Chapter 222 – Pilgrimage.
The dense fog returns to the waves, and the air that has just been soaked in the morning is still full of salty smell, but nonetheless it digs into your nose refreshingly. But even that morning air couldn’t calm his agitated mind.
“How long does it take to reach the Holy Land?”
That’s because it’s already been two days since they went forward looking at the same sight. Waves washing over unknown waterways and small islands that can be seen from time to time seemed peaceful, but that tranquility gave anxiety instead. Because no matter where you looked, you couldn’t find any trace of the paladins who took the girl.
“There is no answer even if you search for a holy place here. Even if you ride a Hildis beanie and run non-stop, it will take a month.”
“How much is that?”
I could tell that it would take a long time, but I couldn’t get a feel for it based on Hildis Beanie.
“Um, let’s see.”
Krikaliev looked back at them for a moment, seemed to judge, then opened his mouth.
“At this rate, it will take five months.”
“It’s taking that long?!”
It took too long. One month was a long time, but did I have to go like this for five months?
“This is also quite close compared to other places.”
At first, he thought he might be able to catch up with the Paladins in the middle, but it was still impossible. Just the fact that I couldn’t ride Hildisbini, or at least the Svadil Ferry, made the one month turn into five months. Just because he’s weak, the time to see Belka becomes absurdly long. Even if he didn’t care, the weakness that kept repeating over and over again bit him.
“In the meantime, what about Belka!”
You don’t know what will happen to the girl in the meantime.
“Don’t worry too much. Do you think the knight you met back then would harm the little lady?”
Usher remembered the image of the blue woman who had petted him. She told him not to be ashamed of her weakness, and her light blue eyes, shining like the clear sky, flashed lonely and comforted him.
“…No.”
So he remembered something he had forgotten for a while.
“As expected, you are acquainted with that older sister, right?”
She had felt that way before, but this time she was sure. Krikaliev knows Rachel. Otherwise, I couldn’t understand why she changed her voice and hid her patterns in her presence.
“Yeah, it’s been a long time since we met.”
However, Usher lost his pulse at his meek nod. From the time he found out he was a paladin, though that was something he should have expected.
“Anyway, five months is too long.”
Usher didn’t feel like he could last that long.
“Who said it took that long?”
“Your uncle just said that!”
“That’s it, if it’s like this.”
Usher, who was about to ask what that meant, pondered his words for a moment.
“It’s like this. Is there any way to go faster?”
“It’s a little drastic, but it’s better than not doing it.”
“What kind of way…”
He didn’t know what he was going to do when he didn’t have anything to ride except a horse.
“I’ll look into that later, and I’ll have to take a break for now.”
Usher heard him and realized that his horse was trembling. Usher felt sorry for the fact that he seldom noticed first, since it had already happened several times. Their slow pace was partly because the horse’s basic gait couldn’t keep up with Hildisbini’s, but more than that, their body temperature dropped because they had to walk half-submerged in water. Because of this, even though it was not particularly night, they had to periodically visit a small island to stay, so they couldn’t help but slow down their pace even more.
When the nearby island came out, I repeated taking a break, and in vain, I saw the sky already going down. This time they had to find an island to stay overnight.
“Is there no sand here?”
The islands I had heard so far were made of sand, but the island they are now on was made of hard stone. It looked the largest of the islands they had stayed on so far. Still, the whiteness was the same, but when I look around the island, it looks strange that the trees, big and small, have hardened into pure white here and there, and the bumpy and distorted things. Because they found the island a little late, by the time they reached the island, the moonlight was already pouring down, making it look even whiter.
“It’s a coral island.”
“A coral island?”
“The corals that were full of this area a long time ago died and traces of them remained, making it such a large island.”
Usher could recall that the ingredient for the camouflage cream he had given him was this coral.
“I have work to do, so find some willows nearby. Don’t forget to feed the horse.”
Then Krikaliev took out a brazier and began to light a fire. He wanted to see it, but it was important for him to find Willow now. No matter what kind of willow it was, horses had a similar diet to humans, and willows were also said to be good food for horses. In particular, in the case of horses, when he heard that he maintained his body temperature by eating, he had to break as many willows as possible.
“Aren’t there willows here?”
But is it because it is an island made of coral, not sand? Usher looked back at Krikaliev, frowning at the appearance of a willow he could not find no matter how much he searched for it. Right next to him, a horse stretched limp, exhausted from carrying him all day and crossing the current. After all, thinking that he had to look a little further, he decided to look for a place a little farther away than that. The pure white island received the moonlight as it was, so it wasn’t too dark, so there was no problem.
“Found!”
However, even though it was a coral island, it was not a place without sand. At first glance, you can’t see willows, but if you look inside, you’ll find them in a similar place. I was worried about the monsters, but the camouflage cream hadn’t washed off yet, and the monsters disguised as willows only attacked when they were sleeping, so I wasn’t worried. He even brought his sword just in case, so if it was just such a monster, it was easy enough to run away.
The water wrapped around my ankles was cold to the touch, but I could bear this much. It was the time when he was walking through the reed forest looking for willows, grabbing them, breaking them, and inserting them into one arm.
“Huh, who’s going to break into the sleeping place?”
As he was advancing through the reed forest, someone suddenly intervened in front of him. Even because the owner of the voice belonged to a beautiful woman, Usher had no choice but to stop in surprise.
“Sah, man?”
The woman who stood in front of him was a woman who seemed taller than he and a head shorter than her. I couldn’t see her closely because sometimes her dark clouds obscured her moonlight, but her person was clear. She tilts her head with her half-open eyes as if she just woke up from her slumber. I was able to notice it because her red eyes were shining in the faint moonlight, even though it was covered by clouds.
“Person?”
Then, at the moment when he was a little relieved by the way he checked to see if the person was right, Usher felt a sense of incongruity. Why in the world are people and women sleeping peacefully in a place like this? In particular, there must be a lot of monsters living here. As soon as I realized that fact, goose bumps ran down Osso’s spine. Whether Usher did it or not, she rubbed her eyes and seemed to shake off her slumber, then she began to look at her Usher with interest.
“Wow, I’ve never seen a little human like you here!”
“Ugh.”
Even though that feeling disappeared as her words stabbed him in the heart.
“Hey hey. Where did you come from? How did you get here?”
“That, that’s in Parz.”
Unable to speak of Lantua, she accidentally put her parz in her mouth, making her eyes sparkle even more. Usher couldn’t take his eyes off her, her red eyes filled with intense curiosity.
“Really?! I heard there are a lot of humans there, but what kind of place is it?”
“What kind of place is it? It’s just a city.”
“Eh, other than that, what do you eat or how do you live?”
The more she asked, the more the sense of difference grew, but she was busy pouring out questions like this and that.
“I just build buildings and eat bread, fruit, and fish.”
Only the appearance and environment of the buildings were slightly different, but Parz would be no different from the ubiquitous city.
“Really? Don’t they eat each other?”
“What?”
At that question, the terrifying feeling that had slowly swelled her body until now finally took over her whole body. Doesn’t she say that she doesn’t kill and eat people of her own kind, as if they were saying that? And that was the moment. The shadows of the clouds that had covered each other until now disappeared and the moonlight shone brightly. The first thing that caught my eye was the red eyes and the pink hair that was subtly tinged with moonlight. Similar to Helena, but lighter pink hair was flowing down her body, so I couldn’t stop my gaze from following her downward.
Because of this, Usher gasped. She was now wearing a very giddy outfit that barely covered her breasts. If it was just that, I wouldn’t have been so surprised. It was not enough that her skin was so white that it was hard to see that it was alive, and the further down her lower body was, the more it was covered with scales that shimmered pink like her hair. And Usher knew what that look meant.
“Mermaid…”
It was because she was similar to the Pohati I saw in a cave the other day.
“Huh? Why? Seeing a mermaid for the first time?”
She tilted her head the other way, as if she knew Usher’s desire to scream at her, and flicked her thin, fin-like ears, which she had never seen before. She wasn’t short of her stature. With only her upper body erect, she only seemed smaller than he was. It was the moment when she took a step back from Usher at the thought that he had to run away even now.
“Huh? Wait.”
At her questionable words, his body froze in vain. He thought he had to run away, but for some reason his stiffened body couldn’t move properly. Her eyes were looking down at him. It was only then that Usher noticed belatedly that his belongings stood up high enough to be seen even over the wide skirt of the dress. This nasty thing is that even in this situation, I was excited to see a woman’s body. Even though she was dressed as if she were naked, she was obsessed with things that didn’t follow her will.
Even so, her frozen body didn’t move, so she couldn’t do anything until she approached.
“Huh?”
She came right in front of him, looked with interest at the object that had been revealed on her dress, and put her nose over it. The wind from her nose, sniffing her, could be felt through her fabric.
“…I thought you were a girl. It was a boy?”
She immediately grabbed his legs exposed under the dress. She fell behind her and the cold water hit his back, soaking his clothes and bandages, but Usher didn’t care. Because she was pushing her head under her dress as she caught his legs apart. Usher tried to close his legs, but he was blocked by her force.
“He’s wrapped up very tightly.”
The fact that her voice could be heard from between his legs, through the dress, was so shameful. But that was only for a moment. His underpants began to come down as he felt the wind on his stomach. She thought she was biting off his underwear. Yes, her hands were holding his legs. Then the air hit his things, and at the same time something wet, soft and warm licked them up.
“Oops!”
“Chuuuuu.”
Soon, with a pecking sound, his things were swallowed in a warm place. Then, as if playing with it inside, the soft thing wriggled and tickled the bottom, then squeezed through the crack at the end and poked and tasted it in every nook and cranny.
“Zut, chuup! Tuck!”
He thought he had to endure it and get out of it, but his body, which was still hardened, did not allow meager resistance, and he poured out tears inside him.
“Eww, ha ha.”
“Uung, Hureup, Chumb, Paha! The taste is worse than I thought.”
She swallowed what was in her mouth and smiled down at him.
“Hee hee, it’s a bit like that here. Let’s go to my house.”
She grabbed him and hugged him and started to swim somewhere. The feeling of the deeper, colder water enveloping him made Usher terrified.
“Ugh! Let go of this!”
“Don’t worry. We know humans can’t breathe underwater.”
I wanted to say it wasn’t a problem, but she was already swimming fast hugging him. She ran around the island and, finding Krikaliev and her horse, who were making a fire on land, called out:
“Mister!!! Help… Oops!”
“Eh, it’s noisy.”
Usher’s voice was blocked by her hand, but fortunately she heard it and was able to confirm that Krikaliev and the horse looked up to see him.
“Huh? When did you become such a good swimmer?”
At the last sight of Krikaliev’s back of the head being struck by the horse’s hoof, Usher lost her blackness.
