Late at night, as the date was about to change...
The moon was hidden by the clouds, making it feel very dark.
Amid that darkness, there were eight people, Aisha, Roroa, Naden,
Halbert, Kaede, Ruby, Julius, and I, standing near a watch fire lit on one of
the city walls.
Illuminated by the swaying red flames, I handed a letter I had written to
Aisha. "Send this to Hakuya in Parnam Castle."
"Understood."
Aisha accepted the letter, tied it to the messenger kui she had brought
with her, and sent it off. The messenger kui flew south through the dark sky,
"A letter?" Julius asked, to which I nodded.
"A letter to the prime minister we left back at the castle, informing him
of our situation and the lay of the land here. If there are tens of thousands of
lizardmen beyond the Dabicon, we're still going to want to take some
measures against them even once the reinforcements arrive. I'm sure
Hakuya will come up with a plan that's appropriate to our situation and pass
it to Ludwin, the commander-in-chief of the reinforcements."
"I see..." Julius nodded his head. "We'll be leaving all the planning to
the Black-robed Prime Minister then."
"Do I detect spite? Because I'm leaving everything up to someone
else?"
"You're overthinking it. I'm still impressed." Julius smiled wryly, and
then let out a little sigh. "In the former principality, the opinion of the ruling
prince was absolute. The prince led without hesitation, and his retainers
followed without comment, whether his decisions were right or not. That
may...be what created the gap between us and you. I feel, as late as this may
be, that I understand why my father lost now."
"Big Brother..." Roroa gave him a look of concern.
Julius broke out laughing. "Roroa, you and your fiancée were
troublesome opponents for me. However, I now have those troublesome
opponents on my side. Nothing could be more reassuring. Am I wrong?"
"For me...I never found myself thinkin' the old you was all that
troublesome an opponent."
"Bold words..."
"But I wouldn't wanna end up fightin' the new you. Ya seem way
tougher than before." And Roroa grinned. It felt like the ice was melting
between them.
Considering their past strife, it was hard to tell whether they could fully
accept one another, but it seemed they wouldn't hate each other without
cause from now on.
Looking at the two of them, I could feel my guilt for taking Roroa's
family away from her lighten just a little.
That's why...no matter what happens, I must defend this country.
I put a hand on Naden's shoulder. "Well, shall we get going, Naden?"
"Okay." Naden nodded and then, with a single breath, turned into her
massive ryuu form.
As I mounted Naden, Aisha rushed over with a worried look on her face.
"I'm worried about letting you two go out alone after all, sire! I should go
with you..."
"Like I explained before, mobility and enemy detection are the
important factors for what we're about to do. It's more efficient to have just
me and Naden. If we take a bodyguard, we'll stand out too much. We'll get
in and out quickly, so don't worry."
"You say that, but...I can't help it."
Aisha still had a worried look on her face, so I gave her a grin. "We all
have to do what we can to get through this situation. I'm pushing my
retainers hard, so I must do what I can myself too. It's okay. If something
goes wrong, I'm sure Hal and the rest will come for us."
Hal thumped his chest proudly. "Yeah. If you get in a jam, we'll go pull
you out of it. Right, Ruby?"
"Right. Naden, you make sure you protect your husband properly too."
"I'll do it without you telling me to." Naden nodded in her ryuu form.
I patted her on the back and said, "Okay, let's go, Naden!"
"Roger that!"
Naden and I lifted off from the castle wall and danced into the night sky.
Naden rose to a height no winged monster could reach and hovered
there. The way the wingless Naden swam through the sky was very quiet,
and her black color worked together with that fact to let her blend into the
darkness of night.
I didn't feel cold because I was protected by Naden's magical power, but
the sound of the wind rushing by my ears was loud, making it readily
apparent to me I was in a very high place.
Naden turned her long neck to look at me. "Souma."
"I know. I'm searching now."
I covered my ears so as not to be distracted by the sound of the wind,
and then focused.
I was using my ability, Living Poltergeists, to control six wooden mice,
and had them searching the ground. Down at ground level, the chimera-like
monsters were eating the corpses of the lizardmen that had been fried to a
crisp after being bombed by the wyvern cavalry.
In a scene that made them look like hungry ghosts, I could hear the
groaning of monsters and the biting sounds of them feasting greedily on
corpses. The sickening images flowed into my head, triggering an
instinctive gag reflex, but I somehow managed to force it down and
continue the search.
I searched the ground carefully from a height where we couldn't be
caught by surprise monster attacks.
Of everyone who had come on this expedition, Naden and I were the
only pair that could pull this off. I was always delegating the tasks I
couldn't handle to the people who could. So, whenever there was something
I could do, I had to be proactive about doing it, or I wouldn't be setting a
proper example for my retainers.
This isn't the time to be creeped out. I must hurry and find it.
While I struggled with my task, Naden looked at me with concern. "You
okay? You shouldn't push yourself too hard..."
"I'm fine... Found it!" I immediately gave the order to Naden. "Go about
200 meters in the direction of three o'clock."
"You got it." Naden swam through the air as directed until she reached
that point. Then, after careful confirmation, I gave Naden the signal to go.
"Okay, do it just like we discussed before."
"Roger that! Hold on tight!"
With that, Naden dove headlong toward the surface.
"Urgh..."
It felt like plunging down the highest drop on a roller coaster. Naden's
magic was supposed to be cutting the force of the wind considerably, but I
still felt like it was going to throw me backward. I should have been used to
flying through the sky on Naden's back by now, but this sudden dive was
really scary.
The ground was rushing up toward us. I could clearly see the eyes of the
mass of monsters on the ground twinkling as they caught the light of the
moon shining through gaps in the clouds.
Before those eyes could turn toward me, I gave the order. "Now, do it!
Naden!"
"Unahhhhh!"
The white mane Naden had in her ryuu form stood on end and purple
static crackled from her two whip-like whiskers. Then...
Roarrrrrrrrr!
Naden bellowed and unleashed a massive bolt of lightning toward the
ground.
The sudden flash of light was blinding, and the massive boom that
followed echoed in my stomach. Naden's unrestrained strike fried the
monsters in the spot she hit to a crisp, which paralyzed or made the
monsters twitch uncontrollably over a wider radius.
Naden set down near the area she'd hit. "Okay, Souma. Be quick."
"I know."
I readied the crossbow I had brought, firing toward my target. The bolt
fired flew straight, stabbing into the little monster that was my target.
"Well done," Naden said, sounding impressed. "That's not bad, hitting it
on the first try."
"My personal martial arts trainer has whipped the basics into me, and
the crossbow was what he said I excelled most at," I admitted. "Though he
was angry that I'm no better than a rank and file soldier at basically
everything else."
"If it's just a matter of shooting, even a child can do it after all," she
said.
Yeah... Pathetic as it felt to admit it, she was right. I wasn't much better
than an amateur with a sword, and even though it was shooting all the same,
I couldn't hit a target with a regular bow and arrow.
If there was anything else I got compliments on...it'd have to be
swimming. I was even better at swimming than Owen was, but winning
against a man who was over sixty wasn't much to brag about. Even if Owen
was super frustrated by it.
With things starting to feel kind of awkward, I grabbed the string tied
around my waist. This string was silk, which was being used as a stand-in
for rubber. It was strong, flexible, and not prone to tearing, and on the other
side of the string was tied to the bolt I had just fired.
As I pulled on the string, the little monster it had stabbed into was
dragged along the ground. I couldn't feel the monster moving, or the bolt
pulling free... Good.
With that confirmed, I placed my hands down on Naden's back and said,
"Okay. Let's go home, Naden. No need to overstay our welcome."
"Roger that!"
Before the monsters could gather around, Naden danced up into the sky.
With the dead body of a monster dangling beneath us, we headed
straight back to where our companions were waiting.
When Naden returned to human form and set down on the wall with me,
Roroa and Aisha rushed over.
"Welcome back, Darlin'. How'd it go?"
"Thank goodness you're both all right," Aisha said with relief. "You're
not hurt anywhere, are you?"
"We're fine. Neither of us are hurt anywhere, and things went well." I
patted them both lightly on the head.
Naden, watching jealously, extended her own head in my direction, so I
gave her hair a good mussing too.
"Nice work out there, Naden. That was quite the thunderclap."
"Heheh, of course it was." Naden puffed up her chest with pride.
While we were bonding, Julius and Hal and all the rest looked on in
exasperation.
Julius tapped Roroa on the shoulder to ask her to back away, then stood
in front of me to say, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'd like to confirm what
you caught."
"...Right." I threw the monster hanging from the string tied around my
waist underneath the watch fire.
It was only a little larger than a dog, with a wide, scale-covered body
that looked like the drawings of a tsuchinoko I had seen back in my old
world. There were pigeon-like wings on its back, and its head was flat, but
there was no questioning it was a snake. If I were to describe it, I'd have
called it a winged tsuchinoko.
I looked around to everyone, then spoke.
"This is likely the monster Madam Jeanne said she ate."
Before dawn, inside the tower near the castle...
This place was dimly lit by the sun in the middle of the day, and was
almost entirely dark by night, but now there was a roaring bonfire lit on the
stone floor, lighting the cell where the lizardman was held in sunset colors.
There were five people around the fire: Aisha, Roroa, Julius, Tomoe,
and me. That was because if there were too many, the lizardman might get
agitated.
"Okay... Let's do this," I said.
I pulled out the plump, winged snake monster (henceforth called a flying
tsuchinoko for the sake of brevity). There was a metal spit running from the
already dead flying tsuchinoko's mouth to a hole near the point where its
tail was attached (was that hole for defecating, maybe?), and the metal spit
had a handle on the end of it. This was a tool for spinning the meat over the
top of the fire as it cooked.
The spitted flying tsuchinoko was rested on two Y-shaped metal racks
on either side of the fire. When I started turning the handle, the flying
tsuchinoko spun over the fire that was cooking it.
Nothing special had been done to the flying tsuchinoko. It wasn't
plucked or descaled, and no spices were added; it was just put over the
flame and cooked. This wasn't for us to eat, it was purely to teach the
lizardman to cook monster meat and eat it, so this was good enough.
The continued exposure to flame made the feathers burn off, and fat
dripped off its plump torso. The dripping fat made the fire burn stronger, so
we cautiously added water to control it.
The savory smell of cooking meat gradually filled the room.
"You're good at that..." Julius remarked as he watched me cook the
monster. "Maybe you would make a better cook than a king."
"Hahaha... I can't deny that."
"No, no, Darlin'. Aren't ya supposed to be denyin' that?" Roroa said in
exasperation.
No matter what job he suggested, I'd probably be better suited to it than
being a king, but...well, I'd just have to focus on cooking this monster for
now.
I called Tomoe over and whispered to her. "Well? Is the lizardman
watching us?"
"Y-Yes, Big Brother. Mr. Lizardman can't look away," Tomoe
responded, also in a whisper.
It was top secret that Tomoe could converse with monsters and demons,
so I didn't want Julius finding out.
Then, somewhat timidly, Tomoe looked at the lizardman. "Until just a
little while ago, it only saw us as food. But ever since the smell of fried
meat filled the air, it's been only looking at the cooked monster. I'm
hearing, 'I want to eat that meat.'"
Clang!
As if to support Tomoe's earlier opinion, the lizardmen grabbed onto the
bars, thrusting its pointed mouth through the gap between them.
"Eeek!" Startled by the sound of the lizardman throwing itself against
the metal bars, Tomoe ran and hid behind Aisha.
Looks like we've got it nice and interested...
The meat was gradually cooking. The fat dripping into the fire made a
hissing noise, and despite the appearance of the creature (one fat snake), it
was starting to look pretty tasty.
"Big Sis Ai, you're droolin'," Roroa said.
"Oops... Excuse me." Aisha wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
This had to be torture for the ever-hungry dark elf to watch. If we had
more food, I'd fix her a midnight snack...
"Well...I'd say that about does it," I said.
I looked at the monster meat from below to judge if it was cooked
enough. This was my first time cooking flying tsuchinoko after all, so I
didn't know how it tasted best, but I figured it was well done enough. I
removed the flying tsuchinoko from the fire and held it up.
"Cooked and ready to serve!"
"Why are you so weirdly energetic?" Julius asked with exasperation.
"Nah, it just felt like a good formulaic thing to say..."
"Huh?" Julius looked at me as if he didn't get it. It was a natural
reaction.
I got back on track, put the still-sizzling flying tsuchinoko on a big plate,
and removed the spit. That was the fried flying tsuchinoko, ready to eat.
"Now, let's do a taste test!" I laid the plate with the meat on it on the
floor, then used a piece of wood with another horizontal piece of wood on
the end to push it in.
When it realized the meat was coming closer, the lizardman stuck its
arms out through the bars and waved them wildly. Eventually, when the big
plate got close enough, the lizardman snatched up the roasted flying
tsuchinoko and crunched right into it.
...Yes, not just bit, crunched. It didn't care one bit about the bones as it
ripped the meat and tore it apart.
"It's so wild that it's creepy..."
It did not look like a pleasant way to eat. I could feel my appetite, which
had been stirred up by the smell of cooking meat, rapidly decline. Looking
around, everyone else was wincing too. Only Aisha looked jealous.
I called Tomoe over and asked her in a whisper again, "Tomoe, how is
the lizardman?"
"It's overjoyed. Its hunger has been at least slightly sated..."
"I see... I guess this lizardman has learned the taste of monster meat
now."
Even in my old world, once an animal learned the taste of human flesh,
it would begin to attack us. This lizardman now knew the taste of monster
meat, so it ought to try attacking monsters.
I told Julius, "This is the first stage of the plan complete. Let's move on
to the second stage."
"Next is the main event, I suppose?" Julius asked.
I nodded.