After I finished the ‘clean up’, the maids returned and we continued our way under the tent.

As I was expecting we didn’t encounter any living people even when we walked for a couple more kilometers. I decided to hold the scouting flights to avoid weather losses and now I can only rely on what I can find with my senses and luck. This week’s luck looks to be the worst in my current life, I doubt that I ever encountered that much problems until now.

This land is much more alive than what I saw back in the kingdom. This is not just a large plain with a huge forest several days away from the settlements. This is an actual landscape with both the fields and forests, integrated into each other. I don’t get tired of being in the forest because I soon find a nice flat grassland, which has some trees nearby.

When I was in the kingdom I soon began to ignore the nature around me, it was either a wild forest, or an artificial plain outside it. Here I started to enjoy being in the nature. I might take some saplings and make myself a beautiful garden on the third level of my future palace.

My thoughts were further strengthened after I saw a wooden bridge over a small river. Up the river was a pretty waterfall and down in the river were playing colorful fishes.

This natural beauty can make anyone forget about the hardships and threat they encounter.

BANG

Right, mister wolf?

The evening was coming closer to the sky. With the sky painted in scarlet I was thinking about setting up the camp but in the end I decided to just follow the road a bit further.

I realized that my bet was successful when I saw a torii gate by the road, they should lead to a temple. I hope the locals don’t just march into the temples and don’t slaughter the priests. They should have at least some level of a culture.

“Master, where are we going?” For the maids it might be just a weird construction but I know enough about Japanese culture to know that those should be related to a religion. And where is the religion, there are people.

I didn’t answer and just headed inside.

The temple looks to be fine and is well-maintained. I don’t see any people around here but my nose and ears tell me that someone is still alive and walking.

“Hey, is there anybody in here?” I cried to the person.

Out of a small building, most likely the priest’s house, exited a girl. She is wearing the typical miko outfit and awkwardly runs towards me.

“Greeting and welcome to our shrine, please, what t-this miko can do for you?” She hastily bowed down and rapidly said her greeting, almost as if she was doing her best not to forget what she should say.

“Don’t be so fast, ok? Good, let’s get down to business. We are wet and cold, can we rest somewhere?” I pointed at the maids who immediately understood what I mean and demonstratively started to squeeze their clothes and hair.

The miko was conflicted, no doubt she has some issues with letting us rest here but also she can’t just let us go like that.

“Alright, alright. Can you at least tell where we can go?” I made my best ‘I am a good and understanding person’ face and started gesturing her that we are alright and if she doesn’t want to let us in, then we will be going.

Her reaction exceeded my expectations.

“Uwaaa!” Poor girl started crying out of helplessness. Did I really corner her that much? I can really feel Rin’s piercing cold gaze.

When I tried stepping back to give her some personal space, she just clinged to me and tried to stop me from going away. I can feel 3 more cold piercing gazes pointed at me. Even I can’t handle that much.

[Think, damn you! Steve, you had girlfriends… what you normally did to make them calm down, aside from kissing and f*?]

I started using my head to its maximum in hopes of finding a proper answer to calm down a girl without making me look like a pervert.

In the end I just hugged her and started tenderly whispering.

“Tshh, it’s alright… Yes, calm down. You don’t need to worry, ok?” I already can feel how my kimono gets wet. Why do they still radiate this murderous gaze?

After the miko calmed down she bowed down many more times and let us stay in her house until the morning.