The Leaders and the Led

by Ao Jyumonji

  “I know, right?” Haruhiro agreed. “I-I did, too... Hold on, everyone else, they’re totally asleep...”

  “I haven’t slept a wink,” Merry said.

  “Yeah, me either...”

  It was dark, so they couldn’t see each other’s faces, but it all started to seem a bit funny, so they both laughed a little. Then the horned maned dogs howled again, making them both jump a little.

  “...Haru, do you think it’s safe now?” Merry asked.

  I dunno... he almost said, but he stopped himself.

  “—Yeah. It’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” Merry said.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Haruhiro asked. “I’ll be up until I get tired. Ah... we probably should have taken shifts standing watch, huh? When we’re out like this.”

  “You’re right,” she said.

  “Well, when I can’t fight off the tiredness any longer, I’ll wake Ranta, or someone,” said Haruhiro.

  “Or you could wake me,” Merry said.

  “Yeah. I might do that.”

  “Well, good night.”

  “Sleep tight,” Haruhiro said. “—Ah, Merry.”

  “What?”

  “Listen...” Haruhiro shook his head and sighed. “...Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.”

  “Okay. ...Good night.”

  “Yeah.” Merry lay down.

  Haruhiro stayed sitting. As he looked up to the red moon, it reminded him of Moguzo for some reason. He would never see Moguzo again, but that didn’t make him feel sad or lonely, it just felt strange.

  That can’t be right, can it...? he thought. But that was reality.

  Around the time that the eastern sky began to brighten just a little, Kuzaku woke up.

  “Huh?” Kuzaku asked. “What’re you up for?”

  “I couldn’t get to sleep,” Haruhiro said. “Well, that, and I’m keeping watch, too.”

  “Wouldn’t you be better off sleeping?” asked Kuzaku. “If you need someone to be on watch, I can do it.”

  Haruhiro took Kuzaku up on the offer and lay down to sleep. His eyelids immediately began to feel heavy, and he managed to get some sleep.

  When he awoke, Haruhiro and the others had a simple meal, then set off early in the morning. Along the way, he told them about the carnivore that had approached during the night, but they made a joke out of it. Merry didn’t seem happy about that.

  In the afternoon, they encountered a vast, slightly elevated plateau. Once they climbed up it, there was a basin past there.

  It was clear at first glance that this pot-like depression in the land was Lonesome Field. When they looked around, they saw there were little towers around what would be the rim of the pot. Watchtowers, most likely.

  There were a number of springs in the bottom of the pot, as well as a town surrounded by a moat and a fence.

  Yes, a town.

  It’s a town, Haruhiro thought.

  It was nothing too impressive, but there were more than ten to twenty buildings, along with the roads between them. They could also see people roaming around. This could only be called a town.

  “Heh...” Ranta brushed his nose with his thumb. “Here at last, finally, we’ve finally made it. Lonesome Field Outpost.”

  He might have been trying to sound cool, but he wasn’t cool in the slightest. Still, if they said anything, he’d just start a fight over it. Haruhiro and the others ignored Ranta, making no hurry as they descended the slope into the bottom of the pot. No matter how much of a fuss Ranta made, no one paid him any attention.

  The moat around the outpost was thicker than it had looked from a distance, and it was deep, too. It was filled with water that had probably been drawn from the nearby springs. The sturdy-looking fence was built on top of a two-meter-high platform of compacted dirt, so it wouldn’t be easy to climb. There only seemed to be one entrance, with a bridge over the moat at that point. There was a narrow gap in the dirt wall with a gate there.

  Just in front of the bridge, next to the moat, there were a number of tents dotted around. They might be tents, but some of them were quite large and impressive. This might have been where the volunteer soldiers lived.

  There were soldiers from the Frontier Army standing in front of the gate. There were two of them beside the gate, but the towers on either side of it held more than ten, some of whom had their crossbows leveled at Haruhiro and his comrades. They seemed to be on edge, but when the group showed them their Volunteer Soldier Corps badges, they did at least let them through.

  Inside the base, the road leading from the gate was lined with large buildings that served as stables and barracks. Once they got past that section, they reached a plaza. On the far side of a plaza was something like a keep. It looked pretty secure, and was probably a command center of some sort. There were a number of buildings crowded around that command center that were probably of a military nature, too.

  They could hear men shouting at regular intervals. They must have been training somewhere.

  The soldiers of the Frontier Army that they saw standing here and there, or patrolling the area, either paid no heed to Haruhiro and the rest of the party, or occasionally shot them looks of scorn but did nothing else.

  However, when they cut between two barracks and went into the back streets, the atmosphere changed. There were a number of gaudy buildings that wouldn’t have looked out of place next to the bars of Celestial Alley.

  There were women walking the streets languidly. There were blacksmiths. There were rows of stalls. There were street vendors. There were even a number of lodging houses that looked better than the barracks.

  There were men and women that they could immediately tell were volunteer soldiers, too. They were seated at the different food stalls, eating and drinking, or were making deals with the various merchants.

  It was a market, a place for entertainment, and a residential district all at once. From a cursory glance at the stalls, there was a reasonably wide variety of weapons and armor on offer. It might even have had Alterna beat for selection. There weren’t many daily necessities or foodstuffs available, but that was probably due to a lack of demand.

  One thing that set it apart was that there were merchants selling caged animals that they had never seen before. When they asked about it, they were told there were also horses, horse-dragons, deer-horses, and other large animals for riding and carrying cargo tied up outside the base. The merchant also rented horses, so they were encouraged to consider using them if they were going somewhere far. The owner of one shop that dealt in all sorts of tents recognized that they were new to the outpost, and gave them an aggressive sales pitch for his wares.

  With all of this looking around, they were starting to get hungry, so they stopped at a certain food stall to get lunch. The skewers of fried meat had a certain rustic charm to them, and the water flavored with sour fruit juice wasn’t bad, either.

  “I could live here,” was Ranta’s take on the place, and Haruhiro couldn’t help but agree.

  “Y’know,” Yume said, with a relaxed and cheerful look on her face, “Yume, she heard earlier, there’re bathhouses here, too.”

  “That is important,” Merry nodded emphatically.

  “...Yeah,” Shihoru said with an incredibly serious look on her face. “If I have to go even one day without a bath... honestly, it feels gross...”

  “Well, yeah, if you’re a girl...” Kuzaku said idly.

  “Ha! Women are such a pain!” Ranta cackled. “Me, I could go ten days, maybe a month, and not even care, you know?! Not bathing never killed anyone!”

  “You say that, but if you start stinkin’, you’re not gonna like that much, now are you?” Yume shot back.

  “What, Yume?” Ranta asked. “If you go without bathing, do you stink that much? C’mere! Let me sniff you!”

  “Yume’s not lettin’ you sniff anythin’, you idiot!” she shot back.

  “Hmm?” Ranta asked. “Well, I bet you must smell pretty rank by
now, then, huh?”

  “Do not! Yume doesn’t stink yet at all!”

  “Well, let me check, and I’ll give you an official judgment from a third party,” said Ranta. “Besides, it’s not like it’s something you’d notice by yourself. You can’t smell your own stink.”

  Merry suddenly leaned in close to Yume’s neck, sniffing. “She doesn’t stink,” she reported.

  “Hyaoh?!” It must have tickled Yume or something, because she let out a weird cry.

  “Oh...“ Merry moved away from Yume. “...I’m sorry.”

  “Mm, nuh-uh, it’s nothin’ to apologize for.” Yume sounded slightly embarrassed for some reason. “Yume was just a little startled, that’s all. But, Yume, she’s glad to know she doesn’t smell.”

  “What do you think you’re doing, leaving me out of the fun?!” Ranta shouted, waving his arms around indignantly. “Let me join in, too! No, actively include me! Let me in on the action!”

  Once their bellies were full, they decided it was finally time to go to the Wonder Hole. However, embarrassingly, Haruhiro and the others only knew that the entrance to the Wonder Hole was at Lonesome Field Outpost. Ranta chased down a few volunteer soldiers and tried asking, but he was brusquely turned away.

  If you didn’t know them and weren’t paying for their drinks that night, most volunteer soldiers weren’t that friendly. Haruhiro should have expected it to be like this.

  “It’d be nice if there was someone I knew around here,” Haruhiro said as he looked around. “...Ah.”

  There is, he realized.

  “Oh!” It seemed Ranta had noticed, too, and he started to wave. “Heyyy! Shinohara-saaaan! What’s up, man! How’ve you been?!”

  There was a group all wearing white capes walking in their direction. The man with the gentle-looking face who was at the head of the group cast a broad smile in their direction.

  Shinohara was the leader of a well-known clan called Orion, but he was a mild-mannered fellow with a great personality. Because they were a group led by Shinohara, all of the members of Orion were friendly and well-organized. That said, Ranta’s audacious behavior still made a few of them furrow their brows in consternation. Shinohara himself, however, didn’t seem upset.

  “Hey,” the man said. “If you’re here, does that mean you’re finally tackling the Wonder Hole, too?”

  “Yes! Siree! Bob!” Ranta shouted, making a weird salute-like gesture for no well-explained reason as he did. He was totally letting his excitement get the better of him. It was so stupid that it was embarrassing to watch. “So, Shinohara-san, you’re going to the Wonder Hole, just like us?! Man, talk about a coincidence!”

  “No,” said Shinohara. “We’re going somewhere else. We have some business to take care of at Mount Grief.”

  “Mount Grief...” Haruhiro murmured the words. It wasn’t a familiar name, but it had an eerie ring to it. What kind of place could it be? Would Haruhiro and the others go there, too, someday?

  “Oh.” Shinohara looked at Kuzaku. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before. I’m Shinohara of Orion. Nice to meet you.”

  “Ohh.” Kuzaku gave a slight bow of his head. “Hey. I’m Kuzaku.”

  “I see.” Shinohara paused for a moment, closing his eyes and taking a short breath. “If I recall, you all took part in Operation Two-Headed Snake as members of Blue Snake Force, right? While there were few losses in the Frontier Army portion of Blue Snake Force, with only six dead, I’ve heard that twenty-three volunteer soldiers lost their lives there.”

  “I wasn’t good enough,” Merry looked Shinohara straight in the eye and told him. “I made a mistake no priest must ever make. Because of that, I let him die.”

  “Merry...” A man with short hair and narrow eyes started to come forward, then stopped himself. Hayashi. The man who had once been Merry’s comrade.

  “And yet, you’re still here.” Shinohara put a hand on Merry’s shoulder. “Rather than stop, you faced forward and continued to walk. You’ve found good comrades for yourself, Merry.”

  “...Yes.” Merry looked down at the ground. Her back was quivering slightly.

  I want to give her a hug, Haruhiro thought, and then got flustered for having thought it. No, I don’t. No way. I can’t give her a hug. That’s so not me.

  He didn’t think that was his role. After all, there was nothing between Haruhiro and Merry.

  “Er, you, too, Shinohara-san.” Haruhiro cleared his throat. “Good work with the attack on Riverside Iron Fortress. I don’t know any of the details, but you guys won, yeah?”

  “Thanks to the work you guys did, we had a perfect victory,” Shinohara said.

  For a moment, it looked like a cynical smile crossed Shinohara’s face. However, it only lasted an instant. It wasn’t a look that was typical for Shinohara, so Haruhiro might have imagined it.

  “Things went the opposite way for Red Snake Force,” he continued. “The Frontier Army was dealt a painful blow, but there were very few volunteer soldiers lost. Soma’s Day Breakers really carried the day. Thanks to them, we in Orion had an easy time of it.”

  “Man! Soma, huh!” Ranta stomped his feet and pulled at his curly hair. “Damn, that Soma’s awesome! The Day Breakers, huh! Ohhh...!”

  Shinohara covered his mouth and smiled. Even though it was Ranta talking, Shinohara had a look on his face like he would when watching an innocent child.

  “I hear that Soma’s been operating out of this town lately,” the man said. “You might just run into him somewhere.”

  “Ohhhh?! Seriously?! Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Ranta shouted.

  “Would you shut up already, man? Seriously...” Haruhiro sighed, then turned back to Shinohara. “—Oh, that’s right. Shinohara-san, actually, there was something I wanted to ask you.”

  “What is it? Hopefully, I’ll have an answer for you.”

  “Erm...” Haruhiro rubbed his cheek with one hand, looking around to each of the members of Orion. Men and women alike, they all looked back at him with calm eyes. No matter how young or old they were, they all felt like reliable older brothers and sisters.

  Meanwhile, his own group—well, Ranta might be dragging down the dignity of the group all on his own, but Haruhiro, Shihoru, Yume, their junior Kuzaku, and even Merry, were all younger than the people in Orion. They gave off a feeling of being so overwhelmingly inexperienced, it was almost refreshing.

  No, it wasn’t refreshing at all. Actually, it was painful.

  Even having come to Lonesome Field to head for the Wonder Hole was something they’d done mostly on the spur of the moment. And now that they were here, they didn’t even know the most basic information, so he was about to ask Shinohara about it.

  Is this really okay? Haruhiro wondered. But, they do say that “asking is a moment of shame, but not asking is a lifetime of shame,” and I’d rather not waste time.

  “...So, about the Wonder Hole, I was wondering where it is.”

  14. First Impression of the Hole of Surprises

  The Wonder Hole.

  Who had named it the Wonder Hole?

  When had it become the Wonder Hole?

  The Wonder Hole.

  Imagine for a moment that there was a super giant mole on the Quickwind Plains. Now, this super giant mole, being a mole like any other, would of course dig tunnels. This was a super giant mole, so the tunnels it dug would be giant, too.

  Imagine that this super giant mole started digging a giant tunnel around 1.5 kilometers to the north of Lonesome Field Outpost. The tunnel entrance wasn’t vertical. It was diagonal.

  The super giant mole had started digging a really long time ago, so the slope was covered in thick grass. How far the super giant mole’s giant tunnel went, how it spread out, no one knew for certain. That labyrinthine tunnel was so ridiculously huge that some people thought it might go on forever.

  Now, this was the Wonder Hole. Also called the Hole of Surprises, or the Hole of Mysteries.

  According to one theory, the deepe
st point of the Wonder Hole was connected to another world. They said that that was why the Wonder Hole was inhabited by bizarre and dreadful creatures seen nowhere else, and a unique ecology had formed inside it.

  Furthermore, there were a number of beasts, monsters, and races that, having been defeated in the factional struggles of Grimgar, had fled into the Wonder Hole. It seemed that each of these groups had undergone their own independent growth and development.

  The Wonder Hole was, of course, not a giant tunnel dug by a super giant mole. That was merely an analogy. Then how was it formed, you ask? The most persuasive theory was that a number of limestone caves, lava caves, geological fractures and ravines had been connected through a series of natural phenomena and the actions of various living creatures.

  The Wonder Hole was a place of many mysteries. For many long years, people had been working to map it in its entirety, but that had yet to be accomplished. The Wonder Hole was just too vast.

  In some places, it was too dangerous even for experienced explorers and well-trained volunteer soldiers. However, there was no shortage of people who went into the Wonder Hole.

  The explorers were driven by the lust for adventure, walking forward again today in search of lands yet unseen. And as for the volunteer soldiers, it was well worth taking the risk.

  “We’re here...” Ranta gulped. “We’re really here. It’s the Wonder Hole.”

  Ranta was acting calm, by his standards. Well, that was to be expected, because this area near the entrance was kind of, well, calm and quiet.

  Honestly, Haruhiro had been expecting there to be more fierce and dangerous-looking creatures waiting for them, so it was a bit of a letdown.

  The Wonder Hole was easily a hundred meters across, so he did feel like, Wow, that sure is huge, but there were chickens, of all things, on that slope.

  No, they weren’t chickens. They were too fat for that. They were big and plump. At a glance, they looked bigger than a person, so these weren’t just mutated chickens. Probably, they were an entirely different creature that just happened to resemble them.

  Those pseudo-chickens were sitting down or walking around all over the place.