Hero194: Holy crap.

  Popcorn5: Huh?

  Paperbird: What's up?

  Hero194: This scary boss dude from Naraka came back with Kid.

  Hero194: And people are talking about some dragon.

  RedOwl: There was a dragon sighted over Red Town.

  Hero194: Hold on, really?!

  RedOwl: Yeah. It's all over the news.

  RedOwl: They said it's a diplomatic envoy from Naraka, and not to worry about it.

  Hero194: It's not a diplomatic envoy, it's the demon king himself!

  OutsiderFan71: Wait, what?

  OutsiderFan71: What'd he do?

  Hero194: Uh...

  Hero194: They kinda just walked off together.

  OutsiderFan71: You didn't stop them and save her?!

  Hero194: Heck no!

  Hero194: He was super scary!

  Hero194: And he kinda looked like he could be her dad?

  Hero194: I'd rather piss off the ADs than deal with that guy!

  Indigo997: Kid's the demon king's daughter?

  ***

  "Is this the correct path? We've been walking for some time now."

  "It is."

  I had to assure Zaitenmodi that we were going the right way a couple of times as we walked from the Lost-side portal to my home.

  "I live about two hours away."

  "You do? Seriously?"

  "Yes."

  I wasn't sure why he was so incredulous.

  "Do you live beside a portal in your dungeon?" I asked curiously.

  "Hmm... I suppose I do not..."

  But after I'd asked that, he seemed to stop questioning it. He had an expression that seemed to say that my decision was rational after all.

  Well... anyway, we eventually reached the cave.

  "This is your home? Why do you live in a cave...?"

  "I haven't made enough bricks for a house yet."

  Savi and Lilac were there.

  I felt relieved.

  'I'd managed to save her after all.'

  Savi stiffened as soon as she saw Zaitenmodi.

  So did Lilac, although that was more ordinary a reaction for her.

  Although I had a guest, I still approached her to pull her into a hug.

  She seemed surprised at first, but pretty soon, she was clinging to me pretty tightly. She eventually started crying all over the dress that those kidnappers had given me.

  It wasn't really even my dress in the first place, so I didn't really mind it. I just tried to comfort her.

  When it became clear she didn't want to let go anytime soon, I shot Zaitenmodi an apologetic look.

  He had an expressionless look on his face. I wasn't sure what it meant.

  'Maybe he's not good around people either...'

  ***

  "What a peculiar garden you've grown."

  Although it was difficult to trust Zaitenmodi's advice on gardening, I couldn't easily refuse to show him after he'd gone through the trouble of rescuing me.

  Even if he claimed he'd done so for his own reasons, and that he was the one who owed me a debt, he could still have simply ignored the situation.

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  That's what most emperors would do, if they had no personal investment.

  Of course, his actions today will probably cause an awful lot of trouble for a lot of people, myself included, but it didn't seem wise to dwell on that fact too much.

  "The local soil's inert," I explained. "I have to grow things this way until I understand more."

  "I see, I see. This path will take many years to bear fruit... but of course, that should not deter you at all."

  He said various cryptic things like that as he looked around.

  "Of course, if you grow bored, you're free to come to my palace anytime you wish, with as many servants as you wish. I'll graciously even allow you to return here, if you so desire."

  'Ah.'

  I got the sneaking suspicion that if I'd taken up his offer before being kidnapped, he probably wouldn't have allowed me to leave.

  Of course, it was just a suspicion.

  "Is that so... unfortunately, you've come early, so the only drinks we have are imperial made."

  "How unfortunate for me, but I did say that any drink would be fine."

  And so I made him some imperial tea.

  It wasn't something I personally drank very often. In fact, it wasn't mine to begin with.

  It was something Savi drank all the time.

  I'd have to get her more later.

  "Is this what you usually drink?"

  "No. I usually just drink water."

  "I see. Once the haoma's come in, I'll show you how to prepare a drink with it."

  I wondered if an emperor was really so free he could offer to do that...

  But then again, he'd become the fastest person to respond to my messages lately, so it seemed that he really was bored.

  A bored emperor struck me as potentially extremely dangerous.

  "If you want to... but you should probably avoid coming with the dragon next time."

  By the way, said dragon had simply vanished in a cloud of sparkling lights when we arrived at the portal.

  I guess it was something he could temporarily summon or create, possibly with a Skill, although having strange powers was hardly unusual for an emperor, so it was also possible he simply tamed an actual dragon that conveniently could disappear when it was no longer needed.

  Although he probably would have answered me if I'd asked, he'd treated it all so naturally that I didn't feel the need to question him about it.

  After all, he didn't question me about my Skill.

  Since he was oddly insistent on treating himself as if he were my distant uncle, I thought it was best to just oblige that.

  ***

  Surprisingly, he really did offer something akin to good gardening advice.

  Not just for the haoma, but in general.

  That said, it seemed that he was just using a Skill or that he was otherwise capable of talking to plants, since he was just relaying what the plants themselves felt.

  "This one needs more sunlight... ah, but these over here would prefer more shade. This one would like a little bit more water, and these feel starved for minerals."

  In other words, his advice really was just that plants need sunlight and minerals.

  If he didn't have the ability to listen to the individual plants' needs, I think it would have been useless advice. Possibly even detrimental.

  Considering Skills usually follow actual talent, I really wondered what knack he had for plants that let him understand them, despite not seeming to know a thing about actually taking care of them himself.

  "It's strange such a determined gardener doesn't have a Skill for this yet," he mused, possibly thinking similar but reversed thoughts about me.

  "How did you get it?"

  "In Naraka, we have such an abundance of mana that it is possible to gain Skills simply through proper meditation techniques. That isn't to say that it's easy, but there are various sects that control the distribution of such techniques, so it is how most Narakans gain Skills... myself included as their progenitor."

  "Proper meditation techniques...?"

  'Did he contemplate plants until he gained a Skill from it...?'

  "Yes. I'll show you one."

  "It sounds like that'd be unimaginably expensive."

  "Correct, and without hyperbole. Nobody could afford my lessons with wealth alone. Nevertheless, almost every Narakan alive can trace their education ultimately back to me. I do not mind teaching. If you prefer, I can send a tutor to stay with you for a time, but burdening you with a guest while you're still building the very basics is hardly a way to repay a debt."

  I wanted to tell him that there was no debt between us.

  Actually, it seemed to me that I was the one who owed him. He'd given me a valuable resource, rescued me from danger, and was now even helping out.

  Even if his gardening Skill was a bit annoying, it was hard to refute that it was helpful.

  However, he was an emperor, even if we weren't actually standing in his empire.

  He didn't seem like a puppet emperor either.

  I couldn't deny his perspective just based on the fact we were in the Lost.

  Although the Terran Empire pretended that we had rights, there frankly was no law in this world outside what other worlds imposed upon it.

  It seemed like a bad idea to try and pit him against the Terran governments, too. But regardless, since I was striving to avoid their influence, relying on them seemed contradictory.

  Of course, not only was I neither Terran nor Narakan, but also not a native of the Lost.

  "I think I owe you more than you owe me at this point, but I don't see any point in arguing with an emperor over it."

  "Haha! And so what if you do? Do you think of me as an ungracious emperor, one who needs to chase down every little debt? I suppose it's natural for someone so small to worry over such little details, but I am wholly unconcerned. Owe me your life a thousand and one times, just as you do the sun and earth. I'll grant it the thousand and second time just the same."

  After that, he showed me the meditation technique.

  ***

  It was an assault.

  A decimation.

  There wasn't any other way to describe it.

  Of course, it wasn't as simple as saying the King of Naraka came to attack a bunch of innocent Terrans.

  Frankly, most of the deaths weren't even imperial citizens. They were mostly islanders.

  Moreover, there was a decent chance that the few imperials that were caught up in all this... were unambiguously bad people.

  People involved in more than just drug trafficking and prostitution.

  Yeah, those sorts of crimes could ruin people's lives, but unless you were at the top, the line between victim and abuser was decidedly blurred. It made it easy to sympathize with criminals like that.

  It was a lot harder to sympathize with human traffickers and murderers.

  Of course, the basic truth was still that the Demon King killed a bunch of Terrans and destroyed a bunch of property in the process.

  The empire was as good as any other when it came to covering up inconvenient truths, but it was hard to cover up what amounted to a one man artillery strike in a rich neighborhood.

  "Even if this isn't in the news," muttered Anieli, the so-called detective whose job this evening was to find the truth only so it could be more efficiently squashed. "There's no way the Islands won't find out."

  "Relax," replied Vincenti, the man whose job it was to make sure the truth did indeed get thoroughly squashed. "There's pretty much nothing they can do about the Demon King. Their old-fashioned sense of honor doesn't extent to humanoid disasters."

  "Yeah. What about the kid they grabbed?"

  "Huh... good question."