97 Behemoth Axe
The Behemoth Axe weighed heavy in Luke’s hands. Despite this, he felt he could easily use it with just one hand since the great weight of the weapon was perfectly balanced from blade to grip.
The weapon’s handle was slightly curved at first, near the head attachment. Still, its ergonomics were nowhere near bad. The handle material was something unlike anything Luke had seen in his entire life; although it had the appearance of a typical Blackwood, he could feel the same firmness as if he were holding the handle of a great metal spear.
“Did you get this little beauty by killing Beherith?” Alexis asked Luke. Impressed, she stood up to look at the Panspermia Weapon more closely.
Luke ignored her and continued to admire his new acquisition. The knob of the ax was coated with a different kind of material, and even running his hand over could not recognize the texture or appearance.
‘That doesn’t look like leather, or metal, or cloth… what the hell is that?’ There were weird, mirrored designs on this material, like the designs Luke had seen several times before on traditional Kaloru decks. All the rest of the handle also had sturdy bands and tiny runes carved into its side.
The ax head was another show of detail and grandeur. Without runes, on the sides of the head were geometric shapes that interconnected and created other designs and symbols that the S-Class had never seen before.
“Do you want to sell it?” The half-dragon asked eagerly. Until a few seconds ago, she thought the sizeable heavy ax she saw in the window of Elf Knor’s store was the most beautiful of all, yet the Behemoth Axe looked even more beautiful and powerful.
Luke quickly hid the ax. “Let’s hurry, we have to help those boys. They won’t be able to hold the body of the man inside.”
“Hey, don’t ignore me! I’ll pay you 50 gold coins!”
“You earned twice that to get me out of the Dungeon.”
“Okay, okay! You’re good at trading…” The half-dragon said and put her right hand on her chin to think. “Fine! I’ll give you 200 gold coins!”
“You’re as poor as I am, and you don’t have a penny in your pocket. Where would you get this money from?”
“Loan?”
Then, before night came, Luke allowed himself to help the twins give their friends a proper burial. He didn’t usually participate much in this kind of ceremony, but he understood that it is quite essential; after all, it wasn’t any of these dead people’s fault that a demon crossed their lives.
Luke was still uneasy because he knew that his friends were in trouble, but he also trusted that Ynosuke would be able to keep them out of problems until he could make sure that everything would be all right.
Because of the cremating bodies in front of the inn, the former thief knew that soon they would have company. In places away from big cities, that’s where wild animals congregate, and so do people with bad intentions.
“Come on; I want to get back to Vasconcelos before night falls,” Luke said after closing the door of the inn and checking for anything that would identify the owner. He found nothing.
The half-dragon and the twins nodded, crestfallen for different reasons. As they walked at a fast pace along the trails of the steep terrain in the area, the two boys did not stop pestering Alexis even for a second, asking dozens of questions.
“What is a demon?”
“Where are we going?”
“What’s the name of the tall, frowny-faced guy?”
“Were you born with big horns already?”
“Why don’t you have a tail?”
The two had already understood that they should not irritate Luke; however, they had not yet seen Alexis angry. Her patience also filled up after answering all of the two’s questions with irony and seeing that they would not stop.
Alexis summoned a common dagger from Panspermia and pointed at the twin with the sides of his hair shaved off. “If you two don’t shut up, I’m going to rip both of your ears off and stick them on my horn, how about it!”
Luke noticed that the yellow details on her horns glowed a little more intensely in that instant, and the twins’ watchful eyes didn’t miss that detail either.
“Ohh!”
“Oww!”
In reflex, they tried to touch her horn without permission, which ended up occasioning a double knockout and a fist mark on each other’s foreheads.
Despite all the worry, Luke managed to smile at that moment. He crouched down, placed each of the boys under one of his arms, and spoke to Alexis:
“That’s it, boys. Only I can touch Alexis’ horn.” Without giving much thought to what he said, he walked back.
Obviously, the half-dragon blushed on the spot. Like the ears, the horns of a half-beast are highly erogenous regions. ‘He’s an idiot…’ she thought with her hands on her cheeks, to pick out the color red.
At around eight in the evening, they finally arrived at the Strogueher Mansion. From afar, Luke smelled a sweet smell in the air. As soon as Ayumi and Nathalia opened the double door of the mansion’s entrance together, Luke felt as if he had just returned from a long battle.
“You guys have been gone all day. What happened?” Nathalia questioned. The two half-beasts had forgotten to warn about leaving because Luke didn’t even know what was going on, and Alexis didn’t know it would take so long.
“Let’s just say that the plague of demons in Vasconcelos is solved,” Alexis said, clapping his palms together as if removing dust as she walked into the mansion.
Of course, before returning to the mansion, she wore the pendant delivered by Tenth to make sure there was nothing left in the area. The half-dragon hated to admit it, but Chris did a job worthy of a genius.
Luke looked at Ayumi Yamazaki far more mildly than at anyone else and asked, “Can we talk?”
The Matriarch smiled briefly as she nodded. Of course, the Matriarch was not expecting a warm welcome, much less a kiss back, but she realized at that moment that something had happened.
“How nice of you to return, Mr. Luke and Miss Alexis. May I ask who the two guests are?” Martha asked, pointing to the two boys hiding behind the half-beasts’ backs.
Luke grabbed the twins by the back of their collars, pulled them forward, and introduced them, “This is Leo and Noah. They’re both very chatty, but I think they learned their lesson on the way here.”
Upon their release, the twins reacted to the imposing Strogueher Mansion in different ways. While Leo, the one with the shaved sides of his hair, crossed his arms and posed like a badass to try to impress Nathalia, Noah filled his eyes with tears.
“We’re not going to become slaves, right?”