Seeing that the Magic Guide Spirits had all dressed themselves up nicely, Dark clapped his hands, signaling the maid beside him to open the box she was holding.
At once a flash of light shimmered, and neatly stacked Saint Coins appeared before the Magic Guide Spirits.
"One little red flower for a hundred Saint Coins," Dark said, spreading his hands with a smile.
The Magic Guide Spirits' attention was instantly caught.
But none of them could quite work out the exchange value between a little red flower and Saint Coins, so they just exchanged glances, too shy to speak up.
In the end it was the relatively well-off Miltank who moved first, trading a little red flower for a hundred Saint Coins. The rest of the Magic Guide Spirits followed suit, crowding forward to exchange their own.
Even though they never lacked for food or drink at the Duke's estate, and could get whatever they wanted with a single grunt of want...
...something given to you and something you buy for yourself were never quite the same.
And besides, this was their first outing — surely they'd want to buy souvenirs, or perhaps a few private little things they didn't want anyone else knowing about.
None of that mattered much to Dark, though.
What really mattered was that repeating this exchange enough times would give the little red flowers a real, practical value.
That was extremely important for building a currency system around the little red flowers.
...
After handing out the Saint Coins, Dark did a light morning workout, then headed to the dining hall.
Ollie had personally brewed him a cup of goat's milk and handed him a rolled-up newspaper before stepping back to prepare breakfast.
Sipping his goat's milk and skimming the paper, Dark suddenly had a thought: "I could use some milk tea."
So when Ollie came back again, he casually mentioned it in passing.
Making milk tea wasn't difficult — for a Magic Guide Master skilled in brewing potions, it was practically trivial.
Its charm lay in the variety of flavors, and in the "pearls" that had made it so popular.
Watching Ollie head off with obvious enthusiasm, Dark figured that by the time he got back tonight, he'd finally get to enjoy the long-missed milk tea again.
A cup of milk tea morning and night — a little extra weight every day.
...
Around seven-thirty, the dressed-up Magic Guide Spirits streamed into the dining hall.
Shortly after, Diana and Aurora, hand in hand, arrived for "class" and entered the dining hall as well.
The two little sisters seemed to have coordinated on purpose — matching sun hats, matching snow-white dresses, and the same shade of silver hair styled the same way. Standing together, they looked every bit like a pair of real sisters.
Oh, right — they actually were real sisters. Never mind, then.
Dark lowered his newspaper slightly to get a proper look.
Though Diana was a year older than Aurora, she had no advantage in height, and her slightly rounder face and lively expression made her seem, if anything, more childish than the quiet, well-behaved Aurora.
The one thing that truly betrayed her seniority was probably her chest, which was already far ahead of her peers.
"Have you eaten?" Dark asked with concern once Diana had climbed onto her chair and settled in.
Diana beamed and said, "I could eat again!"
"Careful, you'll get fat," Aurora said.
Diana squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head quickly. "I won't, I won't."
Then she turned a hungry, longing gaze on the breakfast the maids were bringing out.
Breakfast at the Duke's estate was so much better than at her own house!
...
After a breakfast that left everyone thoroughly pleased, the three of them rested a while before setting off from the Duke's estate in grand style, the Magic Guide Spirits in tow.
At the estate gates, Trina, head maid of the "Lion Palace Maid Corps," was already waiting with two maids from the "Lion Palace" and three Dragon-taming Guards.
Trina stood six feet tall, with short brown hair, a slender build, and long, straight legs — she looked every bit a proud, majestic lioness.
The two maids under her command shared the same general look, though with somewhat less presence.
For this outing, Trina had prepared three carriages in total.
She'd been a little surprised that the young master wanted to take the Magic Guide Spirits out for a day of fun, but once she remembered he'd also hired four private tutors for them, it started to seem perfectly reasonable after all.
The only real trouble was that with so many people going out, keeping an eye on everyone wouldn't be easy.
With the Demon King's "execution ritual" drawing ever closer, more than a few unsavory characters had been flooding into the royal capital lately.
Those lowlifes posed no threat to the young master, of course, but if they so much as spoiled his rare outing for fun, that alone would be an unforgivable offense.
So she'd called in two extra maids — combat maids, naturally.
...
Seeing the three carriages, Dark nodded in satisfaction, then turned and asked, "So how do we split up?"
He was, of course, asking the Magic Guide Spirits.
Counting the Moon God Spirit, there were nineteen Magic Guide Spirits in all, needing to be split across three carriages.
Only the Duke's estate's carriages were spacious enough to fit them all — anything smaller simply wouldn't have worked.
The moment he said this, the quick-reacting DemiDevimon flew straight to his shoulder, as if to declare it took up no space at all and didn't need counting into anyone's group.
Meanwhile the Vampire Young Lady's eyes darted about, and she grabbed the Phoenix Maiden by the hand, hunching over as they crept toward the carriage in the middle.
"Meow—" Only Sylveon watched them with wide eyes, waving her ribbon tendrils in a sulky, coquettish display.
Dark's gaze swept over the group once, then he settled it plainly. "Let's do it this way. Gatomon and Leomon will each lead a group. Gatomon, Vampire Young Lady, Phoenix Maiden, Shuckle, Honedge, and Blue-Eyes Baby Dragon in one group; Leomon, Moon Maiden, Trash Slime, Ditto, Miltank, Popplio, and Hawlucha in another; and the rest — DemiDevimon, Misdreavus, Meowth, Eevee, Sylveon, Magic Guide Scribe, and us — will ride together."
There was, of course, a reason behind this arrangement.
First, Blue-Eyes Baby Dragon was too large and needed to be kept apart from Leomon.
Second, Shuckle moved too slowly on its own, so it could simply ride on Blue-Eyes Baby Dragon's back — or fly "sword-style," so to speak.
Trash Slime and Ditto naturally had to stick together, while Miltank, Popplio, and Hawlucha were old friends already familiar with one another, making them a good fit for the same group.
As for the Magic Guide Spirits traveling with him, Sylveon and Eevee-chan had placed second and third in the end-of-term test, so it seemed only fair to indulge their hopes a little.
Misdreavus and Meowth, meanwhile, were simply too mischievous — only he could keep them in line.
And of course, part of the reason was that the six Magic Guide Spirits in his own group were all quite small and didn't take up much space.
As for the Magic Guide Scribe, that one could just be carried in his hand.
Dark had long since noticed that the Magic Guide Scribe genuinely seemed to enjoy being held that way.
And with that, a world in which nobody got hurt had been achieved!
"You two, get in that carriage."
Dark, keeping a straight face, shooed the Vampire Young Lady and the Phoenix Maiden toward a different carriage.
Gatomon, tasked with looking after them, let out a deep sigh, scooped up Honedge, grabbed Shuckle and Blue-Eyes Baby Dragon, and trudged toward that carriage.
On the other side, Leomon, leading his own group, called the rest of his team together and boarded the other carriage.
Only then did Dark pick up the Magic Guide Scribe in one hand and lead the way toward the middle carriage.
Meowth and Misdreavus, who would clearly have preferred to run wild and free, trailed behind him with pouting lips.
As for Sylveon and Eevee-chan, they were positively beaming with joy.
But just as Eevee-chan and Sylveon were about to speed up to take their places at Dark's sides, a shadow suddenly fell over them from behind, and their feet lifted off the ground — they'd already been scooped up by Diana and Aurora.
The two little sisters, each cradling an "Eevee," happily fell into step behind Dark.
...
A few minutes later, the three carriages, each pulled by Dragon-horn Horses, set off one after another down the road.
Each carriage was staffed with one Dragon-taming Guard and one maid.
The Demon family crest stamped on the carriages gleamed brilliantly.
Once the carriages got moving, the Magic Guide Spirits threw open the windows and pressed themselves against the sills, gazing curiously out at everything passing by.
To Magic Guide Spirits so newly born, everything in the outside world was full of wonder.
Though Gatomon and Leomon had been entrusted with responsibility, they too were, in truth, babies born less than a year ago — no matter how mature they looked on the outside, that couldn't hide the youthfulness underneath.
The massive Blue-Eyes Baby Dragon carefully curled itself up small, trying not to take up too much space by accident.
Its round eyes stayed wide open, watching with the same curiosity as the scenery streamed past on either side of the carriage.
The world was so vast.
If it were only possible...
who wouldn't want to go out and see a bit of it?
...
Inside the carriage riding at the front of the group.
Dark quietly flipped through the scanned contents of books stored in the Magic Guide Scribe, while Misdreavus occasionally poked its head down from above to play a little game of staring contests with him.
Diana and Aurora each held an "Eevee" in their arms, mimicking the way Dark groomed their fur.
DemiDevimon had its claws clamped firmly onto the curtain, poking its head out the window.
Meowth had claimed the window on the other side for itself.
Trina was peeling an apple.
The carriage swayed now and then, but her fingers never wavered — the apple came out in perfectly even little cubes, arranged neatly on a fruit plate.
Once she'd finished cutting the apple, she brought the plate over to Dark's side, speared a piece with a fork, and held it up to his mouth.
Dark opened his mouth, bit down on the apple, pulled it free from the fork, and chewed a couple of times — juice ran out at once.
In that instant, a thought struck him out of nowhere, and a possibility occurred to him.
So he asked, curious, "Trina, is there some kind of special apple? I mean, one rich in magic power."
"A magic plant, you mean?" Trina frowned slightly; this wasn't really her area of expertise.
Aurora tilted her head and said quietly, "An apple with magic power — a golden apple?"
"A golden apple..."
Dark set down the Magic Guide Scribe in his hands and tilted his head back slightly.
When it came to "apples with magic power," the golden apple was indeed the most famous by far.
This world, too, had inherited a fairly complete version of the golden apple legend Dark remembered from his previous life.
Not the legend involving the gods, though — the one connected to Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve, said to be the first human man and woman brought forth by the Holy One, held a place of extraordinary significance in the legends of the Holy Church.
According to the scriptures of the Holy Church, after their creation Adam and Eve lived in a paradise called "Eden."
The Holy One told Adam and Eve that they could eat the fruit of any tree in the garden — except the fruit of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," which they were forbidden to eat or even touch.
But Eve, tempted by the "Serpent," secretly ate the forbidden fruit of that tree, and then gave some to Adam as well.
When the Holy One learned of this, He cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden.
The fruit in question was the "golden apple."
In the doctrines that have carried down to this day, some call the golden apple the "Fruit of Wisdom," believing it to be the key that unlocked human intelligence.
Others call it the "Forbidden Fruit," believing it to be the origin of humanity's original sin and every sin that followed.
But as time passed, the "golden apple" gradually lost its original meaning.
Passed down through generation after generation, whatever divine power it once held grew thinner and thinner.
Nowadays, golden apples serve merely as breeding tools to preserve bloodline purity, held mainly by the elven race and the pixie-folk.
Even so, the golden apple remained an exceptionally potent magical plant.
If he could get his hands on some golden apples to refine Magic Guide Spirits...
Dark tapped his own head, deciding that was a ridiculous thing to be hoping for.
He asked instead, "Is there a more ordinary version, then?"
DemiDevimon suddenly chimed in. "You could ask Professor Plante."
"You mean Ms. Plante?" Dark mused on the idea.
As the former director of the Royal Botanical Garden and a senior mage specializing in plant-based magic, Ms. Birdie Plante was indeed an excellent person to consult.
"Then let's go ask her once we're back!"
With that decided, Dark went back to browsing through the Magic Guide Scribe's contents.
...
About half an hour later, the carriages rolled into the largest market in the royal capital — the Eugenie Trade District.
This trade district was run by the largest merchant guild in the kingdom, the Eugenie Merchant Guild, and travelers and traders from every corner of the kingdom passed through it, bringing goods in from outside and carrying local goods out — almost any ordinary item imaginable could be found here.
Even so, Dark had rarely come here in the past, simply because the place had far too much "everyday life" to it.
Dark, born in a tower and raised in a tower, had never really fit in with a place like this.
But that was all in the past now.
To the Dark of the present, the so-called Eugenie Trade District was just a somewhat larger version of an ordinary little market.
As for the travelers and adventurers who thrived here, he actually found them rather interesting.
If one wanted to see a bit of the world and broaden one's horizons, there was probably no better place for it.
Once they were done browsing here, he planned to take everyone somewhere a bit more upscale.
...
The Demon family crest engraved on the carriages was striking enough that vehicles ahead scrambled out of the way.
Merchants might not recognize every great noble by face, but they'd never mistake a great noble house's crest.
For people living cautiously, scraping by day to day, offending any great noble house — for any reason — simply wasn't something they could risk.
Even if some newcomer failed to recognize it at first glance, an older hand would hurry to point it out, so as not to bring trouble down on the innocent.
The Duke's estate had always enjoyed a fairly good reputation, but that was still just a "reputation."
Once you'd actually provoked them, you couldn't very well pin your hopes on their good name saving you, could you?
And so the three carriages drove straight through without slowing, like a great sword thrust straight into the heart of the market, sending ripples through the entire trade district in an instant.
Some of the bigger merchants scrambled to retreat, while others, sniffing out opportunity, grew restless with interest.
Adventurers from out of town watched with open curiosity, while the unsavory sorts hiding among the crowd quietly weighed the value of life against death.
Those who weren't merchants — especially outsiders — tended to have a narrower view of the world.
Not many people could recognize the Demon crest at a single glance.
But there was always someone who happened to have kept an eye on the Demon family, and such a person recognized it instantly.
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