小嫂子的味道

"Finally here," I said to myself, letting out a sigh. 

Although as I was lying there I felt something weird. Req\'s hand should have been holding my hand but I didn\'t feel it there. It was strange so I decided to take a look in her direction. 

However, when I turned to the side I found nothing but a sword lying there on the ground. Req was not there, just the Requiem sword. 

"Req?" I called. 

There was no reply. I didn\'t understand what was happening, she was here just a moment ago. 

I got up and tried to look for her. But found nothing. As I was walking the pain in my body suddenly increased and I ended up coughing blood.

I thought it was just some blood, however it didn\'t stop just then. I fell on my knees and suddenly started vomiting, which mostly consisted of blood since I hadn\'t eaten or drank anything for a month. 

"Fuck, this is getting worse," I said to myself as I gasped for air. I needed to heal myself as soon as possible. The wound may not be fatal but by now it was starting to affect my insides, plus the wound was not the only damage my body had taken. 

But I needed to look for her first. Hence I wandered around looking for her, but found nothing. 

Then after ten minutes or so her voice resounded in my head.

[Don\'t worry, I\'m fine,] she said. 

\'Where are you?\' I asked. 

[Huh? Why didn\'t you notice? I transformed back into Requiem.]

\'Why so sudden?\'

[You see, using Req at full takes a lot of mana. I didn\'t have enough mana for it but still did it forcefully, hence now I don\'t even have the mana left for manifesting myself. But I\'m fine, so don\'t get worried.]

She was right, that did explain the situation. But for some reason I felt slightly frustrated at her actions. I didn\'t know why so I paid it no mind. 

\'How long will it take before you can manifest yourself again?\' I asked.

[Hmm. I\'m not sure. I mean, this has never happened before so I have no idea.] 

\'Sigh. Why did you do it when you knew this would happen?\'

[Because I promised to not let you get hurt ever again.]

\'Ah…\'

Well, that proved I succeeded. 

There was no use crying about what had already happened so I waited till the dust cloud settled, picked up the Requiem sword and started walking toward Havenreach.

As I got closer the view of the city became clear and well, it looked more like a futuristic city than a city set in a medieval fantasy setting.

Naturally, I knew this beforehand. In fact, I had witnessed that tragedy when loli_pop decided to do this. In short, he had no clue about the world building of his world and had gotten bored by writing in a medieval setting, therefore he made this city more modern—even though it made zero sense. 

I mean, according to the novel this was the most advanced city in the entire world. And it looked like one too since even at this distance I was able to see the long buildings that stood proudly. 

The land around here was completely leveled with no other city or settlement near Havenreach so it didn\'t look strange, if it would have been otherwise then this modern city would\'ve stood out like a sore thumb. 

I couldn\'t see any corpses of demon beasts so it was safe to assume that this was located pretty far from the other cities and countries. 

\'Ah well, no use caring about that. It\'s not like I\'m getting free of troubles anytime soon,\' I thought to myself. 

As I walked forward toward the city the plot of the novel and what was going to happen next began to run in my mind. There was a lot of stuff that was going to happen from now on and it will be even worse than everything that had happened. 

To be completely honest, there were a few things I had no idea about how I would deal with them. But I had no choice but to do it so there was no use in complaining. 

I had to do what I had to do.

After a while I reached the border of the city. There was a big iron wall built around the entire city and I couldn\'t see many gates leading inside the city. 

Fortunately though, I had landed in the direction where the entrance gate was. It was a little far and took a few minutes but I finally reached there. 

I stood in front of the gigantic doors made of iron and waited. I thought about knocking but seeing the size of these gates made me change my mind—I probably would have done it for comedic relief if I was a character in some novel though. 

So I stood there and waited, a few seconds later a small window opened in the gate and I saw the face of a man peeking from the inside. 

"Who are you?" he asked. 

"Human," I replied. Then he eyed me and took a look at the condition I was in. 

"Prove your identity," he declared. Of course, I wouldn\'t be surprised to know that these guys already knew about how demons can look just like humans. 

I was aware of this hence I\'ve kept something with me to help in this situation. I slid my hand inside my pocket, meddled there for a while but found nothing. Then I did the same with my other pocket but found nothing. 

\'It\'s better not what I think it is…\' I thought to myself. I\'ve seen this trope occur in movies way too many times, I\'d die out of cringe if I ended up doing the same thing. 

Fortunately, I found it when I looked through the pocket of my shirt. This one was closed with a zip, that\'s why I had kept it there—though I was still surprised that I managed to not lose it.

I then went ahead and handed him the card. It was nothing but my ID card from the Zaforths magic academy.

The guy took it and then closed the window. At that time I thought about how much mana it would take to break open this door in case he didn\'t let me in. 

But then a minute later he returned and handed me the card back. Then I heard a loud rumbling sound as those big iron gates began to move.

As the gates opened I saw the view of the city before me. 

"Welcome to Havenreach," the guy said.