Alex smiled and waited so that Leo could look his fill.
In the 'future' too, knights and soldiers had come to the village after he died.
'But they never found the wolf and simply went back.'
This time as well they would return empty-handed. The wolf had died to Two Hundred's magic.
Still, perhaps thanks to the knights and soldiers coming, there had been no wolf attacks afterward, so it seemed he need not worry about the village.
'I was just unlucky.'
Going up the mountain on that day of all days.
Alex smiled bitterly.
Once the knight and soldiers had passed, Alex drove the cart back onto the road.
"Uncle! Knights really are so cool! Their armor looks really hard and it's all shiny! And the cloak is cool too!"
Sitting beside Alex, Leo chattered excitedly. He must be worked up at seeing in person a knight he had only ever seen in storybooks.
Alex smiled and listened to Leo's talk.
Then Leo spotted unfamiliar people walking along the road. Leo's sky-blue eyes went round.
"There are people, Uncle!"
"They're people from other villages. The lord's castle is just a little farther on."
"Is everyone going to the lord's castle?"
"That's right."
"Why?"
"To sell what they have or to buy things at the market. Or they might be going to look for work."
"Are they going to buy snacks too?"
When Leo's eyes shone brightly, Alex smiled and nodded.
"I'm sure some of them are buying snacks."
"Whoaa!"
Leo, who at only six had never been to the lord's castle, looked all around with an excited face.
[This seems like the right road, doesn't it?]
[The knight and soldiers came from that way, and people are heading that way too.]
Quite so.
Alex agreed with Two Hundred. And yet something nagged at him.
Unable to tell what it was, Alex thought for a moment and then let out an "Ah."
'In the future we went a different way.'
Ten years later.
In the 'future,' when demonkind were invading the continent, refugee settlements had sprung up here and there because of the flood of refugees, and roads had disappeared or been newly made.
'And there was a dungeon in front of the lord's castle's south gate.'
He did not know exactly when it appeared.
Because a dungeon formed at the south gate, the Kaldis lord had had to close the south gate and build a new gate to the southwest.
So it was no wonder the road felt unfamiliar now.
'We went that way.'
Alex turned his head to the left and looked toward the road he had walked with the 'sixteen-year-old Leo' in the 'future,' the road that had not yet been made.
With a gaze both wistful and bitter.
Just then.
Six-year-old Leo asked in an excited voice,
"Uncle, there are people with swords over there! They must be mercenaries!"
Alex quickly smiled and answered.
"That's right. Those are merchant company wagons, and the mercenaries protect them so no one steals from them on the way."
It was a future that had already vanished.
Now was the time to make the present Leo happy.
"I see!"
[Aren't there any mages? I want to see otherworld magic!]
Listening to the thoroughly excited Leo and Two Hundred, Alex drove the cart.
On the main road and the small roads leading to the lord's castle, the people, carriages, and carts steadily increased.
And at last.
The south gate of Kaldis lord's castle came into view.
"Whoaaa!"
[Ooooh!! An otherworld lord's castle!!]
Sturdy-looking stone walls and a great wooden gate blocked the way ahead, and on the two watchtowers above them, flags embroidered with the lord's emblem swayed in the wind.
"Wow! It's so tall!"
The closer they came to the stone wall surrounding the lord's castle, the further Leo's neck tipped back, as though it might break.
At that Alex ended up laughing.
He looked forward to how astonished Leo would be when he saw the kingdom's capital and the great cities they would go to in the future.
"Uncle, can we go up there?"
[Oooh! Let's go up!]
At Leo and Two Hundred asking with shining eyes, Alex smiled bitterly and answered.
"Unfortunately, that's an important place only soldiers can go, so we can't."
"I see...."
"Instead, when we get to a bigger city, your uncle will take you somewhere even higher, Leo."
"Really?!"
Leo, who had been disappointed, brightened at Alex's words.
"Really."
"Wow! Uncle's the best!"
Stroking the delighted Leo's head, Alex explained about the lord's castle.
"This is the Kaldis domain. It's ruled by Viscount... Viscount Kaldis."
Alex the ghost had originally dropped the honorific and gone about calling them "that Duke bastard, that Count bastard," but now that he had returned to the past he could not do that.
'There's a crime of insulting a noble.'
On top of that,
"Viscount!"
There was Leo too.
If he spoke without thinking, Leo might pick it up.
It seemed he would have to be careful how he spoke from now on.
[Oh, a viscount.]
As for Two Hundred, only Alex could hear him, so it hardly mattered.
"In the south, where our village is, people farm, but in the north of the domain there's a dungeon, so mercenaries come and go often."
"A dungeon! I know that! It's where monsters come out, right, Uncle?"
[A dungeon?! Did you say a dungeon?!]
[There are dungeons here too?!]
"Yes. That's right. That's why there are so many mercenaries. To defeat the monsters."
"My mother and father are mercenaries too!"
At Leo saying it so proudly, Alex smiled faintly.
[Wow, so the otherworld has dungeons too. Are they similar to the dungeons in our world?]
[Let's go to one sometime, Alex! It'd be perfect for practicing magic and making money!]
Deciding to answer Two Hundred later, Alex got in line behind the people entering the lord's castle.
Excited by all the new people, Leo bounced on his seat and looked all around.
"Next!"
In front of the south gate, soldiers holding spears were managing the people coming and going.
"Uncle, what are the soldiers doing?"
"They're checking whether there are any bad people."
"I see!"
[The soldiers seem well managed too.]
After waiting a little while, it was Alex and Leo's turn.
"Next!"
Leo, who had never seen a soldier this close before, looked up at him with sparkling eyes. The iron helmet, the armor, the spear in his hand — all of it looked so splendid.
"Ahem!"
The rough-faced soldier was a little flustered by the small child who stared straight at him without crying, but he soon cleared his throat and inspected the cart.
Given the cart and the child, he seemed to have taken them for traveling merchants.
"You have no cargo?"
"No. We've come from Bello Village in the south. I mean to become a mercenary."
"A mercenary?"
The soldier's eyes narrowed slightly.
There were people now and then who ran off from their villages to become mercenaries as soon as they came of age (and before it, too, of course).
But there was almost no one who tried to become a mercenary while bringing along a child this young.
The soldier, who had a daughter about Leo's age, looked back and forth between Leo and Alex with a somewhat worried expression. They seemed like a family with some story behind them.
"Do you know where the mercenary guild is?"
It was not his business, but the soldier, a little concerned, asked.
"Yes. I know."
"And an inn to stay at?"
"That, not yet...."
He had been to the lord's castle before, following adults who were paying taxes or going to market, but they had gone straight back to the village rather than staying at an inn. So he knew of no such place.
'There is one, though.'
The inn the 'Hero Leo' had stayed at in the 'future.'
But he could not remember exactly where it was. It had been the first day of the journey, so both Leo and Alex had been in a fluster.
"If you go to the east street, there's an inn called the Lake House."
The soldier said.
"It's clean, so it's suitable with a child. If you say Kane sent you, you should be able to stay a little cheaper."
Alex blinked for a moment at the kindness of Kane the soldier, then smiled.
"Thank you."
"For the child's sake, it's better not to take on jobs that are too dangerous."
"Yes. I'll do that."
Leo rolled his eyes toward Alex and the soldier, Kane, watching them. Somehow he sensed the air of a village uncle about this unfamiliar soldier.
He was not quite sure what it was about, but since it seemed the man had helped them, Leo smiled widely and called out.
"Thank you!"
At that charming greeting, Kane, the soldiers around him, Alex, and Two Hundred all burst out laughing.
Having been recommended an inn, Alex bowed his head and thought for a moment. Would the place Kane the soldier had recommended really be all right?
'If it's a bad place, we can just leave again.'
Alex drove the cart toward the east street.
"Whoaaa!"
Perhaps because the sun had not yet set, the town inside the lord's castle was bustling. Horses and carriages, rare sights in the village, were going about here and there, and there were many people.
"One, twoo! Wow! Uncle, over there! It's a two-story house!"
And unlike the village houses, which were built with a single story, there were two-story houses here and there.
"Just a moment, Leo. We have to go to the inn first."
"Yeah! Understood!"
At Alex's words Leo sat obediently on the driver's seat, but his head did not stop moving quickly this way and that. He did not even seem to notice that his little mouth had fallen open.
Smiling faintly at that, Alex looked around as well while driving the cart. It felt both familiar and unfamiliar.
[Oooh! Fantasy! Medieval!!]
Two Hundred, watching through Alex's field of vision, seemed excited by the new scenery of an otherworld too.
"Leo, do you know what kind of place an inn is?"
At Alex's question, Leo nodded quickly.
"I know! It's in storybooks. It's where the Hero sleeps. And he eats with his friends too."
[And then somebody picks a fight and a brawl breaks out!]
That had happened now and then in the 'future' as well.
Ruin was right in front of them, but the bad sorts went on doing bad things all the same.
'No — it was more likely because ruin was right in front of them.'
Because it was a world where order and rules no longer properly held.
Which was why good people had shone all the brighter.
'...Though most of them died in the end.'
Smiling bitterly inside, Alex went on.
"We'll be sleeping at an inn tonight too."
"Wow! Then is the Hero there too, Uncle?"
He is.
The Hero of the future. Right here.
Looking at Leo with a smile, Alex said,
"Wouldn't the Hero be sleeping at a different inn?"
At that Leo was disappointed, but he recovered quickly and looked excitedly all around the town.
"The Lake House. There it is."
Just as Kane the soldier had said, the inn — the Lake House — looked tidy even from outside, and it had quite a few guests.
An employee who looked about fifteen, cleaning outside, spotted Alex and the cart approaching the inn and came running over.
"Welcome! This is the Lake House! Our inn has a back yard where a cart can go and a stable where a horse can rest comfortably!"
"We came on Soldier Kane's recommendation."
"Ah! Soldier Kane!"
The employee, Matthew, brightened even further.
"This way, please!"
Following Matthew, Alex left the horse and cart in the inn's back yard, took Leo's hand, and went inside.
The inn was clean as Kane had said, and though there were mercenaries, it was not particularly loud.
"Food's up!"
He suspected it was all thanks to this fierce-looking owner. And somehow he felt he had seen him somewhere.
"Sir! They came on Soldier Kane's recommendation!"
"That fellow did?"
"There's a child too!"
At that, the inn's owner, Hallon, who had been frowning, quickly relaxed his expression and pulled something wrapped from his pocket. It was a sweet biscuit.
Seeing it, Leo looked at Alex. When Alex smiled and nodded, Leo smiled widely and accepted the biscuit.
"Thank you!"
Matthew was astonished.
"A child who doesn't cry at the sight of the master! It's the first time besides his granddaughter!"
"Why you!"
At the sight of Hallon lightly smacking Matthew on the back, a familiar sight apparently, the guests burst out laughing.
[Seems like a decent place.]
Alex smiled and agreed with Two Hundred.
"One room will do? How long will you be staying?"
"Five days should be enough."
Buying the things they needed for the journey, registering at the mercenary guild, and making a trip to the northern dungeon would take about that long.
"Then just pay this much."
At a price cheaper than in the 'future,' and cheaper than what his sister and brother-in-law had told him about, he could tell that Soldier Kane had recommended a good inn.
That thought grew stronger still once he saw the room.
"It's the second floor! Uncle!"
Leo's steps up the stairs were light. It was his first time staying in a two-story house.
"It's not very large, but there's a window, and the bedding has been washed clean, so it should be comfortable!"
[So this is what the inside of an inn looks like.]
Just as the employee said, the room was clean and good. Leo looked around curiously.
"Uncle! This place is really nice!"
"So it is."
Alex examined the room thoroughly too. He even knocked on the walls here and there at times.
[What, are you looking for a hidden room?]
He had been meaning to check for something along those lines.
'No traps.'
There had been people who attacked the 'Hero's party' now and then, so his body had moved unconsciously.
"Whoaa!"
Six-year-old Leo looked out through the wide-open window. Being on the second floor, he could see the town quite well.
The sun had not yet set, so there were many people going about here and there.
"We have time before dinner. Shall we go out and look around, Leo?"
"Good! I want to go!"
[Sounds good!]
When Alex came down with the thoroughly excited Leo, Hallon asked kindly,
"Where are you off to?"
Though of course his fierce face was frightening.
"I thought I'd go to the market and the smithy."
"Is that so? For a smithy, Roiman's in the north is the best."
"Thank you for telling me."
When Alex gave his thanks, Leo raised his voice and said it too.
"Thank you!"
At that adorable sight, laughter broke out here and there.