The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary-Chapter 299: From Waking Up to Going North (1)

Proofreader: Xemul

The dinner with the Great Demon King, which would not have been a comforting experience for ordinary people, went on without a hitch from Loren’s point of view, although the atmosphere did become a little sour and strange. After being released, they each went to their assigned room.

Overwhelmed by the funny feeling that he was the only human who had ever stayed overnight in the Great Demon King’s castle, Loren entered the room he had been allocated and immediately fell asleep on the bed.

The next day, Loren woke up to sunlight streaming in through the window of his room, and as he opened his eyes, he noticed that the atmosphere in the room had changed compared to before he fell asleep.

Loren had no idea what the comforter was made of, but it seemed to be of a very high quality and was very light and comfortable, but when he woke up, he felt a great deal of weight above him. When he stirred, he found that the bed, which was supposed to be quite spacious, was so cramped that he could not even move properly. Moreover, he heard something like irritated muffled voices every time he tried to move.

As he realized something must have happened, Loren forced his drowsy eyes open and tried to sit up, only to find himself looking into the face of a girl with purple eyes that was peering into him from above. Without thinking, he dropped his half-raised head back onto the bed. 

“Good morning, Loren-sama. How are you feeling after waking up?”

The smiling girl’s face was unfamiliar to Loren. However, somehow, he couldn’t help but think that he had seen that face among the maids who were waiting by the wall at the dinner with the Great Demon King last night, though he couldn’t say for sure.

More than that, when he thought about why the girl was peering at him upside down while he was sleeping in his bed, Loren realized that what was supporting the back of his head was not a pillow but something tauter and more resilient, and cautiously asked.

“This must not be true, but you weren’t on your knees all night, were you?”

“I’d say close to that.”

Loren looked to his left and right as the girl said this, and the reason why the bed felt so cramped that he couldn’t even move his body immediately became apparent.

As it turned out, on each side of Loren was a girl in a maid’s outfit sleeping, snuggled up to his body. He lifted his head a little and looked at his chest area, and there, too, was another maid lying face down with a happy sleeping face.

Realizing that she was surrounded by a total of four girls, Loren once again dropped his head down into the lap of the girl who was apparently kneeling. Her sitting posture was perfect, and the feeling coming from the back of his head was quite nice, making Loren almost fall asleep again. But he held on and kept his consciousness, then asked the girl who had started to peer into his face again to explain the situation. 

“What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

When she asked him back, Loren wondered what he should say.

After all, he was currently in demon territory, a place where human common sense could not be applied. There was a possibility that what he was wondering about was something common on this side of the world and did not need to be asked, and the maids might not understand his concerns.

Still, Loren opened his mouth again, thinking that the only course of action he could take at the moment would be to ask her honestly.

“Why were there four maids sneaking into my bedroom?”

“Are you dissatisfied?”

When asked if he was dissatisfied, Loren was once again at a loss for an answer.

Most men would have answered that there was no way they could be dissatisfied with the situation, but for Loren, it was a situation in which he could hardly say he was satisfied.

“It’s more horrifying than satisfying.”

“Oh? What does that mean again?”

“I’m a weak human, surrounded by demons, not to mention demons who are in the service of the Great Demon King. Before I can even think of being happy about the situation, I feel that my life is in danger.”

It was hard to imagine from their appearances, but the maids in the Great Demon King’s castle, at least as far as Loren saw them last night, possessed immeasurable abilities that made Loren think they could rival the Demon Kings. The fact that four such beings snuck into his bed while he was sleeping, unnoticed, meant that Loren was in a situation where he could be killed at any time, and he had no time to feel happy or embarrassed.

“I think you’re being a little paranoid, don’t you?”

The maid said with a faint smile on her face.

“Then, why did four demons sneak into my bed?”

“It’s to entertain you.”

It took Loren quite a long time to understand what the maid said. 

Then, after understanding what the words meant, he asked the kneeling maid with a surprised expression as if he had heard some incredible information.

“What do you mean by ‘entertain’?”

“Shall I rephrase it as ‘winning some favour’?”

“No, no, no, wait.  I don’t understand anything.”

The other parties were demons. As they were all superior to humans in terms of abilities, naturally there was no need for them to flatter humans at all. 

But Loren also could not understand why the maid would go to the trouble of declaring that they had come to entertain him. Amidst the confusion, he suddenly thought of an element that would make this possible and asked again.

“Did the Great Demon King send you?”

“I am not obliged to answer that.”

“Nah, that’s the same as saying he did, isn’t it?”

Loren thought that it would not be strange if the Great Demon King had planned something like this. After all, he was the kind of person who would summon a mere mercenary, a human, to the Great Demon King’s castle just because the person seemed to be interesting. It would not be surprising if the guy thought it would be even more interesting if he set the maids, who might rival Demon Kings, after him. 

“But even so, four are too many!”

“We don’t know what Loren-sama likes, so we thought we’d let you choose…”

That said, it was true that the maids were all girls with well-defined faces, but their hair lengths and body types varied, and their ages also seemed to be different, even though it was impossible to tell if that difference was real or not. They are such girls that would catch someone’s taste in their own way, even if they couldn’t be a perfect match.

“You’re not complaining? You’re extremely powerful people, aren’t you?”

Loren, who didn’t like to think that an average demon could possess the same kind of presence a Demon King normally would, believed that the maids working in the Great Demon King’s castle must be of a certain level of power even among the demon tribe. And it seemed that he was not wrong, judging from the look on the girl’s face when she heard his words.

“Yes. I don’t think we are at the same level as the Demon Kings though. We are a part of the group that protects the castle of the Great Demon King, and I am proud to say that we have the power to do so.”

“If that’s the case, then it must be humiliating to have to deal with a dubious human like me, right?”

“No, that is another matter. We were willing.”

“Huh?!”

As Loren wondered if he had misheard something, the girl who was talking with him blushed a little and began to fidget.

“Certainly, if it were just a random human, we wouldn’t even consider letting him touch our bodies… But Loren-sama is the one that His Majesty the Great Demon King was interested in. It is hard to consider you a mere human.”

Loren wanted to say that without a doubt, he was a mere human. But judging from the maid’s reaction, he felt that even if he tried to insist, it would all fall on deaf ears with just one counter-argument: the Great Demon King is interested in him.

The maid, wondering what Loren’s reaction was, put her hand on Loren’s cheek as his head still rested on her lap.

“Well, you were sleeping so comfortably that we didn’t think it would be right to wake you up. So here we are.”

Loren felt like praising himself for going to sleep that quickly last night, thinking that if he had stayed up even just a little later, he would have been tempted by these four girls. 

He had fallen asleep as soon as he laid down on the bed due to physical and mental exhaustion, and he could not say whether he would have been able to resist the temptations of the maids if he had remained conscious in such a state. Smiling wryly, Loren thought that he definitely would not be able to.

The maid who was kneeling moved her face a little closer and said in a hushed voice.

“We still have time now.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like it.”

At Loren’s rejection, the maid reached out and lightly shook the shoulder of the maid who was lying face down on his body. That action alone was enough to wake the other maid, and she began to feel his body through the comforter. But after a while, she turned a sombre face towards the kneeling maid and shook her head. 

“Oh, no reaction at all?”

“Where was she pawing at? Have you guys no shame?”

The place where Loren was touched through the comforter was a place that he did not want to speak out loud. That was why Loren, with a reddening face, threw a steely gaze at the kneeling maid. 

“I think we are all attractive in our own way, so.” 

“Maybe so, but no matter how good you look, I just can’t react to those who could kill me with one hand.”

As he said this, Loren suddenly thought of a red-headed young man with whom he had worked together on various jobs in the past. The young man, Klaus, would have been able to make love with these maids even under such circumstances. Loren smiled wryly, thinking that he, on the other hand, would never be able to do such a thing himself.

“Well, I appreciate the thought, so why don’t you let me go?”

“It can’t be helped then. What a pity.”

Apparently, the maid whose lap Loren’s head was resting in clearly understood that even if they continued their conversation, it was not going to turn out the way they wanted it to.

Once that was decided, the maid immediately shook the girls sleeping on either side of Loren to wake them up, and they all quickly got off the bed so as not to get in the way of Loren getting up.