My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World
Chapter 116: Lesser Demons

Chapter 116: Lesser Demons

As I kept facing off against the shadowy monster that used to be the captain of the ship, I realized that I had no way to bring him back to normal.

The more the fight prolonged, the more that killing him became one of my main options.

I didn’t want to kill anyone if I could avoid it, not because I had some sort of "justice code" or anything. It just felt like something that would leave a terrible taste in my mouth.

The captain wasn’t technically a person anymore, but he used to be. I saw him turning into the monster he was now, so of course, it felt like I was fighting a person to me.

Hitting him with my bo seemed to affect him as he would react to being damaged, but it didn’t matter if I hit him in the head. He wouldn’t lose consciousness. He just kept standing up and fighting.

"Come on, man... I didn’t want to kill anyone today..." I said, feeling frustrated that I couldn’t come up with a solution.

In the middle of my pondering, I lost focus for a brief second, and the monster had gotten very close to me.

Just when I braced myself for the attack, I felt an even stronger energy suddenly appearing behind the monster.

Red eyes glowed brightly behind the faceless shadow, and in the blink of an eye, I saw a pair of spider legs slicing the monster’s neck and decapitating him in an instant.

"Vesp...?" I asked, surprised at what had just happened.

My companion stood tall with the headless body of the monster beside her, and the spider legs that extruded from her back slowly went back into her body.

"Sorry, Ichiro..." she said with a somewhat somber expression.

"Sorry for what?" I asked, noticing her weird mood.

"I know you didn’t want to kill anyone, but I had no other choice. That was a ’lesser demon,’ so we couldn’t keep him alive..." Vespera explained.

I didn’t know exactly what "lesser demons" were, but I could guess based on their names.

When Vespera confirmed that she had taken all the prisoners back to the capital, we took one last look around the ship to see if we hadn’t missed anyone and teleported there ourselves.

Yoru was still scouting Romanov’s group, but I was able to teleport to him thanks to our familiar connection, so I could tell how far the bandits were from returning to the capital.

__________

Arriving at our hideout, all of the prisoners that we had recently freed were there, eating a hot bowl of food and meeting with their families.

The empress was right outside the abandoned house, surrounded by guards, so I approached her to tell her about what had happened.

The guards tried to stop me from getting too close at first, but Lysandra asked them to calm down since I was "the man she sent on a special mission."

’What did she say? Wasn’t this whole thing my idea? Whatever...’ I thought before going into details about what happened to the captain.

"So, he ate some weird black pellet and turned into a lesser demon?" the empress asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Pretty much. The holy panacea didn’t work on him either, so I don’t know if there is a way to cure them..." I said.

The empress looked troubled about the news and explained to me that lesser demons were one of the leading forces they were fighting against in their borders.

Kalusia and the Droman Empire were separated by a desert, which made it a challenging feat for any nation to invade the other, as their armies would have to cross the desert before their battles.

However, Lysandra told me that since most of the forces of Kalusia were made of lesser demons, the beasts could cross the arid desert and not feel tired like an ordinary soldier would.

She told me that there were other soldiers who were still beastkins, but she then got intel that all of the soldiers who weren’t lesser demons were cursed.

I started connecting the dots, which made it evident that Romanov was working with the devil, Zagor. But I couldn’t think of a reason other than pure greed.

Romanov was still a few days away from the capital, but he had nowhere to go once he got here.

The underground tunnels were under my control, and the imperial guards were waiting at his residence. However, there was still the fact that he had a whole convoy with him, which could lead to a big fight in the middle of the city.

Since I could sense Yoru was still following them, I decided to dwindle their numbers before they got to the city.

I told the empress about my plan, and she agreed without much resistance. I could tell that my actions had made Lysandra gain trust in me because she didn’t question me about how I would do it or anything.

Vespera and I teleported to Yoru’s location and found ourselves at the top of very tall trees, overlooking Romanov’s convoy in the distance.

"Great job, Yoru." I praised my companion, making him wag his tail in recognition.

It was nighttime, so while the convoy was camping in the middle of the road, I decided to get some sleep so I wouldn’t be flying sleep-deprived like last time.

They were still quite far from the capital, meaning they would take at least one more day and night before reaching the city, so I wasn’t feeling too pressured.

The next morning, I woke up to the dawn sunlight hitting my face and saw that the convoy was starting to move.

That entire day, we just followed them from a safe distance, which was incredibly boring, to say the least.

When it got dark, the convoy organized their little camp and started to rest. However, I wasn’t sleeping that night.

I told Yoru and Vespera to weave through the shadows and knock out the bandits that were keeping watch of the area, leaving only the sleeping ones to deal with.

It was pretty simple, to be honest. We just quietly moved between their tents and used Vespera’s powers to tie them up and gag them so they wouldn’t be able to ask for help.

Once they were secured, I teleported them to the capital, where the empress and her guards were waiting to take them into custody.

Some of them had the curse on their necks, so when I teleported them to the capital, I let the empress and the guards know who the real bandits were.

When morning came to the camp, Romanov and his right-hand man came out of their tent, which was much larger than the others, and began panicking when they noticed everyone had disappeared.

While watching the two men frantically walking around and looking for their group, I wondered if they would return to the capital or make a run for it, so I used sound magic to listen to their conversation.

It took them a few hours to decide to keep moving on their own, wondering if their group had run away or gotten attacked during the night. In reality, they were all in the capital behind bars already.

The right-hand man’s name was "Copper," like the metal, which I heard Romanov saying a bunch of times every time he called for his assistant.

Copper told Romanov that he felt something was very suspicious and suggested that they didn’t return to the capital.

’Huh, that guy thought the same as me. If I were in their position, I would stay clear from the capital...’ I thought.

However, Romanov expressed that there were too many valuable things in his home that he needed to take wherever they went, listing a bunch of items such as jewelry and expensive paintings.

Just as I thought, Romanov was too greedy to leave his material possessions behind, so they ended up deciding to return to the capital.

’Well, it’s not like it mattered if they ran away since we would have caught them anyway...’ I thought.

After the disappearance of their convoy, Romanov and Copper kept riding towards the capital at a much slower pace than before, seemingly cautious of their surroundings and stopping every hour to make sure that they weren’t being followed.

It took them two extra days of travel due to their pace, but eventually, the city became visible in the distance, so I told Vespera to keep tailing them while I teleported to the city quickly and let the guards know of their arrival.

However, my assistance there wasn’t needed since the imperial guards were already standing close to the city gates, ready to capture their suspect.

The empress was standing beside them, seemingly giving orders to a pair of imperial guards.

When she was done, she beckoned me to join her for a moment as she introduced me to the person who stood behind her.

"This is my little sister and the Princess of the Droman Empire, Arabella Argentum." the empress said.