help laughing at the last part.

Never mind human souls, that “Sweet Trap” clearly refused to die, Myss thought darkly.

Salaar mounted first, leaving space behind him. He tapped the saddle to signal Myss to hurry up.

Truth be told, Myss was extremely reluctant. Yet compared with running after the horse, or sitting in front of Salaar—the thought of that damned book made his hair stand on end—sitting behind Salaar felt less awkward.

Fine.

Myss climbed on properly, gripped the edge of the saddle with both hands, and didn’t touch Salaar at all.

Salaar gave a casual wave. A warm breeze swept past, and the flecks of flesh stuck to Myss vanished without a trace, leaving Myss feeling clean and fresh.

“Didn’t you say your magic was low and you needed to conserve it?” Myss frowned.

Salaar shook out his new clothes. “I’m afraid you will smear mine.”

Myss drew in a sharp breath. He had been careless. How had he not thought of that move just now?

…Next time for sure. He clenched the saddle and silently resolved himself.

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The author has something to say:

Myss: How can humans’ kinks be this crazy?

They can, my friend, they can. That’s exactly what being into non-humans is like.

“Sweet Trap” is only disreputable gossip not worthy of public release. For the official version, read “A Contract Between Enemies”.

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