The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 602: Networking is important even if you’re in the wild

Chapter 602: Networking is important even if you’re in the wild

"Whoaa...you’re seriously well-prepared!"

The kids exclaimed at the camping equipment and ingredients I took out. Honestly, I had no idea why they were reacting like that--I mean, they also brought all kinds of equipment. Especially Aina, who seemed to bring half his kitchen into the journey.

Gosh--this kind of journey would be so much harder without dimensional storage items, wouldn’t it? No wonder they were so expensive.

Thankfully, Arta didn’t only pack one tent, but several, and we decided to use what I brought because everyone was curious about the tents from the Demon Realm. Thanks to that, I was freed of construction duty, and thanks to the ingredients, I was also freed from cooking duty.

"What kind of sponsor does menial work anyway?" Zarfa waved her hands, giggling, before whispering to me. "Besides, can you really do any of this?"

"No?" I shrugged, and we giggled while watching Aina make her kitchen.

To be honest, at first, I wanted to learn how to pitch a tent, make a fire, and cook some simple camp meals. But when Jin, Renna, and Fatia started, they did it so quickly I didn’t have the heart to ask them to teach me--which would slow down the process several times.

And then, I looked at Aina and saw how passionate she was about her cooking, and the same thought came. I felt like I was going to burn more stuff than make them edible. Even if I helped with chopping, I had no experience with knife play. It wasn’t like I could chop them with Alveitya.

When I saw Ian doing the heavy lifting, I was thinking of helping him, but everyone told me to stay put. Hmm...I was sure it wasn’t because they thought I couldn’t do it, right?

"Worry not, my friend," Zarfa patted my back in assurance. "They just feel bad for how much you spent in the auction. If they let you work too, they’d feel like they’re robbing you."

I raised my brow and glanced at her. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

...oh, right. She actually bought her own item. She nudged me with her shoulder and we giggled, playfully calling me the ’big sponsor’ and herself the ’little sponsor’ as we lounged around while the other worked.

"In that case, I’ll meditate and purify this place for a bit," I told her. "Gotta feed my kid too."

[Yummy ball!!]

I laughed and told Jade to quiet down before closing my eyes and spreading my consciousness to the surrounding area. It had been a while since I did it in a foreign area--and honestly, it hadn’t been that long since I was able to do it at all--so it was rather fun. Relaxing even.

As expected, I was at my best inside a forest.

It was also fun finding out that the plants in the Human Realm and the Demon Realm were different. Curiously, their degree of friendliness was different too. Perhaps because it had been so long since the forest in the Human Realm felt any druid’s touch, they were very cautious at my approach.

Only after I let out some purified mana back to the forest did they become more welcoming and no longer fought back when I tried to absorb their mana. When I finished, a soccer ball-sized purified mana had formed, and Jade dove inside without hesitation, rolling around happily in the bird form.

"Haha...it’s been a long time, right?"

[Long time!] Jade curled and stretched as if doing gymnastics inside the energy ball. [Stone that Natha give Jade is tasty, but Papa’s yummy ball is the yummiest!]

"Is that so? Eat a lot, then~"

"And we’ll eat too over here!" Zarfa pounced me from behind and flicked the energy ball toward the campfire.

The cheerful chirping filled the dark forest, making it feel as if we were having breakfast instead of dinner. I had told Aina she could use any ingredients, and she didn’t play. It didn’t feel like camping when I saw the plates of grilled meat and steamed fish with stir-fried vegetables and fresh salad in citrus dressing.

Phew, girl--I was glad I didn’t involve myself in the cooking process. It was amazing how she could get this kind of result, but then I saw some cooking devices on the side. I guessed he introduced some modern convenience. How glamorous.

"Whoa..." Renna was especially interested in Jade inside the energy ball, poking it around while we had our dinner. She wasn’t so timid now that we spent some time on the journey together, which was good.

Synergy was good in team play, right? Not that I ever did any team play.

"Oh, right!" I took out the small box where the bead--that Goddess relic--was and opened it. "Should we see what would happen if we placed the beads close together?"

"Ah, let’s!"

Jin nodded and took out his bead--the one he found in the ruin--from a pouch with a protective spell on it. Zarfa pulled out a tray, placed it on the folding table I brought from home, and we put the beads on its surface.

Intentionally, we placed the beads on different ends of the tray just to see if they would synchronize with each other.

And they did.

"Oh, they vibrated?"

"Yep," I crouched in front of the table to see the beads from eye level. "The Goddess’s power in each bead seems to be increasing while they are in proximity. Should we try placing them closer?"

"Yeah," Jin reached out and moved his bead to the center of the tray. Before I could do the same to the bead we received recently, the first bead was already rolling toward it.

We gasped and let them reunite. The moment the beads touched, they vibrated a bit stronger and let out a glow for a few seconds before the shine died down.

"Huh? That’s it?" Zarfa tilted her head in confusion. Well, we were all in confusion.

"Well, there are only two," Jin shrugged. "The templars have another one, so we should try again then."

"I guess..."

As I took the auction bead and placed it back inside the velvet box, I kind of felt like the way it shone reminded me of something. I couldn’t remember what it was though, so I just put it in the back of my mind for now. Maybe I’d remember more once there were more beads in our possession.

Maybe we should collect seven of them to summon the Goddess?

...no! Mother--please, no! I couldn’t possibly go around the Human Realm collecting five, no, four more beads?!

I mean...not in eighty days!

"You’re okay, hun?" Zarfa asked curiously, and I told her about it, and we ended up gasping together because it sounded more and more plausible the more we talked about it. "Ugh...let’s not beat ourselves for a mere conjecture."

"Haa...yeah, let’s just sleep..."

Hugging the energy ball that was still being digested by Jade, I entered the tent with a gloomy feeling. Thinking we needed ten days to even reach the hidden church was already depressing enough. If we had to spend the majority of our time roaming around the Human Realm looking for beads...

It wouldn’t be so devastating if we had some kind of detection method or at least a speedier transportation method. If only I could bring my girl Vrida here...

Haa...

With this gloomy feeling looming in my head and my usual missing-my-baby hour, it was hard to sleep well. It didn’t have anything to do with the tent--even if I slept in our comfortable bed back home, I would still roll back and forth in my mattress and wake up every half an hour.

Perhaps that was why I woke up instantly when the leaves around our camp rustled softly. A tree branch was stroking the top of my tent as if trying to wake me up, so I crawled out and narrowed my eyes to take a look at our surroundings.

"Do you see anything?"

"No," Ignis crawled to my shoulder and looked up. "But the trees are trying to tell you something, right?"

I left Jade in the tent and got out so I could look around better. Ian, who was on watch duty, turned around from the sound and raised his brows. "Brother Valen? What’s wrong?"

"The forest tries to warn me about something."

He blinked and tilted his head. "Is that like...a druid thing?"

"You can say that," I nodded and placed my palm on the nearest tree.

Suddenly, a flash of vision flooded my mind, the way Jade usually showed me what he saw earlier in the day. Visions of a group of people entering the forest and tracing some trails, of those people running through the forest quickly, of those people brandishing their weapons.

"Well, well...do we finally have chasers?"

"What?" Ian scrambled toward me. "Did you say chasers? Did the trees tell you that?"

"Uh-huh," I nodded. "About five--seems like rangers."

"I’ll go wake up Brother Jin and the others--where are you going?!"

Where? Of course to catch those people--wasn’t it obvious? I tilted my head at him.

"Uhh...but we don’t know how strong they are, so it’s better to face them together," Ian moved his hands frantically. "And you said they seem like rangers, so they’ll have more skills in the forest than--"

I chuckled and shook my head. "Ian," I smiled and waved my hand, letting the trees shake around me. "I am a druid."

He blinked as the realization came upon him. "Oh..."

Oh, wasn’t it good that I formed a friendship with the forest earlier?

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