Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 4 - Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Unveiling the Mystery

Within the Woodlands a short distance from Fort Tilia...

A boy with disheveled dirty blond hair, Sakagami Gouta, was stabbing a knife intensely into the ground, a gloomy air hanging over him.

“Heh. Heheh... Hehehehehe...”

He was drawing something in the moss-covered dirt, laughing all the while as if having a fit. It was like he was playing with a voodoo doll. It was almost curious how he didn’t notice his own deranged behavior, the flawed conviction that he draped around himself.

His vigorous movements opened his wounds. He was too engrossed in his work to notice. The cloth wrapped around his thigh was wet with dripping blood. Despite being impaired by his leg, which was refusing to move as he willed it, Sakagami didn’t stop and doggedly continued carving the ground, his eyes bloodshot.

Right next to him was a double-headed wolf. It deviated a fair bit from a regular firefang, but I could still tell that was what it was. It wasn’t all that much bigger than one, but its dignified bearing clearly set it apart from common monsters. I could see the light of reason dwelling behind both pairs of eyes. Its long gray hair was magnificent, giving it the air of a monarch.

There were somewhere around ten monsters in the area. The only one who appeared to have anything resembling an ego was the double-headed wolf, which made her Berta.

“Done!” Sakagami shouted in exaltation.

He had drawn a crooked circle on the ground about three meters in diameter. There was a complex pattern of lines running through its interior. It looked like the scribbling of a child, but judging from his reaction, there was no way it was anything quite so cute.

“What are you up to, Sakagami?”

Sakagami, who’d had a twisted smile plastered on his face, jerked up all of a sudden. He turned around and was greeted with an already brandished spear.

“Gurgh?!”

Lily charged in and placed her spear against his jaw. Berta sensed the oncoming attack, but Gerbera cut her off. With that, any counterattack was out of the question. Berta’s choice to take a step back was a splendid decision on her part.

“Graaaaah!”

One of Berta’s heads unleashed a crimson flame while the other spat out a hailstorm of ice, both targeting Gerbera. She was engulfed in fire, ice, and steam. Nevertheless, Gerbera paid it no mind and kept charging forward as the other monsters in the area rushed her.

“Out of the way.”

There was a rough rabbit, a gutsgallaz, and a treant, among others, but none of them posed a threat to her. She quite literally kicked them aside, but their sacrifice allowed Berta to escape her grasp.

Even though I’d instructed Gerbera beforehand not to chase her too far, just in case, the fact that Berta managed to slip out of range proved she was a fairly powerful monster.

Once she was a safe distance away, the remaining monsters gathered around Berta. I left Gerbera to hold them in check, and I turned my gaze to the now captured Sakagami.

“You’re late, Majima-senpai. I just finished the ritual.”

Even with Lily’s spear at his throat, Sakagami’s composure didn’t break. The strange drawing he’d just finished apparently granted him great confidence.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You can’t tell? It’s a glyph. One to attract monsters.”

Now that he mentioned it, the drawing kind of resembled a poor mockup of a glyph. It had the shape of a pentagram, which differed from the patterns used in this world.

“Monsters are gonna swarm the area in the hundreds, just like before. Hyahahaha! Looks like you brought some amazing ones with you, but how long can they keep you safe?”

I could hear skittering from behind me. Gerbera was showing her irritation at Sakagami. I didn’t even have to turn and look; I felt her feelings through the mental path. I held out my arm to restrain her.

“You’re right. If that happens, I bet the few survivors still left in the fortress will be overwhelmed.”

“Whoa there. You’re not thinking you can stop them by offing me, are you? Sorry, there ain’t no point in doing that now. I can’t do a thing about it no more.”

“So you can’t stop it. You did mention that before. You can’t control the monsters. You’re only able to attract them. That’s what this...glyph is for?”

“Damn straight. You being here means you beat Juumonji, yeah? I’m sure it was an epic struggle, but too bad for you.”

Sakagami sneered at me, holding his sides in laughter. He could’ve just kept running away, but apparently he stayed in the area because of this. It was questionable whether he could actually get away from us even if he did run, though...

“My Lord?” A hushed voice tickled my ear. I turned around and saw Gerbera’s blood red eyes, still affixed on Berta. “Isn’t that enough now?”

I could feel emotions akin to burning hot magma beneath her cold voice. The injury Ayame had suffered during Sakagami’s escape had her seething with rage. Seeing that she was liable to leap in at any moment, the double-headed wolf began growling.

“I understand your desire to be careful, but there is no meaning in further conversation with a fool who does not even realize that he sits upon another’s throne.”

“Stay put, Gerbera,” Lily said, keeping her spear at Sakagami’s throat. “We don’t know that’s the case for sure yet.”

“Hmph. It’s pretty much guaranteed, seeing this mockery of a glyph or whatever it’s supposed to be.”

“Still...” Lily mumbled.

Sakagami looked confused by their conversation. “Wh-What’re you talking about? Hang on. It’s like you’re saying...”

His words trailed off into silence. He finally started to realize that nobody here was paying him any sort of special attention.

“Hey, Sakagami,” I said, giving him a sidelong glance. Lily was right. We still didn’t know for sure. I had to confirm it. “This is important, so answer me honestly.”

“Why do I gotta—”

“Just answer me. It’s no big deal; it’ll only take a second. Just say yes or no.” I ignored his snarling, then asked, “Sakagami, do you recognize the name Anton?”

“Huh...?”

He looked confused. This was as eloquent a response as I needed.

“Thought so. I guess we were right. That’s why you only called for Berta. We’re fine then. You just stay put right there.”

I turned my gaze to the double-headed wolf. She was looking at us with rational, clever eyes. Her bearing resembled that of certain watchdogs.

“You can talk, right? How about saying something if you’ve got a rebuttal? Now’s the time if you want to make some kind of excuse.”

Berta stopped growling. “How...?” she said in a deep voice. “How did you realize?”

It was an abstract question, but I knew what she was asking. She didn’t plan on making any excuses. Perhaps she was being gracious, or maybe she didn’t feel a need to do so.

“Lily found Watanabe’s scent on Anton, which got us thinking,” I answered, probing Berta’s mind. “Mikihiko said it was possible that the Watanabe we saw die was just a doppelganger.”

Mikihiko had had a good point. Lily’s nose was excellent, but it wasn’t omnipotent. Even if Watanabe was actually a doppelganger, she wouldn’t have been able to tell in such a short amount of time. Doppelgangers returned to their original form when they died, but we couldn’t find his corpse after the explosion blew it away.

“That couldn’t have been a doppelganger, though. He was a cheater. Right when his head flew off, he cast grade 5 magic. A doppelganger can’t reproduce abilities. They can only take their target’s form. They could never use grade 5 magic.”

That massive concentration of mana was the real thing. Even with its power halved by Watanabe’s death, it had almost killed Gerbera just because she was near the blast. That was definitely a cheater’s trump card, grade 5 magic on a grand scale.

“Not even Juumonji can replicate that kind of magic. It’s irrefutable proof that it was the real Watanabe who got killed... So why did Anton have his scent? Thinking back on it, I realized Anton’s behavior was unusual.”

“H-Hey. Who the hell is Anton? What’re you talking about?” Sakagami said in a trembling voice. “Explain it so I can understand!”

He had been left behind. I ignored him while Berta listened closely to what I had to say.

“After Anton killed Juumonji, she ate his corpse. This was unnecessary. Unlike a mimic slime, doppelgangers don’t need to eat their targets to copy them. Oh, and one more thing. Anton exposed herself to unnecessary danger. She said she was targeting Juumonji’s life, but if that was all she wanted, then I was just seconds away from killing him myself. There was no need to crawl out and expose herself.”

I recalled Anton’s mechanical impression. All of her actions felt like they were meant to desecrate Juumonji’s being, but it was all a part of the doppelqueen’s glamor. For example, humans are repulsed by wasps and caterpillars, but fellow insects see each other as simple living beings. Anton was the same. She wasn’t inhumane, just inhuman. Her insect-like lack of emotion and her almost automated actions appeared unnatural to me. I didn’t think she’d do anything useless, or rather she couldn’t have done so. That was the key factor here.

“She’s emotionless like a machine and doesn’t seem capable of acting without reason. And suddenly, she does just that right in front of us. The natural conclusion is that there was some purpose to it, right? In other words, she had a reason to kill and eat Juumonji herself. Thinking of it that way, it was pretty easy to see why Watanabe’s scent came from Anton.”

Anton was a queen monster. Her body was larger than that of a normal doppelganger, measuring around 3 meters tall, and her belly was swollen as if she’d just eaten a human.

“Anton ate Watanabe’s corpse, just like Juumonji’s. Of course his scent would be there. His body was inside her, after all.”

Gerbera calling Anton a scavenger was unexpectedly right on the mark. Having said that, I didn’t know why exactly she ate their corpses. I didn’t know enough to figure it out.

“Watanabe really did die up on the ramparts. He wasn’t switched out with a doppelganger. Mikihiko’s idea wasn’t bad; the conclusion was just wrong. But it made me think that Anton’s master could’ve been there too and was switched out with a doppelganger.”

I probably wouldn’t have noticed this on my own, which would’ve left us totally in the dark.

“Anton called her master her king. Even for a mechanical being, I sensed a hint of loyalty in that. Yet when her supposed king Sakagami asked for help, she didn’t respond despite being close enough to hear him. I thought this was strange, but if Anton’s master was in fact someone else entirely, then it isn’t all that weird.”

This was also the reason Berta had so easily allowed us to catch up to Sakagami. At its logical extreme, it meant she didn’t care what happened to him.

It made me wonder whether Anton’s objective, the one she said she’d accomplished before running away, was in fact killing and eating Juumonji, rather than providing a distraction so that Berta could rescue Sakagami. There was a true master who manipulated the powerful monsters known as Anton and Berta, after all.

This sham of a glyph was obviously a complete and downright lie. Sakagami didn’t possess the ability to attract monsters at all. Someone out there was using him as cover; someone made Sakagami believe their cheat was his.

The fact that their ability clashed with mine meant they were likely a cheater. In other words, it was one of the students. I could exclude the survivors in Fort Tilia, Miyoshi and his three friends. If we hadn’t protected them, they would’ve been caught in the collapse of the walls or killed by Juumonji’s grade 2 magic that followed. It would have been a different matter if they were actually doppelgangers, but that was impossible. Right after the collapse, we left Shiran behind to hold off Juumonji and escaped with Miyoshi’s group. If one of them was a doppelganger, Lily would’ve definitely realized at that point. Meaning it was someone among the large crowd of humans on the ramparts who was blown up in the initial blast.

“Berta. Your real master is—”

“You’re lying!” Sakagami screamed. “You’re lying! Liar! Liar!”

He ran off wailing at the top of his lungs. This caught us off guard. We hadn’t actually forgotten he was here, but our wariness toward him was remarkably low, since we knew he was nothing more than a decoy.

Having said that, even if Sakagami chose to attack me, we’d be able to handle him one way or another. We were at least prepared for that possibility, but he didn’t choose to charge me. He was running in an unexpected direction, right toward Berta.

“What the?! You idiot! Get back here, Sakagami!” I yelled.

“Shut up!”

My words didn’t reach him. He ran awkwardly through the forest with his injured legs and fell to his knees, clinging to Berta.

“Berta! Y-You’re my underling, right?! I won’t believe this shit! Didn’t you say I’m your master?! Didn’t you teach me how to call monsters?! Hey!”

“...”

For some reason, there was a look of pain in Berta’s eyes as she listened to Sakagami’s pleas, but that only lasted for an instant.

“You can stop now, Berta. I don’t need him. He’s just in the way of Senpai and I having a chat, so please have him take his leave.”

A boy’s voice came through the trees. Berta’s hesitation suddenly vanished as if this was some divine revelation. Her jaws opened, revealing a row of sharp fangs, and closed with a snap. Everything above Sakagami’s chest vanished. It happened in an instant. Blood gushed everywhere as more monsters began appearing. Dozens of them were closing in all around us.

“Master!”

“I know.”

I didn’t have the time to mourn the loss of life before my eyes. I had Asarina stretch out around my body as I got my sword and shield at the ready.

“Good evening, Senpai.”

The other monster tamer appeared. The time had come to unveil everything.