Chapter 37
Undercover Investigation
Starting from Dandol territory, it took me about three weeks to reach the Barony of Ceres, which was located almost in the northernmost part of the Cleydale Kingdom.
The journey itself was somewhat lengthy, but there were no incidents that were of particular concern.
However, being a woman and a child, I felt I was more easily entangled with both bad and good people compared to when I was a dirty vagabond.
I couldn’t accurately judge the goodness or badness of others. Even if they seemed normal at first, they may attack me out of the blue, like those boys did.
Therefore, from the latter half of the trip, I changed into men’s clothing that I had bought in the towns along the way and continued my journey, taking the forest animal paths along the side of the roads, instead of taking the city roads.
The season was about to change into summer. In Cleydale Kingdom, where there was no snow in the winter, the summers were reasonably hot, but even so, the breeze felt a little cooler, perhaps because of the river that was to the north and divided the town into north and south.
“…a big city.”
The territory itself was smaller than the Barony of Horace where I lived, but most of the towns and villages were along the waterfront, seeking the benefit of the river that flowed from the mountains that could be seen even from here to the north.
Perhaps because of this, the whole area was lumped together like a large city, and the center of the city, where Baron Ceres lived, seemed more developed than Baron Horace’s territory.
The river was large enough, and there were some large boats that appeared to be used for transporting goods. However, there were no fishing boats or small boats in sight, as was common in such waterfront towns.
I asked the shopkeeper while buying some preserved food at a stall if this was because the river was flowing faster than expected, and he replied that the high water volume was because of the seasonal rainfall, and that the lack of fishing boats was because demons sometimes appeared in rivers flowing from demon habitats.