The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)-Chapter 686: There’s no better motivation for parents than their children

Chapter 686: There’s no better motivation for parents than their children

"Auntie, why don’t you stay here instead of the townhouse?" I asked Aunt Nezja during dinner.

I had been away from Natha a lot after starting this whole mission. But there was a stark difference between sleeping in a camp or an inn with the group and sleeping in a wide bed all by my loneself. Even taking the children to the bed did not make it any fuller.

Haa...when I was away before, I was in the middle of doing something, so it didn’t feel so lonely or hard. But this time, it felt like I was waiting for my husband to come back from a faraway business trip.

I wondered if this was how Natha felt while I was away. Or was he too busy calming down our fussy baby? With my presence, Shwa was as calm and gentle as he was at the start, so I didn’t have to struggle with him anymore.

Perhaps that was why, the loss of Natha’s presence became more prevalent.

"Come sleep here, Auntie~" I blinked and fluttered my eyes, staring at Aunt Nezja with my best pitiful eyes.

"Sleep here~"

Even Jade helped me begging, so naturally, Aunt Nezja laughed and told me she would.

Wow, it also felt good to see Aunt Nezja laugh like that. Thinking how she was back then before fixing his relationship with Natha, wasn’t it a huge development? Or...perhaps it was because she regained hope for the Old Covenant?

Joyfully, we had a little night snack party after dinner. Even after Jade and Shwa fell asleep, we continued with a bit of cheese board and light wine that Mara carefully picked for us.

Naturally, our conversation revolved around Shwa--because I couldn’t seem to stop talking about him. Was this how parents were? Even after spending my whole day with the little dictator, I was still gushing out about him later on.

Well...but Aunt Nezja was also the one who asked about him first. She especially laughed when I told her about the new rivalry between Natha and his mini-version. She told me that Natha barely had any rivalry during his childhood since he was an only child of an only child. He was basically the prince of the clan.

Aunt Nezja might not have a kid on her own, but she babysat Natha a lot because Natha’s mother experienced several periods of baby blues until Natha reached adolescence. Coincidentally, she also babysat Natha’s father a lot. Perhaps that was why Natha ended up living with her after that tragic massacre.

Well, now I know why she adored Natha and his father.

"It was fascinating seeing how your baby interacted with you," Aunt Nezja said. "He has Natha’s face, so it brought me back. But your baby is so active and different in personality with him when he was a baby."

Hmm...so, like Shwa when he was a newborn?

"They are similarly cheeky though," I giggled. "It was cute seeing him pulling on Natha’s hair."

Aunt Nezja laughed at the imagery, and I slipped in an offer to continue staying here so she could see it sometimes. She said she would think about it--which was progress already.

Or maybe because of the wine, who knows?

"If this Old Covenant works...he’ll be able to live without worry, right?" I glanced upstairs, where my son was sleeping in the nursery.

"I think he’ll be able to live without worry nonetheless as long as his parents love him," Aunt Nezja smiled. "But there’s no reason why we shouldn’t strive for more."

"Right," I clenched my fist slightly.

There was no better motivation than this. Perhaps it was selfish of me to do this solely for my kid’s sake instead of the betterment of the world, but...

Oh, who cares! It was better than doing nothing, right?

"You’re cooperating with the human’s Hero, aren’t you?" Aunt Nezja asked, pulling my attention back to the conversation.

"Oh, yes--my best friend is also in the group, and one of Natha’s contracted inventors."

"That’s nice," she smiled, but it looked rather sad somehow. "It would be nice if we could do that in the past. Maybe we could go further rather than debating on the best course to do it."

Oh, was she talking about that Society?

"Umm...so, was the society only consisted of demons?" I asked carefully.

"No," she put down her empty glass and filled it with more wine. "We have drows and humans too."

I straightened my back at this surprising information. "Humans too?" my brows arched high. "But...you said--"

"We had never met in person," Aunt Nezja shook her head. "We had meetings with the drows sometimes, but never with the humans. It was just too...dangerous. More for them than for us."

Yeah. If they were caught having correspondence with demons, they would be hunted. Worst case, they would be killed. Their best chance in that scenario would be running to another realm. Sure, they could live--some discrimination would ensue, but at least they wouldn’t be killed.

But in that case, the society would lose any contact with the human side, and the effort would regress. What was the point, then?

That being said...

"How did you communicate without meeting each other?" I tilted my head.

The inter-realm communication orb was only successfully created by Aina and her partner last year. Even then, we were the only ones using it currently, since Natha put a hold on mass production until the cost-efficiency could be improved. Using bird carriers would be impossible because the birds in the demon realm were starkly different from the birds in the human realm.

"There was a way," Aunt Nezja said while rummaging through her storage pouch. "I think I still have them somewhere--wait..."

Curiously, I watched Aunt Nezja searching for an item for a few minutes, before taking out what looked like a slab of stone the size of a saucer. It had nothing on it and looked plain if it wasn’t for the sets of formations around the thin disc.

"What is that, Auntie?"

Aunt Nezja placed the stone on her lap and stroked it with nostalgia. "We had been trying to reach out to the human side for some talks. If not formally, we thought we could at least have an informal meeting in a neutral land. Unfortunately, we were rejected again and again."

"Um..."

"Perhaps because we had only been contacting the royal family or the aristocrats from the bordering kingdoms," Aunt Nezja chuckled, shaking her head as if she were recalling some silly pastime. "We thought those kingdoms would be interested in opening the border, at least for trade. But we were wrong."

"They are the ones receiving the most indoctrination," I said.

Aunt Nezja nodded. "Yes. No one hated other realms more than those bordering kingdoms--aside from the Holy Empire, of course. They had more churches than any other places."

Yeah--after all, the one who attacked the Realm of Wrath and the Druid Kingdom was the state bordering them directly. With the preparation that Natha did once he decided to wage war with the church, I was now convinced that the church was doing the same thing.

The Holy Empire must have been influencing the bordering kingdom first. Aside from making sure those kingdoms did not open their border to other races, it also served as the best hub for the moment they decided to wage a total war against the entire realm. Building churches and making sure the civilians became blind devotees was among the first steps.

"After repeated failure, we started to become desolate," Aunt Nezja continued while taking a deep breath. "But then, someone contacted us."

"Who is it?"

"We didn’t know," Aunt Nezja shook her head regretfully. "As I said before, we had never met."

"Oh..."

"The message was simply to take a package store in an empty house in an empty region."

I tilted my head in doubt. "That sounds...suspicious?"

"Oh, it was," Aunt Nezja smirked. "We were both doubtful and intrigued. Could it be a plan for an ambush? What do you think, Valen?"

I blinked at her twinkling eyes. Ugh--this was why I thought she was similar to a headmaster or a governess. Perhaps she was one. I had never thought the casual drinking session would turn into a Q&A.

"Umm..." I pursed my lips as my brain tried to work. "I don’t think there’s much one can do by ambushing the society member in the empty region," I answered after thinking about it deeply. "If they want to bait demons as a justification for an attack, they should have told you to pick the package in a human territory--then they could say the demons were invading or something."

Aunt Nezja smiled with her eyes, and I unconsciously let out a relieved breath. Geez--it wasn’t like I was being tested or anything.

"You’re right," she said. "We had the same thought, so we eventually went there," she looked down then, at the slab of stone on her lap. "This is what we found."

"Oh! Does that mean you were communicating with that...stone?"

"Yes."

My eyes widened, and I leaned forward to look at the stone more closely. "But...how?"

Aunt Nezja took the stone slab and placed it on the table between us. "We had no idea how it worked, but a text appeared here as if it was carved before."

"What?!" I stared at the plain, unblemished stone with wide eyes.

"The text would vanish after a few seconds, and if we wanted to reply, we had to write back on the slab with our mana."

What the hell?! Like...texting? Like texting on the phone?!

Oblivious to my inner chaos, Aunt Nezja continued. "We couldn’t send a long message because it disappeared right away, but it was enough to communicate to some extent. At least, we knew that the other person had the same aspirations as us."

"A-and?"

"Unfortunately, the communication suddenly ended around the time the Druid Kingdom got attacked," Aunt Nezja sighed, stroking the stone’s smooth surface. I could feel mana flowing to the tip of her index finger, and she mindlessly wrote ’hello’ on its surface. "We kept writing for a few years afterward, but no reply came. Eventually, as I told you, we just gave up."

As she said, the word vanished about ten seconds later. It was probably only sufficient for a short sentence each time. Perhaps more like telegram? Or a pager?

Hmm...

"Umm, Auntie?" I looked at Aunt Nezja sheepishly. "Would you mind if I show this to my inventor friend?"

"I don’t mind," she chuckled lightly. "At any rate, this has become nothing more than a memoria--"

Aunt Nezja paused, and I gasped as the smooth surface of the stone rippled. There, where the word ’hello’ was etched and vanished earlier, something appeared in cursive, common tongue.

Good Evening