Proofreader: Xemul

Following Lapis, Loren went to a flower store.

He had thought that they were going to some kind of dubious alchemy-related store or some back-street shop to buy prohibited items that if traded openly would make them criminals. So, when Lapis stepped into the store on the main street, rather than feeling a sense of anticlimax, he was suspecting that there was some kind of mistake.

“Hello… Is there anyone in?”

Lapis called out into the store very amiably, but there was no sign of the shopkeeper coming out.

Loren, wondering if it was as he thought, stopped Lapis and slowly entered the store. The store seemed to be in a commercial-residential building, and inside he found a young woman standing helplessly at the door separating the store from the residential part of the building.

“Hey, are you all right?”

Lorén approached the woman, who did not seem to be alright in any way, with caution, but she did not open her mouth, although she did respond to his voice by directing her stare towards him. Thinking that this was not a good sign, Loren looked at Lapis to see what was going on, but Lapis was not concerned at all. She had begun to look around at the flowers in the store.

After alternately looking at Lapis, who was rummaging through the flowers, and the shopkeeper, who may or may not be watching her, Loren let out a single breath and decided to stop thinking about the shopkeeper for now. He turned his attention to what Lapis was doing instead.

Lapis was fumbling with flowers, of which neither the types nor the names Loren were familiar with. However, the fact that they were easily found on the shelves of a flower store suggested that they were not incredibly rare or expensive.

“You are looking for flowers, right?”

Loren, wondering if she was looking for something that looked like a flower at first glance but actually something else entirely to someone with knowledge, asked for confirmation.

Lapis replied with a puzzled look on her face.

“Do they look like anything other than flowers?”

From Lapis’ reaction, Loren judged that she was really just looking for some flower. But if that was the case, then he didn’t understand what Lapis was trying to do by buying flowers.

“I kind of understand what you mean, Loren, but I really came here to buy flowers.”

“Are you trying to mask the smell with that of flowers?”

If that was the case, Loren didn’t think it was a very good move. It was true that the scent of flowers was generally considered to be a nice fragrance, but he couldn’t help but think that it was a rather weak counter to that odor.

“I’m not trying to mask it. I’m just trying to do some tricks.”

Lapis looked at the shopkeeper, who hadn’t moved from the back of the store, and suddenly spread her arms.

“Excuse me, can I have all the flowers here?”

The shopkeeper did not respond.

Normally, Loren would have thought that the shopkeeper might have been so surprised that she could no longer speak, but as far as he could tell, he doubted that Lapis’ words had even reached her ears.

Lapis stared at the shopkeeper for a moment, and when she saw that the shopkeeper did not take any action, she walked up to her and slipped a shiny golden coin into her dress pocket.

“I paid for them. Please keep the change.”

The shopkeeper still did not show any reaction when Lapis said this.

Wondering if perhaps the woman was dead, Loren inwardly asked Shayna to look at the shopkeeper with the King of Death’s vision, but Shayna confirmed that the reaction was that of a living person, and there was nothing strange.

“So, Loren. The flowers in this store. Please collect them all.”

“How am I supposed to carry all that stuff?”

The store itself was not that big, but even so, there were quite a lot of flowers in the store, ranging from potted plants to cut flowers. Some of them were even wilting, and Loren wondered if a wagon would be enough to transport them all.

“Cut them down to the roots and put them all together. The roots and pots are not needed, so you can leave them behind.”

The shopkeeper still did not move. Lapis looked around and found two pruning shears nearby, both of which she picked up and carelessly tossed one to Loren. He safely caught it and, after seeing Lapis immediately beginning to cut the potted flowers, he himself also began to cut the stems of the flowers, starting with the nearby potted plants.

Cutting flowers of an entire store was a time-consuming task, but the shopkeeper did not say a word during the entire process, and rather than watching them, her eyes kept wandering off to somewhere else. There were also no interruptions from outside other than the occasional resident wandering past or some curious peeks into the store by someone from out of town.

They laid out the cut flowers and stacked them into a bunch. As they were looking around for something to hold them together, Nig, who was clinging to Loren’s shoulder, spat out a thread and tied them up. Not only that, the spider even allowed some slackness to the winding threads so that it was easy to carry by hands.

“Nig is really useful.”

Loren lifted the bunch of flowers that Nig had bundled up with one hand, and Lapis said with admiration as she watched Nig returning to his shoulder.

“I can’t say enough about its cleverness, not to mention its abilities.”

“I know it’s smart, but why is it clinging to my shoulder?”

Loren had previously heard that spiders in Nig’s species had a habit of clinging to stronger individuals and cohabit with them. However, Loren believed that he should be considered the weakest of the party, to which Loren currently belonged. The spider should cling to Lapis, a demon or Gula, an Evil God. He did not understand why it was living on his own shoulders.

“There are two possibilities. The first one is that you are actually the strongest in our party, Loren.”

“That can’t be true.”

“The second one is that it is unlikely for it to survive clinging to me or Gula.”

The second reason given by Lapis was somewhat convincing to Loren. If you thought about it, Nig had clung to Loren’s shoulder when they passed through a dragon’s nest. If the spider simply had a habit of clinging to stronger things, it would be strange for it to not cling to the dragon. The reason it did not do so was because it knew that if he tried to cling to the dragon, it would probably be recognized as an obstacle and killed in no time. It was possible that Nig thought that beings such as Lapis and Gula were too powerful for it, and that Loren was just right.

“If it’s really because of the latter reason, then Nig is quite incredible.”

“It somehow understands not only what you’re capable of, but also how dangerous you are.”

From the mercenary’s point of view, it was an ability to drool over.

Loren still didn’t quite understand what adventurers were about, but as a mercenary, it was natural to run away from an opponent you couldn’t beat. With the skill to see through both an opponent’s strength and danger level that Nig may possess, he could avoid impossible battles.

“I’ll know that if I can communicate with Nig, but I’m not sure if I can hold a conversation with a spider.”

“I don’t think I can either.”

On Loren’s shoulder, Nig, who may have been listening to the conversation, patted him by raising and lowering its leg. No one but Nig itself knew whether it did that because it was disappointed about being unable to establish a conversation with Loren and the others, or for some other reasons that had nothing to do with the current conversation.

“Be that as it may, what are you going to do with these?”

Loren asked Lapis, lightly lifting the bunch of flowers he was holding. Since it was a bundle of flowers, it might have been appropriate to call it a bouquet, but it was so large and so carelessly bundled that it would have been a little daring to use that word.

“We will deal with them when we reunite with Gula and Ivy.”

Saying this, Lapis walked out of the flower store. Loren followed her, but it was hard to believe that the flowers he was carrying would be enough to counteract the strong odor.

“I’m not sure that the flowers I’m carrying are going to be enough to counteract that smell.”

“I told you that it was impossible to have a perfect solution, didn’t I?”

Loren was well aware of the fact that it was impossible to completely restore the sewage system to a state where people can pass through it without having problems, as the smell has been permeating the system for years. However, he also knew that it would be impossible to explore that area without doing something about it. The smell was at a level that if they forced themselves to go on, it would put everyone out of action before they could encounter or find anything.

“I’ve been close enough to the area to know that even some kind of temporary deception is difficult to achieve.”

“What I’m asking is, what are you going to do about it?”

“We’re talking about taking what’s already there and making use of it.”

The tone of Lapis’ voice and expression suggested that she was confident about what she had just said, but on the receiving end, Loren had no idea what she was planning to do.

“In other words, we’re dealing with it not by erasing it, but by mixing and making it into something else. You’ll know what it’s going to look like when we use it.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“In cases like this, humans will try to eliminate the problem by force, won’t they? In fact, humans have the tendency to use force to solve problems more than demons. Just leave it to me and wait for the result.”

Loren thought that he probably wouldn’t understand how a whole store’s worth of flowers would help, even if he heard the explanation. However, judging from Lapis’ confident attitude, he believed that it would probably be alright, so he just did what was necessary for now and kept a firm hold on the bunch of flowers he was carrying.