The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 607: Not all magicians are good with their brain, okay?

Chapter 607: Not all magicians are good with their brain, okay?

Once again, I woke up with Jade looming over me, shaking my body and telling me to ’quickly get up so we can have fun’ as I had promised.

Well, the ’have fun’ should include laying down longer in this nice, perfect, comfortable bed, so I hugged him and rolled to the side, forcing the boy to lie down again. Jade shrieked gleefully and jumped around the bed instead of lying around, but he still let me sleep a bit longer.

Unlike Shwa.

Natha came back from feeding and sunbathing the baby, and Shwa grabbed my hair so tightly I thought he wanted to make me bald to match his head. It was like the little guy scolded me for sleeping when he was awake. Shwa was only awake around seven or eight hours a day--and some of those hours were spent during the night when Natha would swiftly take him away so I wouldn’t get awoken by his cry--so I should be there during his daytime.

"Okay, okay~" I laughed and got up groggily, receiving Shwa in my arms and burying my sleepy face in his tummy. "Did you have your meal? Did you have your burpees? Good boy~"

"Uaaah!"

"Whoaa...you can yell now?" I bit his fist playfully. "Don’t tell me you’ll be able to talk when I return the next time?"

"Only if you go for a year or so," Natha chuckled before pausing with narrowed eyes. "You won’t, right?"

"Of course I won’t!" I kicked him playfully. "What would happen with the summon then?"

Natha smiled wryly and laid his head on my shoulder, acting like a clingy husband for exactly seven seconds before Jade grabbed his hair and pulled him away from me--although these days, I had no idea if the little boy was jealous of him or me.

Maybe because my arms were often occupied by Shwa, Jade naturally placed himself on Natha’s lap or asked Natha to carry him instead. Seeing them now, glued to each other, it was laughable how much they fought in the past.

Anyway, due to Shwa’s insistence, I quickly washed up, and we spent the whole day together--including Natha, who took a day off from his key-collecting business. We took Shwa walking through the garden, crossing the bridge, and visiting Shwa’s old abode: the shed!

Yeah, we left it in its original state. The tree shading Shwa’s flower before was still standing there, although the druid formation had vanished after Shwa’s birth. The original flower was no longer there, but there was a bed of little white flowers in its place that the fairies used as their beds. They immediately flew and circled Shwa while buzzing and giggling.

These fairies would be the guards protecting the shed from within, which would become Shwa’s playing fort in the future--because I was in the firm belief that every child needed their own hiding camp, just like Ignis needed its bubbling magma cave.

Mine used to be Grandma’s cottage and later on the corner slide in the children’s ward’s playground.

We spent the whole day there, having a picnic, and conversing with the druid rangers still staying there for Shwa’s protection until the summoning day. Naturally, we slept together again, because I had to return to the Human Realm the next day.

But it was better since I didn’t have to leave in the morning. We spent time in the nursery this time, with Angwi and the other nannies, listening to their stories about what Shwa had been doing while I was gone.

Even though he only slept, drank, and wiggled all day--I mean, what could we expect from a baby?--I squealed at every iteration. Even a story about how Shwa spent an hour staring at the fluttering blossom in the wall excited me.

Surprisingly--or not--the one acting dramatically during the farewell time was Jade.

"Jade...don’t want to go..." the little boy bowed his lips and gripped the bassinet tightly, shaking his head and scrunching his face in rejection.

I stroked his head and smiled. "You’ll stay here, then?"

His lips trembled, and he immediately turned around to hug me tightly. "But Jade don’t want to leave Papa’s side."

"I know, baby," I picked him up and stroked the green head buried in my shoulder. "We’ll return home as soon as we can, okay?"

"Okay..."

He clutched my neck tightly and refused to see Shwa. Maybe he knew it would be harder to leave if he kept looking at the baby. I patted his head and turned toward Arta. "Thanks for the refill, Arta."

"My pleasure!"

Lastly, I leaned down to kiss my sleeping baby and whispered my farewell. This time, it was a bit easier than before--and by that, I meant I no longer felt like I would die, but it still felt like someone stabbed my heart with a knife. "See you again, my darling."

"What about me?" Natha asked from behind, slipping one hand on my waist and stroking Jade’s head with the other one.

I laughed and turned my head to kiss him too. "See you soon, husband."

"You’re making it so hard," Natha frowned as our lips parted after a second.

"I can’t be suffering alone," I shrugged.

He laughed and kissed me again, saying all those things about being careful and not spare any expenses, the usual. Ignis came just in time and I told Jade to turn into a bird again before activating the teleportation token.

This time, the sensation lasted for five minutes, telling me that the group had moved further away from the riverside village. Well, it was three days’ worth of journey, so the distance covered must be pretty significant, even if they only used stagecoaches.

When my feet touched the ground again, it was in the middle of an inn bedroom. Solid flooring, so I guessed Zarfa took them to the best possible lodging in the city. Enough space in the middle for me to transport to.

"Oh, wow!" she clapped her hands from the edge of the bed. The token plaque was on the floor instead of her neck--good call. "That was magical!"

"We live in a magic world, Ceci," I rolled my eyes. I picked the token from the floor and flicked it toward the grinning girl. "How’s things been going?"

"Boring, not even any bandit," she shook her head while standing up and moved to the small table beneath the window.

I followed her there and peeked out. It was night, but the city wasn’t very dark. The inn, however, was located a bit away from the center, so there was nothing much I could see. But it was quiet, so it was nice, matching well with our group. Looking peaceful and well...boring.

"Is that unusual?" I asked while placing Jade on the chair beside mine so he could turn into a boy again.

"Nah," Zarfa dragged a tray full of snacks to the table, greeting the newly transformed Jade with delicacies. "They know the merchants from that village don’t really have much. We just tagged along and used up your food, sharing it with the merchant to build a good rapport--that’s fine, right?"

"Sure," I shrugged. "I already brought a refill."

"Yahoo!" Zarfa threw her arms in the air. Apparently, the ingredients Arta packed for me were even better than what she usually ate, perhaps due to distribution issues, which Fatia’s kingdom still had a bit of trouble with.

As expected, Arta was the best.

"More jelly for Jade too?" the little boy asked with cookie crumbs around his mouth.

"Of course," I laughed and wiped the crumbs away. "She even packed some candies."

Jade gasped, and Zarfa clapped again, sending her gratitude in the direction of the Demon Realm. Hmm...I should convey this to Arta later.

"Anyway, buying four horses would attract too much attention in this city, so we decided to buy a carriage instead," Zarfa reported. "It won’t be as comfortable as the first one, but definitely much better than the stagecoach."

I bit my lips and smiled wryly. "I hope so..."

She giggled and clasped her hands. "Oh, I already booked another room to anticipate your return, so you can go there--here’s the key."

"As expected of our Midas Princess," I winked and snatched Jade away from his second tin of cookies. "Good night."

She sent me away with a curtsy, and I took the key to the room across the hall. It took a while for me to fall asleep, however, since it was only past dinner when I teleported. And so, while Jade trained his magic with Ignis in a battle of fire and water, I took out the puzzle box that I had been neglected all this time.

Initially, I had wanted to do it during my return, but I was too busy playing with my sons that any other thoughts were shoved away from my mind. Now that I finally had some idle time, I took out the tree statuette and laid it down beside the puzzle box.

Before coming to this mission, I had tried to solve the puzzle box so many times that the first few paths were etched in my not-very-decent memory. Surely, it wasn’t a coincidence that the path and the lower motif of the branches felt familiar...right?

Rubbing my palms together, I took a deep breath before picking up the puzzle box and began pouring my mana thread inside while staring at the branches motif, following it carefully.

"Oh!"

I exclaimed as my suspicion was proved right--they had the same motif. Well, at least for the lower part. Exhaling softly, I recalled my mana and stopped.

No, I couldn’t go right away.

The branches in the statuette seemed to represent all paths in the puzzle box. It was a map, not a key, so I would have to solve the map first. In the middle of these connecting branches was a rather large, deep green emerald. If I had to guess, it would be the ’goal’ of the puzzle, and I had to figure out the path from the lowermost branch to the emerald.

Only then would I unlock the hidden compartment...I presumed.

...ah, damn it--I should have asked Eruha to do this before coming here.