Combatants Will Be Dispatched - Volume 7 - Chapter 2.5

5

It’s been two days since Belial went missing.

The Bashins who lost their village to the fire have started forcing their Hiiragi captives to build a new settlement near Hideout City.

Savage A, who was at serious risk of having her head bashed in, gave a groveling dance of apology to Little Bashin, and is now working for her as an underling.

I see Savage A hauling around construction materials under the watchful eye and hand ax of Little Bashin, but so far, there aren’t any problems of note.

Since these two tribes seem to have a long, complicated history, it’s probably better to just let them handle it.

The problem that’s left for us to solve is to figure out how to find Belial and get her to come home.

As Alice and I chew over this problem, a messenger arrives from a country called Grand Doble.

I’ve never heard of the place, so I’m caught a bit flat-footed even as I head to the conference room to hear what the messenger has to say.

The messenger from Grand Doble bows his head the moment he enters the room.

“Our country has no intention of making an enemy of Kisaragi. We are prepared to begin diplomatic relations with your company. Ours is a nation rich in high-quality ores, and we can provide them to you at extremely low cost.”

“...I see. Our main exports are water crystals and manufactured goods. We don’t need you to sell us your ores at too low a cost. So long as it’s a little cheaper than the market rate, we’re happy to trade.”

Despite the fact that this is our first meeting, the messenger is almost excessively respectful. Alice, unfazed by this attitude, deals with him calmly.

The fact that she doesn’t ask for details before launching into terms is very in character for Alice, but the small concessions she’s making tip me off that she’s aware something happened to Grand Doble to make them approach us so meekly.

Even I can see what's driving this. It’s gotta be Belial-related.

“T-truly?! Thank you, thank you so very much! I’ve brought some rare and valuable ores as a gift, so please accept them as a sign of friendship! His Majesty has been extremely anxious about the outcome of our negotiations, so I will be leaving immediately, if you will forgive my haste! It will be a pleasure doing business with you!”

"...Yep, thanks. Get home safe.”

Alice lightly bobs her head as the beaming messenger bows deeply and leaves the room.

Once the messenger is out of sight, Alice murmurs softly to herself.

“...Guess that’s all thanks to Lady Belial.”

“Are you sure you’re grateful? You look a little troubled. Are you perhaps regretting calling her here? Even just a little bit?”

At my prodding, Alice smiles.

“I’m glad to have you as a partner. You can share my concerns. Since you’ve known her for so long, do you mind if I ask you about her?”

"Go on.”

Alice grabs my arm and asks me with a small smile on her lips:

"Having left in pursuit of the monsters, how many countries do you think Lady Belial will terrorize along the way? Just for reference, Grand Doble, the country we just entered into a friendly trade relationship with, was on the list of potential enemy states. You don’t need me to tell you why, do you? .. .What is it, partner? Don’t be like that! I’m not letting you run away under these circumstances!”

“Lemme go, partner! This is all due to your whole secrecy schtick! If you’d kept me clued in, we could’ve avoided all of this from the start!”

After we finish trying to shift blame onto each other for a while, we sigh as we realize we’ve just wasted a lot of time.

“Given how much the messenger was groveling, I wonder what she did there. Honestly, I was too scared to ask.”

“Did you know? Grand Doble is a great power that converted an inhospitable ancient ruin into a fortress city and has refused to bow to anyone’s whims. Lady Belial forced a country like that to come to us, begging for a good relationship. She must have done something truly terrifying...”

Stop, I don’t want to hear any more!

“But Grand Doble’s supposed to be beyond the lands of even the old Demon Lord Realms. Just how did she stumble into there? I figured she'd be wandering around the woods...”

“Lady Belial’s got more initiative and drive than just about anyone I know. Let’s go by game terms: Assume a NEET can do one action per day. We Combat Agents can do five actions per day. In comparison, Lady Belial can do something like one hundred actions a day. Essentially, she can do the work of a hundred NEETs.”

“Your analogy is so bad that it’s hard to tell if I’m supposed to be impressed or not.”

Well, either way, I’m glad she managed to make it out of the woods.

Alice looks a bit more relaxed, so she must feel the same way.

“Well, now we have an idea of the general area where she might be. I have no idea what she’s done, but she did something big enough to make a country send a messenger in a panic. Let's send in a search party while Lady Belial’s resting in Grand Doble.”

I know then and there that Alice’s remark has just jinxed us to failure...

[Three Days Since Belial’s Disappearance]

We ignored the complaints that the return trip would take far longer than the initial trip and sent a bunch of agents through the teleporter to Grand Doble. Unfortunately, this search party was also unable to find Belial.

After the expendables asked around locally, we learned that Belial had incinerated a giant monster that was attacking the fortress wall, taking a piece of the wall with it, and told the authorities to send the repair bill to Kisaragi before vanishing.

“We don’t have to worry about the repair fees. When the agent on the ground said, 'You were lucky it was just a piece of the fortress. If Lady Belial had used her full firepower, you could have lost the whole thing. So anyway, how much did you need?’ they said we didn’t have to worry about the cost.”

“Why are our guys always so quick to try to pick a fight? Why can’t we have the occasional tactful agent?”

I can’t help but grumble when Alice, lying on my bed, looks intently at me, as though wanting to say something. Why?

...Just then, I hear a pounding of feet and a loud bang as my door is thrown open, and another expendable agent enters in a panic.

“Hey! They’ve confirmed a high-energy surge and huge shock waves in the northwest tundra! That’s gotta be Lady Belial!”

“Seriously?” Alice can’t help but sputter in shock, then, regaining her composure, calls out orders to the expendable.

"The tundra’s at least a three days’ drive from Grand Doble. Just how did she get there without so much as a bicycle? ...Well, never mind that. At least now we know where she is. This time, we’ll get her with the teleporter...,” Alice says to herself, forced to accept the illogical logic of Belial’s route.

“Hey, Six, let’s make a bet. Do you think Lady Belial will sit there and wait for the short amount of time it takes us to gather a search party and teleport them to that location?”

“Of course not. I’m wagering she’ll be long gone by then.”

I get into an argument about how unfair the bet is with the expendable while Alice just quietly stares at us.

[Four Days Since Belial’s Disappearance]

Our effort at teleporting expendables to the tundra ended in failure.

When the expendables arrived, all they found was a field littered with the charred husks of countless monsters.

A search of the surrounding area revealed no sign of Belial, and the expendables on the ground indicated by radio that they couldn’t even figure out what direction she had run off in.

To not even find a hint as to where she could have gone... This is why expendables are so useless...

When I tell them to turn back and come home, they start whining that they don’t have enough points to order a vehicle and start begging for us to pick them up, so I decide to just cut the line.

Yes, right now finding Belial is a much higher priority than picking up a couple of Combat Agents.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any clues, so the most we can do is just hurry up and wait here in the Hideout.

The day after I deploy the agents, I sit there watching Savage A do a strange dance at the Bashin tribe's temporary village...

<Notice for Combat Agent Six! A high-energy surge believed to be Lady Belial has been observed! Currently there are only two other Combat Agents left in the hideout! We have to hurry up and send one through the teleporter, but neither is answering their comms! I don’t care which one you pick, go grab one and bring him here!>

The constant calls for help by the deployed agents have gotten so annoying that all of the agents left in Hideout City have their radios turned off.

Because of that, Alice isn’t able to reach anyone by radio and has to resort to using the PA system.

There’s a faint hint of frustration in Alice’s voice as her announcement rings throughout Hideout City.

[Five Days Since Belial’s Disappearance]

I drag a crying expendable to the teleporter. I get that he’s short on Evil Points, but orders are orders. After we send him through the teleporter, we learn that Belial’s already flown the coop.

When the expendable arrived, he found a group of lizardmen trembling as they stared wordlessly at a giant smoking crater.

According to the expendable’s interviews, the crater is the result of a red-haired woman picking a fight with a raging god.

The lizardman village is apparently situated a little bit away from the crater, and they have to provide this raging god with a sacrifice once a year.

It’s a pretty common trope in video games and fantasy novels, but evidently it piqued Belial’s curiosity, and she asked the lizardmen to take her to the area where they encountered the raging god.

The raging god, upon seeing Belial, said, “This year’s sacrifice has some fight in her, it seems.”

To which she responded, “I’ll be taking over as the raging god starting today. That makes you the sacrifice.” She then proceeded to incinerate the god and just ran off into the distance.

The lizardmen, having watched the event unfold from start to finish, have started worshipping Belial as the new raging god... And that was around the time I grew bored of the report and hung up.

It's all well and good that we have lizardmen who owe us, but it’s long past time we found Belial.

This is all the fault of the expendables running away when I tried to catch them and teleport them. If they’d just reported to the teleporter when we detected the energy surge, we might have found her.

But this time, we’ve accounted for that problem.

“Hey, Alice, why am I the one getting sent off next?! Since Six is still here, why don’t we settle this with a coin toss?!”

“Shut up! I’m the ace in the hole, so I can’t go off on random errands like this! Besides, for whatever reason, I get Evil Points every time we teleport you. It’s important to make sure I have enough points to deal with any unforeseen complications.”

I lightly pat the expendable’s shoulder, even as he struggles against the wire that restrains him.

“Screw that! None of the agents that have been sent out have come back yet! At the very least, give me some equipment before you send me off! Hey! Don’t push!”

I shove the whining expendable into the teleporter, when I come to a realization.

“Hey, Alice, I bet it’ll be too late if we wait to detect an energy surge. We should try to guess the next explosion point and send him on ahead.”

“That’s pretty smart coming from you. Good plan, we'll go with that.”

"Don't go with it! I mean, Six is one thing, but Alice, think it through a bit more!”

Alice and I ignore the expendable as he continues to whine and complain, and we spread out a map to guess the next explosion point.

Alice seriously thinks over the possibilities, but I decide to just stand a pencil up on the map and let it fall on a random spot.

“My guess is here. It’s my gut instinct as the most senior surviving Combat Agent. She’s probably almost certainly there.”

“I think it’s more likely to be near this city-state. But I guess we should go with your gut as a Combat Agent.”

“You idiot! A random pencil drop’s got nothing to do with your gut, dammit! The city-state! Please send me to the city-state!”

As the expendable continues to make demands, I give him the bare minimum equipment of a pack of Calorie-Z bars and water.

“When they sent me to this rock, they used a roll of the dice to choose me! Quit being such a baby and go already!”

"Hey, wait, at least untie me...”

I press the teleport button before the expendable finishes his sentence, immediately hearing the Evil Point chime in my head. That instant, the observation monitor lights up when the sensors detect another energy surge.

The dot indicates a spot near the city-state, which means...

“I guess even a Combat Agent’s gut instinct fails every now and then. Don’t worry about it; let’s do better next tune.”

“Hey, Alice. Aren’t you starting to enjoy this a bit?”

[Six Days Since Belial's Disappearance]

“The agent we sent out randomly yesterday has made his way to the city-state on his own. Since it’s a good opportunity I’m having him report on the Belial situation while establishing diplomatic relations.”

“Then I guess it’s a big win after all. Good to see him doing his job properly.”

Alice and I exchange nods in the teleporter room.

“So we’re now out of Combat Agents to teleport...”

“That’s fine. Since you’re not as strong as Combat Agents, we’ll be sending you two as a pair.”

We look toward the platform where Snow and Heine are tied up with wire.

“What are you talking about?! Wait, is the reason there’s no Combat Agents in Hideout City...?”

“Hold up, if you send the two of us into a place we’ve never been, of course we’re not going to make it back alive!”

The two wail even as they struggle against their restraints, but we’ve prepared supplies for these two.

“Water and rations, tent and radio. Map, matches, and a compass... Am I forgetting anything?”

“No, that should be more than enough. If you give them too much, it won’t be good survival training.”

...Survival training?

“What do you mean training? I’m the greatest knight in the kingdom! I don’t need any training!”

“I used to be a commander in the Demon Lord Army! What’s the point of making me do this training?!”

Alice shakes her head in feigned exasperation.

“We’ve all been getting a bit soft from a lack of activity. Since the Combat Agents have been losing to monsters, it’s time to remind them just how harsh an environment this world can be.”

"That has nothing to do with me! I'm a knight, but I’m more of a strategist than a grunt!”

"Th-then, so am I... Sniff...sob...”

“You two aren’t that much smarter than I am.”

Well, Snow and Heine aside, I guess Alice wasn’t just enjoying teleporting people off into random areas. It’s true that the harsh environment of this world makes it perfect for survival training. That’s why she’s the brains of our operation...

“Right, let’s send you two to the Midgard Mountains, where the dragons are supposed to live. Dragons are fire monsters. I’m sure you’ll be happy to join more of your kind. Heine.”

“Wait, the Midgard Mountains are waaay too far away! That’s not the sort of distance for a training mission!”

“Even if we use the same element, I don’t feel any kinship with dragons! Wait, hang—”

...Alice presses the button, even as I admire the thought she’s put into the whole operation.

“Anyway, the Midgard Mountains only have greater dragons. Those sorts are intelligent, so they probably can’t be bothered to attack people. The first batch of Combat Agents should be getting back soon. Where should I send them next?”

“...Yeah, you’re definitely enjoying this.”

[And now...]

Over the past few days, we’ve had a constant stream of messengers declaring their country or city’s submission to Kisaragi, but yesterday, we didn’t encounter any sign of Belial.

Instead, we got a messenger from Grunade today.

Yes, the same Gninade that had its national treasure, a giant sorcery stone, stolen by a bipedal feline monster.

“Did they figure out that Tiger Man is one of ours? Are we going to war?”

“No. While they might be suspecting our involvement, I doubt they have any solid evidence. That gives us some wiggle room. We told them that the Hiiragi Agency of Order has its own giant feline monster, remember? Maybe they just want to learn the details.”

So the game plan is to hear what they have to say, then decide whether to go on the offensive, or simply apologize.

After confirming our plan of action, Alice and I invite the messenger into the room.