Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 15: Croutons

“Three gold rings.”

At the very first glance at Myss, the person in charge jumped straight to discussing compensation.

To prepare for the Magibase Summoning Ritual, people had cleared out the best inn in the Lower City and turned it into a temporary workplace. It wasn’t far from the church, and outside the window one could see the vine-covered spire.

Myss stared at that spire in a daze and began to question his life choices—to investigate the Summoning Ritual, did he really have to go this far?

The so-called “Pure Soul” was essentially the ritual’s mascot, a role filled each year by a beautiful young person.

The role required no lines. He only needed to put on traditional clothing, keep a smile the whole time, and scatter white rose petals over the children at the end of the ritual.

He, smiling, children, those damned white rose petals.

Myss felt those words should never appear in the same sentence. However heartless Salaar might be, he should at least put a stop to something as absurd as an “Archdemon blessing humans”.

As it turned out, Mr. Salaar truly hadn’t a shred of conscience. He was working hard not to laugh, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“Four gold rings. I assure you my friend is the most suitable person in the entire city for this role.” Salaar actually began to haggle.

The person in charge was a short, plump man with a little mustache. He lifted his pinky, rubbed the tip of his mustache, and sized Salaar up and down.

“Four gold rings plus six silver shields,” he said. “But you have to play a Holy Guard.”

Holy Guards were the other type of ritual mascot. They didn’t actually guard anything. They only needed to stand around the ritual array and provide a symbolic visual effect.

The ritual armor was very form-fitting, so the role had strict requirements for physique, though not for looks, since the guards’ faces would be covered by helmets.

“A pity about that face. If only your demeanor were sunnier,” the person in charge lamented.

“Five gold rings. I checked the going rate,” Salaar didn’t let up. “Believe me, I’m also the most suitable person in the entire city to be a Holy Guard.”

The person in charge put on a critical look, ready to nitpick. Then he realized Salaar wasn’t simply overconfident—

This gentleman had broad shoulders and long legs, with excellent proportions. His muscles were the right thickness, the lines graceful and smooth, like a lithe beast, but not at all bulky.

“All right, five gold rings, not including room and board.”

He deflated. “I’ll take you to sign the contract. Remember to report each morning. You’ll need to train in etiquette beforehand. Don’t think that ‘just standing there’ requires no practice.”

“Also, try on the clothes before you leave. We’ll need to adjust the sizes a little.”

Myss stared at Salaar in shock. The man had bundled the two of them into a package deal in all of five minutes.

“Prime seats to watch the ritual, plus five gold rings. Perfect,” Salaar said with satisfaction. “Come on, let us try on the clothes.”

Myss: “I’m not going.”

“Then we will lose five gold rings of income.”

Salaar announced this solemnly. “Hired carriages are expensive. If funds are short, we’ll have no choice but to leave on horseback. Or worse, walk.”

“We might have to take a longer route and could run into bad weather or bandits. Overnight, you and I would have to squeeze together on alert and keep watch in turns…”

Imagining that scene, Myss clutched his head in agony.

He had modest demands for lodging and food, but he loathed trouble, especially when trouble involved “Salaar”.

In the end he slouched off toward the fitting room.

The “Pure Soul” costume wasn’t all that ostentatious.

It was a dignified, gender-neutral white robe, loose enough to reach almost to Myss’s ankles. There was also a silver circlet decorated with laurel leaves and pearls, and a matching pair of ankle boots.

The slave body was on the slender side, so Myss slipped into the robe easily. His look of utter deadpan despair partially canceled out the inhuman aura and, strangely enough, did lend him a touch of “purity”.

However—

“Smile a little, sir,” said the staff member in charge of costumes. “Your expression is too serious. You’ll scare the children.”

Myss gave him a blank sideways glance.

Salaar, dressed in the Holy Guard armor and idly hooking a helmet with one hand, came over in high spirits to watch. Seeing Myss’s constipated expression, he started laughing again.

“I will teach you a little trick,” he whispered. “…Imagine my death.”

Myss almost immediately thought of the Salaar on the eve of the unsealing, old, sickly, and on his last legs in the dark.

He couldn’t help the corners of his mouth from curving. Only after he smiled did Myss realize he was smiling.

The staffer drew in a quiet breath. “Yes. Yes, sir. Exactly like that. You did very well.”

Salaar was silent for a moment, then shook his head with a smile.

“Now there is only one last thing,” the staffer said cheerfully. “You don’t have fixed lines, but if the children come up to you on their own, you’ll need to interact with them kindly.”

“Here, imagine I’m a child.”

Before Myss could react, he crouched and looked up, putting on a childish tone. “Sir, you look so nice. Can you give me your blessing?”

Myss’s brows twitched. Interact? His only interaction with humans, including Salaar, was destruction.

Now he was supposed to bless… bless…

“May you live,” Myss said stiffly. It was the greatest kindness he could imagine.

Staffer: “……”

Salaar slipped behind the staffer and mouthed, “May you be blessed with outstanding wisdom.”

Myss got it. “You’d better be smart.”

Staffer: “……”

Salaar: “……”

Perhaps Myss was unfamiliar with the language of social niceties. Salaar wiped a hand down his face and decided to change tactics.

He gestured again and mouthed again, “Give his head a gentle pat.”

Myss kept a straight face and reached out. There was a tremendous thump, and the staffer landed on his rear, nearly pressed into the floor.

What was that about? It had certainly not been this over the top when he patted Salaar.

Myss looked to Salaar for a new cue. Salaar let out a long sigh and clapped a hand over his eyes.

The next second he rushed over to help the staffer up. “My friend is a bit hungover and has no sense of his own strength. I apologize on his behalf. Let me buy you a drink later…”

“I am fine,” the staffer waved it off. “Don’t drink for the next few days. Don’t let it interfere with the real work.”

Perhaps it was because Myss’s appearance was too impressive that the kind-hearted man didn’t fire him on the spot.

“Mm, you’re very suitable. This presence is exactly what we want.”

After assessing Myss, the staffer turned to Salaar. “If you dyed your hair blond and made your expression more compassionate, you could even play the real ‘Salaar’.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” Salaar replied, after a pause, with sincere courtesy.

“…Unfortunately, I may be the single least suitable person in this city to play ‘Salaar’.”

……

The next few days were peaceful, almost boring.

Rosha had given them a welcome that was hectic and strange, and then everything fell into silence. Over these days the bird-beaked demon vanished, and no one else died of the strange disease.

Even Mina stopped appearing. Their newly formed memories sat intact. The events of a few days ago felt like a dream, a joke of a nightmare.

Myss got up on time each day, ate three meals on schedule, and during ritual practice he fantasized about Salaar’s death.

Once they solved the mystery of the body swap, how should he kill Salaar?

Perhaps he could pierce the man’s heart with his hand and let the warm blood lick his palm. He could also clamp a hand over that hateful mouth and watch Salaar slowly suffocate until his lips turned cold.

What he wanted most, what he looked forward to most, was for everything to return to its rightful track. He would return to his true body in the dark. Salaar would be dragged back to that failing mortal shell and would watch with his eyes wide open as He shattered the seal and restarted the Night Calamity.

Thinking of that last possibility, Myss smiled with particular delight.

Once he got so engrossed in his fantasies that he nearly turned the white rose petals in his hand pitch black. If he scattered a handful on the day of the ritual, they could annihilate every participant in an instant.

Aside from that, practice went very smoothly.

Things went smoothly on Salaar’s side as well.

Training for the Holy Guard was simpler. Myss had to practice smiling, blessing, and scattering petals. Salaar only had to master holding his head high like a warrior.

By midday on the first day Mr. Hero met the standard, and he spent the rest of his time chatting away—

“I’m a little worried about job safety. Has anything ever gone wrong with the Rosha ritual? … Never? That’s really wonderful.”

“I wonder what kind of Magibase the children will summon. Have there ever been unusual ones in past years? … Ah, caterpillars are indeed unusual.”

“Has that court mage always been in charge of Rosha? … More than twenty years? Then he must know everything!”

…

Throughout his inquiries, Salaar always kept his helmet on.

This didn’t surprise Myss. Once that gloomy aura was exposed, anything Salaar asked would feel like it had ulterior motives.

“Would anyone ever summon a Magibase on their own?”

Today Salaar was also pulling people aside to chat, playing the part of a moderately enthusiastic and excessively nervous outsider.

“I mean, a place like Sepanti is strict. Rosha is a bit out of the way. What if someone wanted to dodge the kingdom’s registry and set up a private array to summon…”

“Haha, absolutely impossible.”

The man facing Salaar, the mustached supervisor, burst out laughing. Over these days Salaar had gotten friendly with him.

“The incantation for the Magibase Summoning Ritual is adjusted every year. Without the correct spell, even if Langesia came in person it would not work.”

Myss remembered the name. Langesia was a legendary mage who was still alive, one of the bards’ favorite protagonists.

As for the protagonist the bards favored most of all—

Salaar’s tone carried a frightening reverence. “I see. Managing the ritual must be no easy task. You work even harder than I imagined.”

“All for the children’s future…” the mustached man said modestly.

“Mr. Myss!” Hailey bounced into the room like a chickadee, hugging a bag of croutons.

Then she noticed the supervisor was present and first bowed to him. “Good morning, sir. My uncle sends his regards.”

“I should thank Huey for the introduction. These two are rare talents.”

The mustached man waved a hand, his smile less mercenary than before. “Off you go. There’s lemonade in the kitchen if you are thirsty.”

Hailey thanked him with appropriate gravity, then ran up to Myss. “Heavens, I knew it. You look perfect in that outfit.”

Myss grumbled perfunctory and stared with total focus at the chickadee on her head.

How would a Magibase have to mutate to give off such an enticing aroma? Even if it did mutate, it might still not be enough for a single bite.

Hailey knew nothing of this. She held out the croutons. “These are from your room. My uncle asked me to bring them over. Leave them any longer and they will go bad.”

…Croutons from their room? Right, those were the ones Mina had given him, and he had stuffed them into Salaar’s hands.

The problem was that Myss and Salaar had just cross-checked last night that “Mina” only appeared in their memories. In the daytime, when Myss met her at the cheese stall, Salaar had watched him the whole time yet had not seen Mina. At night Mina brought cranberry soup to the door, and Salaar thought he spoke with her, yet Myss saw only Boss Hammer.

The “bookstore encounter with Mina” was very likely a polluted false memory. The croutons shouldn’t exist.

So, what was this?

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The author has something to say:

Salaar’s physique was tuned to his former combat habits, so he already had an excellent body.

The Demon Lord simply hadn’t noticed, but eventually he will.

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