***

[AI CENSORSHIP BLOCKED THIS CHUNK - RAW ENGLISH RETAINED]

Wind Port, the Demon Continent’s one and only port city, was a townscape with rolling hills. From the entrance, you had a sweeping view of the entire city. Most of the houses were made with mud and stone in the Continent’s typical style, but there was the occasional wooden house here and there. At the edge of the city was the harbor. That, rather than the main entrance, was where most of the hubbub took place and the peddlers set up shop.

It was a city with a flavor uniquely its own, different from the others I had seen before. Beyond the harbor, across from the city, the sea spread out vast and wide. When was the last time I had seen the ocean? Probably back when I attended a middle school on the coast.

This world was different from ours, but the sea was not. It was the same blue, had the same sound of crashing waves, and birds that looked just like seagulls. There were even sailboats. It was the first time I’d ever set my eyes on one. I saw them occasionally in movies, but seeing the real thing—made of wood with its cloth sails unfurled, gliding through the water—made my heart pound as if I were still a young boy.

There must be some mechanism in this world that allowed a boat to sail against a headwind. Actually, considering the world I was in, maybe they propelled themselves forward using wind magic.

“Look!”

The moment we arrived in the city, the red-haired girl riding the lizard with me suddenly leaped up. Her name was Eris Boreas Greyrat. She was the granddaughter of Sauros, the Liege Lord of Asura Kingdom’s Fittoa Region, and also my pupil back when I worked as a tutor for their house. She was ferocious and spoiled rotten when we first met, but she’d become more flexible recently—enough to listen to what people had to say. She had been teleported together with me, and I had to see her safely back home.

“Look, Rudeus! The ocean!” The words that passed her lips were in fluent Demon God tongue. I had stressed the importance of speaking it all the time; Ruijerd and I also spoke in Demon God tongue as much as possible. As a result, Eris’ language abilities had increased dramatically as of late. It was as I suspected: The quickest way to improve in a foreign language was to use it as often as possible. Granted, Eris couldn’t read or write in the language at all. It wasn’t that difficult a language, but it also wasn’t something that could be mastered in a year.

On the other hand, I hadn’t taught her any magic since coming to the Demon Continent. So not only could she not cast spells without chanting, but she had probably also forgotten the chants themselves.

“Eris, wait! Where are you going? We haven’t even figured out where we’re staying for the night!”

Eris stopped in her tracks when I called after her. This was the third time we’d had this exchange since we came to the Demon Continent. The first time, she got lost; the second, she got into a fight on a street corner. I wasn’t going to have a third incident.

“Oh yeah! I’ll get lost again if we don’t decide on an inn first!” She bounded back to us, constantly glancing over her shoulder at the sea.

Come to think of it, this was probably the first time she’d seen something like this. There were some rivers near Fittoa, and apparently Sauros took her there on his days off and let her play in the water. Sadly, I never went with them, so I had no idea how much she knew about bodies of water.

“Can we swim?”

I tilted my head at her words. “You want to swim in the harbor?”

“I do!”

I did want to see how sexy her body had gotten now that she was thirteen, but that desire was destined to remain unfulfilled. Namely because there was an important component missing from this equation.

“You don’t have a swimsuit, do you?” I asked.

“What the heck is a swimsuit? I don’t need one!”

Her response was so shocking I couldn’t hide my confusion.What the heck is a swimsuit, I don’t need one, she said. So she meant to swim totally naked…? No, no way, that couldn’t be it. Most likely she meant to swim in her underwear. I pictured her clad in nothing but her underwear, water pouring over her. The damp fabric would cling to her body, and through the sheer material I would be able to see the color of her skin, as well as the slight protrusions on her chest.

Why didn’t I ever join them when she went to play in the water back in Fittoa? Oh yes, because I was busy. Even on my days off I was preoccupied with something. Still, I should have gone with her just one time at least.

No, now wasn’t the time to think about that. I needed to focus on the city right before me. Live in the now. That’s right, live in the now! Woo-hoo, the ocean!

“No, you shouldn’t swim in this ocean.” A voice cut in from behind like a bucket of ice-cold water.

When I looked back, Ruijerd was sitting there with his bald head and a scar stretched across his face, like a yakuza. His full name was Ruijerd Superdia. He was a demon, one who loved children and had taken it upon himself to escort us from the very beginning, when we were so lost we didn’t know up from down. Now that he was bald, it was impossible to tell that he had the infamous emerald-green hair of the Superd race. In this world, demons with emerald green hair were regarded as a symbol of fear. Ruijerd had cut his hair off for our sake. Restoring honor to the name of his people was just one way I could repay my debt to him.

“There’s a lot of monsters in there.”

A red jewel embedded in Ruijerd’s forehead provided him with a sixth sense. It acted as a radar that could detect the presence of every living creature within several hundred meters of its bearer. With such a convenient ability, it was easy to think we could swiftly dispatch all those creatures in the ocean, but maybe it wasn’t as all-powerful as I thought. Maybe those murky depths were impenetrable.

Nah. Even so, we should still be able to swim for a little bit, right? Swimming in the harbor might be too dangerous, but I could at least use earth magic on a nearby beach to make our own little pool.

No…there was still a chance it could be dangerous. There were beasts out there with powers of their own. Some of them might be able to jump over my barrier. It might be a sexy encounter if it were an octopus, but if it were a shark, we’d be in a real-life reenactment ofJaws.

There was little choice. Probably best to give up the idea of a swim in the ocean. There really was nothing else we could do. “There’ll be no sea bathing this time. Let’s go find our inn and then hit up the Adventurers’ Guild.”

“Okay…” Eris looked dejected.

Hmm. I was still very much interested in seeing how toned her body was. We hadn’t much opportunity to check out each other’s growth in the last year. It was difficult to gauge anything through her clothes, but maybe if we were out on the open beach, I could see a little more.Yeah, that’s right, we should do that.

“Even if we can’t go in the water, we could at least play on the beach, right?”

“The beach?”

“There’s something called sand by the ocean. At the water’s edge, that sand stretches out pretty far,” I explained.

“And what part of that is supposed to be fun?” Eris asked.

“On the beach, you can squirt water on yourself and…”

“Rudeus, you’ve got that weird look on your face again.”

“Ugh.” Apparently, my expressions changed too easily with my emotions.

As I tried to clean the lecherous look off my face, Eris turned her eyes to the ocean and smiled. “But it sounds interesting! Let’s do that afterward!” She happily kicked off and soared through the air, returning to the lizard. It was an incredible leap. Just the sound of her takeoff made me jump—it was like a low thumping noise. She had really toned her legs and lower body. Right now that really complemented her build, but I imagine her becoming even more brawny and muscular in the future, and that worried me a little.