Chapter 12

A slim man in his early twenties quickly walked towards them. He looked a few years younger than Lion. He had red hair, which was cut short in the front, while in the back he had a long braid. This peculiar hairstyle was common to the summoners of the Tailes Kingdom.

“You’re a summoner right? You have summoning symbols on your hands. I’m a summoner too! I was just thinking that over there was this reaaal cool guy when I spotted you next to him.”

So, this stranger, who addressed Lion vigorously and in a friendly, or rather, overly familiar manner, was a summoner too.

“I’m Noah. Noah Legrand. You are…?”

“Lion Shray.”

“Shray…you mean, from the Shray family? The prestigious family from the southern Mauser Kingdom?! Wow. Isn’t that the family where, a hundred years ago, a grand summoner was born into? Ah, but, why’re you all the way out here? Oh! Are you traveling to gain experience too? I’m doing the same thing actually!”

He sure talked a lot, and fast too. He didn’t give Lion any opportunity to speak.

Lion wasn’t traveling in order to practice his summoning, he had simply run away from home because being there was too painful… but since Noah seemed to have misunderstood, Lion wasn’t going to go out of his way to correct him.

Lion had heard about the Legrand family of summoners before. There were two well-known summoner families within the Tailes Kingdom, and the Legrand family was one of them.

“Then, you must be here for that! For the commission job to detoxify the polluted soil by the demons’ poison, right?”

“Poison? We’ve just arrived, so we haven’t gathered any information, yet.”

“That so? So this is just two freelancing summoners bumping into each other? Nice! Let’s form a party then!”

“Lion said that he didn’t know what that job commission was about. Explain.”

“Ack!”

An arm slithered past Lion’s shoulder, tightly gripping Noah’s face. Bewildered, Noah’s eyes darted to the arm’s owner, and then he shifted his gaze back to Lion.

“I-I’ll talk!” he squeaked. “I’ll talk! So please let me go! Lion, just who is this handsome guy1?!”

This was the same scene that Lion had witnessed the other day. And anyway, shouldn’t Noah be directly talking to Seirios?Why was he asking Lion?

It took some canoodling, but he got Seirios to let Noah go. From there, they decided to head to a tavern allowing Noah to fill them in on the details.

“Like I said: lately, demons from the Southern Demon King’s territory have been pouring in. Since that’s the case, the invading demons are naturally being suppressed every day, but when a group of demons is slain, the soil and nearby rivers get polluted by their toxic blood, so the locals are in quite a pickle right now. The damaged area is kind of vast too. I heard that even the healers were brought to their knees.”

Noah kept talking without pause, even as he popped food into his mouth. After hearing out what Noah had to say, Lion thought: ‘So that’s how it is.’

Healers excelled in dealing with toxic substances; no one but them could create antidotes. However, it would take several weeks for them to make enough antidotes to spread around the soil.

If there was a summoning beast with detoxifying abilities, it could be used to restore the large area of polluted soil instead. There was a relatively easy to obtain summoning beast that had these properties. It was called Sylphide, and Lion had a contract with it as well.

As long as the government didn’t take any action, the summoners officially employed by the country wouldn’t do anything either. This incident must not have been made public yet.

“If that’s the case, then… I’ll accept this commission, too.”

“Perfect. I thought that this commission might be quite tough to do solo. It’ll be even more reassuring since this handsome black mage is coming with us too! Tomorrow, I’ll go let the client know that the three of us will be taking the job.”

“Alright, thanks.”

Noah, it seemed, had gotten past his fear of the mysterious black mage who traveled with Lion, which is how he introduced Seirios.

They parted ways with Noah, and went in search of lodging.

They found a decent inn and rented a room. When they had left Rowan, Lion continued his negotiations with Seirios about getting two rooms and resting apart… but it had been a waste of effort.

Lion turned to look over his shoulder to the tall man waiting in front of the door outside their rented room. He was, once again, repeating words that Seirios never seemed to understand, no matter how many times Lion explained them.

“Mister Sei, I’m warning you: if you do anything weird, I’ll seriously get angry.”

“‘Anything weird’? Are you talking about kisses and physical intimacy? Those aren’t weir-”

“M-Mister Sei, you are talking too loud!”

Since there were other guests staying at the inn, Lion had no idea what could be heard, nor where. He hurriedly pushed Seirios into the room.

There was something seriously bothering him. Seirios just wouldn’t understand the concept of ‘embarrassment.’ Without hesitation, he would openly try to kiss him on a public road, filled with people because he wanted to touch Lion. When Lion would get bright red and resist, Seirios would look at him with a confused expression.

”

”

Lion wasn’t prejudiced. Same sex marriage was acknowledged in his country and even among the people he knew, there were same sex couples. But… it wasn’t about Seirios being a man. Rather, Lion had never even imagined that a demon would try to court him, so he had no idea what he should do.

“Lion, is it normally rare for summoners to work on their own?”

“Yeah. Summoners are often employed by their country through their families, so there are only a few summoners that do other work besides the commissions issued by the country. Although sometimes there are young people who work independently in order to gain experience, like Noah.”

“What about you?”

“Huh?”

“Why did you leave your county to travel alone, Lion?”

“Ah, um…”

Lion was usually able to casually say that he was trying to gain more experience as a summoner, just like Noah. However, guilt prickled through Lion at just the thought of lying to the demon. The same demon who was looking at him straight at him with his dark red eyes.

“All of the members of my family are remarkable summoners. The grand summoner who joined Hero Aaron’s party, the one that defeated the Southern Demon King a hundred years ago, was also a member of the Shray family. He was my great-grandfather. And.. I can’t really do a lot of stuff, right? So it was a little difficult to keep living there, so I left. That’s all, haha,” Lion said, letting out a laugh.

Summoners who were able to summon the few divine beasts that existed there, on the continent, were called grand summoners. Sometimes no grand summoner would appear in any country, sometimes for a hundred years. Families who consistently and continuously produced grand summoners, were looked upon with envy. True to their reputation, within the present Shray family there were many outstanding summoners, including Lion’s older brother.

Any more questions from Seirios would just bring Lion pain, so he decided to change the topic.

“Ah! There’s something that I want to ask you too. For demons, is the poison…”

Before Lion knew it, Seirios was right in front of him and had Lion in a gentle hug. Although he was a demon, the way he was touching Lion was loving and kind.

“Even I can tell that you possess amazing talent. I understood that it was because of your family that you look down on yourself so much despite how talented you are. Shall I track down those who said those hurtful things to you, and make them disappear, one by one..? Although, if you had not traveled North and taken up a job, I would never have met you. Just the thought of that… fills me with an indescribable emotion.”

Lion’s eyes and ears felt hot. Various thoughts were running through his mind. ‘He was joking about threatening to make my family members disappear, right?’ and ‘…wait, did he say “taken up a job up North?”’

In the end though, Lion stayed quiet. Gradually, his eyes glossed over with warm tears.

“…Mister Sei, are you really a demon? Why are you so kind…?”

Lion heard that there were demons in this world that would make you trust them and then betray you, feeding on the person’s despair. Could this be what Seirios was after? If not, then his kindness truly made no sense…

“‘This is ‘being kind’? I see, I’m glad. You are my owner, so driving away your sorrows is my duty.”

Lion felt a tickle of a soft laugh, then something warm touched his left ear. Seirios clung to that place, playfully biting him. A shiver went down Lion’s spine.

Then, a big hand grasped his chin and tilted his face, Seirios meeting his lips at a gentle angle.

Lion received a deep kiss from Seirios. After a short while, Lion gathered his courage and tried to nudge the man’s tongue with his own.

Lion wasn’t completely clueless. One time, after he had left his country and in the middle of a job, Lion’s party brought him to a brothel, where he had his first sexual experience. Since then, Lion would have sex once in a blue moon, only when he would overwhelmingly yearn for a human’s touch.

He felt that for a man in his late twenties, his sex drive was rather low. But it was difficult to stay unresponsive when he was being kissed, and the kiss felt so good.

“You’re so lovely.”

Seirios was smiling, happy about Lion responding to his kiss for the first time.

That night, he touched his body all over, guiding Lion to his climax. Lion felt a little panicked over the fact that his protests were getting rather weak.

However, when Seirios moved down to caress his ass, Lion flustered, and made him stop. Although Lion still had some doubts about if Seirios truly wanted to have sex with him, he didn’t have the courage to allow him to go that far yet.

As always, he fell fast asleep, wrapped up in the arms of the man whose body was slightly colder to the touch than Lion’s own.

The next morning, as the two made their way down to meet with Noah, Seirios asked Lion: “Come to think of it, were you not asking something about ‘poison’ last night before we went to bed?”

For a moment, Lion looked at him, confused.

Hm? Poison?…Ah, that’s right!

“Yes, I did. I wanted to ask you if things like ‘poison’ were effective on demons. Since we were told that our destination is an area with poisoned land, I was wondering if you’d be alright.”

“If I am to speak accurately, poison does affect demons too. There are many demons with a high resistance to poison, but every demon is also different. Overall though, we are far more resistant to physical status effects than humans.”

“So it’s just as I had thought, you should be fine.”

“Indeed. Poisoning has no effect on me. Even if you were to become afflicted, Lion, I would heal you with my powers. So it’s not something you’ll have to worry about.”

Right. At this point, Lion knew that whether he liked it or not, Seirios wasn’t an ordinary demon who’d get affected by something like that.

Lion was certain that Seirios must have been a well-known and high-ranking figure among the northern demons, judging by how Seirios dealt with the demons they’d met so far, and from listening to Seirios’ conversation with the Eastern Demon Queen, Vega.

“Ah, however, there is one thing that I can do nothing about. It is something only humans can cast—a ‘curse.’ Not only do they have no effect on demons, we cannot detect them either. Therefore, I can’t cure it.”

“A curse, you say…? Well, I don’t really do things that would make me hated to that extent, so I should be fine.”

The ability to cast curses was a unique skill even among black mages. It wasn’t effective against demons, so these spells were used exclusively against humans, but Lion heard that there was still a certain demand for it.

“Lion! Mister~! Over here, over here!”

Upon hearing this boundlessly cheery voice, Lion turned around and spotted Noah in front of the tavern that they were supposed to meet at, waving.

Apparently, the place where their commission’s destination was, was a village that was a few hours away from Salto on foot.

Right as they journeyed out, Noah said that he was scared of demons appearing, and summoned a common type summoning beast, Garm.

Summoning beasts that were generally very easy to obtain were referred to as a ‘common type,’ and Garm was a large dog-like beast with sharp fangs. It was loyal to its master, and would attack an enemy with resolution and daring. Noah explained that its purpose was to guard them on their way.

A dog! It’s so cute… and somehow similar to the first beast I ever summoned. I want one too…

He really wanted to pet it, but summoning beasts tended to only be friendly towards their contracted summoner. Lion concluded that he shouldn’t touch it carelessly.

Lion also had contracts with dog-type summoning beasts, but considering that he could only summon one beast a day, it was rare that he summoned one.

“Lion, what are you looking at?”

“I was just thinking that Noah’s summoning beast is really cute. It’s all fluffy, I really wanna pet it! I love it.”

As Seirios’ drew his face close to Lion’s, for some reason, he wore a sulking expression.

“…I will allow it. Pet me.”

“Huh?…Uh, I don’t really get what you’re trying to say…”

“Bwahaha! Mister, your face looks so serious! It’s hysterical!”

Noah looked at Seirios’ face and roared with laughter.

And so the two summoners, a demon and a summoning beast noisily walked ahead.