Opening my eyes, I saw the clear blue sky up above that was a bit too bright for my eyes to handle. Lowering my gaze in order to avoid the strong glare, I saw a sleeping girl that was using my chest as a pillow. Seeing her peaceful sleeping expression, a gentle smile grew on my face as I closed my eyes once again and enjoyed the refreshing gentle breeze. Seemingly sensing my awakening, The little girl who looked just like me began shuffling around in my chest as she raised her head and gave me a bright smile as she said:

“Good morning, Alex~”

“Good morning, Ailya”

Yeah, we ended up having to sleep on the ground without any cover. Can’t say I did a good job of planning our course of action after I excitedly left the forest.

To explain how we got here, well… 

After we left the forest, we began walking due northwest. How did I know that we were walking northwest? That would be all thanks to [Veritas], which allowed me to see the four cardinal directions as though I had a built in compass in my head. Though I won’t lie and say that I didn’t wish more than once that I had one of those abilities seen by other protagonists that allows them to have some sort of minimap, or other method of being able to see the terrain around them, I won’t complain too much since I should consider myself lucky to even be able to tell where the hell I’m facing.

The reason why I decided to head northwest, was due to the clearing from which we exited the forest into the plains being at the northwest side of the forest. Since I wanted to get as far away from the forest as I could, I simply decided to head straight away from the forest until I found a place where we could momentarily rest, as it was already turning to night, before planning out our future. However, despite us walking for a couple of hours, we were unable to find even a cave or tree in the vast plains and, deciding to just hope for the best, the two of us plopped down on the ground we were standing and went to sleep.

And that’s how Ailya and I found ourselves waking up in the middle of nowhere. Really, we should count ourselves lucky that no predators, or actually, any brigands decided to attack us.

Staring at the girl that seemed to find happiness at just looking at me, I couldn’t help but release a small sight and worry slightly for her future.

Really, at this point, Ailya appears more like a human size puppy than anything else. Just like my dog Thomas, so long as you give her attention she’ll be happy. And, also like Thomas, she responds very well to my mood. If I get sad, she starts to get sad as well. If I get happy, a vibrant smile will start appearing on her face. And when I found a large bug that gave me more exp than normal and celebrated, she also began to celebrate along with me. Really, that reminded me so much of when I would defeat a hard boss for the first time and I would celebrate, and every single time without fail, as soon as I began celebrating, Thomas would also get excited and bark, even though that big doof had no idea what I was even celebrating about… 

I wanted to find a way to liberate Ailya somewhat from the constraints placed on her by [Lord Subordination]. However, just thinking about this led me to become very aware of just how much Ailya was able to intuit about my intentions from our bond, since her expression began to sadden as soon as I started to think of how to weaken our bond and she asked me in a reserved and melancholic tone:

“Do you not like the bond we share? Am I bother to you Alex?”

Seeing the sad expression on her face made me put away such thoughts. Thus, even though I knew that it was because of her subordination that she even had such thoughts and feelings in her mind, I decided to not tamper with the bond we shared and just focus on keeping a smile on her face. Since even I found some tranquility in having such a strong bond that allowed me to feel someone in such an intimate manner and allowed me to trust them completely.

Deciding that it was time for us to think about what we would be doing from now on, I sat myself up and had Ailya sit on my lap. Putting my chin on her head and hugging the little me on my lap, I asked her:

“So, Ailya, since it seems we didn’t find anything by walking in the direction I picked, do you have any suggestions for where we should head towards today?”

After I finished asking my question, Ailya leaned her back onto me as she closed her eyes and asked:

“Which direction have we been heading in Alex. If you know?”

“Perfectly Northwest”

Not even doubting how I knew such a thing without a compass as she had full trust in my words, Ailya simply answered happily:

“Then we should keep heading in that direction, my mom told me before that the closest city to the elven forest was northwest to us, so I think we should just continue heading in the direction you were guiding us.”

With our course of action planned for the moment, the two of us stood up and began heading northwest once again, walking hand in hand just like the day before.

As the two of us were walking, I began to think seriously about what I would need to become a true Demon Lord. Outside of the obvious requirement of me attaining unmatchable power, I would also need powerful servants, an army to command, and, if I didn’t want to be the Demon Lord of a wasteland and ruins, I would need a nation to rule over those I conquered.

Thinking about all the things that I would need in order to become the Demon Lord, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with all the things I needed to accomplish. Honestly, I don’t have a single clue about how to accomplish this or how long carrying out this ambition of mine would take. There’s also the question if my lifespan would be long enough for me to even accomplish this. 

Deciding to take advice from a motivational posts that I had read online, I decided to set short term, easy to achieve goals as a way to motivate myself to get things done. Thinking about the short term, it was clear that the first thing we would need was money and weapons to protect ourselves. While food and water may be an obvious choice, since both of us had the [Soul Devourer] ability, so long as we kept killing insects and taking their vitality from them, we would be able to sustain ourselves. 

At this moment, as the two of us were walking calmly hand in hand, a cloaked hooded figure appeared in the distance, seeing that it wasn’t facing us, I used my ability [Veritas] to gauge the threat level of the figure before deciding on a course of action. However, as soon as I used my ability, the hooded figure turned to face our direction. Although I had immediately shut off [Veritas], I was still left trembling at the small glimpse of information I had been able to glean…