The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)-Chapter 663: Mixing some truths had always been the recipe for a good lie

Chapter 663: Mixing some truths had always been the recipe for a good lie

Aaah! I felt so dumb! So stupid! We could have had all the relics already!

"Sweetheart, we don’t know if this is the last relic yet," Natha shattered my self-regret.

I looked up from my curling position on the floor. "What...what do you mean?"

"It was two years ago," Natha said while carefully folding the debt contract back. "It might be the relic that Heraz took from that aristocrat’s house."

Oh...

I straightened my back, but soon deflated again. "But if that was the case, then we were back to square one..."

Natha smiled and patted my head, before pulling me off the floor. "What I’m trying to say is that we should look into it more before getting stressed out about it."

I let him manhandle me like a puppet, getting carried to the bed and laying down beside Shwa, who was welcoming me with a loud laugh and a loving smack on my cheek. Was he trying to say I shouldn’t make a sullen face? Sighing, I hugged my son to calm myself, pressing my face on his stomach to inhale the soft, soothing baby scent.

"Besides, you probably wouldn’t know what it was even if you held it yourself, would you?" Natha continued. "I bet those guys forced Valmeier to take out his possession and picked the most precious-looking one."

Well...that seemed plausible. The stuff inside the box was mainly trinkets from his days of going around the border fighting demons. At the time when he had just arrived from that mountain, all he had was that pouch with the bead inside, the pendant, and a bit of money from the old priest for him to survive.

"And I bet Valmeier didn’t even remember he had that bead as a guarantee," Natha smirked.

Huh...I looked up to dive into my memory again, and he was right. Even the memory of handing the pouch to the church was as vague as it could get, meaning he barely cared about it.

"It seemed like both that old priest and the father were so quiet that they didn’t even think about divulging such an important piece of information to Valmeier," Natha rolled his eyes while lying on the other side of the bed so we were flanking Shwa. "They were probably thinking the Goddess or the Fate would show him the way."

His voice was laden with cynicism, which was so funny since he said all of those while patting our son softly. Perhaps because of that, I felt much calmer. Yeah, there was nothing we could do about that.

"But then again...if the present situation is the work of fate...they weren’t wrong, you know?" I whispered, which made Natha roll his eyes again and Shwa giggled in response. "Oh, he likes you doing that."

"Weird kid," Natha pinched the tiny nose, smiling softly. "Just like your Papa."

"Hey!"

Shwa giggled even more when we were arguing, so we promptly stopped, or this kid wouldn’t go back to sleep. After patting Shwa for around twenty minutes and making sure the baby was fast asleep, I finally realized that Heraz was no longer there.

"I had told him to go back and investigate it," Natha told me. "Like I said, it might be the one that’s already in your possession. That being said..."

"Yes?"

"There wouldn’t be any reason for them to search the auctions and ruins for those," Natha said. "And I doubt they’d let a retainer hold into the relic in their house just like that--no matter how devoted they are to the church."

I got up and sat on the mattress, widening my eyes. "R-right? And mine was in a pouch, not in a box like the one in that noble’s house."

Of course, the church could just move the bead from the pouch to the box after finding out it was a relic, but...what Natha said was more convincing. I could imagine them taking the bead to the higher-ups while reporting their failure, and someone from the central--those around the puppet ’pope’--probably recognized the essence of Goddess inside the bead, and boom! They found a relic!

Perhaps that was why they couldn’t find the others; they probably just started looking for it in the past two years without any lead or luck.

"If they really have the relic...what should we do?" I asked cautiously.

"Why do you even ask that?" Natha got down from the bed and walked to the fireplace, which had become dimmer past midnight. "Whether they have it or not, I have no intention of leaving the church alone."

The shadow dancing on his face because of the fire was beautiful and menacing. At that moment, he looked like the epitome of a Demon King.

"They dared to perform a soulmancy at you?" the silver eyes were cold, rippling like liquid ice. "It’s going to be a war either way."

Oh...I glanced at my innocently sleeping son. Would it be irresponsible to leave him for an hour or so right now?

* * *

"Ignis, Ignis! Can you hear me?"

The next day, I immediately called Ignis to inform Zarfa and the others about this development. I thought about using the communication orb, but I recalled Zarfa saying they would start going to the ruin soon, and it might disturb them if I used the orb.

And I was right--they were inside the ruin.

"What is it?" the blazing shadow flame asked.

"Are you in the ruin? If you are, tell them to go back quickly--you have the teleportation scroll, right?" I couldn’t just say something like that in a place without ample security against eavesdroppers. "Once you do, call me again. I’ll call from the communication orb so we can all talk."

The dancing flame paused for a second--and by that, it had literally stopped moving. I touched the fire, and while I could move my fingers through the flame, it did not sway like usual. After around a minute, the flame vibrated and...glitched (?) for a few seconds.

"Alright, we’re back at the hotel."

Ignis told me and snuffed the shadow flame. Oh, that was quick. It meant they immediately used the teleportation scroll without questioning the order. What a bunch of nice kids. I waited for a few more minutes while calculating the time they needed to arrive at our dedicated floor before activating the communication orb.

[Val? What happened?] Zarfa sounded urgent, unlike usual.

Ah, she must have thought something bad happened. "Ah, nothing bad...I think," I told them quickly. "It’s just...I think we might find the last bead, so there’s no need for you to go inside the ruin anymore."

[What?!]

This time, everyone on the other side made a loud noise--which was understandable. "Might--I said ’might’. We don’t know yet, but..."

I proceeded to tell them what Heraz’s subordinate heard from the Soulmancer Natha was trying to employ. Naturally, there was a series of horrified gasps from the lawful-good kids, but their attention was immediately shifted when I got to the main point.

Firstly, they were more horrified about the audacity of the church using a soulmancy at me. If they were horrified about the use of it on a criminal, they were double--no, triple--horrified knowing the church used it at me.

Secondly, they had the same meltdown as me knowing that the bead was already in my possession from the start. There were around three minutes or so where Ceci and Aina were cursing at the church so vehemently that I worried someone on the floor below might hear and call the church. But even Jin joined at the cursing party in the end, so...

"Anyway, we are still investigating the church to make sure it was a different bead from the one Heraz found in that noble’s house," I told them. "Please inform your group and the Templars about this. I think we should focus on this for now."

[Of course, we should!] Zarfa sounded more worked up than usual. [But I think we need some kind of trick to make them move. We haven’t seen the people in the center move]

"You mean the ones in the Holy Empire?"

[Yeah] Zarfa’s one-word reply was filled with disgust. [Perhaps we had been hiding too much]

"Yeah, it seems like the rumor about me was not big enough to move them," I let out a sigh, not sure if I had to feel relieved or offended. "So...Natha was thinking that we have to upgrade the fake lead."

[Upgarde?]

"The fake lead had been presented vaguely just so the church’s agents shifted their attention to a location far away from us, right?" I glanced at Heraz, who was staying still in the corner. "So why don’t we let them know that ’I’ had been looking for the relic," I told them the idea we had been cooking since dawn.

[Like what?]

"We’re going to make them see that ’the man with the sentient spear holds a glowing bead in the ruin’ or something like that."

It was basically telling the truth by using an actor and a prop. Of course, we had to craft the prop and stage the situation so the church’s agents saw it. But Heraz nodded firmly that it should be doable--at any rate, he would make it doable even if he had to wring every bit of magic from Tsalinade.

"This time, we’ll make sure the news arrives in the Holy Empire."