Once their break comes to an end, they grab every key behind the clerk’s station and make their way to the second floor of the inn. The long, narrow hallway is frightening but nothing hides in the dark.

With the safety of the warm candlelight, she decides to take the doors to the left while the duke takes the ones on the right. She opens each door carefully, but there are only empty bedrooms waiting for her.

Each room is the same: large bed, rug, dresser, and mirror. There’s a room at the end of the hallway sectioned into two toilets and one bath. The toilets look recently cleaned, and the tub is spotless.

“Nothing,” the duke says after clearing the last room.

There isn’t a single sign of a struggle, or any indication of people dropping everything to run. The place is spotless if somewhat stuffy. It’s as if someone closed the inn, cleaned it, and left never to return.

“I’m going to check the dressers.” She goes back to rifle through the rooms. She comes across a few items, but they are mostly useless ones such as an empty ink bottle or a sock with a hole in it.

She keeps a collection of the interesting things she finds: an old coin stuck to the side of a drawer, a child’s satchel with terrible embroidery that can only belong to an absolute beginner, and a very small lantern shaped like a clam.

In the last room, she almost misses the folded paper with an odd bulge tucked neatly behind the dresser. It’s wedged in good, but she manages to pry it out after a struggle that threatens to break her nails.  

The bulging paper turns out to be made of a thick, leathery material, and upon opening it, a round object falls out. It doesn’t take long to realize that the round object looks an awful lot like a compass.

She unfolds the paper and keeps unfolding until it turns into an extremely large map. She has to spread it out over the bed to actually look at it. Big, fancy letters at the bottom spell out “Helmbeck,” and it shows not only a close up of the town but also the land around it.

She doesn’t see the duke come in behind her, and she almost jumps out of her skin when he leans down to better see the map.

“The town sent a missive to the palace, but there are no signs of emergency. All the food in the pantry is gone, but the alcohol remains,” the duke mutters to himself. “Rather than flee, why not retreat to a temporary shelter to wait it out?” His eyes flicker around the map rapidly.

That would explain the lack of carriages and carts, she thinks.

“Where would they go?” she wonders. It has to be big enough to hold an entire town but easy to defend. Somewhere the palace would want to go to after exterminating the demons.

“Here,” the duke points to a solid circle on the map, “the salt mine.”

There’s a road from the town that leads straight to the salt mine that would definitely make for easy transportation. The mine might make for a good defensive position with plenty of tools to use as makeshift weapons.

“We’re going there, aren’t we?” she sighs.

“We could always kill the mayor and his wife, take over their house, and wait for the demons to come to us,” Duke Wulf offers, eyes dead serious.

She opens her mouth to scold him but closes it with a thoughtful frown. Her headband digs into her skull as she considers the idea. The mayor is definitely not innocent, neither is his wife, but there is no proof of wrongdoing.

He lied to them and acted like a creep, but he hasn’t actually done anything deserving of death. Can she murder without remorse? How much of Aira will be left if she jumps down that rabbit hole?

“To the mine,” she says in defeat.

Duke Wulf pats her on the head condescendingly.

She stuffs the map and compass in the child’s satchel along with the weird coin. All her attempts to fit the small, clam lantern into it fail. The lantern won’t clip to the satchel, so she decides to just carry it.

“You do not need it. We will find plenty of torches at the mine,” the duke sighs in exasperation.

“You’ll be thanking me before this is over,” she says haughtily.

The duke rolls his eyes.

It feels like they’re preparing to ride off to battle. They decide to raid the kitchen one last time. This time she chooses the wine. Most of the labels have drawn fruit on them, and she picks the one she thinks is peach.

She tries spilling wine down the front of her dress seductively, like in the movies, but Duke Wulf just laughs obnoxiously at her.

“Were you that desperate for a drink? You are such a piglet,” he says fondly.

She throws the bottle of wine at his head; her throw falls short, and they’re both left staring at it. The bottle pours out onto the floor with a glugging sound.

“Shut up,” she says.

“I said not a word.”

“You’re saying it now.”

If she was a decent person, she would clean up the mess she’s made. If she was a good person, she wouldn’t have stolen the wine to begin with.

She slides on her new ugly satchel, grabs her lantern, and heads for the door. She’s here to be a savior not a maid. If the Goddess wanted her to spread kindness and love, then She should have given her a cheat skill.

“Hurry up before my legs give out,” she says with all the bravado she doesn’t have.