The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 477: When the clue was in your hand the whole time

Chapter 477: When the clue was in your hand the whole time

If it was any other date, we might need to question it. But this...it was too much of a coincidence to bear any other meaning, wasn’t it?

"Did the entry start twenty-four years ago?" Natha asked.

The Hero nodded and it was a match then; meaning the person visited Valmeier on his first birthday. And...

"Did he stop visiting because..."

Zarfa did not finish her word, but everyone knew what she wanted to ask. Perhaps, from the very beginning, ’he came alone’ meant...well, there was no one to bring, and in the end...

Phew--didn’t matter. Whether Valmeier’s parents were still alive or not, the important thing was the date of birth. "So it’s different," I sighed in disappointment but shook my head immediately. "It’s fine, it’s only one day. We should adhere to the twenty-third."

"...or we can do it at midnight," Natha shrugged.

I gasped and turned to look at him. He smiled and held my hand, bringing it to his lips to kiss it. Right, that would be better. We should do it at night anyway, since the journal mentioned doing it under the moonlight.

Zarfa put her chin on my shoulder from behind, and asked curiously. "Do what?"

Oh, right--she only knew I was there for information about Valmeier’s father, not about...ahem, conceiving. But there was no way I could say it to her in front of other people like this--especially in front of this body’s wet nurse--so I just shook my head and grinned. "Secret!"

"Hey!"

She whined and tickled me in revenge while the Hero continued to peruse the journal. But we had to stop being playful when Jin spoke again in a confused and serious tone. "But...there is still no clue about who or from where your father was."

"Hmm...that’s right..."

Honestly, even the fact that the person was Valmeier’s father was still merely a conjecture. There was no explicit mention that he was, although the characteristic seemed to point in that direction. There wasn’t even a name drop, and the mother, the druid, was nowhere in the picture.

However, I could understand if the person couldn’t travel with her. Either she was already passed after the Priest ’acquired’ Valmeier, or the person was hiding her due to her identity.

I mean...even Natha hid me for a while in his Lair.

Honestly, it didn’t matter much to me. Perhaps because I didn’t have any attachment to my own parents, I couldn’t care less about Valmeier’s too--especially since Valmeier himself did not care.

But that wasn’t the case for the Hero.

He needed this information for his objective--and frankly, for the good of the Human Realm, if not the world. Based on the blind nun’s information on how this mysterious visitor exuded the same aura as the Hero, it was safe to assume that the person had the Goddess’s blessing.

And so, while my problem regarding the birthday was solved, his quest for finding the clue to the Goddess’ location was not.

"Can I see it?" Natha raised his hand for the journal, and the Hero, after about three seconds of hesitation, relented.

Now, it was Natha who was busy perusing the journal, even taking out his reading glasses. No, not because he had worsening sight, but because the glasses had a function to look for hidden text. He skimmed through the other entries, and only carefully read the entry about the three visitations on the twenty-third, however.

"Are we going to do this now? Are you guys not hungry?" Zarfa suddenly asked, and we belatedly remembered that we were supposedly here for a dinner. "Don’t let my lovely cook’s food get wasted, yeah?"

"Yes, we shouldn’t let Valen miss his dinner," Natha nodded and closed the journal. Cheekily, he didn’t return it to the Hero, and Jin had no time to ask it back because Zarfa ushered us to the dining room quickly.

Well, thinking is better done in a filled stomach, anyway.

* * *

Scratch that; we shouldn’t try to think on a full stomach.

After the nice meal--in which I got an update on how the kingdom was doing after the purification--we were back in the drawing room. Everyone kept feeding me more food that I ended up so full and now too sleepy to be able to use my brain. Even the coffee that the butler provided could not prevent my body from slouching on the couch. And with Natha patting my thigh--just as he usually did before we go to sleep--my eyelids just got heavier and heavier.

How lucky was I, that there were other people who would use their brains for me? Yay!

"Hmm..."

Natha’s humming effectively woke me up from drowsiness. "What--what is it?"

Natha chuckled and showed me an entry. The words were written in a smaller font at the bottom, as if to save some space. "Here, on the first visit, it is written that the man gave the Priest something," he said. "A token."

"A token?" I tilted my head, trying to make my brain work. "I don’t remember having such a thing..."

"Ah, perhaps..." the nun, who had been quietly sipping her tea instead of after-dinner coffee, exclaimed softly.

"Aunty?"

"There was this necklace that Valmeier used to wear..."

"Oh! Oh, that’s right!" Ian slammed his hands on the armrest. "The cord got small so it became a bracelet later on!"

I frowned and tried hard to recall it. "I still don’t..." I closed my eyes and covered them with my hands, trying to block everything else but Valmeier’s memory.

He was smart and had a good memory, but also very single-minded, so he wouldn’t bother to remember things he had no interest in. Stuff like accessories attached to him? He didn’t care about them. But surely, since it was something from his alleged parents...even if he didn’t know about the fact, it was still something given by the Old Priest, so it should still have sentimental value...right?

"Hmm?" I frowned as a memory before the war started to surface. "Oh..."

"Do you remember it?" Jin asked hurriedly. I could hear how he was getting impatient since the journal had been in Natha’s hand.

"I think...I think Valmeier took it off before the war because he didn’t want to lose it," I opened my eyes to look at him. "But..."

"But?" now, even Zarfa sounded eager--although she kind of treating this like a juicy story. I guessed the Goddess did not give her any vision about Valmeier’s background since he wasn’t the main character.

But I bit my lips as I awkwardly confessed. "I don’t know...where his stuff is..."

"Huh?" the humans looked at me in confusion.

"I mean, I didn’t exactly pack when I moved to the Demon Re--oh!"

I clasped my mouth in surprise when a small chest suddenly materialized in front of me. It was something from a forgotten memory, but I remembered what this chest was--and what was inside of it.

The chest containing Valmeier’s stuff--the one I still kept after selling everything else to pay for the ’debt’ from the contract penalty from ’losing’ Alveitya.

When I looked at Natha with surprised, widened eyes, he just replied casually. "You did tell me to put this somewhere."

"Do you carry that around all the time?!"

"Naturally," he said, even though it didn’t sound like something people would ’naturally’ do.

But then again, not everyone had a dimensional storage ring enough to store a house.

"Just out of curiosity, Doc; how big is your storage space?" Zarfa asked him with sparkling eyes.

"As big as a storage," Natha said nonchalantly.

"Yes, but what kind of storage?" Zarfa rolled her eyes--probably the only person who dared to do so in front of Natha.

"The kind that your merchant guild has?"

"...like a warehouse?"

He only answered by sipping on his after-dinner spirit, consistently acting cool as usual.

"Damn..."

"Wait--focus!" I snapped my fingers to stop this wealthy people’s conversation and started to rummage through the chest. There were the tags of the fallen soldiers and some trinkets people gave him, just as I remembered. Thankfully, I did not sell the content of this box because I didn’t think it was right to sell the things people give with sincerity. A right move, it seemed, because in the box where he kept the trinkets, I fished out a rectangular wooden token tied with a cord. "Oh! Is this it? Ian--"

"Let me see," the Paladin hurriedly scooting closer to see the item better. "Yes! Yes, I think this is it!"

"But does it have any significant clue?" Natha tilted his head to observe the small token, and except for the blind aunty, all of us huddled over the bracelet.

I untied the cord so we could observe the token better, and caught a carving on one side with my fingers. "Hmm...ah, there’s Valmeier’s name in it"

"Only that?" the Hero sounded disappointed.

"Try infusing your mana or something," Natha offered am advice.

"Oh!" I nodded and immediately tried it, but...

"Nothing?"

Natha corrected himself. "The light mana, the one from the Goddess."

"Ah, right--let me try again."

This time, instead of the usual druid mana, I tapped into the priest carving in my heart. The mana that came out of my fingers was light this time, seeping into the carving of Valmeier’s name and...

The token cracked--no, a line appeared along Valneier’s name, and a clicking sound could be heard. I almost gasped as the token split; a layer in its surface opened up like a window, and the token got widened, like a cube being deconstructed. It didn’t stop there, however, because more and more layers split and the small token got bigger and bigger as it became thinner. Like a piece of ancient puzzle, the small token in the size of a matchbox suddenly became as big as a parchment roll.

"Oh! Oh!"

The wood token had turned into a whole open scroll.

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