Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 6: Kai
He was a young man in his mid-twenties. His eyes were tawny, his short hair the color of brass, and a dusting of freckles lay across the bridge of his nose. He was short. His white shirt was wrinkled, and the overly loose black vest he wore with it made it hard to tell what profession he was.
What was most striking was his luggage—two enormous suitcases, big enough to hold two grown men. God knew how he managed to carry them here.
His gaze swept over Myss and Salaar’s faces, and his eyes opened a little wider.
“Kai,” he introduced himself in a slightly high-pitched voice. “Pleased to meet you both.”
“Salaar.” Salaar offered his hand without hesitation. Myss crossed his arms and pretended not to hear.
“Oh, ‘Salaar’.” Kai shook his hand. “Looks like your elders were fond of heroic legends.”
“I think the bigger reason is these eyes.” Salaar blinked his lapis-lazuli eyes. “Plenty of people guess I am a distant relative of the Karns family.”
Kai chuckled. “I am a little curious too. Are you?”
“I wish I were. Then I would never worry about money for the rest of my life,” Salaar said, lowering his voice.
“Lord Karns” gave off a brooding demeanor; Salaar’s bluntness neatly balanced that. After just a few exchanges, Kai relaxed considerably, and the mood became incredibly congenial.
Myss wrinkled his nose. With anyone other than him, Salaar’s social intelligence shot up a hundredfold and that provocative attitude vanished without a trace.
How fake. He stared so hard at Salaar that Kai began to feel awkward.
Kai cleared his throat. “Uh, and this is…?”
“My friend,” Salaar said with a straight face.
Myss’s expression suddenly changed as if he had swallowed a fly. For the first time he discovered that human faces could change shape; who knew he could pull his face that long.
Perhaps his murderous intent was a bit too obvious, because Kai gave an uneasy laugh. “R-Right, is that so?”
Salaar’s eyes curved. “Don’t mind him. That’s just his temperament.”
He pointed at Myss’s murderous expression. “His looks are too striking, so an easygoing personality would only invite trouble.”
Kai’s eyes flicked between them, then suddenly lit up.
With astonishing speed, he flipped open one suitcase, revealing a jumble of trinkets packed to the brim. “These are all magical artifacts of my own making. You can say, I’m somewhat of an alchemist.”
“If you do not want to draw attention, I can help you with that,” he said, rubbing his hands enthusiastically.
It turned out he was a magic artifacts merchant. Salaar brightened. “Any recommendations?”
“This one is called ‘Down-and-Out Gentleman’.” Kai produced a pair of sunglasses that came with a ruddy nose and a big beard. “It sticks to your face and only comes off with a special potion.”
Myss was a little interested in that furry thing and glanced at it out of the corner of his eye.
Salaar: “…Anything else?”
Catching on, Kai set the glasses down and fished out a tiny vial. “Brand-new ‘Vertigo Eye Drops’! Put in a drop and anyone who makes eye contact with you will unconditionally become nauseous.”
The vial was full of bright green slime, a rather ominous color. Kai looked at Salaar full of hope, and Salaar subtly avoided his gaze.
“Okay, okay. A discerning customer.” Kai put the potion away dejectedly, then swapped in another.
This time it was a small bottle of pills.
Each pill was about the size of a pea, blood-red, and shaped like a tiny heart. Pressed together, they gave a faint, gentle throb and released a strange sweet-and-sour scent.
“This is the best-seller.” For some reason, Kai didn’t look happy about it. “‘Resolve to Elope’. Take one and your presence fades. The effect lasts twelve hours.”
“If both of you take pills from the same bottle, you will be immune to each other’s effect, so you won’t lose track of one another. By the way, they taste like raspberry.”
Kai asked for one gold ring per bottle.
That wasn’t cheap. One gold ring would cover a commoner’s expenses for a month, and Lord Karns’s allowance was only ten gold rings a month.
Of course, they had taken some money off the bandits and sold the horse. Even so, after hiring a caravan, Salaar had only five gold rings left in his pocket, plus half a small sack of jingling silver shields.
Their funds weren’t exactly abundant, but that bottle of “Resolve to Elope” was truly useful.
“We’ll take one.”
Salaar handed over a gold ring without haggling. “Pleasure doing business. How about you throw in a bit of news?”
Kai was taken aback by his generosity. “No problem!”
Then Myss listened as the two of them chatted away.
Salaar spun them brand-new identities: a twenty-year-old fledgling scholar and his nineteen-year-old ranger partner.
According to Salaar, his specialty was the history of the Night Scourge era. Myss had known him since childhood, a genius ranger who was cold on the outside but had a warm heart. They had just saved up a little money and decided to set out adventuring together.
“We have always gotten along especially well.” Salaar gave a hearty laugh. “I can guarantee Myss knows me better than anyone in the world, and it goes both ways.”
Myss couldn’t help but sneer. “‘Get along well’?”
Salaar turned to Kai. “See, he didn’t even deny the second half.”
Myss: “……” Unable to kill and unskilled in cursing, he didn’t want to continue to speak anymore.
Beside him, Salaar kept right on talking. His words were full of a naive yearning for the world and high praise for Kai’s alchemical craft. Kai grew a little embarrassed listening to it and voluntarily refunded him two silver shields.
“Small business lives on wandering around and trying one’s luck.”
Faced with two “naive youngsters”, Kai unconsciously adopted the tone of an elder. “To be honest, Rosha isn’t a good place. It is a bit closed off, and there’s been ugly rumors.”
“Ugly rumors?” said Salaar.
Myss pricked up his ears as well.
“They say there are demons in the city of Rosha,” Kai said mysteriously. “A friend of mine just came back from there last month. He says he saw one with his own eyes.”
“My heavens, demons actually exist? I have never heard such things!” Salaar exclaimed in shock.
He even patted Myss soothingly, pretending this wasn’t the biggest demon in the world. Myss caught his hand and firmly pressed it back where it belonged.
“Haha, I’m joking. Of course demons don’t exist. My friend probably saw some kind of monster, or some lunatic pretending to be one.”
Kai was amused by their reactions.
“Listen, demons and gods—they’re just tricks. Remember that and your chances of being duped drop by ninety-nine percent.”
Myss lifted his eyes and stared at Kai for a while. “If there are no demons or gods, then what is the ‘Chaos Archdemon’?”
“The Night Scourge is only a natural phenomenon. There’s no evidence it was caused by anyone. The ‘Chaos Archdemon’ is a folk tale, since no one knows the cause of the Night Scourge.” Kai explained patiently, “You know how people are. They like to pin whatever they cannot understand on ‘gods’.”
As he spoke, he picked up the bottle of “Resolve to Elope” and shook it in front of them.
The bright red little pills rattled. Seen through the glass, the amber of Kai’s eyes looked slightly distorted.
“Just like this bottle. I never expected to sell many of these. How many people are really going to elope? Yet its sales have been like a ‘miracle’.
Only recently did I realize that everywhere I sold it, theft cases shot up… Those bastards chose actual stealing over stealing hearts or stealing lovers.”
“With the option of a sneak attack too,” Salaar added, full of sympathy.
Myss’s scalp tightened. He suspected that was Salaar’s true purpose for buying the stuff.
He actually had one more thing he wanted to ask Kai: if you think the ‘Chaos Archdemon’ is a fabrication, what about Salaar, the one who sealed said demon?
But seeing how unconcerned Salaar looked, Myss couldn’t be bothered. There was something else that deserved more attention right now.
Myss glanced at the other suitcase that hadn’t been open yet. Its magical fluctuation was very faint, yet it nagged at him inexplicably.
Kai himself was the same way. He bore no hostility toward them at the moment, but his scent was thin, lacking something other humans had.
Myss shifted his body and edged Salaar toward the carriage door.
If anything went wrong, he would kick this guy out of the carriage. That way Salaar would survive and wouldn’t get in the way, and it would be oddly stress-relieving—truly killing three birds with one stone.
…But the rest of the journey was painfully dull.
The route the caravan chose was level and safe. The carriage rocked lightly like a cradle, making Myss drowsy. At noon the caravan stopped and offered the passengers corned beef and small rolls.
The rolls were decent. The corned beef came in a thin slice and was startlingly salty. Kai took a tiny bite, frowned, and set it down. He fished cheese, smoked fish, and pickles out of his pack and generously shared with his two companions.
Both declined.
Myss wasn’t picky about food, and neither was Salaar. When a man has eaten salt-roasted mushrooms for over three hundred years, it’s hard for him to fuss about anything else.
After their meal, feeling full and drowsy, Myss felt the lull sleep press down heavier and heavier. Human impulses were too unfamiliar to him, and he hadn’t yet learned to resist them. At last, in the warm afternoon air, he drifted off.
As the carriage swayed, Myss gradually tilted over. With one bump, his head thumped onto Salaar’s shoulder.
Salaar didn’t dodge. He stared at Myss for a long moment, then lowered his gaze. A ray of sunlight slanted across the floor and just touched the tip of his boot.
“Ah.” Across from them, Kai shook his head and silently mouthed, “Our ranger isn’t very vigilant.”
“Never has been,” Salaar whispered.
Myss seemed to be born without whatever “vigilance” was. The Demon Lord slept soundly on his shoulder; Myss’s chest pressed to his arm, and each heartbeat pounded against his skin.
Not long ago, Salaar could only see the tips of His countless tendrils, roaming freely over the ground. His heartbeat—if that symphonic rhythm could be called a heartbeat—filled the vast darkness.
That sound never varied and never ceased, precise as the hand of a clock. To this day it still echoed deep in his mind.
Salaar closed his eyes. His head lowered by an almost imperceptible degree, then a little more. At last he caught the warm breath of something living.
The fingers resting on his knees twitched, as if they wanted to calibrate something.
But in the end, he did nothing.
The author has something to say:
It’s fine. The pills are already bought. There will always be someone who chooses to steal hearts rather than steal goods or spring a sneak attack.
Myss: Humans are far too slow on the uptake. I will eliminate every hidden danger.
Myss: (two minutes later) Out cold. Head-butting his nemesis and still not waking.
Salaar: …
— — — —
On currency units and purchasing power:
1 gold ring = 10 silver shields = 1,000 yuan
1 silver shield = 100 copper teeth = 100 yuan
1 copper tooth = 4 copper kels = 1 yuan
Right now the two of them have four gold rings and some silver shields in cash (not counting the jewelry), which is about six to seven thousand yuan.
After Lord Karns was exiled to Ring Town, his living allowance became ten gold rings per month. Back in the capital, it must have been over a hundred.
Kinky Thoughts:
Just a note, Myss is a considered a (Chaos) “Demon God”, the term being used is (魔神) which broken down is Demon + God. This is why there’s reference to him being a ‘God’ but in terms of western standards, he’s technically not a “God” but more of an extremely powerful demon (think the Devil, Lucifer, ect.), so I decided to go with Archdemon instead.
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