“You don’t get it, do you? These middle-class inns actually have better food and provide a more comfortable experience. Those upscale hotels just make you feel ill at ease.”
“Huh, is that right?” Beryl replied, recalling that the food in the inns Andal picked out hadn’t failed them so far. The fact that he could discern that just by inspecting the outside of the inn was an incredible feat.
“Whatever; let’s go in! I’m starving!” Chi said as he entered the inn first, prompting the two men to follow him.
“Chi, you’re a spirit, so you can’t be hungry,” Beryl quipped, but the spirit wasn’t listening.
Andal wasted no time and addressed the concierge. “We’re looking for a short stay. Any rooms open?”
The concierge didn’t reply. Upon looking at Beryl and the others, they froze with a look of utter shock on their face.
“Heeeey,” Andal said with a raised voice and a wry smile, attracting the stares of those who were in the dining hall on the first floor. Ignoring the stares, he waved his hand in front of the concierge’s face, snapping them back to their senses as they started to reply.
“Oh, we have openings! However...are you certain you’d like to stay here, sir? There are higher-class offerings nearby,” the concierge said to confirm, taking quick peeks at Beryl all the while. Just from their reaction, it was clear that the concierge had caught on to Beryl being a Beloved.
“Yeah, it’s fine. We’re staying here. That okay with you, Beryl?”
“If it’s okay with you, it’s fine with me,” Beryl agreed. He had traveled with Andal long enough to know that wherever he picked was fine, so he had no complaints.
“Very well, sir!” said the concierge in a delighted tone as they handed over the room key.
After safely securing an inn, Beryl and his party decided to grab a meal. Despite all eyes being on them, the meal they ate was fantastic.
After they had stayed for several nights, word of Beryl spread rapidly through the town, causing some people to go out of their way to find the inn and bring him tribute. He had no reason to refuse the offerings, so he accepted them, stocking up for his journey.
One day, as his breather in the town continued, he overheard something from the table next to him in the dining hall. Judging by their attire the speakers seemed to be merchants. They either had no mana or were incompatible with spirits, because they showed no signs of caring about the many spirits floating around Beryl’s head, likely meaning that they couldn’t see them.
However, they could see Chi, who had a physical body, so they were initially a tad surprised to see him sitting at the table with them, but aside from that, they conversed normally without really keeping their voices down.
“Hey, did you hear? They say a human suddenly showed up in the castle of the Nation of Furgal.”
“Ah, yeah. I did hear that. And I heard that there were multiple people, not just one. All of them had dark hair and dark eyes.”
“Are they all related somehow? Dark hair and dark eyes are already a rare color, but all of them with the same color?”
“Nah, apparently they’re not.”
Andal, who was also secretly listening in on the conversation, turned to Beryl, his face screwed into a grimace upon hearing the news. “The inside of a castle should have been reasonably well guarded, so for that many humans to just show up there... Are they transmigrators like you?”
“Not sure, but it’s certainly not uncommon to see people with dark eyes and dark hair in my world. Kohaku is a prime example,” Beryl replied as he turned to Chi, sitting in the chair next to him. “Chi, do you know anything?”
Chi had been standing in his chair, front paws on the table, and scarfing down his food like no tomorrow. Upon being asked, he stopped and tilted his head, puzzled.
“No clue. No use asking me,” he replied indifferently.
“Don’t spirits share information with each other?” Beryl asked.
“I don’t share information all the time. The little spirits stockpile all kinds of information and talk a lot, so it gets annoying. That’s why I usually make it so I can’t hear them.”
“Oh, really?”
Seeing as Beryl didn’t know how it felt to share memories and information with other spirits, he had no choice but to accept what he was told. However, he couldn’t deny that the spirits around him on a regular basis tended to get too chatty and noisy. If that was the case with just the few spirits that followed him around, the voices of all the spirits scattered across the world had to be noisier than he could ever imagine. Thinking of it like that, he couldn’t really blame Chi for shutting them all out.
Just as they were about to leave, they overheard more of the merchants’ conversation.
“And get this—I heard that there’s a Beloved among them.”
Beryl’s and Andal’s ears perked up. They looked at each other and listened quietly so as not to miss anything.
“Yeah, but that’s just a rumor, isn’t it?”
“Not sure. I can’t attest to the validity, but I heard the Nation of Furgal has been rushing to prepare for war.”
“The hell? That story took a pretty tense turn.”
“I can’t believe they would, but you think they’re gonna use the Beloved for war?”
“I don’t know about all that, but it might be good to stay away from Furgal. If that person does end up being a real Beloved, who knows what kind of disaster could occur.”
Perhaps it was because they had alcohol in them, but the merchants continued on with their boisterous talk. Beryl’s crew ate in silence so as not to miss what they were saying, but Andal’s brow was creasing more and more by the second.
“Is there some kind of issue?” Beryl asked.
Andal gave a sour grimace and replied, “The Nation of Furgal is a neighbor of the Nation of the Beast King. It’s a country that also has many demi-humans, which might be the reason they’ve been on bad terms for so long. They’ve disputed and warred many times over territory. Then again, it has basically been them stoking the flames of hostility, and we’ve brushed them off. They don’t keep to the fact that the Nation of the Beast King is considered one of the Four Great Nations.” Andal took a sip of his glass of wine and whet his whistle before continuing. “They continued to wage war even after control of the throne went from me to Arman, but once that Beloved named Celestine showed up, they finally stopped their crusade. It seems that even they are afraid of Beloveds.”
Andal chuckled for a second, but his expression soon turned serious. “But now that a Beloved has appeared in the Nation of Furgal and they have a means of fighting back, I wouldn’t be surprised if they launched an offense.”
“I see,” replied Beryl.
“So...preparing for war...” Andal trailed off, seemingly worried about his homeland as the former Beast King.
Beryl decided to lend a helping hand to his first friend since coming to this world. “Chi, can you gather some information? About the Nation of Furgal and the Beloved there?”
“Hmm... Well, I’m not all that great at doing research like Wind is.”
“Can you at least try?”
“Well, I guess I can for you. But why don’t you contact Ruri just in case? Wind could probably do a bunch of research.”
Beryl put his hand on his chin. “Good point. Ruri seems to be on good terms with the Nation of the Beast King’s Beloved, so maybe I should tell her to keep an eye out. But I’m not sure how to relay the message...”
The lower-level spirits were extremely bad at playing telephone. The more difficult the story, the likelier it was to be weirdly misinterpreted.
“Couldn’t you just relay the message to Kotaro or Rin, Chi? Both of them are usually next to Ruri, so they’d likely tell her.”
“Aah, hmm, yeah, but...I’m not very good at explaining things either, so I don’t know if they’ll get the full message. Why don’t you just write a letter, drop it in your pocket space, and have Lydia deliver it for you? I’ll make sure she knows. That should be simple enough.”
“I didn’t realize that was an option.”
Beryl had never met her personally, so he only knew about Lydia’s existence in the pocket space from Ruri. He had tried to enter his own pocket space since he was interested, but everyone vehemently stopped him, stating that it was dangerous for anyone besides her contract-bearer, Ruri. When warned that he would suffer a mental breakdown, he’d tried to smooth things over by saying that he would just tough it out the old-fashioned way, but once even Chi had stopped him, stating that it wasn’t something you could just tough out, he’d had no choice but to give up.
“Okay then, I guess I’ll whip something up.” Beryl wrote down the situation, including the supplementary information from Andal, on a piece of paper and placed it in the pocket space. “That should do, right?”
“Yep. Now I’ll tell Lydia to deliver it.”
“Andal, why don’t you write your son a letter too? Even if you’re on bad terms, you’re still worried about the nation, aren’t you?”
“Even if I did that, he would just rip it up and toss it without ever looking inside,” Andal swiftly replied with an awkward smile. Beryl had still never been told how Andal’s relationship with his son had become so strained. “Well, anyway, even if anything does happen, the Nation of the Dragon King and Nation of the Spirit King are allied nations, so there shouldn’t be any need to worry.”
“I sure hope so,” replied Beryl, having a bad feeling about all of this but keeping it inside, as he was reluctant to say it aloud to Andal.