“No way. There’s no way there’s nothing.”
Reinhild widened his eyes and looked around.
There wasn’t even a trace that anything had ever been in the basement.
Then had it been empty from the start?
That makes no sense.
As the human Rebecca said, there had definitely been something here.
Otherwise they wouldn’t have talked about a curse and even put a seal here.
But no matter how he searched, there was no sign of a secret passage.
Thinking it might be hidden by magic, he even spent his precious mana checking, but there was no such trace at all.
Whatever had been in the basement had vanished cleanly.
In other words, someone had picked up whatever was here, carried it out of the basement, passed through the kitchen, opened the front door, and took it out of the house.
And even lifted the seal.
Only one person could have done that.
“Xion moved it.”
There was no one else but Xion who could.
No one besides Xion and Reinhild had come into the house.
Even when humans had come including that brazen human, they had only talked at the entryway. Not once since Reinhild collapsed had an outsider set foot inside.
‘When did he go down to the basement?’
If Xion had taken something out of the basement and carried it out, there’s no way Reinhild wouldn’t have noticed.
There had been times when Xion left Reinhild alone at home, but never the other way around.
No matter how he thought about it, there had been no chance for Xion to empty the basement without Reinhild noticing… or rather, there wasn’t none.
‘When I was asleep?’
If it was then, it was entirely possible.
Come to think of it, there were more than a few suspicious points about that too.
Whenever he tried to stay awake to observe Xion, he would strangely, suddenly drift off to sleep.
He’d been perfectly clear-headed, but then at some moment drowsiness would surge over him. On those days he’d sleep especially deeply.
At first he thought it was nice to be able to sleep well and let it pass. But looking back now, after grasping the situation, that wasn’t it.
It always happened right after Xion lay down beside him.
Only then did Reinhild realize.
‘Xion was putting me to sleep!’
He hadn’t known.
It had never even crossed his mind.
Xion had been artificially making Reinhild fall asleep.
He couldn’t tell whether he had been putting him to sleep like this every night, or only shrewdly doing so when Reinhild happened to be awake.
But when he slept like that, he woke up feeling more refreshed, so he hadn’t particularly minded.
His body’s mana would settle more, which was actually good.
‘So Xion wasn’t making me sleep by a bad method.’
He may have put Reinhild to sleep on the hero’s orders, but perhaps he actually helped him out of a desire for him to sleep comfortably.
‘As expected, Xion is on my side rather than the hero’s.’
This made it even more certain that Xion wanted to take his side.
All he had to do was create an opening and pull him out of the hero’s clutches.
‘But how did he put me to sleep?’
Did he use magic?
But he couldn’t sense any trace of magic anywhere.
Even if he had lost his power, he wasn’t so foolish that he wouldn’t notice someone using magic on him.
Even without power, a Demon King is still a Demon King.
If he couldn’t even tell that much, even if the other party was Xion, he ought to quit being a Demon King and take up farming.
‘Did he, by any chance, use mana to put me to sleep?’
He’d heard that if you spread the mana pooled in the heart throughout the body at an extremely fast rate, the sudden mana stabilization would make the body feel fatigued and fall asleep quickly.
He’d never tried it himself, so he didn’t know how effective it was.
After all, when Reinhild put someone to sleep, it wasn’t temporary but for life, so he had never needed to use such a cumbersome method.
‘They say this method is quite good for the body, though.’
In truth, this was a training method developed for someone with delicate mana control to help someone with little mana; it wasn’t made for the purpose of putting someone to sleep.
One simply fell into a deep sleep in the process of moving mana; there were no side effects and no strain on the body.
He’d even read a paper stating that by repeating this training, one could absorb the mana spread throughout the body with great efficiency.
In short, Xion had been helping Reinhild fall asleep comfortably while at the same time aiding his mana recovery.
He was both the very one who had hindered his mana recovery and the one helping it. It was a little funny, but it was probably the best way to help Reinhild while obeying the hero’s orders.
Xion had been quietly helping Reinhild, within the bounds of not getting caught by the hero.
Continually.
Reinhild couldn’t help feeling proud and pleased.
‘I didn’t know Xion had this level of ability.’
Even if he didn’t know the phenomenon in detail, he knew it required incredibly fine mana control.
Spreading, in an instant, the mana pooled in someone else’s heart—not even one’s own—was an enormous feat.
It was difficult even for an Archmage or a Grand Sword Master.
‘Just what is he?’
He began to think that perhaps Xion wasn’t simply a rich farmer pretending to be poor.
Right. Rather than finding an out-of-the-ordinary farmer in a rural village and winning him over, it would be far easier to find an extraordinary farmer and plant him in a rural village.
‘Could it be he’s not even a farmer?’
Of all things, Reinhild was most shocked by the possibility that Xion might not be a farmer.
Working the fields suited him so well, and yet he might not be a man who farmed.
How did that make any sense?
‘We really have to be careful with this hero.’
The mad human of the lake with tremendous holy power and Xion on top of that. The thought that enemies with such formidable strength were waiting sent a chill through him.
He had to lure Xion over to his side as soon as possible. If he balanced things that way, the hero’s party might be a little less frightening.
Reinhild clenched both fists tight.
He wanted to free Xion from the hero’s clutches as soon as possible.
‘To do that, I have to find what was in the basement.’
The item Xion moved while Reinhild was asleep.
Where on earth could it be?
Xion fell asleep later than Reinhild and woke up earlier. But the difference was only an hour or two.
The range he could have moved within in that short time wasn’t very large.
At the very least, he wouldn’t have taken it to some distant city a day’s ride away.
That meant there was a high chance it was still hidden in this village.
He had to find it somehow.
Before that damn hero hid it.
“At times like this, I should make use of other humans’ help.”
Ah. A Demon King receiving humans’ help… the ring of it didn’t feel right.
He would amend it to “extracting information from humans.”
Mm. Much more satisfying.
‘Humans talk a lot. Toss them a rough topic and it’s easy to siphon off the information you want. Truly convenient.’
Reinhild bundled up and left the house.
Xion told him not to get sick, so he mustn’t catch a cold.
And if someone asked why he took to searching for Xion on his own while heeding the “don’t get sick,” he had something to say.
‘Xion told me not to wait, but he didn’t say not to come after him.’
If he said he came because he wanted to see him, Xion wouldn’t be able to say anything.
It wasn’t exactly a lie, either.
Thinking about him constantly made him truly want to see him.
“Ah, if I leave it like this, they’ll find out I went into the basement.”
Perhaps he had finally grown wary of the hero’s meticulousness.
For the first time since he’d gone around causing all sorts of incidents, Reinhild thought he ought to clean up after himself.
“What should I do first?”
He had never tidied up before, so he had no sense for it.
Reinhild decided to go back over what he had done, step by step, and put things in reverse order.
“I just need to close the basement door and straighten the carpet.”
That much would keep anyone from knowing the basement door had been opened.
Reinhild boldly shut the basement door.
As soon as he closed it, the strawberry jam he’d splattered in the shape of a magic circle caught his eye.
It had been fine when he drew it, but he hadn’t thought about having to clean it up.
After a moment’s thought, Reinhild fetched the cloth Xion used for cleaning and scrubbed the floor.
Which only ended up smearing the strawberry jam over the basement door as if he were spreading it on bread.
“What is wrong with this?”
The cloth stuck to the sticky floor, and it became hard even to rub, let alone clean. An inevitable result of smearing at strawberry jam with a dry cloth.
But Reinhild didn’t know that obvious fact.
How often would a Demon King get his hands wet in daily life, aside from when he washed?
“Xion did it just fine…”
Was it because he wasn’t using enough strength? Reinhild put all his strength into scrubbing with the cloth.
Only his wrists hurt.
This didn’t seem to be the method.
After some thought, Reinhild just covered it with the carpet. He threw the soiled cloth in the trash.
“No one will know unless they lift the carpet.”
The basement had already been emptied for some time.
Xion wouldn’t bother to lift the carpet either.
“Next is… ah, the mana stones!”
It would be terrible if Xion found out he had used mana stones. The hero mustn’t hear that there had been any need to use mana.
Reinhild returned the sack of mana stones to its place and shut the storage door.
It was far easier than wiping up the strawberry jam.
‘Just in case, I should take one with me.’
Reinhild slipped one large mana stone into his pocket.
Perfect.
This was the perfect crime.
There was no way Xion would find out.
Having finished all the cleanup, Reinhild strode out of the house carrying the tremendous mission of stealing Xion away from the hero.
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