I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level Max Level Witch - Volume 7 - Chapter SS2

  GOING ON DATES WITH HER MAJESTY ON MY DAYS OFF  

It was one of my days off.

Holding hands, Her Majesty and I walked through a human village.

The market was especially interesting; what the humans had on sale was completely different from what we sold in the demon lands. That difference was partially due to culture, yes, but also the climate. The indigenous plants and animals were nothing like what I knew.

But I didn’t mind that so much—at least, not compared with my holding hands with a certain someone.

“Ah, Your Majesty?” I whispered.

I didn’t want others to hear she was royalty, much less the demon king. There were more and more demons visiting the human lands recently, so the humans wouldn’t be as terrified as they would have been back when I first became the minister of agriculture. Yet the name of the demon king still had a lot of impact.

I doubted any humans would even believe she was the demon king.

“Yes, what is it, Miss Beelzebub?”

“Is it all right if we let go of our hands now?”

“Awww, of course not. You can’t have me getting swept away in the crowd,” said the demon king, wearing a hood to hide her horns.

I was also wearing a hood as my basic disguise. My horns were so long that the hood was sticking up in a decidedly unnatural fashion, but it was better than nothing.

“Still, I am off duty today, so strictly speaking, it is not within my realm of responsibility to look after you, Your Majesty. If you are worried about getting lost, then you may as well stay in the castle.”

But I couldn’t just leave the demon king alone, so my protests were ultimately empty.

“Gosh! Don’t say things like that!” Her Majesty tugged on my hand, dragging me in a different direction.

“Fine, fine. There was a nice café over that way, so let’s go there. Do be a proper escort, please.”

“I still have things I would like to see.”

“Please allow the young girl’s opinion to take priority.”

“I am biologically female as well, might I remind you.”

She answered with an especially insistent tug not even I could resist, and we escaped the flow of people.

“Sigh, you still have no idea of the proper way to treat me, Miss Beelzebub. On a scale of one to ten, you’d be a three,” Her Majesty complained over tea.

“But conversely, this means you trust me enough to give your honest opinion of me. This is the highest honor.”

“My, but how eloquent you are. You really have grown into your position as a minister.”

She was looking at me reproachfully, but this was no different from usual. It would be even more worrying if she never felt like she could say anything.

“You’ve been there nearly two full centuries now, alas. You are getting strangely good at it. It was much more interesting when you were new.”

“Yes. We’ve been in office for the same amount of time, Your Majesty. Your general reputation is that you’ve gotten rather good at your job, too.”

We drank tea as we conversed.

Human tea was rather weak. Personally, I would prefer something just a tad spicier, but one of the rules of a seasoned traveler was to accept the flavors of the destination.

“I had planned to mold you into the absolutely perfect elder sister for me after holding the position of agricultural minister for so long. I failed in your training.”

I brought the teacup to my mouth, feigning ignorance.

We’d had this conversation dozens of times now, perhaps even hundreds.

“I would rather not take on a leadership role relative to you. I know that your goal with someone like that is to have them wrapped around your finger.”

“That’s not it at all~ And I mean it! You can’t refuse because you would find it a nuisance if you were at my whims! An elder sister must be on her feet at all times caring for her little sister, but also strict when times call for it. And the little sister is to be inspired by her elder sister. Doesn’t a spiritual pseudosistership like that sound lovely?!”

“I believe I’ve told you this many times now, but I don’t understand it at all. I am simply thankful that you brought me up into the position of agricultural minister. You also gained another close adviser, so I believe this is a win-win.”

“You wouldn’t know romance if it bit you on the nose, would you, Miss Beelzebub?”

“Indeed. One who spends her holidays drinking and lazing about alone hardly has the chance to become familiar with the concept.”

I had started gaining much more out of life once I’d become minister, compared with my stint as a bottom-tier bureaucrat.

I had established my power as the agricultural minister, and the demon king was the same. It would not be an exaggeration to say this was the most the demon world had developed in history. We were much more advanced than any human nation.

And if I didn’t end up at the beck and call of my ruler, even better…

“I planned to use as my close adviser someone who wasn’t on the career track, like you are, and I succeeded—but your individual development has gone way beyond what I was expecting. I cannot have my way.”

“Cannot have your way? Well, neither can I, since I’ve had to make time for you on one of my few days off. Traveling is one of my hobbies, and I would love to have the chance to fully enjoy it.”

“I cannot have this anymore.” Her Majesty abruptly stood from her chair.

Then she finished the rest of the tea in her cup before slowly placing it back on the table.

“Today, you will be acting entirely as my escort! First, you will accompany me on my shopping!”

I placed my elbows on the table, knowing full well it was rude. “Shopping, Your Majesty? You don’t have anything you want, do you?”

“So what if I don’t? I specifically mean the act of shopping itself. You have no feminine sensibilities when it comes to these things, Lady Beelzebub.”

“That is what I’m saying—if you want someone to act as your elder sister and indulge these interests of yours, then please look elsewhere. Or more precisely—” I stared hard at Her Majesty’s face. “You would hate it if I were inclined to stick so closely to you, no?”

“Yes,” Her Majesty said, grinning. “There is no point if she doesn’t disobey me. I look at people who do nothing but follow me all the time, every day!”

Which meant she wanted to have someone like that wrapped around her finger.

This is complicated… Much too complicated…

I stood wearily. “Then why don’t we cool down in a different town?”

“Indeed. There are too many people here.”

Her Majesty leisurely left the shop. I, obviously, paid the bill.

Afterward, we entered a forest we did not know the name of.

I did wonder why we had taken this route, but Her Majesty said there were beautiful flowers growing in the area, so we went.

Once we had grown tired of walking, we found a small mountain hut right nearby, so we decided to rest there for a little.

Living there were two twin girls, young enough to be considered toddlers.

The older of the two was bright and cheery, and the younger one spent all her time reading books.

Their personalities were so different; were they faring all right?

“Do you not have parents? It must be rough on your own.”

“Hmm, I guess you could say we do have a mommy…,” the cheerier of the two girls answered hesitantly.

Perhaps I asked a question I shouldn’t have?

“I will defeat Mother… Our mortal enemy…,” growled the bookworm.

Their home environment was much more complicated than I thought it was…

“What are you two walking around in the forest for?”

That was a reasonable question. Only hunters ever had business out here.

“A date,” joked Her Majesty. “We’re on a date.”

I made sure I didn’t give her a reaction. “This girl is important, but she has been clinging to me for some time now. This is my day off, yet she’s assigned me to a big job.”

The girls didn’t really ask any more than that. My explanation wasn’t too detailed for the children, so it was perfect.

“I thought we should take a detour and walk somewhere quiet.”

“In that case,” the girl who was reading suddenly spoke up, “if you keep going straight for a while, you’ll find a highland. I think it’s a nice spot, but there’s a terrible, evil entity that controls everything from the shadows.”

An evil entity controlling everything? That’s an interesting thing to say to the demon king.

But Her Majesty seemed to like that. “Thank you. Then we will visit the highlands.”

We thanked the two girls, then headed off.

“It sounds rather far. How are we going to get there?”

“Pull me up and fly, Miss Beelzebub. Can you do that?”

“…I would get tired, but it’s not impossible.”

I braced myself for a future backache as I grabbed Her Majesty and flew off.

The towns and villages dotting the highlands had much cleaner air than Vanzeld Castle.

And perhaps because of the dry climate, my skin didn’t stick to itself. The buildings formed neat, aesthetically pleasing rows, too.

Her Majesty did no shopping in the end and instead gleefully walked along the streets.

When we were holding hands, I often felt like I was dragging Her Majesty along with my longer strides, but she apparently didn’t find much fault with it. I didn’t understand her values.

On the other hand, she was disappointed with something else.

“There’s too little entertainment around here.”

Her Majesty sat on a low wall, her head tilted.

There weren’t a lot of people in this village, so they only had the minimum shops needed for survival.

Minstrels would never step foot in a place like this. I doubted there would be any evil entities here to begin with—only bored adventurers.

“I suppose this is how it is with a low population. The town around the castle is densely populated, and for that, we have plenty of different kinds of shops.”

“Hmm, so our hometown is ultimately the best. I’m a little sad to think that’s the lesson we’ve learned…”

Then a crowd started gathering before us. Maybe some kind of celebrity had come by.

In the middle of the crowd was a young girl wearing a black pointed hat. But despite her age, she had a dignity, a sophistication about her that suggested she was more than she appeared.

“Ah, she’s the same type of person as us,” Her Majesty said.

The villagers were calling her “the great Witch of the Highlands.”

“I see. A long-lived witch has made this her territory. Perhaps she is our mysterious ‘evil entity.’”

A small handful of witches had gained methods for immortality and lived for a long time; this witch must have been one of them.

Some witches were not so trustworthy; calling them evil wasn’t entirely off the mark.

In that case, I understood why villagers who looked much older than her treated her with reverence.

The witch was selling medicine to the villagers, as her kind often did.

There likely weren’t any thick woods in the highlands, so it seemed somewhat inconvenient to specialize in making medicine, but she must have her reasons.

Finally, the villagers who were talking to the witch left.

Once there were fewer people around, the witch turned to face us. Of course she noticed two strangers in the small village, especially since we weren’t wandering adventurers.

“Are you two travelers? There’s nothing to see here, but it’s not a bad place to stay. Feel free to relax here.”

“Indeed. That is exactly what we were doing. We are of a long-lived race, so we can live a hundred human lifetimes within our own.”

It wasn’t exactly a hundred, but I just decided to give a simple answer.

“I see. I’ve been alive for a little over two hundred and fifty years, too. I sell medicine, but I get most of my money by killing slimes.”

“You live a rather idle lifestyle if you get money from killing slimes…”

I’d never really heard of such a laid-back witch.

“My past is a little complicated. I died after working too hard, so now I’m just doing what I can at my own pace. But maybe it wouldn’t be bad to go traveling around like you two once in a while.” The witch approached us. “Especially you—you look so small, but you’re out here traveling! Good for you. If only I had a little sister like you, I think she’d make a great addition to my laid-back life.”

The witch placed her hand on Her Majesty’s hood.

“Good girl.”

In that moment, with incredible force, Her Majesty stepped away to put distance between them.

“Wh-what is it?!”

I looked at Her Majesty to find her expression frozen and tense, as if she had just met someone she wasn’t supposed to meet.

“Is it true she is the evil entity…?” Her Majesty’s attitude wasn’t normal.

Yet the witch seemed entirely relaxed; she didn’t seem interested in harming us.

“What’s wrong? Don’t tell me that touching your head is an insult or anything? I’m sorry if it was.”

“No, nothing like that…”

“Oh, phew. I’m glad~” The girl placed her hand in my hood to pat my head. “You have long horns, don’t you? Are you a kind of beast-person?”

I could feel every hair on my body standing on end, and I immediately stepped back to create distance.

“Who are you…? I felt something terrible…”

This woman had strength she wasn’t fully able to hide—the kind that only high-level demons had!

I wasn’t entirely sure of the reason, but after Her Majesty’s reaction, I could tell this wasn’t trivial!

“Huh? What? I don’t have any hidden power or anything—I just make my living killing slimes! I’m just a witch who’s lived a long time!”

I couldn’t detect any dishonesty in her words, but she was powerful enough to do anything she wanted.

We could not afford to let our guard down.

“Witch, if there is nothing evil about you, then we will be leaving this village now, so don’t pursue us, all right? With that, I would like to verify you have no ill intent about you.”

“O-oh… That’s fine… I have no reason to chase you… I don’t know—something feels off here, but I won’t go after you. I get the sense my laid-back life might become a thing of the past if I get too involved with you. I try to live life avoiding trouble anyway.”

“I see. Well, that way of thinking isn’t wrong.”

Her Majesty was staring unnervingly at the witch the entire time.

Her Majesty was still frightened, but I took her by the hand and led her out of the village. Her instinctive wariness eventually disappeared.

“Are you all right, Your Majesty?”

“Yes, I’m calm now.”

Once we came to the center of the wide-open highland, Her Majesty plopped down on the grass and placed her own hand on her head.

“When she patted me, I felt so strange. I was actually shivering with terror… But my heart is still beating fast, even though the trembling is gone…”

“Oh, someone patting you on the head is unthinkable, Your Majesty. You must have been surprised by such an unfamiliar experience.”

“Hmm, I don’t think that’s quite it, but it’s hard to put into words.” She was speaking calmly, but her behavior wasn’t normal. She was typically smiling in most situations, but she was not smiling now.

At that moment—I sensed several hostile people around us. Our guards were already up after encountering that witch, but this time, we noticed a number of demons flying ahead. We called them hawk-men or bird-people.

There were five in all.

I didn’t see the witch anywhere. But although there were five of them, I didn’t expect them to pose much of a threat.

“Demon King Provato Pecora Ariés! Your life is ours!”

They were holding swords and spears. I guess they had been watching us from above.

“Let me ask you, you wicked fiends, is there a witch among your ranks?!” I cried.

It was apparently an unexpected question, because one of the hawk-men wrinkled his nose. “What? No! We are only demons! We will change the current demon king’s lenient policy!”

“I see, I see. That is a relief.”

I promptly cast a spell, and two of the ones in front of me froze over.

By the time I was finished, Her Majesty had already buried the other three into the earth.

I didn’t exactly see what had happened, but I was sure the enemy didn’t, either.

“Well, that’s that.”

Her Majesty clapped her hands together.

“And so my strategy to lure out the assassins has been a success.   Thank you, Miss Beelzebub.”

“There would not have been any problem to begin with had you stayed protected inside the castle,” I said, exasperated. “Even if it did mean you couldn’t lure them out.”

That being said, my mind was at ease. After all, in the time that I had defeated two of them, Her Majesty had taken care of three. Her Majesty wasn’t so weak that she needed my protection.

“I’m sure I’ve told you it’s terribly boring to stay inside the castle all the time. That is why I decided to go with you on your travels. We can also lure out assassins like this, so it’s two birds with one stone.”

“And it turns my holidays into more workdays.”

Her Majesty threaded her arm through mine. “But you get to be with me. Please consider it a bonus instead.”

When I saw Her Majesty smiling in high spirits, a part of me gave up—she would be toying with me a lot from here on out, wouldn’t she?

“I don’t think I would go so far to think of it as a bonus, but I will consider it evened out.”

“Fantastic. I will allow that, then.”

I had fun working as agricultural minister, but I could do with fewer threats on my life.

“I see there are plenty of those who don’t like my way of doing things, but I think it’s about time we annihilate them all.”

“I am not sure if that perception of them is the right approach. But the first fifty years of your rule had the most assassination attempts, with the next fifty only having a third of that, and now it is relatively peaceful.”

Her Majesty stood before me and grasped my hand. “Even if you can’t act as my elder sister, I would hope that you continue to support me as a political partner.”

“Yes. Beelzebub is your greatest servant, Your Majesty,” I replied to the one who decided my fate.

“Um, is there something on my face…?”

Laika was looking at me dubiously.

Of course she was; I was staring at her quite intensely.

“Oh, it just came back to me—I feel like I sparred with you once a long time ago. I often went to the hot springs at Mount Rokko, and I wonder if we didn’t…”

“I have been training since I was little, but my memories from back then are not so clear.”

Laika seemed to have trouble remembering, but little would change if she did.

“Perhaps you might learn if you ask your parents about the demon pillow-war incident. Although…I would rather leave that incident buried, actually, so on second thought, there’s no need…”

I got a sound beating from the ministerial meeting after that… I shall just let it lie…

“I can’t even remember what I ate three days ago~,” Vania offered.

“That is a problem,” Fatla snapped back at her.

Today, I had brought my two subordinates to eat at the house in the highlands.

Azusa said we were pushing it, but holidays like these weren’t all that bad. We typically worked hard, you see.

“Miss Beelzebub, thank you for buying me another book.” Shalsha bowed politely to me.

Falfa followed suit. “The math book was really interesting!” she said with a smile.

“Of course, I have plenty more books at home if you want to visit. I am a high-level demon, after all. I have lots of space in my manor~”

“Hey, hey, hey! You can’t just adopt my girls!” Azusa put her foot down.

My strategy to adopt them amid the confusion never seems to succeed.

“To be honest, I suspect I may have I met the two of them before you did. I feel as though I once visited a small hut in a forest.”

“You have no proof of that, and there’s nothing stopping you from making up whatever story you want. Honestly, they’re from a completely unremarkable and ordinary forest. There’s no reason to go there.”

“But fate has a way of bringing people together. Actually, I do believe our paths crossed once, as well. It might have been thirty-five years ago—no, perhaps even longer…”

“You mean we ran into each other? I don’t remember anything. Word hadn’t gotten around back then that I was strong.”

It did not seem that Azusa remembered anything.

I was much the same. I only had a faint inkling that we’d met. “I remember that I once came to Flatta, but I have traveled round the entire country, so I cannot say exactly when that was.”

“Hmm. I know you like traveling, but why would anyone come to Flatta…? Well, we’ll never know what happened in the past, so we should concentrate more on the present and the future.”

“Those clear-cut solutions are much like you.” Impressed, I took a sip of my drink.

“Yes. The future is much more important than the past,” Fatla agreed. “Personally, so long as you take your duties as agricultural minister seriously, Lady Beelzebub, I am perfectly fine with that.”

She was alluding to how I didn’t do my job properly long ago.

“But Beelzebub, you’ve had that high-and-mighty attitude ever since you were a baby, right? You were born a noble, and lived your whole life with that incredible ego, didn’t you?”

I wanted to tell Azusa to let go of her assumptions, but I decided not to say anything.

“Vania, at least, has been scatterbrained since the day she was born.”

“What?! Why is that a reason to insult me?!” Vania protested her older sister’s surprise attack.

“Your first word was whoops.”

“No, that can’t be! Don’t make these things up! I’ve never heard about this!”

“I cannot verify Fatla’s story,” I said, “but Vania’s scattered brain is undeniably true.”

“Please give me a break, Boss!”

Here, as her boss, I had to help cover Fatla.

“Sigh, you sure are close. Especially for a boss and people working under her,” Azusa said with a hint of envy. “I wish I’d had an understanding boss, too. That’s the past, too, but I just can’t help thinking about it, you know?”

“Indeed. If the boss herself has a desire to improve, her subordinates also change the way they are.” Fatla glanced briefly at me. “It’s all right if she’s incompetent to begin with. But once she becomes aware of her shortcomings, that is when she can begin to grow and improve. Life is long, after all.”

“You sure are talkative today, Fatla.”

“I have no ulterior motives. I am simply speaking generally.” A ghost of a smile crossed Fatla’s face.

Silently and to myself, I said to her, Thank you.

There have been a lot of detours, and I had been bumped up to a position I never imagined I would have…

But on the whole? I’m happy.

“Oh, whoops,” Vania blurted out.

“All right, Vania, tell me what it is. I’ll get mad.”

“Wait, aren’t you supposed to say you won’t get mad…?”

“Just say it…”

“I forgot to turn in the documents that were due yesterday…”

I stood up and gave Vania a noogie to the side of her head.

“Ow, ouch! This is workplace violence!”

“No need to worry. We are not in the workplace!”

My road ahead as the agricultural minister wasn’t going to be a smooth one, it seemed…

The End