Chapter 1
Act 1
A carriage traveled along the imperial highway headed north. I sat in the driver’s seat, looking toward the cloudy sky as I clutched the reins in my hands. It was already spring, but due to both the overcast sky and the region we were in, it was still a little chilly.
“Hey, Seika. Are they all right behind us?” Lulum asked, sitting next to me.
I peered through the field of vision of the hitogata I had floating above us. There were four carriages in a row following behind ours. “They’re fine for now, but the rearmost carriage looks like it’s falling a little behind. We’ll take a break and let them catch up if they look like they’re getting separated,” I replied casually.
“Okay.” Lulum’s tone was just as unbothered.
After recovering the divine demon slaves from Elman and Neg, we’d been at a loss as to what to do and had decided to buy five carriages to transport them all. Though they were similar to humans, relatively speaking, divine demons still stood out. Some of them were still weak, so we needed a way to easily move them without drawing any unwanted attention. As for the funds to obtain the five whole carriages, we used the money we’d earned from completing requests.
Despite giving all the hydra reward money to Elman, we still had all the money we had earned before that. It had cost almost everything, but we’d managed to get enough carriages to transport everyone.
I was driving the first carriage, while the following ones were being driven respectively by Amyu, Mabel, Nozlow, and a divine demon who conveniently happened to know how to drive carriages. However, because we’d been in a hurry to buy them, the carriages’ sizes and speeds were all different. Combined with the fact that they were being driven by amateurs, our pace was completely unorderly.
In the end, we’d all had to match our speed to the slowest carriage, hindering our progress. Lulum was probably worried because slow-moving carriages were prime targets for bandits. Still, there was nothing to fear. When it came to brute force, I would never lose.
“Seika,” L