The Regressed Demon Lord is Kind

ouse so that we can check what day and what time your item will be auctioned.”

“Okay!” Leona nodded with a hopeful smile. An elf’s smile was extraordinary.
All the people passing by momentarily stopped to gaze at her face. 

However, Zich crushed the smile on her face with an indifferent expression.
“Ms.
Leona, you won’t  be able to retrieve your item back with the amount of money you currently have.”

“…But I have so many gold coins?” Leona peeked into her sack. 

“The customers in the Tyroul Auction House easily use that amount of gold coins for just one meal.”

“…” Leona looked down at her sack as if she was going to eat it whole.

Lyla elbowed Zich for completely crushing Leona’s hope.
Lyla’s attack directly hit the center of his abdomen, but Zich received her attack with no change in his expression.

“Well, please don’t lose hope. There’re certainly ways to get it back.”

“There’s another way?”

Leona lifted her head up with a bright expression again.
It was amusing to see how quickly her expressions changed. 

“Yes, so don’t worry about it too much, and let’s go find the auction information about the Lake’s Tear.”

“Okay!” Leona smiled brightly again.

*   *   *

“Well, it’s easy.”

While drinking a glass of wine, Zich sat on a chair and stretched out his legs on a stool.
With a high and mighty air, he said, “How difficult would it be to coax an inexperienced hillbilly elf fresh out of the woods?”

Then Zich arrogantly tipped his wine glass towards him.
Lyla tried her best, but she couldn’t look favorably at him because he looked so much like a swindler that had successfully captured his prey.

“What was up with your actions today?”

“For what?”

“You acted like someone completely different.
Like…you know, what…”

“Like a person who is kind and caring and filled with a strong sense of justice?”

Lyla did not reply.
She shivered as goosebumps ran down her arms and legs.

“Hey, go easy on me.
I didn’t act like that because I wanted to.” Zich took a gulp of wine.
If Lyla looked closer, his expression didn’t look too pleased either.

“It was the best way for me to successfully approach her and intervene given the situation.” Zich put his legs down from the stool.
“She’s a young elf who came out of the forest for the first time to complete a mission of retrieving her tribe’s treasure back.
Moreover, she must have experienced all sorts of discrimination as an elf.”

All the swindling and fraud was the most prominent discrimination she received so far.
If she had been a human, she wouldn’t have been scammed to that extent.

“Of course, in her head, she must know it too that she should be wary of a person who suddenly appears to help her; but in such an awful situation, if a kind and caring person like me appears in front of her, she probably feels differently.”

Regardless of species, if everyone acted only on logic, swindlers would decrease to at least a tenth of their size.
Zich was sure of this.

“Leona Pearl in Droud already trusts me beyond a normal level, and I’m able to maintain a relationship where I can interfere with her business.” 

“No matter how I think about it, you look like a swindler who is trying to con a naïve country bumpkin who just came to the city.”

Zich burst out laughing.
“Even though our goals are different, we probably are aiming for the same thing.”

Lyla shook her head. 

“If we didn’t intervene, what would have happened to her? Judging by her reaction, Leona would have really caused havoc in the auction house if we didn’t stop her.
From my memory, however, I don’t think she experienced a particularly bad incident.” 

“Ah, that? It’s simple.” Zich recalled a distant event in his past.
He remembered her ferociously sharp arrows and abilities in their final battle with Glen Zenard.

“It’s because she was strong enough to be one of Glen Zenard’s comrades.
She’s probably crazy strong right now—strong enough to cause chaos in the auction house and successfully escape.”

After all, being street-smart and possessing physical strength were completely different matters.

*   *   *

The next day, Zich, Lyla, and Leona went back to the Tyroul Auction House.
The employee at the information desk and the guards seemed to recognize her, but she didn’t act in any way that would make them chase her out.
The guards merely strengthen their grip on the weapon they were holding.
However, Leona also had no intentions to fight with them anymore, so she thoroughly ignored them and followed Zich and Lyla.

“That’s where the items being auctioned are written.” Zich pointed at the wooden boards on one side of the wall. 

The wooden boards were huge.
It was much bigger than a full-grown man, and they were filled with papers that had items soon to be auctioned written on them. 

“Let’s first check out that wooden board.” Zich pointed at the wooden board where the building’s least valuable items were being auctioned off.

If the Lake’s Tear was on this board, they could buy the item at a relatively affordable cost.
However, unfortunately, the Lake’s Tear was not on the first wooden board.

“Well, let’s go to the next board.”

Zich and his companions searched through each one of the wooden boards to find the Lake’s Tear.
However, no matter where they looked, they couldn’t find the Lake’s Tear.
Leona began to grow more and more nervous.
Each time they moved on to the next board, the more valuable the items were; thus, the prices increased exponentially.
Even though Zich said there was another way, she couldn’t help but feel worried.
To her dismay, the Lake’s Tear didn’t appear even after they passed through many wooden boards.

“There’s only one board left.”

With Zich’s words, Leona looked at the last remaining board.
It was the highlight of the auction house where items being auctioned off at the center auction room were posted.