The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 54: Shouldn’t all transmigration come with perfect memory skills?

Chapter 54: Shouldn’t all transmigration come with perfect memory skills?

"Call me," Natha leaned down to kiss me, hands around my waist, already neatly dressed in his formal wear.

Oh—this felt like a drama scene or something. I whispered an okay, and then he dispersed into black feathers after kissing my forehead once again. I stayed on the balcony for a while, savoring his leftover temperature and picking a black plume off the floor.

How should I say this—I had the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl after seeing their crush. I felt silly and giddy, and wanted to bask in this kind of sensation for the whole day.

But I had homework to do.

Remembering the author girl and relighting my hatred toward the kingdom made me think about the novel once again. I had been ignoring it because it didn’t feel relevant anymore once I receive the Amrita and found my home in Natha’s Lair.

Like I said before, I didn’t read the second novel’s draft, and for all I knew, it didn’t get published since the girl passed away. What I knew about the sequel was from what the girl told me in passing as she drafted the setting in her notebook when we met in the internal medicine lounge or the park.

It was those draft settings that save me from dying, since one of them pointed to the Amrita owned by Natha. I didn’t care about other parts since it wasn’t important to me. Valmeier being dead in the original story also led me to believe that I had no more involvement with the novel plot.

But information had piled up that made me concerned about the plot once again. What was once just fleeting thoughts started to tickle my curiosity once more. So I decided to jot down what I could remember from the author’s setting.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t equipped with a perfect memory like other transmigrators, so it was quite hard for me to patch up verbal stories spoken during several meetings years ago. I could only remember bits when I concentrated hard, and sometimes I would remember them randomly while doing mundane things; like when I was eating, when I trained my mana sensitivity with Jade, or when I strolled in the forest. So I ended up carrying a notebook everywhere these days.

I tried to look at the general timeline, and the first thing I knew would happen was that the hero would find out about the kingdom’s trickery, which led him to run away from the palace, feeling betrayed and used. It was what kickstarted the second volume.

If I recall things correctly, he would start by trying to trace Valmeier. This was where I wondered if things would deviate, since Valmeier—meaning me—wasn’t dead but ’missing’...right? But assuming things did not change, the hero—what was his name again? Jun?—would go to Valmeier’s old church, which no longer had any priest now.

"Oh—damn!" I just remembered then. When the old priest died in the middle of Valmeier’s mission, the church was taken care of by a blind nun and her adopted son. The hero was supposed to come just as a group of mountain bandits tried to turn the church into their hideout—what timing, just like your regular protagonist. Anyway, the nun ended up dead and the son traveled together with the hero and became his first true companion...or whatever.

I couldn’t remember the details, but the focus at that point would be traveling to other countries while being chased by the kingdom, encountering troubles, solving them, and collecting more companions on the way, all the while finding out the true face of the world without the palace’s bias—which should become a character development for the hero, I think?

Those adventures eventually led them to a problem that they needed a magician’s help to solve. But the magician refused to help because of the curse inflicting her, and told the hero to acquire Amrita from the Demon Lord of Greed.

I paused here, making three big dots on my note. Yep—I thought about it once already, that the hero and his companions would end up coming face to face with Natha. Somehow though, I had a feeling that they came here, to the Lair, instead of the Lord Castle.

Because the author did not mention a big fight, and rather pictured it like an infiltration mission in a secluded area. Since she mentioned the hero got an elf companion before coming here, there was a high possibility that they came through the mountainside forest.

Which mean...I might meet the hero after all?

"What are you doing?" Zia tilted her head at the library’s table, staring at my scribble in interest. She couldn’t read it, of course, since I wrote in the alphabet. But since it was rare for me to write something instead of reading, she seemed to be interested.

I narrowed my eyes and said in a low, whispering voice. "A prophecy,"

She scoffed and returned to her own journal, probably drafting another story for her books. After a while though, she seemed to contemplate something, and stared at me again. She seemed to remember that I was a former priest, which sometimes received an oracle—not that Valmeier ever received one—and also a druid, which was as close as what children of nature had of a priest, or shaman.

"Really?" she asked again, this time more eager than ever.

I nodded casually and didn’t even try to look convincing, which made her even more convinced, somehow. In a way, it was the truth, since what I had written was mostly future events that hadn’t happened yet.

At least, if things didn’t end up deviating due to my survival.

"What is it about?" she asked with sparkling eyes.

"The Hero," I answered with pursed lips, making the math of the timeline in the notebook.

"...what hero?"

"The human one," How many weeks had it been since I was gone? When did Valmeier suppose to die in the original timeline? When did the hero defect from the palace?

Zia leaned her body forward, almost climbing the table to look at my foreign scribble. "Why do you still care about those people?"

"Not those people, just the Hero," I bit on the pen in confusion. Ugh—I ought to read those drafts before she passed away. "He might come here one day."

"What?!" this time, Zia did climb the table. "Are you sure? Why?"

I sighed in defeat at my own scribble and put my head on the table. "The same reason as me—to get the Amrita from Natha."

"Huh...when?"

"That’s what I had been trying to see...but I don’t have enough information..." I pursed my lips.

If I recalled my own condition before meeting Natha that night, I had about two weeks before my body supposedly ceased to function. The kingdom should watch over my condition carefully since they were waiting for the spear to come out of my corpse. Knowing them, they would probably make it seem like I committed suicide from guilt and humiliation. The hero didn’t get the news of Valmeier’s death until later, when he overheard the high priests talking about the foolish ’puppet battle priest’ that became the stepping stone for the hero and his companions.

Wait—I had no idea about the precise time, but I remembered the author wrote the draft during spring, and said she had the urge to add the scenery of falling petals over the burning church. It was winter in the kingdom when I left, so about two or three months until the hero came to the church then.

Which was...about now?

I jotted down ’now’ beside the words ’church’ and ’first companion’. I kind of feel guilty about the nun, but I truly forgot about their existence since I was too busy trying to survive. Also, they were practically strangers to me...

Of course, I wouldn’t know the exact time they came to the Lair since the author didn’t specifically tell me about such details. At this point, the only way for me to approximate the time would be by monitoring the hero’s movement.

Was it even possible to do that?

"Why don’t you ask Lord Cousin then?" Zia said suddenly. "About the Hero, I mean..."

"...huh?" I stopped my scribbling and stared blankly at the succubus.

"You know, since Lord Cousin has spies and everything," she shrugged, still looking at my scribble with a frown and confusion.

Oh...right! Didn’t I even catch one so I could send my letter to Natha at the start? But...would he even grant it? It seemed like Natha totally despised the kingdom and the Hero.

Oh, well, might as well just ask. If he didn’t want me to look at the Hero’s information, then so be it. I’d just tell Natha that the Hero might come looking for him someday, and see what happened.

So with that, I told him during our regular call session before I went to sleep that night.

[Sure,] unexpectedly, he agreed to it without argument.

"Really?"

[Anyway, I managed to get one of the scrolls from the market, so I’ll send someone to take it to you]

"That’s fast..." I shuffled excitedly, scooting closer to the orbs on the nightstand.

[That’s the easy one. I’ll try to get the other as soon as possible,] he sounded proud though, and I couldn’t help but laugh a little. [The person who will bring the scroll to you—ask them whatever you want to know, and they’ll find the information for you. They will stay to serve you from now on, so use them to your heart’s content]

As usual, your Lordship was extremely generous. "What if I ask them to spy on you?"

There was a pause before I heard his crisp laugh from the orb. [That’ll be my pleasure. I’ll make sure they tell you how many times I think about you every day—]

"Okay, okay, I get it!" I cut him off swiftly, feeling the blood rushing to my face.

He laughed again, before telling me gently, [I’ll see you in three days]

Ugh...

I thought that having this ’phone’ and talking to him daily would lessen my longing, but hearing his voice actually just made me want to meet him more—or at least saw his face. But using the communication device up there felt pretty overkill—not to mention the lack of privacy.

This was why video call was a thing, huh?

[Sleep well, sweetheart,]

"...okay,"

Ahh...three days felt so far away.