“This just looks like a city, though,” Aziz mumbled, his eyes on the city walls and the people standing around them. “We’re going to be stuck in here for some time, aren’t we?”

“It’s better than sleeping on rocks or hard ground,” the Exemplar replied, yawning obnoxiously a moment later. “Sorry. It’s just that we’ve been walking for twelve hours or so. I’m bored and my muscles have stiffened up.”

“You’re an…Exemplar, right?” Marie asked. “Even people like you can suffer from things like this?”

“Well, if you do things you’ve never done before, your muscles will ache, right? No one cares whether you’re a Novitiate or an Exemplar. Muscle pains are almighty. In fact, the Lord—”

The Exemplar cut his words off. “Whoops.”

“Exemplar, why did you stop there? You were about to say something really interesting!” Marie folded her arms. “Come on, spit it out!”

“What are you, a child?” The Exemplar rolled his eyes. “Also, don’t call me ‘Exemplar’; there are many people with that title nowadays. I’m Nos-Arum.”

“Arum, eh?” Aziz rubbed his nose. “It’s—”

“Not Arum. Nos-Arum,” the Exemplar replied. “You only chop off the first part of the name when you’re very close to the person in question, got it?”

“That’s how it works?” Marie asked. “Well, I should note this down somewhere, at the very least. If you guys are aiming for a permanent peace with the Five Lands, something like an etiquette booklet would be really useful for my people. Why, I could even sell it and make money of it!”

“T-that sounds great, I guess,” Nos-Arum replied. “Good luck with that—”

“Why are you making it sound like it’s not your problem?” Aziz chimed in. “Come on, let us interrogate, uh, interview you for a moment.”

It wasn’t like he had anything else to do anyway. More important, the marshal was winking over and over at him; Aziz had a feeling that if he didn’t play along with her efforts, a world of hurt would follow…probably. Sure, Marie was unlikely to beat him up or anything, but she could just slack off slightly in dealing with paperwork and Aziz would start crying out for her forgiveness.

Huh? Dignity? Was that even edible? Aziz felt his lip twitch as he continued to coordinate with Marie to land a barrage of questions. The Exemplar didn’t really show all that much resistance — inwardly, he must have felt a small seed of desire to help bridge the Five Lands and the Wildlands in more than just the physical landbridge.

At the same time, the other officers began to drift over. Given Aziz’s knowledge of them, he was reasonably sure that the battalion officers just wanted to make their stay at their camp a touch more pleasant wherever possible…or they just wanted to score points with Marie and him. Whatever it was, the colonel didn’t mind their proactiveness, since their movements, which had not grown unnoticed, were busy distracting the rank-and-file soldiers from their impending captivity.

It was possible that these soldiers could discern the demons’ attitude towards them, or at least Nos-Arum’s, from how he hadn’t stopped the battalion officers from sneaking closer to listen in. The relative freedom that had been accorded to them would probably be a huge factor in getting them to remain docile.

Those thoughts flickered through his mind as his mouth operated on his own. Aziz had a metaphorical brain devoted to playing along with Marie in whatever she did; it was something that had probably developed over weeks of transporting things towards a dismal camp and years of subconscious retorts to his superior’s jokes.

“Alright, alright,” said the Exemplar, who was glancing around at the small crowd around him nervously. “I’ll make some time to talk about etiquette, okay?”

Is he actually scared of crowds? Aziz stole a glance at the uncomfortable Exemplar, but he didn’t quite know what to make of his odd behaviour.

“Come on, Arum,” said Marie. “Once we’re inside that, you’re probably never going to find us again. Wouldn’t it be a shame if I can’t complete the first draft because you never lived up to your promise.”

“It’s Nos-Arum,” said the Exemplar.

“Well, the three of us are going to be co-authors of the book, which will be called…” Marie thought for a while, and then clapped her hands. “‘Demonic Decorum: Customs and Conduct of the Wildlands’! Yes, that’s a good name indeed! There’s so much alliteration, and the title is simple enough for everyone!”

“Ooooh.”

Aziz joined the others in applauding her wit, and then followed up with a true fatal blow. “Nos-Arum, wouldn’t you like to be famous? If Marie succeeds, you’ll be known throughout Orb as the first published demon! You’ll be the household name, the person who would become more famous than even the Demon God.”

The Exemplar wavered visibly. “Well…I mean, uh, the Lord wants something like a mutual dialogue. Increased, uh, inter-thingy. Hmph. Helping you guys out with your book’s going to be conducive to this goal, so…well, I don’t mind helping.”

“Right, of course. Thank you so much,” said Marie. “Well, let’s get the skeleton of this new book done first, and then we can discuss about the specifics over our stay here.”

“Hopefully, this would also help to dispel preconceived notions about demons,” said Aziz. “Wouldn’t this be great for your overall goal? I think your boss might even be happy about it. More importantly, however, you’ll be famous. Like, real famous. Isn’t that great?”

“Th-that’s beside the point!” The Exemplar tugged at a strand of purple hair. “I’m not doing this because I want to become famous, alright? It is our duty to execute the Lord’s will and nothing else! Got it?”

Everyone, not just Marie and him, nodded together.

“Don’t nod together at the same time! Now you all sound like understanding adults!”

“Oh, so they do the same thing in the Wildlands too…”

“Stop it!”

Everyone laughed.

By the time they drew up to the town in front of them, the atmosphere had lightened up considerably.

“Well, we’re here,” said Nos-Arum. “We never did get around to actually starting off the book, though.”

“We did,” Marie replied. “The book I envision also involves an observation diary. Twelve hours of walking with you, Arum, has granted me many things worthy of note. When paired with your initial introduction, there are many links one can draw. For instance, the importance of authority and responsibility in demon society, and…”

She rattled off a whole bunch of interesting inferences. Some of them were only obvious in hindsight, like how demons didn’t really care about their conversation partners’ level of cultivation in everyday interactions. Or the general absence for decorum outside of formal talks.

Well, the marshal was always an observant one, but Aziz still didn’t quite understand how he didn’t pick up on these points either. It was probably the difference in talent or something.

In fact, it wasn’t just him either.

“Now that you bring these things up,” said Nos-Arum, “I do find them rather accurate. I mean, I don’t actually consciously pay attention to everyday conversation, so—”

“That itself is an observation on its own, right? It just shows that you don’t put much importance on being polite in normal, everyday talk,” Marie replied. “Even the simplest actions can reveal a great deal of one’s character. Like, for instance, how the two of us don’t actually fear death, since we’re talking very normally to our captor.”

She paused.

“Our nominal captor, anyway. You haven’t restrained or threatened us in any way.”

“Because I saw no need to.” The Exemplar rolled his eyes. “No one expected any resistance to begin with; we had starved your fellows and subjected them to psychological warfare long ago. From what I know, simply telling them the truth was enough to make just about everyone desert.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, even the people you call Knights. I understand that they’re the Five Lands’ version of our Scholars…but anyway, even they surrendered upon confrontation.” Nos-Arum shrugged. “It’s a testament to how impressive the Lord’s plan is.”

“Don’t even get me started on that,” Marie grumbled. “By the way, who’s this Lord of yours?”

“He’s—” Nos-Arum glared at Marie. “You nearly made me reveal a secret!”

“Oh, his identity is a secret?” Marie rubbed her chin. “Aziz, what do you think of this?”

“Gah! Stop, stop! Anymore, and we’ll all be in trouble! Stop thinking about these issues, and we’ll be fine!” The Exemplar shook his head. “Don’t go prying about his identity, and all will be fine!”

“So, a man…”

“Stop!”

“Alright, alright.” Marie rolled her eyes. “We can’t even do anything even if we know his name, so what’s the point of keeping the whole thing a secret? He can command you guys — even if you give me another five First Aerials, we won’t even put a scratch on his defences.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, got it?” Nos-Arum rubbed his forehead. “Anyway, if you were to pry into secrets like that, the others won’t like it. There’s an Exemplar assigned to just about every group here, and not everyone is as easy-going as me.”

“So, there are differences in thought,” Marie muttered. “To date, it seems that demons are indeed not much different from the Five Lands, then.”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to say through our actions,” the Exemplar muttered. “You guys are no different from us, so we’re trying to not kill you lot. Is it really that hard to understand?”

He sighed. “Alright, hurry up! We’re very close to the processing area!”

At the foot of the city walls were sheltered tents, where small booths with demons were sitting at. Like the Exemplar, all of them had a third eye, but none of them looked threatening or anything. Aziz couldn’t see any hint of madness in them either, which lent strength to the argument that the Demon God was the one behind their insane onslaught earlier.

Whether the Five Lands would buy it or not was another question, though.

That, however, was a question for another time. For Aziz, his main concern was the city in front of him…or rather, the booths.

“Is that who I think it is?” Aziz muttered, his eyes on a particular person.

“That’s Major Xi…and judging from how his uniform is nice and clean, he definitely didn’t put up a fight either.” Marie chuckled. “Oh, he noticed us.”

Major Xi glanced at them, before walking over.

“Good, good. You guys weren’t stubborn.” The major let out a small sigh of relief. “No one from our side died, then. That’s good, that’s good.”

“We could say the same for you,” Aziz replied. “You and your men sacrificed a lot of things in this invasion; it was very possible that you guys would be irrational or something when confronted with an impossible opponent.”

“Nah, nothing like that happened. A Demigod told us that food and bedding awaited us if we surrendered, and just about everyone threw down their arms a moment later,” Major Xi replied. “They didn’t kill our comrades, so no one really felt guilty about surrendering.”

“This no-killing strategy really is a masterpiece,” Marie noted.”

“Right?” Major Xi jiggled his shoulders. “Keep this off the records, but…”

He lowered his volume. “I’m actually glad we were captured like this. We won’t need to live on rations anymore. The demons actually kept their word; my men are already feasting and dancing around in joy.”

“They’re prisoners of war, but they don’t seem to note that bit…”

“Purely because they didn’t restrain us or anything,” the major replied. “They only took our weapons and nothing else.”

Aziz turned to Nos-Arum, who was listening in. “Is there actually any point in taking our weapons? We can’t kill you demons permanently anyway.”

“To prevent you guys from shooting your allies?” Nos-Arum was visibly confused. “Why else would we take them away? It’s not like you can harm us…”

For some reason, Aziz felt very stifled at those words.