《Heh heh heh! Now, now. Settle down, my liege,》 Gon said. 《You won’t be imprisoned for any crimes. As it turns out, one of this nation’s rulers is rather understanding.》
“One of its rulers?” I repeated. Wait, who would that be?
《It is as Gon says. The human woman who sat next to the king was indeed thoroughly sensible. She swore that we would not be harmed or interfered with, and given her place at the king’s side, she was surely an individual who wields some degree of power.》
A woman sitting beside the king?
I took a few seconds to let that sink in.
“That was the queen, you guys!”
《Was she? She seemed mightier than the king himself, given how she chided him.》
“Oof...”
I was starting to get a sense for the balance of power in the kingdom’s royal family. Sounds like the queen’s got the king pretty whipped, huh?
《And since she was so unusually sensible, I told her I would consider doing her a favor in the future. She would not be so foolish as to allow a chance to have a fenrir hear out one of her requests to slip through her fingers.》
《Quite. And she also said we were free to stay in this kingdom for as long as we pleased! She’d know better than to go back on a promise like that with beings as mighty as us.》
W-Wait, really? Does that mean...?
“I’m...not under arrest?”
《As we already told you, no. You are in no danger.》
《You’d do well to listen to us a little more closely, my liege!》
Oh, don’t you start! I wouldn’t have had to worry this much if you two hadn’t flown off the handle in the first place! But more importantly...
“Oh, thank god! I’m saaafe!” I said, letting out a deep sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, Dora-chan flew over and perched on my head. 《Hey, you guys done talking yet, or what?! We’ve got food stalls to visit!》
“We’ve what?!”
《Master, Sui’s huuungry!》
《Indeed. Before anything else, we must sate our hunger.》
《The capital’s food stalls do seem rather decent indeed.》
《Arright, I’ll take point! And I already spotted the perfect place to start a while back. It’s right over there!》 Dora-chan exclaimed before steering us onto a completely different course than we’d been taking before. Before I knew it, we’d ended up heading for the food stall that he’d apparently taken note of.
From that point onward, the gluttonous quartet was in complete control of our itinerary. Fel, Gon, Dora-chan, and Sui let their noses take the lead, leading us from one stall to the next in a rambling tour of the capital’s streets. I was dragged along for the ride, of course, and by the time everyone was finally satisfied, the sky was bright red and the sun had mostly set.
《Yup,》 Dora-chan said, 《the capital’s stalls really are up to snuff!》
《It was all really, really yummy!》 Sui agreed.
《The food here is indeed of passable quality...though it did not compare to the stalls we found in the town by the meat dungeon,》 Fel noted.
《Right, that place! Yeah, the food there really was a cut above!》 Dora-chan said.
《Ooooh, the meat dungeon! Sui wants to go back there someday!》 Sui added.
《Oh? A meat dungeon?》 Gon repeated. 《I never knew there was such a thing! I’d love to see it, myself.》
Rosendahl, huh...? Yeah, that brings back some good memories. That dungeon was way less lethal than the ones we usually end up in, and getting all that meat was a godsend. It’d be nice to see the kids at the orphanage again too. I’d like to see how things are going with that stall Maynard and Enzo said they were going to open, and I did promise everyone I’d come back to visit.
“Let’s try to stop by when the next Meat Dungeon Festival happens,” I said.
《Indeed!》
《You know it!》
《Yaaay!》
《Gra ha ha ha! Now that is something to look forward to!》
I’d been terrified that we’d screwed up to a lifestyle-altering degree just a few hours earlier, but considering that nobody had shown up to arrest me during our whole shopping trip, it seemed safe to assume that I really had been acquitted of my familiars’ crimes. Phew! All’s well that ends well. It sort of feels like I’m forgetting something, though. What could that be...?
“Hmm... Wait. Oh. Oh. The guildmaster!” He’d completely slipped my mind over the course of our happy little stall tour, but Willem had come to the capital with us, and we’d left him behind in the palace! “H-Hey, we’d better head to the Adventurer’s guild, pronto!”
I hurried us along toward the guild as quickly as I could, stopping from time to time to ask a local for directions. I eventually arrived at a noticeably larger and fancier building than any of those belonging to the local guilds that I’d visited in the past. I timidly stepped inside...and froze in my tracks as a demon straight out of my nightmares barred my path.
“Well. Well. Well. Now look who we have here!” Willem said.
“Hyeeek!”
“Here’s a question for you: Just how much hell do you think I went through after you ran out on me, huh?!”
“I-I am so sorry!”
It seemed that after I’d left, Willem had been subjected to an endless barrage of questions from the king and queen. That, however, wasn’t what had him really upset with me.
“Those damned lordlings! They just wouldn’t stop with their snide remarks and snobby lectures!” Willem raged. Some of the local nobility had been extremely persistent during the conversation that had followed my departure, and had really grated on his nerves in the process. “If only you knew how many times I nearly lost control and threw one of those pompous bastards halfway across the hall!” he added with a very bitter scowl. “And then to top it all off, when I finally worked my way out of their clutches and got back to the guild, where were you? Not here, that’s for sure!”
Oooh, right. We did say that we’d head to the guild after our audience was over, didn’t we? I totally forgot about that.
“But then I thought, ‘Well, this is his first time in the capital. No surprise it would take him a little while to find his way there.’ So I waited, and waited...but you just wouldn’t show up!” Willem practically growled with a dangerously pointed glare.
Ugh... Y-Yeah, sorry about that. The truth was that I hadn’t thought about him at all during our food stall tour, but I knew that if I admitted that, I’d be in for my longest lecture yet, so I decided to keep it to myself.
“So then I found a couple adventurers who weren’t busy and asked them to go looking for you.”
Agh! Seriously?!
“And apparently while I was wasting the day away, you were stuffing your face at the food stalls!”
W-Well, so much for keeping that secret. And, uh, Willem? You’re kinda scaring me, here! I don’t think that forehead veins are supposed to bulge like that!