The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)-Chapter 628: Once again, mysterious places underground are not an amusement park

Chapter 628: Once again, mysterious places underground are not an amusement park

The two hours Tsalinade promised ended at the end of our afternoon tea, and Heraz came to deliver the teleportation scrolls on a silver platter.

Where he got that silver plater, I had no idea. He even dressed like a butler, truly your average master spy.

I checked the spell once more to see if she input the calculation for the people using the scroll correctly, and checked for any sneaky spell. While I wouldn’t be able to notice any complicated trick, I could at least check for the basic and the important circuits according to what Eruha and Lesta taught me.

After all, I hadn’t completely trusted Tsalinade yet.

Thankfully, these scrolls seemed legit. If Tsalinade put anything, it would have to be woven intricately so that only a master spellmaker like Uncle Sol could notice. If she managed to do that...kudos to her, I guessed?

"What’s this?" Zarfa raised her brow when I got her one of the scrolls. It was the only one with a different colored line since it was made for a bigger number of people. "We get one too?"

"You’re the one who said something might happen once we take the relic," I shrugged.

That meant something might happen to the rest of the ruin too, right? Not only the chamber where the bead was placed. Since the only one who received the bead ’organically’ was the Hero, Zarfa turned to Jin instead.

"Ah--there was nothing happened in the ruin where I found the relic," he tapped his chin to recall. "But there’s a story about a ruin’s layout change after something was taken, a swarm of corrupted beasts coming up, or a collapse..."

"See?" I shrugged. "In that case, something might happen on your side too--or you simply get found out."

Sure, if something did happen, using the scroll might make them look suspicious, and this whole plan about being sneaky would be useless. But I’d rather have that than my friends getting trapped inside a ruin while I escaped. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

My grandfather did not teach me to abandon our business partner. Unless they betrayed us first.

"Well, that’s true," Zarfa nodded and put the scroll inside her pouch. "Thanks, Val!"

"Of course, it’s best if we don’t use it," I said. "We can use it next time an emergency arrives. This place is practically our safe haven in this part, right?"

"Of course!"

And that was why I asked Tsalinade to make three. We would definitely use one of them, so if the decoy team did not use them, we’d have two scrolls that were enough for the whole team to use next time there was an emergency.

After all, we still had to explore other ruins and dungeons to look for the seventh one--at least until there was information about it being in the church’s hand. We had decided to use this place as a central point while we were hopping from ruins to ruins in this region, so using the hotel was a good choice.

"On the other hand, if the church put their funds into investigating what happens to Count Elmer’s house and tracking the relic, it means we need to brace for a storm," Fatia said at the end of our meeting.

I glanced at Heraz to make sure, and he assured me. "I have damaged the tracker put in the original box and threw it to the river too. The box I gave you was a different one, Young Master," he explained. "Still, if something is done to the bead itself--forgive me, but I wouldn’t know."

I wouldn’t either; and I took it out so the others could check, and no one could detect it. "Let’s hope they didn’t put any tracker on the bead itself. I don’t think they can track the relics since they still haven’t found the one in the ruin though."

And they wouldn’t divert the funds from this ruin if they knew. They probably just took an interest because it was a new ruin, and there was a little bit of probability that a relic would come out.

"Still, Jin would be on their top watchlist after this, even if they don’t know we have the relic," Fatia continued. "So let’s keep our vigilance."

We agreed and ended the meeting with dinner before going to bed. It was fortunate that I looked so different from the first time I got transmigrated here, so even without disguising my features, they wouldn’t recognize me--unlike Jin, who had to dye his hair tonight.

That being said, Zarfa came into my room the next morning and rubbed some powder over my face. "Can’t have you looking like a lost princess out there, Val."

"Excuse me?"

"Blame yourself for being too pretty," she stuck out her tongue and rubbed a kohl beneath my eyes. "No magician had healthy sparkling eyes like you."

"Fatia--"

"She wore makeup to cover them dark circles."

"Oh..."

I felt like I just heard a secret I shouldn’t know, so I just pressed my lips and let her tie my hair into a slightly messy ponytail. We didn’t go for the wild here, just made me look like your average mercenary magician--because the neat, successful-looking one would be in the tower, not going around as a mercenary.

But why should we still be in disguise when I would be in stealth anyway? Well...it was because maintaining stealth mode took too much mana, and using it before we even arrived at the ruin would be too ineffective. After all, we didn’t know what kind of things we might have to face over there.

Well, in my case, I wouldn’t have to worry about the mana cost, but while I didn’t know Heraz’s capacity, Renna wouldn’t be able to last.

Anyway, we went out at dawn because we would need at least three hours to reach the ruin from the outskirts of the city. We didn’t want to be late and the agreement to be canceled. There was only a limited amount of group being allowed to go inside the ruin in a day, so...

Naturally, we didn’t come out of the luxury hotel wearing this mercenary guise. We used the secret tunnel to reach the outskirts and used Midas’s employee wagon from there. Since the three of us were supposed to not exist, we had to squeeze inside the wagon, and if I didn’t have my rejuvenation, I would have lying on the floor from the nausea.

Anyway, we arrived at the location before ten, and the three of us immediately got off the wagon while using stealth before we reached the congregation of people.

It was my first time around a ruin, but...it almost looked like a festival from the outside. Several big tents were installed outside, selling equipment and potion. There were also merchant tents willing to purchase what the mercenaries excavated from the ruin right away, and those selling food for people waiting for their turn.

Zarfa told me that the newer the ruin, the more festive it was, because a lot of people would come to try their luck there. Even casual ruin explorers would come to just look around. Old ruins usually wouldn’t be so crowded because most of the things inside would have been excavated already.

Anyway, it was like seeing a marketplace in a tourist attraction. I would probably stroll around just to sightsee if I wasn’t on a high-stakes mission. Perhaps I could disguise myself as a tourist next time.

"Phew..." I did a breathing exercise to get rid of unnecessary thoughts. No tripping this time, Val. No squeaking. I turned toward Renna and Heraz for a briefing while we were hiding behind a bush near the ruin’s entrance. "Okay, let’s do it like this..."

The plan was simple; we would wait until the decoy group entered the ruin, and we would follow one by one to avoid mana detection. Three people in stealth moving together might trigger someone’s detection after all. I would go first with Shiny--since the mole was our guide--and Renna would go next with Jade as an extra bodyguard--also to make sure Renna’s stealth did not come undone. Not that we underestimate her, just...realistically speaking.

"You get in last so you can cover for us if we make a mistake at the front, okay?" I looked at Heraz, who replied a bit heavily.

"...yes."

I suppressed my laugh and added. "That includes me."

He flinched slightly and perked up. "Yes."

"I trust you, Heraz."

"By your command," he nodded and lowered his head again.

Nodding in satisfaction, I turned toward the pair of round green eyes and round black eyes on my hands, briefing them through telepathy.

[No noise!]

They shook their head.

[No chirp or chii! Talk in my head if you have to, okay?]

They nodded with serious faces, and it was me who almost broke the guise and laughed. Ah, damn--they were adorable. Perhaps it was out of luck to not do this at night, because they might get exhausted and lose focus in the middle. But the two were fresh, and so was Ignis who pretended to be Fatia’s lizard companion.

Wow...the pride he had to sacrifice for this. I would make sure to look for a volcano after this.

"Oh, they’re in."

I whispered and turned to give Renna a signal, before carefully following the group inside. I used as little mana as I could, and what Halurean taught me about erasing traces so no footsteps could be seen behind them. From behind, I really couldn’t recognize my friends--even Zarfa and Aina used insoles to make them appear taller, and wrapped layers of clothes so they looked more bulky.

Well, that was a good sign.

Hidden from the rest of the world, I entered my first ruin.