by Dojyomaru
“Naturally, we’re putting a force together to put them down ourselves, and we’ve put in a request with the guild for adventurers to slay the monsters that came out of the dungeon, but... time is of the essence,” Kuu said. “Once a beast has a taste for human flesh, it’s sure to attack people again. These things are going to be the same. We don’t know when they’ll attack another village. I dunno if they’re ogres, or what they are, but I’m not letting them do what they want any longer.”
Kuu looked more serious and heroic than I had ever seen him before. He was completely different from the Kuu who was always aloof, and laughing. It was his anger at the people of his country being attacked. Kuu had acted like being the son of their head of state meant nothing to him, but in that anger, I felt like I could see the pride of one who stands above others.
“I see,” I said, nodding. “You have to prevent any further casualties.”
“Yeah. That’s it, Kazuma. I want you guys to help!” Kuu said and bowed his head once more. “We can travel to the village quickly from here. Also, I know you’ve got capable bodyguards on hand. Particularly the dark elf girl, and the red-headed guy. If they’d come, it’d be reassuring. Do you think you could ask them to?”
Emotionally, I wanted to help, but... I’d be risking the safety of my family, so I couldn’t say yes so easily. I wanted a little more information.
“Aisha?” I asked. “Just how strong are ogres?”
“Well, they have the strength to crush boulders with their bare hands, but even ordinary soldiers could defeat one if they surrounded it with ten men. I could do it alone,” Aisha added with a confident snort.
“It sounds like there are more than ten of them,” I said. “Can we fight that with the strength we have on hand?”
“If it’s around ten, I don’t see us failing. Madam Juna, Sir Halbert, and Madam Kaede are all superb combatants, and Sir Kuu is quite skilled himself.”
“I see...”
In that case, if we could confirm the situation on the ground, we could help.
“Got it,” I said. “Let us help.”
“You mean it?!” Kuu cried.
“This is a problem that could happen in any country. It’s practically a natural disaster. Now isn’t the time to be worrying about whether it’s Friedonia or Turgis.”
“Thanks! I owe you one!” Kuu seemed relieved to have our help.
I added, “However, I want you to bring me, too.”
“Darling?!” Juna shouted.
“Darlin’?!” Roroa cried.
Before they could say any more, I raised my hand to stop them. “I can’t fight, but my magic is suited to scouting. Let me help.”
“If that’s how you want it... Okay,” Kuu said. “I’m counting on you.”
“Yeah. We’ll get ready to go immediately, so wait outside for us.”
Kuu said, “Be quick about it,” and left the room with Leporina in tow. Once we had heard the sound of their footsteps leaving, Roroa confronted me.
“Hold on, darlin’! Are you outta your mind?! Goin’ to a dangerous place like that?!”
“I’m opposed to it, too,” Juna objected. “If anything were to happen to you, sire, I...”
From the fact she was referring to me as “sire” not “darling,” I could see she was seriously concerned.
Roroa continued. “You’re not strong like Big Sister Ai, now are ya?! Why can’t ya just wait here?!”
“Listen, I’m well aware I’m not strong, but I want you to let me go.” I plopped my hand down on top of Roroa’s head. “I don’t think Kuu was lying, but to prepare for the possibility of a trap or any other unplanned-for event, it’d be convenient for me to be next to our greatest combat asset. If I’m going to be loaning out my family and vassals, I need to make sure they’re returned to me.”
“Well, maybe, but...”
“Besides... I think this is a good opportunity for me to learn about what monsters are like.”
“Learn about monsters?” Roroa asked.
“Yeah. Since coming to this world, I’ve seen vicious creatures through the eyes of a Little Musashibo I was making work as an adventurer, but when it comes to monsters, I only have secondhand knowledge. Thinking about the future, I’d like to actually see them and gauge the threat they pose for myself.”
There might eventually come a time when I would have to face demons from the Demon Lord’s Domain. If that happened, I might get tripped up if I approached it with the naive thought that it would be okay because they were intelligent. In addition to the demons, there were apparently scads of monsters in the Demon Lord’s Domain, too, after all. That’s why I wanted to take this chance to learn about monsters.
“Of course, I’m going to secure my own safety as far as possible... Inugami.”
“I am here.” Inugami suddenly appeared from the shadow of the door Kuu and Leporina had left through.
There were always more than ten members of the Black Cats posted nearby, watching over us unnoticed. It had been that way ever since our departure for the Star Dragon Mountain Range.
I handed something over to him and gave him an order. “You were listening to us, right? I want you to send some of the Black Cats to scout out the site now, and confirm that the situation and number of monsters matches what Kuu told us. I’ll leave the choice of members to you. If there are more of them than we can handle with our number, report back to me with this wooden mouse. If that turns out to be the case, I’ll feel bad for Kuu, but we’ll have to back out.”
“By your will.”
Inugami took the wooden mouse possessed by my Living Poltergeists, then vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. He was getting more and more like a ninja, wasn’t he?
“Hrm... Well, if you’re gonna be stayin’ in a safe place, I guess it’s fine...” Roroa murmured.
“We’ll have to accept it,” Juna agreed.
I smiled. My thorough safety measures had made Roroa and Juna reluctantly accept that I would be going along.
“Have no worries!” Aisha declared. “We’ll wipe out those monsters immediately. We’ll not let them lay one finger on His Majesty. Right, Sir Halbert, Madam Kaede?”
“Sure thing!” Hal agreed. “I was just thinking I wanted to test out my new weapon, too!”
“Geez, Hal...” Kaede muttered. “But if it’s a royal command, we’ll follow it, you know.”
Aisha proudly thumped her chest, and Hal and Kaede nodded. What a reliable fiancée and comrades I had.
Now that our direction was decided, I gave each of them their individual orders. “Roroa and Tomoe will stay in this town. We’ll leave some members of the Black Cats to guard them.”
“Well, even if we did go, we’d only end up bein’ a hindrance,” Roroa said.
“Stay safe, Big Brother,” Tomoe added.
“Sure. I won’t do anything dangerous, so just trust me and wait.” I placed a hand on each of their worrying heads, and patted them gently. “The rest of the group will go with Kuu to put down the monsters. I will keep in contact with the Black Cats, and scout ahead from the rear. I’ll ask Juna to be my bodyguard.”
“Leave it to me,” Juna said.
“Aisha, Hal, and Kaede, you’ll put down the monsters with Kuu. But don’t push yourselves. If you think it’s dangerous, pull back immediately. That goes for if I detect more enemies than anticipated during my scouting and give the order to retreat, too. I won’t stand for us losing a single person here in another land!”
“Yes, sir!” Aisha exclaimed.
“Gotcha!” Hal said.
“You can leave it to us, you know,” Kaede confirmed.
Hearing everyone’s replies, I gave the order.
“Now then, everyone... Let’s go!”
““““Yes, sir!””””
In the carriage on the way there, I explained my magic to Kuu and Leporina.
Obviously, if I told him about the limitations or the area of effect in detail it would take a long ti
me, so I only told him what he needed to know.
“My magic transfers my own consciousness into objects modeled on living creatures, like mannequins, and allows me to control them freely. For instance, if I transfer my consciousness into this wooden mouse, I get an overhead view of... well, just assume I can see what the mouse sees.”
“Wow, that’s one hell of an ability!” Kuu said, impressed at seeing the wooden mouse moving around on my hand almost like it was the real thing. “Oookyakya, if I had an ability like that, I could peep on the women’s bath all I want!”
“You had to go there immediately?!” I exclaimed.
“Young master, you’re embarrassing me as your subordinate, so please show some self-control,” Leporina protested with tears in her eyes.
Unlike the pensive look on his face when rushing into the inn, Kuu was already back to his usual self.
I ignored them and continued. “That’s why, if I send this wooden mouse out to scout, I can get an accurate picture of the situation without the other side knowing. The problem is, if I don’t know what direction the enemy is in, I can only send it to patrol the area around us.”
Maybe Aisha could, but I couldn’t do something like sense the enemy’s presence. If I knew the direction the enemy was in, I could send one out immediately, but until then. I’d have to have them spread out in the area around us to patrol.
That said, once sightings came in from the Black Cats we’d sent on ahead, I’d know the right direction immediately. However, I couldn’t let Kuu and Leporina know about the clandestine unit operating under my orders.
“In that case, we can have Leporina look,” Kuu said as if it was no big deal. “Leporina and her fellow white rabbits have good ears. Even in forests with poor visibility, she can sense what direction things are moving in by the sounds they make.”
“I only know the direction of the sound, and if it’s a single source or many, though,” Leporina added.
Oh, that paired well with my ability. Leporina could narrow down the direction, and then I just had to send out the mouse.
Then I received a message.
“Inugami reporting in. Target sighted.”
The report from Inugami and his men came into my mind through the separated portion of my consciousness.
“We have visual confirmation of five from here. The targets are ogres. However, Your Majesty... their form is somewhat warped.”
Warped? I was able to see the dolls I was controlling from an overhead view, but that also meant I could only see the area around them. Because the Black Cats were monitoring the targets from a distance, I couldn’t see them myself, so I could only imagine based on the report.
“Their faces and size match ogres, but their arms are massive and touch the ground, resulting in them walking on all fours,” said Inugami. “I hear many monsters are bizarre in form compared to those told of in legends. Most likely, this is one such subrace.”
A subrace of ogres... huh. I made the mouse he was carrying shake to indicate I understood.
The arrangement was that Inugami and his people would stake out the dungeon the ogres had appeared from for now. That was to prepare for a situation where more monsters crawled out of there, and because I couldn’t have a unit of spies doing anything that stood out too much.
Even so... it caught my attention that many of the monsters that resided in dungeons had bizarre forms.
The large number of monsters and demons that showed up after the appearance of the Demon Lord’s Domain. They were distinct from the many strangely shaped monsters that inhabited this continent’s dungeons. What was the difference between them? Was there even one to begin with?
In order to get a full picture of this world, I may need to turn my eyes to that, too.
It was a vague feeling, but that was the sense I got.
While I was thinking that, we reached the mountain village said to have been attacked by the monsters.
It was a hamlet with only about ten buildings, but it looked like it had been hit by a typhoon. None of the buildings were burned, but almost all of them were collapsed or had holes in the walls. If there was one difference from a typhoon, it was the splatters of blood that could be seen here and there.
The lines of blood that looked like someone had been dragged were especially disturbing.
“Damn... First, we search to see if anyone’s here!” Kuu said, gritting his teeth.
We all looked around to see if there were any survivors. However, we couldn’t even find the bodies.
Those who could escape had fled, and those who couldn’t must have been devoured or dragged off.
Having confirmed there was no one left in this village, we gathered again and began our search.
“Leporina,” I said. “Can you tell what direction the monsters are in?”
“I’ll try.” Leporina perked her rabbit ears up, and twitched them. A few seconds later, she added, “There are five at two o’clock, seven at three o’clock, and noises indicating the presence of several others.”
“I hear ogres move in groups,” Aisha explained. “The five and seven are likely ogres.”
The several others were probably the members of the Black Cats posted throughout the forest.
I sent the wooden mice in the directions Leporina indicated. Then, when they had gone about eight hundred meters from the village, I confirmed five ogres, and another kilometer away, there were seven of them.
Like in the report I had received from the Black Cats, the ogres did indeed have a bizarre form. Their arms were bizarrely fat and big, making their bodies extremely unbalanced.
From manga and games, I had an image of ogres as fat macho guys with horns wearing straw skirts and swinging clubs around, but while these ogres definitely had ogre heads, they wore no clothing, carried no weapons, and their bodies were covered in long hair. They were like what you’d get if you crossed an oni with a gorilla, and resembled the ijuu I had seen in the youkai encyclopedia I had read as a child.
The wooden mice crept closer and confirmed both groups were sitting in a circle and feasting on something. I had a bad feeling, so I decided not to look, but I caught a glimpse of one of the villag... No, best not to think about it.
The gorilla-like ogres with their bloodshot eyes were devouring their food with reckless abandon. The only thing I got from them was they were intensely hungry.
Good thing we didn’t bring Tomoe...
If I were only considering my objective of learning about monsters, Tomoe’s ability would have been useful. But I could tell just from looking. There was something different about these guys. They were only thinking about eating.
When it came to humans and animals, once their stomachs were full of food, they calmed down. However, these ogres were eating, but they didn’t show any signs of satisfaction whatsoever. They were like starving ghouls out of hell. If Tomoe could understand what they said, she’d probably faint in shock. It was a pretty harsh sight.
While forcing down the nausea, I informed everyone of what I had just seen.
Hearing my report, Kuu slammed his fist into the ground as if to take his frustrations out on it. “Those bastards! I’ll never forgive them!”
Hal crossed his arms and said, “Is there a distance between the two groups? It’d be a pain if they joined up.”
“Defeating a divided force is basic strategy, you know,” Kaede, who was Ludwin’s staff officer in the National Defense Force, agreed. “If possible, I’d like to dispose of the smaller group quickly.”
Kaede placed five and seven stones on the ground, then dug a trench between them with a stick.
“I’d like to lay a trap between these two groups. One that will let us delay the seven if they notice something is wrong with the five and rush to their aid, and that will maybe injure them if we’re lucky.”
“Do we have time to be laying traps?” I asked.
“I can easily use my magic to make pitfalls, if nothing else, you know. That’s why I’d lik
e to sit out the fight with the five, and instead focus keeping them separated. If possible, I’d like to have an archer who could aim to injure and weaken them...”
“Then Leporina can go with you,” said Kuu. “She acts like a moron, but she’s a capable archer.”
“You didn’t have to call me a moron,” Leporina protested, but she still followed the order.
That more or less gave us our battle plan. While Kaede and Leporina were delaying the arrival of the seven, Aisha, Hal, and Kuu would wipe out the five with their full combat potential. I, myself, would only be in the way, so I’d be supporting them at range using the Little Musashibo (Small) with Bowgun Equipped I had brought.
Juna was to be on standby as my bodyguard and strike commando.
When the operation started, Kuu gave an order. “I’m sorry to get you people from another country wrapped up in my country’s problem. But for now, please, lend we your strength! Let’s get this impromptu combined force going!”
““““Yeah!””””
Though we were a small, hastily thrown together team, the first joint battle between the Kingdom of Friedonia and the Republic of Turgis had begun.
In order to defeat them all before the seven arrived from elsewhere, we decided we would first hit them with a surprise attack with the greatest power possible. The goal was to make sure at least one went down in the initial strike.
And among us, the one with the most power was... Aisha.
“Hahhhhhh!”
With a war cry, Aisha swung her greatsword.
Caught unaware by the assault, one of the ogres was bisected without being able to do anything about it. The other four panicked when they saw one of them had gone down.
Then Aisha, Hal, and Kuu sprang on them.
“I’m sure you know this, redhead, but we don’t have much time!” Kuu shouted.
“I know, whitehead!” Hal shot back.
Wait, Hal, he’s the son of their head of state, okay?
Kuu was holding the cudgel decorated with a golden centipede that we had seen in Taru’s workshop. Hal was holding two short spears, but the bottoms of their shafts were bound by a thin chain. Was that the new weapon he said he’d bought at Taru’s place? I believe it was called the Twin Snake Spear.