Stray

Chapter 203: Two People

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The elderly demon warlock could feel very clearly that he was losing his superior demon flesh.

The person in front of him… No, after some kind of creature put his finger on his shoulder, the piece of demon flesh let out a sharp scream in his body, and then it began to disappear slowly like a mass of snow melting in the sun.

“My contract,” the old man said blankly, his voice hoarse.
“My demon.”

“I sent it home.” Nemo hesitated for a moment and took off his robe and ignored the other man’s eyes that widened with anger and shock.

“Traitor of the Abyss! The Emperor of Alban is accepting us, but you are helping those stupid wastes.”

The meat vines were withering, and the demon warlock’s body was returning to its original shape.
At this moment, he was naked, like a lunatic who had escaped from an asylum.
He looked around at Nemo’s body, trying to find more traces of deformation, and apparently misunderstood that “going home” meant something worse.

“With that kind of power, you have an incredible demon.
Fuck, what a waste!”

The shadow separated the two from the large army, and the clouds caused by the abyssal magic had not yet dissipated.
The surrounding was bleak, as if there were only two of them left in the world.

“…Traitor of the abyss, haa,” Nemo repeated in a low voice, throwing his robe on the naked old man.
The latter spit on the ground angrily, quickly grabbed the robe and put it around his vitals.

The demon warlock strained his neck and his wrinkled skin turn red with anger.
There was no fear of being killed or defeated in his face, only paranoid hatred and resentment.
He moved his fingers to try and summon abyssal magic as before, but this time, there was no brilliance of any spell to respond to him.

“Kill me!” he hissed in a low voice, clutching the fabric around his waist.
“Since you can kill my demon.
Come on, hypocrite— You have insulted me from the perspective of a mage, so why this pretense?”

Nemo silently took out the black badge and summoned the light screen.

“As a demon warlock, you should at least behave like a demon warlock.
Even if I’m defeated, I hope to lose to a butcher who is crazier than me, rather than to a pretentious, immature kid… Hey, what are you doing?”

“Looking for a bounty,” Nemo replied sincerely.
“You have a lot of blood on your body.
You have killed at least hundreds of people, haven’t you? It stands to reason that there should be a reward.”

Faced with this overly normal answer, the old man didn’t know what to say for a moment.
He held back for a few seconds and let out a sharp smile.
“How funny.
What do you represent? Justice? To stand on the side of those selfish humans—”

“I’m just short of money.” Having found the information he wanted, he signed his name, and Nemo put the black badge in his pocket with satisfaction.

“How noble and short-sighted it is to exchange the life of a companion for money,” the demon warlock said maliciously.
“No wonder you didn’t use devastating spells in the first place.
It turns out that you wanted to use my corpse to make some extra money.”

Nemo glanced at the old man lightly, with a slightly bitter exhaustion on his face.
He casually stroked in the air, and a rift in the space suddenly took shape.
The decoration style on the opposite side was distinctive, and the emblem of the Mercenary Guild was very conspicuous.

“First, I am not your companion.” A dark shadow stretched out, wrapped around the old man’s chest, and lifted up the demon warlock who had lost his power.
“Second, I never considered myself as a representative ‘justice’.”

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Nemo showed a wry smile.
“Third, I won’t kill you.
It is your compatriots who will judge you, and this is the price you have to pay.”

“How interesting for you to talk as if you don’t have blood on your hands.”

“Of course I have.
I may be more of a craze butcher than you might think,” Nemo responded softly.
He used the dark shadow to throw the demon warlock into a cell in one of the mercenary guild branches.

After making sure that he wasn’t noticed by any surveillance magic, Nemo merged the rift and watched the other party’s hateful eyes disappear at the other end.

“…And I am ready to pay the price.”

The other party couldn’t hear it anymore, but Nemo insisted on speaking it out, as if he was vomiting out the rotten flesh that was stuck in his chest.
For some reason, he was suddenly relieved— It didn’t feel like he was free from reality, but on the contrary, reality completely overwhelmed him.

Everything suddenly became extremely simple.
It had nothing to do with good or evil, nothing to do with position, nothing to do with motivation.

Those questions that made him anxious couldn’t change facts.
If he had sown blood and fear with his own hands, then he was destined to bear the consequences of them.

He never wanted to escape the consequences, and he had even prepared for the worst for it a long time ago.
Nemo was surprised to find that the accusations and curses of the demon warlock didn’t make him feel any tingling or discomfort— He thought he would be upset about it.

Since the beginning, there was only one reason why being buried in the unknown made him painful.

From the start, Nemo thought he wasn’t a person who was obsessed with “living”.
After all, reasons belong with reasons and facts belong to facts.
To make sure that the dark past really existed, if he walked alone in the world as before, he didn’t mind giving up the pursuit of the so-called truth and just walking to the headquarters of the Mercenary Guild and confessed his identity— It didn’t matter what awaited him.

Compared to the endless suffering brought about by the unknown, Nemo Light wasn’t afraid of pain or death.
After more than a decade of mortal life, he didn’t believe from the bottom of his heart that he was a strong-hearted person.
The “deserved” death could even free him from endless self-questioning.

Perhaps a person could suffer alone and give up asking questions.

But not for two people.

That attachment made him embrace a slim glimmer of hope, cruel and warm.
It forced him to find what was behind the truth, not for himself, but to give the other person the exact answer.

That was all.

Even though his feet were stepping on the battlefield, Nemo suddenly calmed down a lot.

It’s like some kind of bad magic.
The shadow spread out with the dark clouds, and only the black-haired mage was left in place.
The commander rubbed his eyes in disbelief, to make sure this wasn’t an illusion.

They spent a lot of money and even lost dozens of lives.
The demon warlock they invited was missing, but the enemy’s young mage was unscathed.

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The young mage was looking in a certain direction, his eyes soft and sad— In the direction of another monster that was on the move.

Oliver was a bit frazzled.

He was still riding on a horse, leading the poor horse around, like a large spinning top, but his movement were so comical it left a terrifying effect.

No one broke through the gray mist line of defense.

He didn’t want to reveal all his killing move before the armies first fought, so the enemy commander was patient at first as he planned to clean up these two young people who didn’t know their own strength, but he regretted it ten minutes later.
Not to mention the demon warlock, their trump card of this war that disappeared without a trace, now they couldn’t even get around this annoying brown-haired knight.

The sharp blade that poked out was corroded by the mist.
Magic spells were more effective, but unfortunately, the knight was as slippery as a loach.

The brown-haired knight clenched his bone sword and stunned the shield bearers who was in the way.
He rode his horse and moved strangely among the soldiers and disrupted their formation.
After observing for a while, the commander began to be uncertain whether this strange course of action came from the subjective consciousness of the knight or was decided by the excited horse.

Damn it.

In any case, this farce couldn’t continue.
Even if they had to break their own arms, they had to get rid of these two annoying monsters early— Gallagher’s army wasn’t stupid enough to break through the mist at this time, which was enough time to deal with those two.

The commander gritted his teeth.
“Use the Dragon Breath Stone to burst the formation!”

“But the shield bearers are still there…”

“Just abandon part of the troops! Those two bastards are too weird, and when they react, we won’t have any troops left to abandon— Go, activate it now! One aim at those two monsters and the other bomb the opposite side!”

Perceiving the fluctuation of the spell on the opposite side, Nemo had no intention of dissolving the spell on his own but wrapped Oliver’s waist with a dark shadow and dragged himself back on the horse.

Feeling the familiar body temperature on his back, Oliver, who was jumping in the crowd with the horse, breathed a sigh of relief.
“Nemo, you’re okay…”

“Stay away from here, they are going to make a move.
It should be a large-scale spell that strikes indiscriminately.” Nemo interrupted dryly.

“This horse is still not very obedient.
Can you use the shadow shield first—”

“No”

Getting an unexpected answer, Oliver raised his eyebrows.

“Ollie, let’s go to the middle of the battlefield.
Such a magic array is very rare, so I’ll teach you to break it.” Nemo took a deep breath.
“You can control this horse, Ollie.
Recall, how you stop it just now.”

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Time was limited.
Oliver didn’t say much.
He frowned, tried to press his hand on the horse, and look for that feeling just now.
The dim light lit up along the edge of his palm again.
The horse snorted and turned its head sharply and ran towards the open space between the two armies.

Despite his doubts, Oliver would not choose this point in time to ask.

He waved his Rest in Peace vigorously, dissipating the gray mist that obscured his sight, revealing the blue sky.
Unfortunately, that clean blue color didn’t last for long, and the next moment, the sky was packed with magic arrays again.

Unlike the abyssal magic array of the demon warlock, this time the magic array exuding white light obscuring the sky.
Two giant formations overlapped in the air, exuding strong power fluctuations and majestic aura.
From the position of the formation, it was obvious that one was to deal with the two of them, and the other has to attack the friendly forces behind them.

Nemo let go of the arm around Oliver’s waist, leaned forward, and held up Oliver’s right wrist with one hand.
He sighed slightly but his voice was calm and steady.

“Ollie, pay attention to the spell node I point out to you, and remember that feeling.
Any kind of structured magic array needs to prepare a path for the power in advance.
They require power to circulate first before they can stimulate the effect of the spell.”

Oliver quickly glanced at the slender fingers of Nemo that was holding his wrist.
Nemo’s breathing was extremely close, and the hot air sprayed onto his ears.
It took Oliver several seconds to fully concentrate.

“As long as you find the spell nodes and destroy them, the power cannot circulate according to the original route, and the magic array will collapse by itself— But the position of the spell nodes isn’t fixed.
They will gradually change with the activation of the magic array, so you need to grasp the feeling of that moment, Ollie.”

“Remember.” The horse obediently remained motionless, and the knight’s answer was equally smooth and powerful.

“Attack, now.” Nemo didn’t let go of his hand.

A gray beam of light shot at the magic array in the sky, and with a harsh tearing sound, the rotation speed of the magic array suddenly slowed down.

“Next is this side— Do you remember?” Nemo exerted a slight force and turned Oliver’s hand that was holding the sword in the other direction.

Oliver smiled slightly, he raised his wrist and broke free of Nemo’s fingers.

Then dozens of gray beams of light lit up at the same time.
In the next moment, two huge magic arrays emitted a burning white light in the air that was enough to blind people for a short time.
When people were finally able to open their tearful eyes, there was nothing left in the clear blue sky.

The generals of the Gallagher’s army completely gave up thinking.

He watched the magic array broke, and countless huge icicles rose up.
Although the opposite side continued to bombard them with countless spells, they were all destroyed before they even reached halfway.
Occasionally, one or two that was missed would cross through and hit an invisible barrier like the original abyssal magic and had no practical effect.

Before they rushed forward, the army on the opposite side completely collapsed.
The huge icicles disrupted the opponent’s formation, and the icy land made it impossible for the knights to move forward.
The enemy’s commander was wise, and he chose to retreat at the last minute— The army, which was extremely aggressive just now, scattered and fled.

‘The battle report couldn’t be written,’ the commander thought numbly as he cast his eyes on the two Black Chapters in the center of the battlefield— They were even sitting on the same horse for goodness sake.

“Thank you,” Oliver said in a low voice his tone seemingly unintentional.
“I think I still have a lot of things to learn from you.
Don’t run away after teaching a trick, Your Majesty.”

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Nemo was taken aback for a moment, then smiled back.
“Of course.”

In any case, he would accompany Oliver to witness the final answer.

“But I have to explain about that demon warlock later.
Ollie, just in case, we’d better keep our distance first—” Nemo said cautiously after glancing at the general on the opposite side.

“Huh?”

“After all, it is true that I defeated a demon warlock, and Marshal Gallagher will definitely notice me.
If his loyalty to, ahem, Zenni prevails, we should keep our distance more—”

Unfortunately, Nemo’s lips were sealed with a kiss before he finished speaking.
Without scruples about the uneven large-scale pumping sound behind him, Oliver kissed him very naturally.
He turned around, pressed the back of Nemo’s head firmly with one hand, and kissed for a long and thorough time.

“What did you just want to say?” It felt like a century before Oliver finally let him go with an ambiguous smile hanging from the corner of his mouth.

His lover was definitely asking knowingly.
Nemo rolled his eyes and shook his head helplessly.

“Nothing,” he whispered.
“Go back, Ollie.”

After saying that, he was silent for a few seconds and repeated it.

“…Let’s go back.”

The author has something to say：

However, in the end, the Demon King and the Hero… cannot calm down.  (ψ°▽°)

Ehhehe (?

——

Jesse: Adri, look, look.
Don’t you think I’m very low-key in comparison?

Adri: …

Jesse: And very innocent.

Adri: (Turn around and walk away)