Riranai

(A/N: I changed the 3-day time limit for her to come back to a 7-day time limit.)

"Is the carriage ready?"

"Indeed, it is. I just finished loading the last thing needed for the horses."

"Alright." Ayla opened the carriage door and stepped in, closing the door behind her as she sat in the carriage seat, while Masa got into the carriage seat and yanked on the reins, prompting the horses to begin moving forward as she steered it in the direction she intended to go.

Time passed.

The carriage continued on its path for many hours without stopping once, as the horses weren't the normal horses one would see on Earth; they were empowered with spiritual energy that gave them supernatural strength, speed, and stamina.

The carriage eventually came to a stop at the carriage house in a town, while the door leading into the carriage from the coachmen's seat opened.

"This town is called Riranai, which is to the east of the Demon Palace, which is as far as I'll take you. It'll take about a day to get there and a day to get back. This will give you a day to do what you planned if you want to make it on time."

"Thanks, but I think you should probably alter the appearance of this carriage as it draws too much attention."

"Don't worry, I will."

Ayla exited the carriage and left the carriage house, heading towards a nearby tavern to gain more information that may help her with the assassination, but she only did this because she knew she could make it there in less than a day by sprinting at full speed, even if she ran into demons on the way.

She entered the tavern. As she did, she received many lustful glares from the men seated at the bar and tables, but she simply ignored them and sat down at a place where she could hear everyone speaking.

Then, a waiter came over with the same look in his eyes as the others, but he tried to hide it by saying, "What can I get for you?"

"Give me something heavy."

"Alright, but are you sure you can handle it?" A waiter stated, his grin concealed.

"I'm sure."

"It'll be done in a few minutes." After saying what he wanted to say, the waiter left to go pour my drink.

'It seems he thinks he'll be able to malest me after I become too drunk to resist him.'

[It has something to do with men considering women as weak and inferior, so of course they'll consider you as someone who can get drunk easily, which they'll take advantage of and rape you.]

'I know, this is another reason why I dislike this type of world, especially with me now being such a beautiful woman.'

[Yep, but since you're here now, there's no point in going back.]

'I know; now let me eavesdrop on the men in this tavern.'

[I know, I'll be quiet.]

I focused my hearing on specific conversations moving from one table to the next, looking for one who was talking about the demon palace, which took a while as most of them were drunk, talking about their women, life, and so on.]

After a few minutes of concentrating her hearing on the conversations happening around her, she found two people talking about the demon palace.

"I heard that the demons within the demon palace attacked a samurai that entered and left nothing besides his bones."

"He must've been desperate to make Jia Chen, the Succubus demon, his wife, but died at the end of his courting death by attempting to invade the demon emperor's palace, Kuragari's palace."

"Yeah, anyone who is willing to attempt to enter his palace is either courting death, thinking that it might've happened to others but thought it wouldn't happen to them, or they just want to try their luck."

"Yeah, I just hope a beautiful woman doesn't try the same thing as them. It'd be a shame to lose such a beauty."

They started talking about women, causing her to cease her eavesdropping on them.

'That isn't that useful. Besides, I know the name of the demon emperor, but anything else has no value.'

The waiter came to her table with a mug of what she assumed was the world's version of sake and placed it on her table before leaving to attend to other customers.

Grabbing the mug, she downed it quickly, which attracted the attention of many people, but she just ignored their stares.

'As expected, alcohol has no effect on me, but it seems I'll be either severely beating this waiter up or killing him since he spiked my drink.'