Outside the half-open door stood the lord. His face was full of bitterness, his brows tightly knit, and he looked mentally exhausted.
After thinking about it for a moment, Ash realized it was probably because of the guy he had killed earlier, so he joked:
"What is it? Was that rude fool your relative? Or... your wife's relative?"
"I've got enough headaches already. Please don't make fun of me too. I don't want a relative that stupid."
The lord helplessly shook his head and let out a long sigh before forcing a bitter smile.
Deep exhaustion showed in his eyes. The pressure of recent days had nearly pushed him to his limit.
"But that guy was more troublesome than a relative."
"Is that so?"
"He was an official envoy from our neighboring country... Ohts."
The lord looked at Ash and slowly revealed the shocking news.
"Uh... that sounds a little bad?", Ash was somewhat stunned.
An envoy dying in a noble's residence was a major incident. Even dying within the territory of a noble from another nation could become the start of a diplomatic dispute.
Still, he didn't regret it.
He didn't like forcing himself to endure things. Rather than putting up with it, he'd rather get rid of the problem. He hadn't worked so hard to become stronger just so he could tolerate more nonsense.
Still, the fact that someone so arrogant and rude could become a diplomatic envoy genuinely surprised him.
He couldn't understand Ohts' standards for selecting people. Sending someone like that on a diplomatic mission was practically asking for trouble.
The lord clearly shared the same opinion and immediately nodded, "That's true, but sending an envoy like that makes it obvious they wanted to create conflict. During this time, his insults toward the Divine Beast have already pushed the townspeople to their limit. It wouldn't have been surprising if someone assassinated him eventually... so this really isn't your fault."
"Yeah. To be honest, I don't think I did anything wrong either."
Ash nodded without hesitation.
The lord's expression immediately became complicated.
He had originally been thinking about how to ease Ash's concerns, but he had also planned to use that opportunity to ask for his help.
Now, hearing such a straightforward answer, he gritted his teeth and seemed to make up his mind.
Taking a step forward, he moved closer to Ash and spoke sincerely.
"Mr. Ash, I know this request may put you in a difficult position, but the situation is urgent. I really have no other choice, so..."
"I'm not interested in politics. Besides, that guy deserved to die. Since I'm the one who killed him, you don't need to feel burdened by it. Even if a war starts, I can deal with their army for you... Actually, aren't they probably hoping for a war anyway?"
"I'm not sure. We haven't received any intelligence about that recently. Maybe the information is being tightly controlled. But... it's probably true."
The lord sighed heavily again, worry filling his eyes.
Ohts was clearly weaker than Sariella, and the two countries had always been hostile. Though neither had formally declared war, small-scale conflicts were common.
Sariella was a major nation and far stronger than Ohts.
But behind Ohts stood the largest human nation on the Kasanagara Continent, the Renxandt Empire, and the Holy Alleius Theocracy, the center of worship for most followers of the Word of God Religion.
In other words, it was very possible that those two great powers intended to move against Sariella.
Still, hearing Ash say that somehow made him feel much more at ease.
He still didn't know Ash's true strength, but he couldn't help feeling reassured.
Then he made another request.
He hoped Ash could look after Sophia at night.
As a result, after he and his wife put Sophia to sleep, they moved her small bed into Ash's room.
There was no special meaning behind it.
They simply wanted their daughter to be as safe as possible.
Recently, the scouts in the territory had discovered several disturbing signs.
The bandits intercepted on the road earlier appeared to have been hired for a job.
Among the belongings they carried, investigators found a commission document that clearly stated they had been hired to kidnap Sophia.
Probably some kind of trafficking organization.
Even worse, as time passed, the number of suspicious bandits and vagrants around Keren Territory had not decreased.
Instead, it kept increasing.
This clearly meant that after failing once, the people behind it hadn't given up and had chosen to send even more people.
Although the lord was completely puzzled as to why someone would target his daughter, the only thing he could do was place her in the safest location possible.
So that night, Sophia, who obediently pretended to be asleep, lay in her little bed and found herself slowly pushed beside Ash's bed before she even understood what was happening.
She was on the verge of breaking down inside.
She never imagined she would be sent into the room of the person she feared most.
Ash, on the other hand, had agreed only because he felt bad about freeloading all the time and didn't care about the matter at all.
Looking at the baby whose expressions changed as dramatically as a little actor's, he simply pinched her chubby cheek and went back to practicing magic.
Sophia secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Just like that, time flowed by, and three days passed.
During those three days, whenever Sophia accidentally woke up in the middle of the night because she felt warmth in her diaper, she would always see Ash's profile.
No matter when she woke up, he was fully awake.
Finally, she couldn't hold back anymore.
["Don't you ever sleep?"]
She asked through telepathy.
["Why does it feel like you've never slept at all?"]
"It's not really necessary."
Without turning around, Ash answered calmly.
His attention remained fixed on the magic book he had compiled about the world's magic.
["I-Is that so?"]
'He's definitely a monster, right? He doesn't even need sle ep? Then why do you keep eating? That's so weird!'
Sophia couldn't help complaining inwardly.
"Eating is more of a hobby."
As though he had seen through her thoughts, Ash casually added another sentence.
After becoming a Great Demon, not eating no longer affected him.
Just like Macht, who had remained sealed inside the Golden City for half a century without any problems.
But those unexpected words startled Sophia.
["Y-You can read my mind?"]
She stared at him in alarm.
"I don't have that kind of hobby. I just guessed. Your expression gives away everything you're thinking. Besides, putting that aside, aren't you a high school student? Is it really okay to wet the bed all the time?"
A faint smile appeared at the corner of Ash's mouth as he looked at Sophia's flustered reaction.
["T-There's nothing I can do about it! This body is hard to control!"]
Sophia felt embarrassed and angry.
Her face turned red as she tried to defend herself, but her stammering sounded unconvincing.
"So it's because you're not fully developed yet? I thought maybe you were into that sort of thing."
Ash's teasing only made her feel even more awkward.
["As if!"]
Sophia immediately jumped up from the bed and waved her tiny fists at him a couple of times to express her anger.
After teasing her a bit, Ash ignored her outrage and casually pulled the cord hanging beside the bed.
A clear ringing sound echoed through the quiet hallway outside.
Not long afterward, the maid on duty hurried over and changed Sophia's clothes.
Ash only glanced over a couple of times before silently turning around and walking to the window.
Leaning there, he quietly gazed at the unfamiliar stars in the distance.
Looking at the vast night sky, Ash couldn't help feeling a bit lonely.
Like a traveler wandering through a foreign land, surrounded by people yet unable to shake the sense of being alone.
After changing clothes, Sophia looked at his profile and found herself even more curious about him.
'Where exactly did this monster come from?'
'Why is he staying in my home?'
Her little head filled with questions.
She wanted to know Ash's story.
She wanted to understand everything about him.
But before she could think about it further, and not long after the maid had left, the previously quiet door slowly opened.
Four men wearing green cloaks entered one after another like ghosts.
Their footsteps were extremely light.
They made almost no sound.
After entering the room, they lowered their movements as much as possible and drew daggers.
Then they slowly approached Sophia and Ash, who had his back to the door.
'Huh?'
'Huhhhh?'
'There are actually assassins after me?'
Watching the scene unfold before her, Sophia immediately started trembling.
Her mind went blank.
Instinctively, she shouted through telepathy: ["P-Please! H-Help me!"]
Her terrified voice echoed inside Ash's mind.
Yet her panicked cry caused no reaction from him.
He had already noticed them long ago.
Without even turning around, he merely tilted his head slightly and said calmly, "Quiet. I'm thinking about home... Besides, with me here, a few small fry like them can't hurt you."
The four assassins paused for a moment after hearing him.
They clearly hadn't expected their presence to have already been discovered.
But they quickly recovered.
Exchanging silent glances, they sped up and charged toward Ash.
Their movements were quick.
The daggers in their hands flashed through the darkness as they stabbed toward his back.
Yet just before the blades reached him, Ash vanished.
The assassins froze.
Before they could react, Ash had already appeared behind them.
He held no weapon.
He simply waved his hand lightly.
A powerful repulsive force instantly spread outward.
They didn't even have time to turn around.
A storm-like pressure struck them from behind and sent them flying like rag dolls.
The impact was so powerful that they couldn't resist at all.
They crashed into the wall and slid to the floor.
After a single exchange, they stopped moving.
Whether they were alive or dead was impossible to tell.
"Good. No furniture damaged. No blood or dust. Quiet and clean."
Looking at the unconscious assassins, Ash nodded to himself and brushed off his spotless clothes.
Sophia had witnessed the entire thing.
She sat there blankly, still unable to process what had happened.
In the wilderness it had been bloody.
In the reception hall he had killed someone without spilling blood.
Now everything had happened so quickly that before she could recover from her shock, it was already over.
And it seemed like nobody had even died.
Then Ash's calm voice reached her ears, "The world you reincarnated into is basically a game created by an evil god. Living peacefully here is almost impossible. And this world is about to end too. You'd better get used to killing and being killed as soon as possible."
["This world... is about to end?"]
"When you grow up, you'll probably find out."
Ash didn't explain further.
He simply touched one of the assassins' heads, obtained the memories he wanted, and returned to reading.
Before Sophia could ask anything else, guards who had heard the disturbance rushed through the hallway.
Soon they discovered the four unconscious assassins.
Only then did Sophia hear that the guards patrolling the courtyard had already been killed by the intruders.
And when the cloaks were removed, everyone sucked in a breath.
Because the attackers weren't human.
They were elves.
———
The captured elves refused to say anything during interrogation, their mouths were firmly shut.
Yet in the following days, several more groups arrived.
Some were humans.
Some were elves.
But every one of them was dealt with by Ash almost instantly.
No one could survive even a single move against him.
Gradually, the fear in Sophia's eyes was replaced with admiration.
Not long afterward, relations between the two countries became so tense that war could break out at any moment.
The lord's headaches grew worse, and he couldn't sleep peacefully through the night.
It wasn't just national affairs.
If war broke out, his territory would be the first battlefield.
On top of that, he still couldn't understand why elves were targeting his daughter.
During this period, a new guest arrived at the estate.
And it was none other than the leader of the elves, Potimas Harrifenas.
This middle-aged elf with long golden hair and handsome features arrived, prompting the lord to personally go out and greet him.
Although he knew elves were targeting his daughter, the man's status left him no choice but to treat him respectfully.
"The elf chief, huh? Hmm. I can't appraise him... A clone or something?"
Standing by the window and looking at the lord and the elf in the courtyard, Ash glanced over them a couple more times but wasn't especially interested.
After hearing him, Sophia excitedly climbed out of her crib and stretched her arms toward him.
["I want to see! Let me see the elves!"]
"Haven't you seen them before?"
["Those were dead! It's different! Hurry and pick me up!"]
Too short to reach the windowsill, Sophia tugged on his pants and repeatedly urged him.
'You're a high school girl! And a girl at that! How can you ask a man to carry you? Do you have no shame at all?'
The spider girl, who had been napping nearby, immediately started complaining.
Unfortunately, as usual, nobody understood what she was saying.
Still, now that everyone knew she was a reincarnator, they could roughly guess she was complaining.
But right after chittering, she climbed onto Ash's back first and poked her head over his shoulder, looking down at Sophia with a smug expression.
Sophia couldn't understand the expression exactly, but she could guess.
So after Ash picked her up, she immediately pressed her face against his chest and lifted the corners of her mouth while swaying her head.
That instantly made the spider girl furious.
Well, furious enough to start chittering wildly and practically want to eat her.
'This girl looks soft and tender! She'd definitely taste good! Even though she's tiny and there doesn't seem to be much meat on her, her hands are all plump too... Just tear one off and heal it right away! Let me eat a little bit! You're so happy right now, so being a little unhappy shouldn't matter, right? Not objecting means agreeing, right?'
The spider girl stared at Sophia's hand with a dangerous look.
For some reason, Sophia suddenly felt a chill and shrank deeper into Ash's arms.
Having unilaterally decided that permission had been granted, the spider girl started climbing down, intending to bite the person who dared challenge her.
At the crucial moment, however, Ash pressed down on her head and said with a laugh, "Stop it already. That's not food. Besides, why are you arguing with a baby?"
'Saved!'
'But... why does the way he said that feel kind of strange?'
Sophia sighed in relief while feeling oddly conflicted.
The spider girl, meanwhile, still looked unwilling to give up.
In the end, Ash held both of them in front of him, a spider on one side and a baby on the other.
As he wondered whether he was becoming a babysitter, he looked downstairs and changed the subject.
"According to the people below, the guy walking in front is the elf chief. The ruler of all elves."
["The ruler of elves?"]
Sophia and the spider girl, who were still surprised to see living elves and feeling a stronger sense that they had truly come to another world, looked up together.
Recalling the memories he had stolen from the elf assassins, Ash casually explained, "You probably don't know this, but elf society is an absolute monarchy."
["Aren't human countries the same? In a broad sense, the king is the ruler, but..."]
"But the elves are more extreme. To be precise, it can practically be called slavery. And there's only one slave owner, the chief. From the moment elves are born, they're destined to devote their entire lives to Chief Potimas. They work for him until they die. To put it simply, they're basically his slaves."
["Huhhh? Wait, what? Aren't elves supposed to be a peaceful race that lives freely?"]
Ash's explanation completely shattered Sophia and the spider girl's image of elves.
But he didn't explain any further.
Instead, he pointed at the elves standing beside Potimas.
"Look carefully at the eyes of the elves around him."
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