A woman let out a deep, bone-weary sigh, shifting the thick straps of the heavy supply pack higher onto her shoulders in a desperate bid for comfort.
A few paces ahead of her, the woman dressed in something similar to a nun's outfit paused her steady stride and glanced back over her shoulder. There was no trace of warmth or genuine concern in her gaze; it was an entirely questioning look.
"Are you struggling to carry the supplies?" she asked, her voice calm and perfectly flat.
Kania quickly shook her head, forcing her posture completely straight. "No, not at all, Miss Zerakhea. I'm doing perfectly fine," she lied through her teeth.
The Demon Lord swept her piercing gaze up and down Kania's frame, silently assessing the obvious lie, before giving a curt nod and turning back around. "Then follow closer behind me, Kania," she commanded smoothly.
Kania immediately picked up her pace, hurrying to close the gap between them.
Over the past month, Zerakhea had painstakingly escorted the rest of the traumatized women and children from the hijacked steamwagon to the homes of their families or other safe havens. All of them except for Kania. She had nowhere left to go, and absolutely no one left to turn to; she was completely and utterly alone in the world. Recognizing this, the Demon Lord had offered to take her along. It wasn't an act of free charity, of course. Kania was brought on to handle the physical labor—carrying the heavy supplies, cooking their meals, cleaning their camps, and even drawing baths and washing Zerakhea. She had essentially become a full-time servant.
It had been an agonizingly difficult choice to make at the time. Yes, she was destitute and stranded, but willingly pledging herself to a terrifying entity who had casually ripped a man's arm completely off was a questionable life decision, to say the least. Yet, looking at her current situation? Kania was profoundly glad she had chosen to follow Zerakhea.
The initial adjustment period had been brutal. They were constantly on the move, and managing all of her exhausting chores on the road took a toll. The travel became significantly harder when their stolen steamwagon had finally run out of fuel in the middle of a desolate road. Zerakhea easily possessed the monstrous physical strength to pick the entire heavy vehicle up and carry it to the nearest city to refuel, but she had outright refused, stating simply that "it would draw too much attention."
Kania had initially assumed a legendary Demon Lord would be a cruel, tyrannical mistress to work for, but Zerakhea had never actually treated her with any malice or harshness. She simply expected the work to be done properly, and that was the end of it.
Under this bizarre but stable routine, Kania was doing so much better than the broken, terrified girl she had been that night in the wagon. She looked significantly healthier. Her dirty blonde hair, once tangled and severely frayed, was now clean and well-kept. Her brown eyes, though currently heavy with physical exhaustion, burned with a grounded, undeniable sense of purpose.
Drawing in a deep, fortifying breath, Kania pushed past the burning ache in her legs and quickened her steps until she was walking right beside the disguised Demon Lord.
Zerakhea cast a sideways glance at her. "You look energetic suddenly," she remarked.
Kania offered a small, genuine smile, staring down the long road ahead. "Yes, I am. I just thought about something, and it gave me a bit of energy."
Zerakhea hummed softly, letting her eyes flutter shut for a brief moment. When she opened them again, her gaze was piercingly direct. "Is it because you were reminiscing about what happened? About how I gave you purpose?" she asked bluntly.
Upon hearing this entirely accurate deduction, Kania let out a sharp, mildly annoyed sigh. "There you go again, Miss Zerakhea," she grumbled, a small, stubborn pout forming on her lips. "You just explicitly state things you shouldn't possibly know and completely suck all the romance right out of situations like this." Muttering under her breath, she quickened her pace, deliberately marching a few steps ahead to hide her exasperation.
Zerakhea paused, staring blankly at the back of the girl's head for a moment, before easily lengthening her graceful strides to walk right beside her once more. "I do not really see what is romantic about what we were just talking about," she stated, her tone entirely literal.
Kania shook her head in disbelief. "Not that sort of romance, Miss Zerakhea! Don't you get what I'm talking about? The feeling, the atmosphere!" she tried to explain.
The disguised Demon Lord simply offered a blank, uncaring shrug.
"Whatever," Kania finally gave in, dropping the exhausting subject as she shifted her focus back to the long dirt road ahead. Suddenly, her brown eyes widened. "Miss Zerakhea, look! We are nearing the border," she pointed out eagerly.
Zerakhea followed the girl's outstretched finger. Looming in the near distance, situated squarely across the main road, were the heavy barricades, fluttering banners, and bustling, armed guards of the Aeruna border checkpoint.
"Finally," Zerakhea murmured, a cold satisfaction bleeding into her smooth voice. "That took a long time."
And with that, Demon Lord Zerakhea had finally arrived in Aeruna, officially adding herself to the dangerous, converging hunt for Joshua Ambrose.