The Demon King’s Castle

Author: Iwashi-zukushi
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n3388fm/4/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Once she had waited for us to settle, Gerda took up the lead again.
Now and then our eyes met those of people in the town, and we exchanged small, hard-to-name nods.
After we had walked like that for a while, we came out into a somewhat more open place.

“Here. This is the castle of my lord, His Majesty the Demon King Shutraum.”

A small ohh went up as we looked where Gerda pointed.
While Gerda spoke with the gate guards—lizardmen, monster-people like lizards who walked upright on two legs—and saw to the formalities, we stared openly at the Demon King’s castle.
To be honest, it was not very large.
The royal castle of the country I had come from was unquestionably bigger; it might even have been smaller than any royal castle on the continent.
I was probably not the only one making that face. Gerda must have noticed.
When she finished the formalities and came back… she was wearing a proud smile.

“Different from the Demon King’s castle you had imagined, is it not?
This castle of His Majesty’s serves only as a facility for government. That is why it is not built wastefully large.”

At that, I thought, oh?
As for the functions a castle ought to have…

“Um, excuse me.
Does that mean His Majesty does not consider this castle a defensive fortification?”
“Mm. That is correct. …Asha, you are rather sharp.”

Gerda said it with what sounded like admiration.
Well. A girl dressed as obviously rural as I was would not be expected to think that far, so the reaction was only natural.
But in that case.

“…This is only a guess, but.
Because this is an island nation, perhaps His Majesty thinks of the sea as a moat, and the entire island as a defensive fortification?” Continue reading →

The City of Sacrifices

Author: Iwashi-zukushi
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n3388fm/3/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Still… you’re quite different from what we had imagined, you demonfolk.
The Demon King, too, I suspect, is nothing like what we think—going by this.”

Once the round of introductions had finished, I spoke to Gerda.
She looked a little tired, but very happy, and she answered with the same pleasant smile as before.

“I suppose so. I can only imagine what you have been thinking… but I am almost certainly different from that.
Well. One could also say that is why you are sent here…”

Her expression clouded, suddenly.
She let out a heavy sigh.

“And that is precisely why it is so unjust that you are sent here.”

We would learn what she meant by that—spoken as if she were deeply troubled—soon enough.

When greetings were done and we had sorted our belongings and taken them up again, we set out for the Demon King’s castle with Gerda in the lead.
We filed through a town of neatly ordered brick houses, already visible from the harbor where we had been put ashore.
To my surprise, the buildings had almost the same atmosphere as a human town.
The brick structures were a familiar size as well. I saw nothing extremely large.
I had been looking around restlessly when something occurred to me.

“…Huh?”
“Hm? What is it, Asha?”

I had let out a puzzled sound, and Gerda looked back.
I pointed, hesitantly, in a certain direction.

“Ah, no, um… I had been feeling eyes on us from all over, and I was wondering… are those people watching from over there… human?”
“Ah. Yes. This area is a human residential district. I imagine they are curious about you, in any number of senses, now that you have been brought here.”

Gerda said it as if it were nothing, and I—we—were too stunned to speak.

“W-we weren’t eaten!?” Continue reading →

The Turning Point Came in Indigo

Author: Iwashi-zukushi
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n3388fm/2/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

I had been tossed on the waves for some ten days after the ship set out, I suppose.
At last, I arrived at the Demon King’s island.
I was put ashore at the harbor, along with more than ten other girls who seemed to share my circumstances.
The official from the Demon King’s side who had come to meet us wore a hood, but the shape of the head beneath it was clearly not human.
The moment the sailors had handed us over, they put back out, in a hurry to leave.
They did not want to spend so much as a minute, so much as a second, on this island; I had never seen work done with such impressive efficiency.

The Demon King’s official watched their frantic departure, and the lips visible beneath the hood twisted into a shape of contempt.
For a while the official simply watched the fleeing ship. Then, after a single sigh, they turned to face us.

“Ah… Welcome, after your long journey—I imagine being told you are welcome would be either a bother to you, or a matter of complete indifference.
I sympathize with your circumstances, and I also think I cannot possibly guess at how you feel.
No—forgive me. If anyone took that sympathy for contempt, I apologize.
That is not what I meant. It is simply the only way I can put it.”

To my surprise, the voice I heard was a woman’s.
When the official removed the hood, long indigo hair fanned out and danced in the wind.
A well-formed face. Kind, shining eyes, a deep indigo in the same family as her hair.
Her eyes were a little sharp at the corners, and her face suggested a strong will; the expression on it was a complicated mix of slight bewilderment and sympathy.
Two horns grew from her head. Scales covered patches of her cheeks and the nape of her neck.
A fine pair of wings grew from her back as well—though they were shaped very much like a bat’s.

“…A half-dragon…?”

Continue reading →

Nothing Good Ever Happened

Author: Iwashi-zukushi
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n3388fm/1/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

It was a life in which nothing good had ever happened.

My first life was, I think, privileged—at least in terms of the house I was born into.
I was born into the family of a successful doctor. That much, in itself, was true.

“Your only worth is to bring a husband into this house!”

My father was convinced that a woman could not inherit. He treated me coldly and pressed me to take a physician as a husband.
I was not even allowed to question it. And, inconveniently, I seemed to have inherited my parents’ genes all too well: the effort forced on me, whether I wanted it or not, gave me the grades to pass the entrance exams for medical school.
I could not, however, find anyone who met my father’s standards. I was told not to leave university until I did, and was pushed all the way into a doctoral program.
Between that and my father’s high-handedness in putting me there, the hostility directed at me was fierce.

“This paper of yours—did you actually collect this data?
Results this convenient don’t just happen.”

If anything, that accusation was the one with no logical basis.
In any case, my research was never given a fair evaluation.
Stress piled up as nothing went right, and I wasted away in body and mind—until one day I died in a traffic accident.

To my surprise, I opened my eyes again.
Unfamiliar walls. An unfamiliar ceiling. An unfamiliar town.
I had been reborn in a world different from the one I had died in. Continue reading →

I Was Reincarnated Without a Single Cheat, Then Sacrificed to the Demon King—and Thanks to That, My Life’s About to Take a Dramatic Turn!

Author: Iwashi-zukushi
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n3388fm/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“It was a life in which nothing good had ever happened.”

Asha: a girl who died young in her previous life, never having found a place to belong, and was reborn in another world.
She hoped her second life would be different. Instead she was worn down by day-to-day survival. The knowledge and values she brought from before her reincarnation were more a hindrance than a help. In the end she was treated as a witch and sent to a remote island as a sacrifice to the Demon King.

If you’re going to kill me, she thought, just get it over with.

That was what she believed.

But the Demon King’s country was nothing like she had imagined. It welcomed her—awkwardly, but warmly. Her knowledge and experience were valued, and Asha found herself working as an apothecary.
The only apothecary in Shutraumburg, a makeshift town where sacrificial girls were allowed to go on living.

With help from all sorts of people, Asha put that knowledge to use.
The first thing she produced with it was “sodium chloride.” In other words: table salt.
The inventions that followed shook the island. Each time, she won more trust, until at last they were calling her a goddess.

“How did it come to this!?”

No one heeds her wail. If anything, they look at her as if to say, what are you talking about at this late hour?
And so the story keeps moving with her at its center, leaving only her feelings behind.

Rated R-15—in the sense that it’s even more fun if you remember what you learned in junior high!
Her weapons, with not a single cheat among them: wits, the bonds she forms, and spirit!
A comedy-tinged otherworld fantasy begins here!

*This is the serialized version of the former title: “I Was Reincarnated Without a Single Cheat, Then Offered as a Sacrifice to the Demon King—and Thanks to That, My Life Somehow Seems About to Turn Around for the Better!?”