Sitting beside a tree of a nearing park, Kanabo took a few sip of her gourd before letting a large “Uhhh~” out and lying down on the grass with a satisfied expression and giving Shina glance.

“Are you sure you don’t want some?... Hic”

Shina who was lying against the tree shook her head as she rejected the gourd which Kanabo was extending to her.

“I am too young to get drunk like you, moreover I don’t know how my mother would react if she saw me drunk.”

Taking a few more sip at her gourd, Kanabo started laughing.

“Aren’t you already old enough since you were allowed to enter this sanctuary?~”

Noticing Shina’s clueless expression, Kanabo laughed even harder than before.

“How old are you actually?”

“Ten-... Four years old.”

Thinking back about the six years she already spent on living on Earth, Shina made a difficult expression before quickly regaining her composure.

Kanabo actually looked at Shina with wide eyes before once again starting to laugh very loudly.

“Don’t you know that you shouldn’t be allowed to enter if you’re below twenty?”

“Huh? Why?”

“Since most races develop their self-awareness around fifteen, taking into account the time for their parents to educate them… “

Twenty years old was the age at which a human was already considered an adult and could even be married. But Shina quickly realized something very important; she remembered that most of the inhabitant of this realm weren’t humans so it wasn’t very strange for the rules to be adjusted for them.

Some greater magical beings like dragons would take at least thirty years for them to acquire the same self-awareness as a four years old child and at two hundred years they would only be between a child and a teenager.

It wouldn’t be strange for some of the ‘children’ here to have twenty or thirty times her age.

Well, mom did say she enjoyed breaking the rules after all. And in a way, I am far older than any of them...

Despite being older than twenty, Kanabo still harbored the appearance of a little girl while still appearing older than Shina. Not knowing anything about the Oni, she had no way of telling how old she actually was.

But looking at this little girl drinking alcohol like it was some apple juice still gave her a strange impression as it would still be unaccepted in the human’s society.

“How old are you then?”

Kanabo smiled as she drank some more from her gourd and exhaled a heavy scent of fruity alcohol.

“73… or was it 74?... Can’t remember… Hic”

While being prepared for an answer like this, Shina teasingly smiled as she made an exaggerated expression.

“Aren’t you already hold enough to be my grandmother?~”

Not appearing the slightest annoyed, Kanabo once again laughed loudly as she smacked Shina on the head and tried to imitate an elder’s voice.

“Youngsters these days~ Aren’t you getting full of yourself?”

Both of the girls started laughing at Kanabo’s strange imitation as she took a few more sip.

“The average age at which an Oni become an adult is six hundred years old. As you can see, I can still be considered as a child.”

“And you’re still allowed to drink alcohol?”

“Hic… Why not? The love of drinking is the main characteristic of our races, whether you’re young or old; as long as you can raise your cup then you can drink.”

“Hmph~ In short, you’re a race made of alcoholic…”

“Fuahaha! You can put it that way, not even the dwarfs can compare with us!”

Shina sighed as Kanabo took her words as a compliment.

Looking at the easygoing girl lying on the ground, Shina’s eyes couldn’t help but pass over her wounds covering the majority of her arms and also her broken horn. Some of them had already cicatrized while some others were rather new.

“You’re curious about these, right?”

As Shina nodded, while keeping the same tone and attitude, the look in Kanabo’s eyes had changed, becoming more serious, unlike her previous self. Even her hiccups suddenly stopped as a tense atmosphere formed.

Taking a look at her gourd, Kanabo showed a rather complex expression with a mix of sadness and resolve.

“This is mostly because of this gourd…”

Making a rather strange expression, Shina began to think how a mere gourd could cause her this much problem. Maybe this gourd wasn’t as simple as it actually seemed despite how ordinary it looks.

“When people dies, their souls exit their world and seek reincarnation. But those whose sins and regrets are too deep aren’t able to ascend and fall deep into the ground, where the Oni resides…”

This story reminded Shina of what her father previously told her, but he hadn’t gone too deeply into the details afraid that she might find it boring. She only knew about the existence of a heaven where people were awaiting their reincarnation, but she hadn’t heard anything about this so-called Hell which terrorized even the strongest men in their dreams.

“By providing punishments, the Oni wash a soul of their sins which allow them to ascent and reincarnate.”

Looking at Shina’s serious and earnest face, Kanabo smiled.

“Simply put, we just smash them until they ascend~”

“Couldn’t you keep it serious?...”

“Te~he~”

Giving Kanabo a smack on the head, she quickly regained a somewhat serious mood after gulping some of her beverage.

“Well to keep it simple, each world has an Oni’s King who rules over the underworld and his subjects are in charge of providing the punishments to the burdened souls.”

“Hm~ Hm~” Nodding her head, Shina somehow kept imagining a middle-aged man with beers in his hand whipping at a ghostly old man while complaining at how tiring his job is.

“I don’t exactly know what you’re imagining, but you pretty far from the reality.” Kanabo corrected as she intuition told her that Shina’s imagination was tricking her.

“And so, what does it have to do with the gourd?”

“Stop being so impatient youngster, take a sip and calm down~”

“Alright grandma, continue already…”

Seeing Shina rejecting her offer, Kanabo didn’t look annoyed at all and continued with her story.

“There’s not much more to it anyway. The issue is just that when a new world is born, one of the Oni King will give birth to a new one to be sent to govern this world.”

“Wait, don’t tell me you’re an Oni King?”

Kanabo smiled as she snapped her fingers.

“Bingo~ And that’s one of my problems.”

Shina sensed that something was strange in Kanabo’s story; an Oni King should normally be someone important as they would be in charge of upholding the correct functioning of reincarnation system.

Was Kanabo someone kidnapped because of the importance of her future position? Or maybe someone simply tried to obtain a ransom

As she tried to voice many ideas that crossed her mind, Kanabo denied each of them as Shina had fundamentally taken the wrong basis to mount her opinions.

“The Oni Kings are indeed very important to every world, but that's not the reason why…”

Looking up in the sky, Kanabo sighed.

“I was exiled from my homeland by my father, left alone in this city until my death.”

The silent Shina felt her heart beating faster as she observed the lonely expression on Kanabo’s face. Frustration and anger surged up in her heart as she imagined which kind of situation could lead to such a result.

As an Oni King, her father should be their sovereign… How is it possible for him not to care about his own daughter… Unless...

A sudden thought crossed Shina’s head, sometimes monsters weren’t that different from humans, or perhaps it was the reverse; the humans sometimes weren’t that different from monsters.

The reason why she was forced to remain here until her death…

“There is no new world…”

Kanabo made a wry smile as she remembered her father’s expression as he exiled her to another realm under the pretext that it was for her own good. His eyes filled with anger, fear, and apprehension.

The fear of being replaced by his daughter, of having to leave all your power to the next generation.

An Oni King being born without any new world following her birth, it was something that never happened in the past, something that made her father think of her as a usurper.

“Hahaha~” Seeing that the atmosphere had become very heavy, Kanabo started drinking while laughing very loudly.

“Why are you making this kind of expression?...Hic... It’s not like it’s my own fault so who cares? I am myself and I don’t think of this as a curse.”

Her eyes full of resolves and expressing her will to fight for her right to live, it indeed reminded her of Eniel… and herself.

With a large smile, Shina grabbed Kanabo’s gourd whose eyes widened as she faced Shina with a surprised look, watching her drink her alcohol gulp after gulp before satisfyingly letting a breath out.

“That’s right! When you feel bad there’s nothing better than a drink… Hic…” Kanabo giggled.

Shina was slightly surprised after drinking when she realized that the amount in the gourd hadn’t even diminished despite how much Kanabo drank ever since they arrive and after she herself took a few gulp.

Giving a mysterious grin, Kanabo still felt somewhat wronged that Shina hadn’t expressed that much surprise after realizing that her gourd was enchanted.

“You said previously that this gourd was the reason why you were in that state, right?”

Kanabo nodded as Shina handed the gourd back.

“This is an Oni’s sacred gourd, an artifact born that only few Oni King are born with.”

“As expected of a group of alcoholic races that drink ever since they’re child…”

“Huhu~ Thanks for the compliment. This gourd can actually copy and give out an unlimited amount of whatever liquid you put in.”

“And so you’ve put in alcohol?...”

“What did you expect me to put in? Some juice?”

Shina giggled as she somehow felt that Kanabo’s argument made sense.

“So you’ve been pursued because it can reproduce any alcohol?”

Taking a serious attitude, Kanabo glared at her gourd while remembering how even her father had tried to obtain this artifact.

“I am using it for alcohol, but imagine reproducing any kind of holy beverage or elixir. The ability to obtain an infinite amount of any legendary ingredients that are normally found in such a small amount that even a single drop would be enough to buy a house in this city.”

An artifact with the ability to reproduce any liquid, moreover so rare that the number of gourds existing in the world didn’t surpass five…

“Even in this city where infighting is supposed to be forbidden, one cannot stop greed.”

Grabbing Kanabo’s hand, Shina gave her a reassuring smile as she stood up.

“Let’s walk a little, I am tired of sitting.”

“Sure~”

A mysterious grin painted Shina’s face as she leads Kanabo by the hand.

Greed cannot be stopped?... We’ll see!