Just as Liamie was carefully trying to recall whether she had seen the beautiful girl in the picture before, Sylphine walked over from the side.
“What’s wrong? Did you find something? This is…??!”
Sylphine stood beside Liamie and followed her gaze to look at the strange body pillow with the picture of the beautiful girl on it. The moment she clearly saw the girl in the picture, her body instantly stiffened.
Colin also came out from another room. Seeing Liamie and Sylphine both staring motionless at the same thing, he grew curious and looked over as well.
“Hm? This is…!”
Colin froze after clearly seeing the girl in the picture. He couldn’t quite believe it and took a closer look again. After confirming he wasn’t mistaken, the corners of his mouth twitched several times. He really hadn’t expected Alek, this demon, to actually use a body pillow with “her” image on it.
At that moment, Liamie finally remembered why this painting felt so familiar. The beautiful girl in the picture resembled the demon lord depicted in the historical records of the Hero and Demon Lord War that she had once seen. But the problem was, wasn’t the demon lord male?
Liamie felt a bit puzzled and turned to ask Colin, who, as a paladin, should be knowledgeable about these historical matters.
“Colin, the woman in this picture looks like the demon lord. Is she the demon lord’s sister or maybe his elder sister or something?”
No sooner had Liamie finished speaking than Sylphine suddenly covered her face with both hands and lowered her head, seemingly unwilling to let anyone see her expression.
Liamie looked at her in confusion, then continued waiting for Colin’s reply.
Colin hesitated for a moment before finally sharing what he knew.
“The demon lord… doesn’t have any siblings. This is neither the demon lord’s parents nor his ancestors.”
“Then who is this? Why does she look so much like the demon lord?”
Seeing that Liamie was still persistently questioning, Colin continued.
“This is… the demon lord himself.”
“???”
Liamie was stunned. She didn’t quite understand what Colin meant—when did the demon lord become female? Wasn’t he a man?
“…To be precise, this is the feminized demon lord. The demon lord is indeed male, but this…”
Colin’s words were cut off as Sylphine took over. She seemed to have finally overcome her embarrassment. Though her face was still somewhat flushed, she went on.
“Before the Demon-Human War, when the demon lord first took office, there was a… strange organization in the module. They dedicated themselves to feminizing and ‘moe-fying’ the demon lord’s image for reasons unknown. It seemed to be just a small personal interest of theirs. Regardless, this group was small and rather secretive, so the demon lord didn’t really care and let it develop on its own. Judging by now, Alek is probably a member of this group as well.”
After hearing Sylphine’s explanation, Liamie finally felt speechless. So it turned out Alek actually had such a strange hobby. No wonder he had little fame even as an officer among the demons.
However, Liamie looked back at the body pillow, then glanced at the ceiling, and her relaxed brow furrowed again. What she had been searching for all this time turned out to be nothing more than the product of someone’s perverse tastes—completely unrelated to the “Iku” clue she wanted!
Thinking of this made Liamie somewhat furious. She had searched this room for so long, yet there was no clue about “Iku” at all, not even anything related to the demon tribe, only this weird body pillow. At this rate, when would she be able to turn back into a man!
At that moment, seeing that the two no longer focused on the body pillow, Colin spoke up about his recent discovery.
“I just used holy magic to scan this house and found that there’s quite a bit of space below. I guess there’s a basement or something, but I don’t know where the entrance is.”
Upon hearing that there was a basement in this house, Liamie’s eyes lit up again. She asked Colin and Sylphine to wait for a moment while she used “Shadowstep” to see if she could find a gap.
After weaving through the shadows in the room’s crevices, Liamie finally found the basement entrance hidden inside a small compartment.
She opened the compartment from inside, and the dust that had settled at the basement entrance was exposed to light once more.
Colin used holy magic to check the entrance for any problems and brushed off the dust. Seeing nothing wrong, he went inside first. Liamie and Sylphine followed him in.
Inside, Liamie found the space larger than she had imagined, seemingly divided into several large rooms. Some rooms had signs indicating their purpose, such as storage or laboratory.
“It seems he didn’t put up any protective measures here. We can enter without worry.”
Sylphine put down her magic staff and was the first to enter the laboratory. Seeing this, Colin followed closely behind. Liamie looked briefly at the only room without a sign, then also entered the laboratory with Colin.
Inside the lab, there were some strange medicine bottles and books. Liamie shuddered, recalling the previous encounter—this time, she absolutely would not touch anything!
Sylphine examined the items but found nothing useful. Neither Colin nor Liamie found any clues they were looking for.
“There are only some irrelevant documents and discarded, useless potions here. No help to us. It seems Alek had already cleared out the important stuff before leaving.”
Sylphine quickly assessed the situation, and Liamie’s heart tightened upon hearing this.
“So, we didn’t come here for nothing, did we?”
Sylphine didn’t answer her question. She was in no position to deny the possibility, while Colin tried to comfort Liamie, saying there were still several rooms left to check.
Liamie had no choice but to suppress her unease and continue inspecting the other rooms.
The storage room contained only some plant materials that had rotted or strange stones that were useless.
The training room was desolate. Aside from a few dusty human targets that looked never used, there was nothing else. It seemed Alek had no interest in magic training; this room was probably just something he set up on a whim.
The library, which Liamie had high hopes for, contained only books they couldn’t use and some strangely themed novels. Liamie couldn’t help but suspect that Alek’s taste was unusually odd.
Even more absurdly, the collection room was filled entirely with the same kind of body pillows found earlier, all featuring the feminized demon lord in various poses. The rest were various potions with powerful sleep-inducing effects.
What was Alek’s deal—was he sleep-deprived or just simply loved sleeping?! He might as well switch careers and become a nightmare!
At last, only the one unsigned room remained in front of Liamie and the others. Looking at the plain door that stood out from the rest, Liamie’s unease deepened.
She had a feeling that this room might indeed hold clues about “Iku,” but surely not just that. There was definitely something else hidden inside—and it was definitely not something good!