The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 327: Let children deal with children

Chapter 327: Let children deal with children

"Do you have a map of the forests, by any chance?" I asked Amarein the next day when we were in the library.

"A map?" she raised her brows slightly, pausing in contemplation. She tilted her head while taking out a few children’s books, before nodding. "Do you want to see the place where the Queen was conceived?"

"Mm," I admitted shyly.

"Hmm..." she had a small smile on her lips as she walked back to the low table with a pile of children’s books in her hands. "The map itself is not a problem, but you can’t traverse the Great Forests with only a map."

I clasped my hand. "Right, the illusion barrier."

"That, and..." Amarein put the books on the low table atop the rug in the middle of the library. "The kind of place you’re looking for, Valen, wouldn’t be visible on the map."

Oh, right...I didn’t think of that. The letter mentioned that the lake was a small and shallow one, and it wasn’t like a map would mark every solitary tree there was in the ocean of trees.

My lips pursed as I tried to think of another way. Amarein, meanwhile, pushed the books in front of my little boy.

Jade clapped his hands when he saw the pile of children’s books; a collection of simple fairytales written in pieces of parchments with a few illustrations, being banded with vines just like the Queen’s letters. The abundance of mana around the settlement made it possible for me to feed Jade again this morning, enabling the constant transformation. So I decided to take the little boy to the library too, while Ignis enjoyed its sunbathing time on top of the cliff.

"Which one would you like to read first?"

Without hesitation, the pair of small hands went down to a drawing of a flock of birds. "This!" he said excitedly. Not really a surprise there.

"What about the map of the forest’s ley line?" Natha emerged from behind a bookcase with two books in his hand. "Do you keep track of the converging point of mana?"

He lowered himself to sit beside me and put the books he had just brought; a handbook on dryad, and another one was a study on spirit.

"That’s right!" I looked at Amarein excitedly. "Do you have one?"

"Unfortunately, we don’t," Amarein smiled wryly. "Convergence points are always shifting after a certain period, so there’s no point in making a map."

I immediately deflated, leaning into Natha in disappointment. He had started to open the book about the spirit, but tilted his head at Amarein’s answer. "Then how do you find those convergence points?"

"How--we just follow the path of mana, of course," she answered lightheartedly. "But convergence points are different from one another."

"What do you mean?"

"It’s a place where the surrounding elemental mana meets," she explained. "But the variety of mana depends on the environment."

I shifted to lean against the table, eyes widened slightly. "So...if there’s no source of water nearby, there wouldn’t be water elemental mana in the convergence point?"

Amarein nodded as she put Jade in her lap, telling the little boy the story contained in the book.

"So...if we want to recreate what the Queen’s parents did, we have to find the exact location?"

"If the point had always shifted, what we need to find is the point where all elemental mana converges--doesn’t have to be the exact same location," Natha said, and Amarein nodded in agreement.

"But...how do we find it in a short time?" I turned to look at Natha. "It’s not like we have a lot of time left. You can’t leave the Lord Castle for much longer."

"Ask bird!" Jade suddenly said. "Birds know all the good places!"

Amarein chuckled and patted the green head. She was very fond of Jade after the transformation. Apparently, my childhood appearance looked so much like how my grandmother looked when she was a child. That, more than the transformation, was what made Tiralein and Amarein gasped yesterday.

"Elemental bird certainly does," she said. "But finding one might take a long time."

"Then--"

Suddenly, I heard the sound of fingers tapping. When I looked down, I saw Natha’s hand on top of the book about Dryad.

"It was a dryad who led the Queen’s father to those points," he said. "We don’t we try to ask one?"

I blinked and immediately looked at Amarein. "Is it possible?"

Amarein shrugged her shoulder. "We could try."

* * *

Spirits are fickle.

No, that wasn’t me. That was the first sentence in the book that Natha read.

Spirit was...well, free. They were not tied to anyone but their ’thing’, like how dryads tied to the trees and the nymphs to water. They weren’t good, and they weren’t evil. They weren’t anyone’s friends and no one’s enemy--at least not initially, nor at first sight.

Even druids did not befriend spirits. They could change their minds anytime--helping when they want, and turning away the next second. Not even the Goddess could force them to do things they didn’t want to do.

So yeah, they were fickle--or rather, naughty. It was tricky to ask for their help, and that was why Amarein said ’we could try’.

And so we tried. Not calling dryads, however, but other elemental spirits. Dryads rarely come near a settlement, so if we wanted to call for one, we had to go deep into the forest. Also, dryads were highly intelligent, so the tricks they played were usually more complicated. Certainly, we didn’t have time to play hide and seek for several years like the Queen’s father.

"Is there any trick?" I asked as we walked to the edge of the forest.

"The trick is always to fulfill their wish," she answered with a smile.

"And what is that wish?"

"That would depend on what they want when we ask," she laughed. According to her, dealing with spirits could either be annoying or fun. "Once, I had to play with them for a whole day, and another, we were doing riddles."

"Like the Queen’s parents!"

"Yes."

"Spirit like to play?" Jade asked, tilting his head and patting Natha’s cheek for an answer.

As usual, the Demon Lord was the one to carry him around--because Jade could walk, but had been too used perching on other’s shoulders. "They do," Natha answered seriously. "But you can’t piss them off, or they will kidnap you."

"Kidnap?" Jade gasped. "Like Nightmare kidnap Master?"

"No!" this time, I was the one who gasped, before clearing my throat. "No, Jade--I came with Natha willingly," I exhaled slowly. This was why we shouldn’t joke in front of a child. "This kidnap is the bad kind of kidnap."

"Bad kind?"

Amarein chuckled from the front. "Yes, it is. You might be taken to a strange place and wouldn’t know how to go home."

Jade shrieked and buried his face in Natha’s shoulder, holding tightly to his neck. Understandable; even I shuddered a little bit. Well, maybe a lot. Maybe I held into Natha’s coat tightly.

"If you move to my other side, I can hold your hand," he whispered, and I slapped his side lightly for the teasing.

"Umm, how do you call for a spirit?" I asked her carefully as we entered the meadows with the flowers and the rivers.

"We spread our consciousness and touched their form with it," Amarein turned and pointed at me. "But you shouldn’t do it, not yet, or you might be the one who gets pulled."

Natha glanced at me with narrowed eyes, and I made a salute. Yeah, no, okay, got it. Spirit...spirits are like...ghosts, right? Nope. No ghost for me. I had heard a lot of ghost stories in the hospital and had built a lifetime of horrible imagery.

Holding into Natha, I watched Amarein walk toward the bridge over the river. She closed her eyes and clasped her hands; the wind swirled and all the flowers swayed in her direction. I took a deep breath, watching the river dancing and bubbles rose. One, two, and then a dozen, moving around the bridge until they popped and small figures emerged.

They were light blue in color, almost transparent. Their lower part was made of bubbles and their upper body looked like little children--like fairies. They made a gurgling sound akin to a waterfall rumbles, like laughter. As they did, more fairy-like creatures emerged from behind the flowers and surfaced from the ground. Some even popped out of thin air, and I lost count of how many were there in the end. Perhaps a few dozen.

"Are they fairies?" I asked in a whisper.

"Yes. They are lesser rank spirits, if you compare them to dryads or nymphs," Natha answered, also in a whisper. "Kind of like a child."

Which meant they were more playful, more naughty, but also easier to appease. Good for a quick request.

For now, every single one of them was laughing, probably in a mocking way. From the way they moved, it seemed like a dancing of some sort. Not gonna lie, it looked fun. But how do we proceed for now?

"There’s a lot of them..." I said with awe, but also worry. "How do we appease all of them?"

"Do we need all of them?"

"Well..."

As I looked at all the fairies in confusion, Jade suddenly patted Natha’s cheek, asking to be put down. And then, to my surprise, the little boy tugged on my coat and asked with innocent, round green eyes. "Master! Candy! Jade want candy!"

I blinked at the sudden request, looking at the little boy, and then to the fairies, and back to the little boy.

"You mean...you want to give them candy?"

"Yes!" the green hair bobbed energetically. "Share candy with children!"

Huh...

I turned my head to Natha, who looked so amused at the idea. "Why not?" he shrugged. "I don’t think they’ll be offended with an offering. But we’ll keep an eye so he doesn’t get kidnap," he added with a grin.

Well...he wasn’t wrong with that. I took out a jar from my storage ring, but before I gave it to Jade, Natha reached out and tapped on the jar, turning the sweet crystal inside into smaller pieces. Jade clapped approvingly and took the jar from my hand, before running toward the fairies.

I thought Jade would say something like ’Heeey, who wants candy??’ or something like that, but he let out a string of gibberish, which, I belatedly realized was a spirit speech.

Oh, right. Elemental birds were like...the forest spirits’ cousin or something. The fairies seemed to be stopped in their track for a second, before moving toward Jade, circling the little boy like a bunch of giant fireflies glowing in colorful lights.

Jade opened the jar and, the moment the sweet scent wafted in the air, the fairies made a ruckus. They screamed and danced and jumped, and Jade jerked the jar upward, causing the candy to spill into the air, which the fairies instantly snatched.

Amarein, who looked at the scene with the same dumbfounded expression as me, muttered in a daze. "Huh...I can’t believe it works."