As hopefully you saw on the progress tracker that"s pinned on the blog, this has simply been a bad couple weeks for both me and Deer B. I got injured last weekend, so I"ve been spending a lot of time just relaxing and sleeping and healing. I live by myself, so it"s been pretty awkward taking care of things around the house alone, too. I should be back at 100% after a couple months, but I"m hoping in another few days I can at least feel recovered enough that I can return to my daily routine without much pain.

Deer B has had some kind of cold for a few weeks now, which makes it hard to work on stuff for extended periods of time. Manga is being worked on, just not at the speed you all have enjoyed for previous releases. We"re only 1 SS and 2 Kenja chapters “in the hole,” as it were, though, so just consider this a blessing in disguise; there will be less of a wait for the next chapters now! Haha.

About an hour after we actually got to the mountain, a problem completely unrelated from the monsters arose.

"Huh? The trail ends up ahead. There"s just a cliff…"

"Hrm… How odd. Was this not the correct path…?"

To put it in simple terms, we got lost.

"Geez, demon lord, if you have a map then give it here."

Angelica s.n.a.t.c.hed the book out of my hands.

"First off, this is written in demonic so I can"t really tell what it says, but the biggest problem is—there isn"t even a map in here!!!"

"Aah, that book is the Top 100 Demon Mountain Trails. We did not want to go on a difficult path, so, according to the flowchart, we must walk for thirty minutes from the start of the trail → at the observation rest stop, continue for forty minutes → after the road splits at Sorrow Ridge, walk for one hour → arrive at the peak. The book came as a supplement to the chart."

"In other words, we"re totally, completely lost, aren"t we? You must"ve made a mistake somewhere, that"s why we"re in this place where there"s nothing at all. Let"s turn around…"

"I see…… However, if we jump down a large cliff like this, there is a possibility that we would end up on the right route…"

"Who said anything about jumping off a cliff?! We"re going back!"

Angelica and I began to retrace our steps.
—And we found ourselves even more lost.

"That"s weird… I can"t seem to remember which path we came from…"

"It"s because this area is flat, so it"s hard to tell which way goes down versus up."

Neither I nor Angelica was sure where we should go next. What"s worse, while we spent all this time lost, monsters continued to come after Angelica. Just now, there was a Stampede Boar, which was a rough battle.

"Aaagh, forget mountain climbing, this is basically just a dungeon now…"

"Indeed… from a human"s point of view, you could arrive at that interpretation…"

I wasn"t really worried about it up until now, but the demon lands were pretty dangerous no matter where you were. It didn"t help that the trails on this mountain were pretty complicated.

"But man, the monsters here are kinda strong… There are a lot of monsters and wild beasts in the kingdom"s mountains too, but none of them are even close to the ones here."

"Quite so; in fact, it"s because the weaker monsters tend to flee to the human lands. They are unable to survive in the demon lands. Because of that, the monsters that stay here are naturally stronger."

"I can"t imagine anyone wanting to live here…"

"That"s why there are demons as well who have a hard time here and move away to live in the human lands. If that were not the case, there would be no reason for enemies to become stronger as you get closer to the demon lands."

"So the demons who came to the kingdom are like outcasts or something?! That"s so sad!"

Sweat dripped down the side of Angelica"s face. It might be expected for one to work up a sweat climbing mountains, but this was different; 90% of it had to be due to the constant fighting.

"What do you want to do now, Angelica? It is fine to turn back. In any case, I—"

"No, I"ll keep going," Angelica cut in. "If I just think of it like a dungeon, then I won"t complain anymore. It"s an adventurer"s job to clear dungeons, after all. I can still keep going."

The light in Angelica"s eyes still shined strong. Rather, it was like she got a boost of motivation and now they were positively glittering. She wasn"t the hero for nothing, I suppose. She would not shrink from a challenge.

"I see. Then let us continue on."

"I"ll have to ask you to cover me. I can use healing magic, but I don"t have that much magic power."

"Then I shall. You just worry about wielding your sword."

More than ever before, it felt like I really did close some distance with my daughter. I see; combat was a kind of extreme situation. If we cooperated with one another, that was a way for a seed of camaraderie to sprout.

We didn"t engage in pleasant conversation or anything. Because monsters had very good sensitivity to sound, we kept chatting to a minimum. However, I did believe my relationship with my daughter was growing.

"Daughter, an Underworld b.u.t.terfly and Graverobber Dragonfly are coming from the front."

"The b.u.t.terfly has poison, so I"ll leave it to you, demon lord. I"ll take the dragonfly."

"Understood."

"And don"t call me "daughter"—is what I"d like to say, but my name is kind of long, so I"ll allow it, but during combat only."

Angelica and I made a pretty good team. We somehow also found our way back to the mountain trail. Even though we had gotten lost, we still worked our way up the mountain and had gotten closer to the peak.

Then, when we got to an overlook area—Angelica"s stomach growled. It was quite the boisterous cry of hunger.

"It"s not even noon yet…"

"All right, let us eat lunch. This was handmade by Laetia, so I"m looking forward to it."

"Ah, so Mama made a lunch for you too. That makes sense. There isn"t really a big difference between making lunch for one person versus two."

Angelica and I looked around as we spread out our lunches. We could see the entire majestic, sinister mountain range.

Incidentally, our lunches were basically exactly the same, except mine was about triple the size of Angelica"s. This showed that Laetia was well aware of her daughter"s light eating habits.

"Ooh, sandwiches and fruit! I knew Laetia was a brilliant woman; what a tasteful meal!"

"I"m not sure you really need to gush so much about it. It"s like you haven"t had a lunch made for you before or something."

"Indeed. My previous wife was not very good at cooking. Due to the nature of my work, I frequently ate in the cafeteria, so receiving a homemade lunch was truly a rare thing."

"Ah… I didn"t mean to remind you of… Sorry…"

Apparently even Angelica could be thoughtful.

"There is no need for you to apologize. Everyone has a past, and everyone has farewells. The one who brought up the subject was I."

It felt kind of strange to be eating the same sandwiches as the hero.

"This sharp, salty-sweet meat goes particularly well with the bread, I must say."

"Ah, that. That"s Mama"s specialty. It pairs well with drinks, I hear. I haven"t had alcohol before, though, so I"m not really sure."

"Certainly not. You"ll have to be patient for another five years before you can drink. Regardless, I cannot say I would recommend it. I believe humans do not process alcohol very well."

"I know, I know, I won"t even think about it for five more years."

Ahh, this kind of development felt nice. There was a lot of trouble along the way, but I"m really glad we came to this mountain. I definitely made the right choice.

"Now then, we"ve eaten, so let us depart."

"No, wait, demon lord, you eat way too fast… Or like, when did you finish?"

"For demons, this is pretty much normal though."

"But you obviously weren"t eating at the same speed as humans!"

Excellent—after eating the same lunch, the distance between me and my daughter shrunk even more.

"Our goal is to reach the peak and find the legendary sword."

"Yep, you got it!"

 —  — Chapter 15