The Leaders and the Led

by Ao Jyumonji

  “Okay. Well, welcome to the group, then.”

  When Haruhiro offered him his right hand, Kuzaku finally stood up straight again and shook his hand.

  For as big and bony as he is, his hand is soft, Haruhiro thought. His grip’s not that firm, so he seems kind of unreliable. He’s not very tank-y, you could say. Is this going to be okay?

  On top of that, even though Haruhiro had loosened his grip already, for some reason Kuzaku wasn’t letting go of his hand.

  “...Um,” Haruhiro said. “Could you let go now?”

  “Oh,” Kuzaku said. “My bad.”

  “Nah, it’s nothing to feel bad about...”

  “Okay!” Ranta pointed northward. “Now that that’s settled, we’re setting out! Come to think of it, we never did decide where we’d go, did we?! I have an idea! New hunting grounds, perfect for getting into a new mindset as we set out anew today! It’s the next generation, new spirit hunting world!”

  Yume tilted her head to the side. “Newspirimahuntinword...?”

  “...Y-Yume...” Shihoru tugged on Yume’s arm.

  “Hoh? Shihoru, what’s up?”

  “...I-It’s not that anything’s up, it’s just...”

  “Where’s that?”

  When Kuzaku asked that, sounding tired, Ranta laughed and said, “Listen, and try not to be amazed! It’s the Wonder Hole!”

  13. Don’t Stop Walking

  It might have been true that Haruhiro and the party had needed to venture out into new and unfamiliar places.

  Haruhiro and his group had been like insects clinging to the frontier of Grimgar. They’d had no wings, and so they could fly nowhere else. Fortunately, however, they did have legs. They could walk forward.

  As they progressed, sights they had yet to see would unfold before them. Beneath the boundless skies, the land seemed to go on forever. It felt like they could go anywhere.

  Honestly, when he thought of going back to the Old City of Damuro again, or to the Cyrene Mines, it weighed him down. Still, Haruhiro had thought there was no other option. He’d figured that if they were going to take it slow and steady, making adjustments as they went, really, the first three levels of the Cyrene Mines seemed like the most appropriate place.

  He had been taking too narrow of a view; he realized that now. He felt like he had come to a dead end, but he’d neglected to gather information.

  It all made Haruhiro keenly aware of how mediocre he was. As a thief and as a volunteer soldier he was average, and as an individual, he was plain and lacking in imagination. He could only look at things from an all-too-common viewpoint, unable to make the logical leaps he would need to to see things another way. Calling that having a grounded outlook might make it sound good, but not only could he not make those leaps, he didn’t even think to try.

  That was why Ranta’s flights of fancy were so valuable. It was a terrible idea to let Ranta run wild and free. But Haruhiro ought to integrate some of the idea Ranta had come up with, the one that he would never have thought up himself.

  “Okay! The Quickwind Plains! Yee-hawwww!” Ranta bellowed.

  Obviously, no matter what happened, he would never imitate the idiotic way Ranta was shouting like a moron and running full-tilt towards the plains.

  “Yahoooo-hoy! Helloooo! Quickwind Plains! Wahahahahahahaha! Hot damn, I’m excited, wow! Gwahahahaha!”

  “Can I ask something?” Kuzaku asked Haruhiro, pointing to the screaming moron. “Is that normal for Ranta-kun?”

  “Yeah, sorta...” Haruhiro said.

  “Wow...”

  “Huh?” Ranta said, turning just the upper half of his body around to look at them. “What? Did I just hear you dissing me?”

  “No one’s dissing you,” Kuzaku said plainly. “It was more of a ‘Huh, Ranta-kun sure is different.’ That’s all.”

  “Gwahahahahaha! That sounds like a compliment! Hurray for being rare!” Ranta shouted.

  Even though everyone else was fed up with him, Ranta himself seemed happy about it. Seriously, what a blissful idiot.

  But, well, when they were out in a wide open space like this, it felt incredibly liberating.

  Yume, Shihoru and Merry seemed so taken with the magnificent scenery that they were at a loss for words.

  When they headed six kilometers north of Alterna to Deadhead Watching Keep, then a little over an hour north through sparse woods, there were plains that could only be described as boundlessly vast. Perhaps due to the openness, the winds there were strong. That was probably where the name “Quickwind Plains” came from.

  The plains were wide and vast, but not empty like a ruined wasteland. They felt like a perfectly natural prairie.

  At first glance, it looked like it was all flat grasslands, but there were trees, too, and it wasn’t as if there were no rises and falls in the terrain. It was just, with the vastness of it all, the trees looked like no more than slightly tall grass, and the slight hills here and there were a rounding error at best.

  Just how far did these plains go on for? Did they even have an end?

  “Hm...” Ranta shaded his eyes with his hand, looking around. He tilted his head to the side. “Y’know, I don’t see anything out there. Like, there’re no animals. You’d think there would be.”

  “Now that you mention it...” Haruhiro squinted and looked off into the distance. Not only were there no signs of people, there were no signs of any living creatures whatsoever. That was pretty strange, come to think of it. “Do you think they’re hiding? No... There’s not really anywhere to hide out there...”

  “Ah!” cried Yume, pointing out into the distance. “There’s somethin’ out there!”

  “Huh?” Haruhiro looked in the direction Yume was pointing. “...Where?”

  “...Maybe,” Shihoru mumbled.

  “You mean that?” Merry asked, seeming to have found it, too.

  “Ahhh,” Kuzaku said, his face twitching a little. “Me, my eyes aren’t so good, you know.”

  “What?! Where?!” Ranta was as annoyingly loud as ever. “Where, where is it?! I don’t see it! Are you sure you’re not imagining things?! You guys’ve gotta be hallucinating, right?! If I can’t see it, that’s gotta be—Wait, whoaaaaaaaa...?! Is that it?!”

  “Oh...” Haruhiro had found what everyone else had probably meant. It was rather far off in the distance, on the other side of some bushes. There was something there. Some thing that was something. That was too vague to be any use, but, well, it was a long way off, so he couldn’t say anything definitive about it.

  “That’s...” Haruhiro began.

  “...something living, maybe?” Ranta finished for him. He was squinting so hard, his eyes were like slits. “Yeahhhh. It feels like it’s moving to me, so it’s gotta be alive, I guess?”

  “It’s movin’, yeah.” Yume was technically—no, not just technically, she actually was a hunter—and she had been trained in archery, so she could see further than the rest of them. “...It’s movin’. That’s probably what you’d call it. It’s walkin’, maybe?”

  “...Walking?” Shihoru was practically clutching her staff. “Then, is it bipedal?”

  “It’s long and thin...” Merry murmured.

  Even to Haruhiro’s eyes, the silhouette looked long and thin, or rather tall and thin. At the very least, it didn’t seem to be a four-legged beast.

  “But, y’know...” Haruhiro said.

  Those bushes.

  The bushes in front of the thing in question... were they really bushes? After all, those bushes were pretty far away from here. Maybe those weren’t bushes, and they were actually a copse of fairly tall trees?

  On top of that, the ground that copse of trees was on was slightly elevated.

  In other words, that would mean it was walking on the other side of a copse of trees on a little hill.

  Haruhiro’s eyes went wide. “I-It’s kinda huge, isn’t it?! That thing?!”

  “Nuwah?!” Ranta jumped back in exaggerated surprise. “S-Seriously!
Now that I think about it, that thing’s gotta be gigantic!”

  “Human...” Yume said suddenly. “That thing. To Yume, it’s lookin’ like it’s human-shaped, y’know...”

  “Nah...” Kuzaku said with a wry laugh. “That can’t be right.”

  “A giant,” Merry said in a low voice. “I’ve heard of them before. There are giants living on the Quickwind Plains.”

  “Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!” Ranta suddenly cupped both his hands around his mouth like a horn, then shouted.

  The hell are you doing, man? Haruhiro thought.

  Before Haruhiro could come up with a witty comedic jab, Merry whacked Ranta in the back of the head with her short staff.

  “Gwah! What’re you doing, Merry, you bitch!” Ranta yelled.

  “Are you an idiot?!” she shot back.

  “Huhh?! Who’re you calling an idiot?! You know what, there’s an ancient rule that says it takes one to know one!”

  “What are you going to do if the giant comes this way?!” Merry retorted.

  “If it happens, it happens! I’ll figure it out then! It’s no big deal! You’ve got me here! If it wants to pick a fight, I’ve just got to cut it down to size!”

  “Hoh...” Yume backed away. “...Y-Y’know, the giant, it just stopped... maybe?”

  “Run for it!” Ranta had taken off at a dash before the words were even out of his mouth.

  Kuzaku watched, looking dumbfounded. “He changed his mind awful quickly.”

  “That’s just what he’s like...” Shihoru sighed.

  “L-Let’s run!” Haruhiro shouted, waving an arm and gesturing for everyone to move.

  Ranta was already looking pretty small off in the distance. He was fast when it came to running away.

  Haruhiro let Yume and Shihoru, Kuzaku, and Merry go on ahead of him, serving as the rearguard. He turned to look behind him, never stopping his legs. Was the giant getting closer? Was it not moving at all? Haruhiro couldn’t tell with his mediocre vision. But it didn’t feel like it was getting any further away, so he figured they had better keep running for now.

  To the west.

  To the west.

  Far to the west.

  The Frontier Army’s Lonesome Field Outpost was around 35 kilometers to the west of here. Lonesome Field Outpost served as the operating base for Blue Snake Force, the unit that handled the attack on Riverside Iron Fortress in Operation Two-Headed Snake. It was called an outpost, but there were far more people living there than just Frontier Army personnel. It was practically a town in its own right. The entrance to the Wonder Hole was supposedly somewhere near Lonesome Field Outpost.

  As he was running, Haruhiro’s eyes met with Merry’s as she turned around. They couldn’t say for certain if the giant was chasing them. They weren’t running as fast as they could, so they could afford to talk.

  “Come to think of it, Merry,” Haruhiro said as he ran. “Your staff.”

  “Huh?” she asked, not slacking her pace.

  “What happened to it? That’s not the one you had before, is it?”

  “Ah! This is—” Merry glanced up ahead. Unless Haruhiro was mistaken, she was probably looking at Kuzaku. “Um, I sort of lost it...”

  “I... see,” Haruhiro said.

  “It was time to buy a new one, anyway,” she said. “My old one wasn’t very practical in combat.”

  “Ahh,” he said. “Do you think the new one’s easier to smack stuff with?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s it. This one’s simpler than my last one! It’s better as a weapon.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing you changed, then,” he said.

  “It is a good thing.”

  “I see. Good, good. Ha ha...”

  I feel like she’s trying to pull the wool over my eyes about something. Still, what happened between her and Kuzaku? I can more or less imagine, but I don’t want to imagine it.

  They probably spent twenty to twenty-five minutes running. Yume said she could still see the giant in the distance, but Haruhiro and the others no longer could. Figuring they were probably safe now, they switched to walking.

  From that point on, they walked across the fields of grass.

  At first glance, it looked flat, but there were bumps here and there, and the ground was softer or harder, so sometimes it was easy to walk and sometimes it wasn’t. It was surprisingly tiring.

  Technically, there were roads that went to Lonesome Field Outpost. Haruhiro and the others just couldn’t find them. They ought to have been heading in the right direction, so that was somewhat disconcerting.

  Eventually, they started to see groups of animals here and there. It must have been because of the giant that they hadn’t seen any earlier. Most of them seemed to be herbivores, but they knew there had to be carnivores which preyed on them, so it was a little bit scary. However, being a hunter, Yume had studied the different animals to some degree, so she was knowledgeable about them. While there were definitely some that were dangerous, she said they didn’t have to be too worried.

  If the route there was thirty-five kilometers, traveling at four kilometers per hour, they could make the trek in a little under nine hours. It seemed possible that they would arrive today, but they’d left prepared to camp out. Partly due to that, they hadn’t been able to leave Alterna until after lunch, so they weren’t going to be able to make it there today, after all.

  As it gradually grew darker, they made the decision to camp out. Though, that said, all that meant was eating preserved food, wrapping themselves in blankets, and then going to sleep. They talked about maybe setting a campfire, but it seemed like too much trouble to gather things they could burn, so they gave up.

  The curtain of night descended over the Quickwind Plains in no time. Though, with the red moon out, it wasn’t totally dark. It may not have been pitch black darkness, but it was dark enough to feel oppressive.

  The wind had grown weaker starting in the evening. Now it was more of a gentle breeze.

  Somewhere out there, there were animals making their various sounds. After they heard a howling off in the distance, Shihoru called out to Yume, asking, “Um... What was that?”

  “Hm... A horned maned dog, maybe?” Yume asked. “They’re like wolves, and they go huntin’ in packs at night. That’s what Master said.”

  “...Will they hunt for us?” Shihoru asked.

  “Not sure about that,” Yume answered. “Master said they don’t attack humans that often, though.”

  “...Not that often...”

  “There’s nothin’ absolute in nature, so be careful,” Yume explained. “That’s what Master was sayin’.”

  “...Nothing is absolute...” Shihoru murmured.

  “Listen, you...” Ranta said, sounding sleepy. “Don’t say things that are going to stir up anxiety. Because Shihoru’s a wimp. Right, Wimpy? I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “...I wish the dogs could come and drag off just Ranta.”

  “Huh? Did you say something, Wimpette?”

  “...I didn’t say anything,” Shihoru said. “I can’t sleep with you being noisy, so would you please be quiet?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fiiiiiine. I’m tired, too.” He yawned loudly. “Fwahhhh...”

  After that loud yawn, Ranta was snoring in no time. At times like this, one had to envy his audacity.

  Merry was silent. Kuzaku, too. Were they sleeping, or not? Shihoru kept turning over. It seemed like she couldn’t get to sleep. Yume was breathing shallowly as she slept.

  The later in the night it got, the more awake Haruhiro felt. He could hear the horned maned dogs howling every once in a while, and could sense something moving not far away. It wasn’t going to be easy sleeping like this.

  Even so, with his comrades sleeping, he couldn’t make a fuss about it and wake them. All he could do was sit still, thinking, Wh-Whoa, that’s scary. It’s seriously scary.

  Then an event occurred that forced him to act. It wasn’t the horned maned dogs howling. He
heard a low roaring sound.

  No, not a sound, a voice. From a carnivore.

  He wasn’t sure, but he had the vague sense that it was probably from one of the big cats. It felt like it was relatively close. As he was trembling, there it was again—Roar.

  “...!”

  Oh crap, Haruhiro thought frantically. Not good, not good, not good, not good, not good, not good. It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. That one was closer than the last. Seriously, seriously, seriously. Is it coming to eat us? Time for a nice meal? We’re gonna get eaten? Is this one of those things? Like, how I should wake everyone up? It’s pretty clear I’ve got to at this point. But, you know, if I move, it feels like it’ll attack? Like, that’ll be what triggers it to pounce? Now’s a bad time? I should wait and see what happens? I dunno. Which is it? What’s the right answer? And, hold on, I can’t move. I’m too scared. No, no, no. While I’m wasting time, I could get killed.

  Haruhiro tried to draw his dagger and sap.

  Should I get up first? But, you know, I really do think moving too much could be dangerous. If I’m going to get up, it needs to be one quick movement. First, I should check the area around me. I’ll move my head just a little, along with my eyes, to look around the area. I don’t know. It’s dark. It’s dark, okay? Damn, it’s dark. It’s too dark. It’s not there... or at least I don’t think it is. I can’t see in the darkness, so I can’t say for sure. I’ll listen closely. For the next one. I’ll judge based on its next roar. Aughhhhhhhhhhhh, dammit, Ranta’s snoring is too loud. Pipe down, would you? Please. Its roar. Is it not doing it yet? Is it still not doing it yet? There.

  Haruhiro heard it. A tiny roar.

  It was tiny. Has it moved away? Seems like it. But it’s too soon to relax... I think. Probably.

  He tried waiting a while longer, but wait as he might, he didn’t hear it. It was probably safe at this point. Haruhiro sat up, and a moment later, Merry groggily sat up, too.

  “Now...” she murmured. “Just now, there was something here, right? Whatever it was...”

  “Y-Yeah,” Haruhiro said. “There was. Did you hear them? Those roars.”

  “I-I did,” she said. “It was scary...”