Reunion [2]

After settling all the confusion in the throne room, I headed towards a room with Zen, Alicia, and Mary to discuss the things I came here for.

Well, it was quite a shock to know about Zen, Mary, and Jessica. They were all siblings and royalty. On my way, I asked them a few more things to have a clear understanding of the situation.

It was like this, they all were siblings and they were the students of the magic academy just like they told me before. But after these things happened with the king, they had to quit the academy and come here in an emergency.

When they met me in the forest, they were on a real quest given to them by the academy and went into trouble after that. When I saved them, I didn't recognize them as royalty and treated them normally that's why they didn't tell me about them.

The thing about Mary doing his father's job in an emergency was a lie, she still didn't want to tell me that she was a princess because she thought I'd start treating her like a princess instead of a friend.

To be honest I didn't care about all this that much. The only thing I was guilty of was that I thought of Mary and Jessica as Zen's waifu's in my mind. It didn't seem like a big mistake to a normal person but to me, as a human with some vast knowledge about 'H' culture, only I know how big of a crime this is.

But keeping that aside, there's still a thing about Mary which is bugging me.

"Mary, do you fight with a sword or are you a healer?" I asked.

"Huh? I fight with a sword, why do you ask?" she said.

"No, I was just curious,"

The reason I asked this was because in the forest when they were surrounded by goblins, she didn't have a sword and looked more like a healer. But maybe her sword broke or she dropped it in panic so I didn't push this matter any further.

"Okay here we are, you wanted to talk to me in private, right Haruto?" said Zen, as we arrived in front of a room.

He pushed the door slightly and we entered the room while Alicia decided to leave. Maybe she decided to leave when she heard Zen say that I wanted to talk in private.

'She is a SSS class adventurer but why is she acting like Zen's private bodyguard?' I asked inwardly.

Zen, Mary, and I entered the room and Zen closed the door.

The room had a rectangular table in the center with chairs around it. It was a sort of meeting room.

Zen and Mary sat on the chairs on the right side and I sat on the one on the left side, directly in front of them.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" asked Zen.

He was pushing right to the main topic without wasting any time, which was understandable. At the time of this emergency, he decided to hear me out is a big thing in itself, so I respected his decision and went straight to the point.

"The king is killed by a demon, am I right?" I said.

Zen's eyes widened a bit in surprise but soon he calmed himself.

"I don't know how you received this information but yes, you are right about that. The king and our father were killed by a demon," he said, the tone in which he was speaking was serious. Now he was behaving more like a king of a country and less like a friend.

Well, it was reasonable; this was not a trivial matter. Understanding this, I also decided to take things a little seriously.

"The demon who killed your father was none other than the demon lord himself," I said.

"What-" Mary screamed in surprise, I told her before about this a little bit but I didn't tell her that the demon lord was involved.

While she was surprised and lost herself, Zen was calm and composed.

"How do you know about this?" he asked me while putting his hands on the table.

This was it, from here on I have to tell them the fake story I created in order to make them believe me. I hope everything goes according to the plan, this is the first time I'm going to manipulate someone for their own good.

"The demon lord told me herself," I said.

After that, the room was dead silent for a while. But breaking the silence Zen said, "You said *herself* right, is the demon lord a female?"

Well, this was a little unexpected, this means they haven't seen her in person or even heard about her that much.

"Yeah, she's a girl. I met her in person and she told me all this," I said while keeping a poker face up all time so they can't read me.

As an introvert, I was pretty good at keeping a poker face.

"It isn't every day when you found a demon lord roaming in a human country right?" said Zen.

'As expected, he won't believe me right away,' I thought.

"Well no, they don't. But you do meet them when they killed your entire adventuring party," I replied as I put both of my hands on the table and interlocked my fingers.

"Sorry," realizing the situation, Zen apologized.

That's right, feel guilty and share my pain with you.

I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't for the [Stabilized Memory] skill, I won't be able to use the death of my friends like this. As much as I feel pathetic about it, after simulating all the possible fake stories this was the one that was most efficient.

"If you can tell me about this from the start, I'd be able to believe you," said Zen, in a soft, comforting tone.

"Sigh," I sighed and then replied, "Well if that's what you want, I'll tell you."