by Funa
As I thought about this...
“Let me have some for my ma and son!”
“For my parents and little sister!”
Five of the villagers reached out again for more medicine.
I pretended to get more out of the bag again, and handed them potions I created on the spot.
Before I knew it, many people were emerging from their houses to gather there.
They didn’t have enough energy to run over, but they seemed to be desperately hurrying to the best of their abilities.
I guess I didn’t need to do the old Angel act this time around.
Just so you know, I wasn’t doing that because I wanted to!
I mean, I was getting a little carried away once I got into it, but who wouldn’t?
I’m only human, after all.
Kaoru.
But what was the point of playing “Angel” for a village with just 200 to 300 people when I didn’t need to?
It was better not to do it if it’s not necessary.
For my own mental health, that is.
Though I was pretty sure people were starting to catch on by now.
I was pulling out way more potions than it would be possible to fit in my little bag.
＊ ＊
Meals were being prepared in the center of the village.
Despite having been cured of their illnesses, many of the villagers were still too enfeebled to prepare food or eat, and so they were all hungry.
Since it was inefficient for everyone to cook food in their own homes, they thought to celebrate the fact that the village had avoided certain doom by having a communal meal together.
They wouldn’t be able to recover their strength without eating something nutritious.
Just ingesting empty calories without nutrition to stave off hunger wasn’t enough.
And so, they would make hotchpotch, which was full of nutrition and easy to digest.
The village chief wanted to have a festival, but I shot that idea down real quick.
People would die if we were to do that.
I mean, some of them could barely walk straight, and seemed to be just managing to hold on. I made those people eat before waiting for the full meal, and mixed some weakened healing potion into their food just so they’d survive.
If we threw a festival in this state, things would get out of hand with people getting drunk and rowdy, and people could actually die.
Everyone may have seemed to be okay now, but their negative conditions were simply removed, and it didn’t mean they had their full vitality back.
There have been many deaths from this epidemic already.
Why risk adding more to that list of casualties?
Yes, I do get the importance of mourning the lives lost and celebrating those who had survived, and that having a festival would be a good way to show appreciation to god and process everything, but that could wait until everyone is fully recovered.
“How much time do you think we have?”
“I can’t be certain, but I’d say if we leave in the afternoon tomorrow, we should arrive late in the night. The soldier that had left earlier would arrive at the royal capital before dawn and report first thing in the morning. Then it would be discussed in the morning meeting and they would decide who to dispatch to confirm the news. A carriage would be sent to receive you, then the Temple of the Goddess would butt in and argue, delaying the departure to the afternoon.”
“Ahhh...”
One of the soldiers that was standing guard at the village had went to the royal capital to report the situation.
They couldn’t enter the village or interact with the inhabitants, so things like well water, food, or fodder for animals couldn’t be obtained from there.
Since they couldn’t take care of horses, there weren’t any there. This meant one would need to travel on foot, which would take some time.
I was asked if they could use Ed or my other horses, but I obviously declined.
I may have made an exception for an emergency, but there was no need to rush when the crisis was already resolved. Besides, I wanted to buy more time, so there was no reason for me to help.
I couldn’t just leave Ed either.
“Then we’d have until tomorrow evening at the latest...”
I’ve already told the lieutenant colonel we’d be leaving this place.
He really tried to stop us, but after thoroughly explaining what would happen if we stayed, and how much I would hate it, he finally seemed to understand.
I was sure he’d try to take me back to the royal capital if I was a regular girl, but it seemed “defying the will of the Angel” was a bit too much of a hurdle for him.
...Being the Angel sure was convenient.
And so, I wanted to get out of there before the men from the royal capital arrived, but there was something I had to take care of first.
I had asked that question earlier to try to figure out how much time I had.
Hmm, one whole day.
Would I make it in time...?
The thing I had to take care of was, of course, to figure out the reason the disease broke out in the first place.
A powerful epidemic had suddenly occurred in some ordinary village.
Did a pathogen spontaneously mutate that way by chance? The possibility wasn’t zero, but it would be better to confirm.
I had nothing to lose by trying, so I might as well use the time I had to give it a shot.
Once everyone was nice and full, the village chief gathered all the key people there upon my request.
Of course, no one had any alcohol, so they were all sober.
“I’m about to ask a very important question. This involves the future of this village, so please think about it carefully before answering.”
They nodded tensely, seeing my serious expression and words after they had just managed to avoid their demise.
I spread a piece of paper out in front of them, then drew a big circle onto it.
“Let’s say this is a map of this entire village. Please indicate which houses have had deaths occur.”
“S-Sure...”
They didn’t seem to quite understand what was going on, but did as I asked.
Even as I looked at what they had drawn, there didn’t seem to be any significant deviations.
“Were there any common factors between those who had passed away?”
The village chief answered my question.
“Ah, well, I suppose they were the children and the elderly, those who weren’t too strong to begin with, and the ones who were the first to get infected...”
Ahh, I’m so stupid! Of course!
“I’m sorry, but please stop writing what I requested earlier and show me which houses were infected first instead.”
With that, I pulled out a new piece of paper and drew another big circle.
Then the villagers went to work again without a word of complaint.
“The first ones to get sick were Mark, Kiara, and Joey...”
“Martha and Joshua too...”
Oh, I almost forgot.
“Excuse me, but please divide the time frames into ten and number them from one through ten.”
Since they didn’t understand the reason for this process, I had to be more specific with my instructions.
All right, they’re making good progress...
“Hmm...”
“Did you figure something out?” Roland asked, despite being pretty quiet until that point.
“Hmm, a lot of the early cases are concentrated around here, but that could just be because they lived near the first victims...”
“Then it sounds like there wasn’t much of a point in checking the concentrated regions.”
He wasn’t wrong, but maybe there was a hint in there somewhere...
There was another concentrated region off in a different spot, but that was likely because someone contracted it early and it spread around from that person.
; I thought something would become more clear if we drew it out, but maybe we needed a professional to look at it instead of amateurs like us.
Hmm...
“The valley!”
“Ah!”
I bent backward in surprise as the village chief suddenly shouted.
“The thing that the early victims all had in common was the valley! The early cases concentrated here are on the valley side of the village, where all the hunters live. The hunters go through the forest and toward the valley to hunt wild animals. The sporadic early victims you see here and there were Kiara, Martha, and Weidt. They were housemaids who dyed textiles at the valley, and youths who occasionally went out to catch fish. The valley must be the source of all this!”
Wow! He perfectly understood why I had them draw this out and utilized his knowledge of the residents as the village chief to analyze the information and come to the logical conclusion! Just who was this geezer?!
...Oh, right. The village chief.
“Incredible, Chief! I’ve heard you were known as a prodigy as a child...”
“Hm, I suppose they did call me that once upon a time.”
Ugh! That annoying smug face from getting his butt kissed by the villagers...
But, well, what he said was reasonable, and I wouldn’t have known about the valley or who goes there if it wasn’t for him.
He deserved the credit.
“Well done, Mr. Village Chief! I’ll go investigate the valley tomorrow, so may I have someone healthy accompany me as a guide?”
“Certainly! You’re the savior of this village, so we’ll do what we can to help. I’ll have one of the hunters who haven’t gotten sick guide you, so please take care of this.”
Afterward, we joined the village chief at his home.
It was pretty common for small villages without inns like this one to have visitors stay at the village chief’s house.
The reason the chief’s house was bigger and nicer than the rest of the villagers wasn’t because he got to live luxuriously due to his status... well, maybe there was some of that.
But even there, there were reasons for things being the way they were.
The soldiers? They said they’re going to take turns wrapping themselves in blankets and napping.
That was just the nature of their jobs, so that was that.
I thought more soldiers would be sent from the royal capital every few days to replace them, but according to the villagers, they would only send carriages with water and food, while the soldiers stayed the same.
It must’ve been to prevent people in the royal capital from getting sick.
These poor soldiers...
Maybe I’d do something nice for them later.
We left the royal capital before noon and it was starting to get dark as the sun began to go down.
We were okay on food supplies because we got some from the communal meal earlier, so I decided to hash out the plans for tomorrow at the village chief’s house.
Whatever happened, we’d be leaving this place by tomorrow evening.
When we do, I guess I’d just firmly tell the villagers not to let visitors enter the village no matter what.
All of the villagers drank the medicine, so they were already fully immune to the disease.
But still, I wanted to find out the cause if possible.
Besides, there was a chance it could spread somewhere besides the royal capital.
The people of this village only went to the royal capital and back, but visitors wouldn’t necessarily be heading only to the royal capital.
And I’m sure there were people who went to other cities from the royal capital after the disease spread there.
It was possible that it may have already spread elsewhere.
Maybe it was spreading village to village, city to city, even now...
I’m only one person. I couldn’t go around every city and village.
It would be impossible to stop it from spreading while trying to play catch up from behind.
Replicate myself using potions? That’s way too creepy!
And if I did that, I wasn’t sure if there would be a way to reverse it.
I was afraid each of the copies would start claiming to be the original and killing each other.
Ya know, that “Cogito ergo sum” thing I read about in manga.
Eeek!
“What’s wrong, Big Sis Kaoru? You don’t look so good.”
“Something wrong, Kaoru? You’ve got a scary look in your eyes.”
Layette sounded concerned as she spoke to me.
“Oh, no. I’m okay... And Roland?”
“Shut it!”
＊ ＊
The next day, we departed for the valley with a hunter from the village guiding us.
“Lieutenant colonel, you can head back to the royal capital now if you’d like. You’ve already fulfilled your role of leading us here.”
“I can’t just turn back now! His Majesty would be angry with me if I don’t see this through to the end!”
“Ah, right...”
And so the eight of us, which included me, the lieutenant colonel, and the hunter guiding us, all began making our way into the forest.
There was actually a beaten path for us to follow already though.
We were still some distance away from the valley, but I decided to put it on at this point.
Yes, I’m talking about the glasses-type destination detector I thought of last night.
The left lens had a PPI scope (Plan Position Indicator scope: Plane coordinates display screen) and the right lens pointed out the position of the destination with arrows and dots.
Oh, actually, let me rephrase that.
It’s a glasses-type destination detector shaped potion container.
There’s a potion inside the part that secures the device to my face.
And I could still see what’s in front of me while wearing it.
Though it did make it a bit more difficult.
It’s used for finding things, so I decided to call it a “Searcher.”
It doesn’t read the opponent’s power level or anything, so I decided against calling it that other name.
I already showed it to the others last night, so no one was surprised to see it.
Even though the hunter was seeing it for the first time, he had already seen the infinite potions popping out of my bag and their effects, so it wasn’t anything to be surprised by at this point.
And of course, I had set the Searcher to find the pathogen that had caused this disease.
Even if I couldn’t find it right away, there was no need to rush.
Whenever we get to the valley in question, I could just increase the search range from there.
For now, I just needed it to ensure we don’t miss out on anything important.
But wait... what’s this?
There’s a bunch of blips showing on the PPI scope on the left side.
And since they were close range, I could see each individual point moving around clearly.
They were moving far too fast to be microbes.
And if they were being blown around by the wind, their movement speed and directions were too erratic.
Plus, the points were too big.
They were infected animals!
This was bad. If the disease could spread through animals, there was no telling when someone other than the people in the village or royal capital, who haven’t had the medicine, could get infected.
And if someone does get infected, it could spread again in some other city.
Not only that, but the animals caught by the hunters of this or other villages would be sold to merchants.
Those would be delivered to not only the royal capital, but to all sorts of cities.
If the animal meat is eaten without being fully heated to kill off the microbes...
In any case, we had to get to the valley.
And so, we eventually arrived at the valley.
> There was a small stream with clear water there.
It was likely a watering spot for the animals in the area.
So, the hunters also likely hunted here too.
There were lots of points at the stream lighting up on my detector.
But there weren’t any animals there that I could see.
...Maybe they were small animals, like mice?
All right, I’ll extend the range and... What the?!
They seemed to be moving erratically from close range, but when I extended the range, I could see the whole image more clearly.
Their minute movements were no longer visible, and instead, the PPI scope showed their movement as a whole.
There was a clear center, and the light points became less concentrated as they went further from the middle.
It was spreading out in a radial pattern.
This had to be the source of the outbreak.
The Searcher’s so useful!
“We’re heading toward what seems to be the source. I don’t know what we’ll find there, so be careful, everyone! Roland, keep your eyes on Layette. Everyone else, stay alert!”
I had to make sure Layette was safe, and I suppose Roland too, who was royalty.
Belle and Emile were fully-fledged hunters already, so they could protect themselves.
The hunter’s a professional too, so I figured he could handle himself.
Though I didn’t think we’d be in too much danger.
The villagers hadn’t been exposed to any danger besides the disease until this point, after all.
But it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious.
It was possible an animal that had become sick could turn violent or something.
We stayed vigilant as we made our way toward the center of the points on the detector, and as we reached the most concentrated area...
“The heck is this?!”
We found something strange.
A squishy thing that was about three to four meters in diameter.
...Thing? No, there wasn’t an actual object there.
It was like the dimension itself was writhing after being twisted around...
From there, a sort of miasma was leaking out with small, mouse-like creatures coming out periodically.