Gather Divine Coins and Gacha! - Chapter 71

 “Sera, it’s morning. Get up.”

Elena’s voice.

But I want to sleep a little longer….

“Come on, Akame is already up too, you know?”

When I don’t get up, she shakes my body.

Uu… can’t be helped.

“…I’m up.”

“Good. Morning. Go wash your face and fix your bedhead.”

“…Okaaay.”

My eyes met Akame the Burrowing Snake, who was stretching its body out from my chest.

I’m just glad it looks lively today too.

For the past few days, Elena has also been sleeping and living inside the 【Hideout】.

Even if the contract with Akame is done and there’s supposedly no problem, a monster is still a monster.

It’s also to keep watch, just in case.

Even if I’ve gotten a little better at waking up early lately, being woken up even earlier than that is rough….

◇

On the day I picked up Akame and talked in Seriana’s room, I went to consult the old man after he got back.

Should I call it a whirlwind of events?

Things progressed all at once, and then it turned into a big deal.

First, the Burrowing Snake’s contract and registration went through without a hitch.

Bringing a living monster into the royal capital is illegal, and tamed monsters are called familiars, but even to walk around with a familiar, you have to file an application with the Knight Order.

If you don’t, then in the worst case, the master gets arrested and the familiar is apparently killed.

So they immediately took us to the Knight Order headquarters, and using ink made from my hair and blood, they pressed a contract seal onto both the master and the familiar.

They said the location could be anywhere, but I chose my left upper arm, and Akame’s was on its head.

It reminded me of the stamp shot from my previous life, but there was no pain at all.

By doing this, it seems you can vaguely tell each other’s location.

Even if it listens, since it’s a monster, they probably have to keep it in a state where its whereabouts can be tracked.

And during the contract, I needed to give it a name.

I hesitated.

What’s a fitting name for a snake…?

Snake names… I guess there were Orochi, Jormungandr, and Ouroboros.

That’s about all I could come up with.

Talk about a name it couldn’t possibly live up to….

I should’ve read more mythology.

In the end, since it has red eyes, I named it “Akame.”

It got a bit awkward, but in the end everyone agreed that simple and easy to understand was fine.

With the familiar matter settled, next was the suspicious warehouse-like building.

The next day, I rode in a carriage with the old man and several knights to show them the way, and since it would be unsettling for a single girl to be surrounded by nothing but old men, they assigned a female knight to accompany me.

A female knight’s main duty is guarding female members of the royal family, and they’re elites with skill on Elena’s level and family status among the high nobility.

I’d been thinking, in a carefree way, that it was kind of them to go out of their way to assign someone like that, but the higher-ups must have been taking this situation seriously.

The day after that, they moved in all at once and apparently carried out an investigation and suppression.

That building had two basement levels and two stories above ground, and it was a warehouse belonging to a fairly major trading company that did business in several western countries, and it also functioned like an auction house where goods procured domestically were introduced and sold to western nobles.

But that was only the public face. Behind the scenes, it was also a facility for bringing monsters captured within Mesaria Kingdom into the royal capital, then selling and contracting them to western nobles.

Of course, that’s illegal.

There were many monsters of various sizes inside the building, and it seems some were already dead.

Akame must have been attached to one of them.

Moreover, as a way to get past checkpoints, they had dug a tunnel from an inn in the slums spread outside the royal capital—where slaves, mercenaries, and the like stayed overnight—running under the city wall and connecting all the way to the building’s basement.

It was such a blunt, straightforward method that apparently no one had noticed until now.

Apparently, it had been said that nobles from some countries had a higher-than-usual rate of acquiring familiars when leaving the country, which is why they acted this time, but even the Knight Order was surprised at how serious it turned out to be.

They’ve already contacted each allied country as well, in case the same thing has been happening not only in Mesaria Kingdom but in the allied nations too.

Relations with the western countries may change in some way.

Good grief, I never would have imagined that a small detour on the way back from an errand for Alec would escalate into an international issue.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sera・【Hideout】【Prayer】【Mira's Blessing】・【Floating Orb】【Shadow Sword】【Scarlet Bee Needle】・6 cards

Seriana・【Area Identification】・【】・19 cards

Elena・【】・【Green Fang】・0 cards

Alec・【】・【Red Shield】・1 card