Proofreader: Xemul
As Loren and his group got into the wagon Yuri had prepared for them at the north gate of the city for their travel to the northern cave, they were joined by Luxuria, who was in an unusually good mood.
The guy volunteered to be the driver, and thus he sat on the driver bench. Behind him were Loren, Lapis, and Gula, sitting among the luggage on the wagon.
“What’s up with the long faces, you guys?”
Luxuria, dressed in his usual tight clothes, looked back over his shoulder and called out to Loren and the others at the back, but no one answered him.
To tell the truth, everyone except Luxuria himself wanted to leave Luxuria in town, but if they left town without letting him know at all, they had no idea what would happen later. Gula decided to pay him a visit, during which he quickly insisted that he had fully recovered, and when he heard that the group was leaving the city, he naturally offered to go with them.
There was no way for them to refuse him.
One reason was that they did not know what would happen if they refused, but the more important reason was, they could not bear the silent pressure from the personnel of the clinic. Loren wondered what in the world Luxuria had done to make the whole staff reject him to such an extent, but he could not ask either the practitioners or Luxuria himself about it.
“Rather than that, I wonder why you’re in such a good mood.”
“Everyone’s going out together, you know. Of course, it’s fun.”
Hearing the word ‘everyone’, Loren looked around, but there were only a few travelers on the street where the wagon was running, and none of Luxuria’s cronies that he was worried about were in sight. Luxuria alone was already a heavy enough burden for Loren, and if the cronies that the guy had directly educated or trained were to follow him, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Loren would lose his peace of mind.
“Going out means camping at night. And everyone will stay in the same tent together!”
According to Yuri, there were originally several villages in the northern area where they were headed, but due to their rather small size as well as the current large-scale war, they had all been destroyed or evacuated, and no lodging of any kind could be expected.
Near Loren, who was feeling heavy at the thought of having to deal with the menace called Luxuria in addition to camping outside, Gula bared her teeth and threatened the other Evil God.
“Don’t joke about it. You’ll be out by yourself, wrapped up in a bamboo mat.”
“Why?! That’s discrimination! Abuse!”
On the driver bench, Luxuria flailed his arms and legs like a spoiled child, but strangely enough, the wagon was moving straight ahead on the street without shifting course.
Loren thought that it would be quite a challenge for the horses to keep going straight with the reins being pulled that much to the left and right, but they kept going in an unnaturally straight line even though their heads were shaking from side to side.
Looking around to see if anyone was doing something, Loren let out a small sigh when he saw none of his party members seemed surprised about the horses.
“Loren?”
“Nothing.”
Lapis noticed his sigh and asked, but Loren waved his hand at her in response, then reached out and inspected the luggage loaded into the wagon.
Yuri had prepared most of the things for them, but they had not heard much detail about what and how much had been prepared. Loren believed that the commander would be thorough, but there was always the possibility that something could go wrong, so he thought it would be a good idea to have some confirmation.
“Well, that’s the commander for you.”
Yuri had said that it would take about three days to reach the cave, their destination.
Loren asked if they had the time to make the round trip, which would take about six days, but Yuri assured him that he could at least buy them some time. The man had said that making progress would be a problem, but maintaining the status quo was something anyone could do. However, with the two armies facing each other, it could not be that easy to do.
Thinking that they had to find the thing that could counter the Evil God of Wrath and get back to Yuri as soon as possible, Loren suddenly stopped his inspection.
“What’s the matter, Loren? Did you find something unseemly in there?”
“For God’s sake, why would he put something unseemly here?”
While being taken aback by Lapis’ words, Loren pulled out the thing he had been touching from the luggage and examined it with a scrutinizing eye.
It was a thick coat.
The coat was quite large, probably prepared for Loren.
He wondered why, but after rummaging through the sacks some more, he found two other coats that were smaller than the one he had pulled out first.
“There are more than just coats.”
Loren searched the area where the coats had been, and found the same number of thick, well-made sleeping bags. As tents and other items appeared one after the other, he tilted his head in wonder.
The temperature here was certainly lower than Kapha, but it was not so low that they had to wear a coat over the clothes and equipment they currently had on. Depending on the time, the northern region may be covered in snow and ice. If they were here at such a time, they would need a lot of equipment, but as far as Loren knew, it wasn’t supposed to be that cold.
“Am I wrong? Or is it getting that cold??”
“What are you mumbling about, Loren? Oh, coats and sleeping bags? Yuri, you must be a very thorough person.”
As Loren fiddled with the things he had pulled out and muttering to himself, Lapis, who was sitting nearby, peeked in and, after seeing what he was holding in his hand, expressed such an impression.
“Do we need these things?”
Loren asked, picking up a sleeping bag, which was too thick to be used for ordinary camping.
It was not that it couldn’t be used, but Loren thought that if he were to wrap himself in the sleeping bag inside the tent Yuri had packed for them, he would have difficulty sleeping well due to overheating.
However, Lapis’ reply was different from what Loren had in mind.
“I think Yuri prepared it because he knew it would be necessary from now on.”
Loren had to agree.
“Does that mean the temperature is going to drop?”
“It’s hard to imagine a sudden drop in temperature, though.”
That was what Lapis said, but they would later learn that her words were wrong.
On the first night, nothing unusual happened, and the group kept watch in pairs, and the morning came without incident.
“Hey, I don’t understand why I’m paired up with Luxuria. With this line up, I can watch over the whole team by myself, right?
“Of course it’s so that Loren and I can team up, and so that Luxuria and Loren won’t be on duty at the same time, right?”
“Ah, right. There’s no choice then. I’ll team up with Luxuria.”
“You two? I don’t seem to have a sleeping bag.”
“You dress like you feel quite hot, so you won’t need a sleeping bag. Just sleep like that.”
“Aren’t you being too harsh to me?!”
The first night was uneventful, despite such conversations going on and on, but something unusual happened on the second night.
After kicking Luxuria down, who had feigned ignorance and tried to enter the same tent as Gula, Loren sat down next to Lapis, who was working on a bonfire and watching the situation, with a wry smile on his face.
Looking up at the sky like this, he could see the stars twinkling in the cloudless sky.
“Has it gotten a little colder?”
A sauce pan was placed over the fire, and the heat from the fire turned the water in the pan into hot water. Lapis took a scoop of the water and poured it into a cup, which she offered to Loren.
“It’s not plain water. There are tea leaves in it.”
Loren looked into the cup. There were indeed tea leaves swaying in the hot water, which had begun changing color. This was probably not the way it was supposed to be brewed, but if you were in the middle of a camping trip, this was a good way to avoid the hassle of straining and brewing tea leaves, so Loren sipped the tea.
“But we’re getting close to our destination, aren’t we? I guess we don’t need those after all?”
Loren pointed to the tent made of thick cloth that Yuri had prepared. Gula must be sleeping in there, and if she was also using the thick sleeping bag, she must be feeling quite hot.
The temperature was gradually dropping due to their trip north, so it was not so uncomfortable that it made them unable to sleep, but it was still stuffy enough to cause night sweats.
“Maybe it’s a misjudgment?”
Lapis tilted her head. In front of her, Luxuria was about to crawl into another tent.
Luxuria had not been provided with a sleeping bag, but the temperature was warm enough that he had no trouble sleeping in the tent without one. They would travel north for only one more day or so, and it seemed like they would not need coats at all.
Lapis had used the word ‘misjudgment’ to refer to both Yuri and herself, but it seemed that Loren understood only one of the two meanings.
“The commander gets old too.”
“Would he be angry if he heard that? Or would he get upset?”
Wondering how Yuri would react when he heard that Loren, of all people, was treating him like an old man, Lapis could not help but laugh out loud, but her laugh quickly turned strained.
Noticing Lapis’ expression stiffen as if she had seen something unbelievable, Loren looked up and squinted his eyes, just as Lapis was doing.
“What is it?”
At first, it seemed to Loren that there was nothing there, at least nothing that would make Lapis’ expression stiffened. But after a few moments of staring into blank space, he saw something small glinting in the light of the campfire.
Before Loren could figure out what it was, Lapis had fed a new piece of firewood to the fire, then jumped onto the back of the nearby wagon and began rummaging through their luggage.
“Lapis? What in the world are you in such a hurry for…”
“It’s ice!”
With these words, a thick coat was thrown at Loren. He immediately put it on, understanding that he should.
After seeing Loren put on his coat, Lapis also began to hurriedly put on hers.
“I don’t know why, but the temperature is dropping so rapidly that the moisture in the atmosphere is starting to turn into little ice cubes! If we’re unlucky, we could have a life-threatening cold wave coming!”
“Why all of a sudden…”
There was no sign or anything. Surprised by this sudden and unexpected change, Loren blurted out, but Lapis vigorously shook her head.
“I don’t know, but what is happening now is all that matters. We have to put off for now the investigation of the causes and the unnaturalness of the situation, and our first priority now is to take countermeasures.”
As fuel for the campfire, they had firewood, dry leaves, and a few branches, some of which had been amongst their luggage and some they had collected in the area before setting up camp. However, if a cold wave were to hit as Lapis predicted, the fuel they had might be inadequate to keep the campfires burning.