Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 4 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The Shadow That Connects Far and Wide

We left Shiran behind and began our chase after Sakagami. The surviving students, Miyoshi’s group, suffered wounds that couldn’t be healed right away with healing magic, so we left three knights with them to take them elsewhere. They were probably hiding in one of the corners of the fortress by now. At present, the monsters hadn’t gotten that far in yet, so they were probably safe. At least it was better than running around the fortress with us.

On the other hand, Mikihiko and Kei wished to come with us. Mikihiko had his Aerial Knight, whereas Kei could use some magic, including healing magic. They could both be useful in the rear guard... Having said that, with our forces down to twenty knights, we were glad for any help we could get.

After parting with Miyoshi’s group, we started by going to the section of the ramparts where we last saw Sakagami. Lily caught his scent partway there at the staircase. According to her, he was no longer atop the wall.

“Somehow, it looks like he’s run all the way to the outer area of the fortress.”

“Even though Watanabe’s magic pretty much annihilated the monsters on the outer ramparts, the area itself still has monsters who’ve invaded the fortress. It’s a safe area for that guy. There’s probably no better place for him to run to.”

Lily sniffed at the air as she proceeded onward at a run. We followed behind her.

“We need to catch him quickly,” I muttered. The image of Shiran’s smiling face remained burned in my mind.

“You can’t panic, Master,” Lily said, throwing me a glance.

I shook my head. “I know... I’m trying not to...”

I forced a smile. Connected by the mental path as we were, putting on a strong front didn’t really mean anything to Lily. I couldn’t help but wish Rose were with us. If she were, we could split our forces in two and Lily could go ahead on her own to chase Sakagami. Or if Gerbera were here, she could help Shiran drive back Juumonji.

As I thought of such things, Asarina purred in a hoarse voice, while Ayame lapped at my cheek. It seemed I’d caused those two to worry about me too. I withdrew my bitter smile and suppressed the impatience in my heart.

“Commander,” I said, calling to the woman running parallel to me a short distance away.

“Aah, Takahiro. What is it?” she replied one beat late, perhaps deep in thought over something herself.

“About what Juumonji said. How much of it is true?”

Juumonji didn’t seem to be lying. He didn’t have any reason to. He was planning on killing us to the last, after all. The problem was whether it was in fact true or if it was Juumonji’s wild delusion.

“I heard there was no way back to our world. Is it really possible to overturn that using cheats?”

“I wonder... I’ve never heard of any such precedent myself. The church teaches us all we know about the saviors’ blessings. It’s possible such a thing was left out of their records, but...” She paused, shaking her head slowly. “I’ve also heard that the souls of the saviors differ from ours in nature. I simply can’t believe such a...”

The commander trailed off, her expression gloomy. She too was a citizen of this world. There was no way she wouldn’t be shocked by such a display of wanton brutality from a being they regarded as a savior.

At this rate, it looked useless to ask for more concrete details regarding our souls. I doubted they knew whether killing a savior granted more mana than killing a monster. Not that their ignorance on the matter bothered me. Besides, saviors conventionally descended on this world about once a century. It was fairly rare for there to be multiple at a time, so there was no way of gathering such knowledge to begin with.

Having said that, it did make sense that killing a savior would grant one more mana than a monster would. It was known that killing a more powerful monster granted one more mana. Gaining even more mana by killing saviors who possessed vast power was just an extension of this. Actually targeting those who had yet to become aware of their own cheats was a brutal idea. Doing it for real was sheer madness.

Even disregarding the morality of it, the efficiency of doing it that way just didn’t balance things out. Juumonji had killed nine students today. According to him, this was enough to increase his mana by ten percent. By those calculations, it would take nearly a hundred sacrifices to gain one savior’s worth of mana. In contrast, the mana gained from killing monsters was miniscule. Defeating a few monsters didn’t even grant a noticeable amount of mana. One could say it was extremely efficient then to kill a savior, but that only applied to the logic of measuring in single units. It didn’t change the fact that the mana gained from killing one person was extraordinarily low.

This was one reason why I didn’t even realize if I had gained any mana after killing other students in the Woodlands. Up until now, I took part in killing the three boys who assaulted Katou, and Kaga when he tried to kill me. That made for a total of four people. Strictly speaking, I didn’t kill two of the boys in the hut and Kaga with my own hands. Lily had finished them off. Taking that into consideration, now that I looked back at it, I felt like there were signs this might have had an effect on her.

When I had first met Lily, even though she’d struck a magical puppet with her strongest magic, the injured monster’s counterattack nearly killed her. That was how weak she was. However, not even twenty days after that, during the attack on the arachne nest, her strength surpassed Rose’s, a rare magical puppet.

I had thought this was because of her mimicry, but wasn’t her growth a little too fast? I didn’t know the truth, of course. The two kills that should have caused the most drastic change happened immediately after she ate Mizushima Miho’s corpse. If there was a change, it had gotten mixed in there, and it wouldn’t be strange if she couldn’t tell the difference. It might’ve been a different matter if I had killed them all myself...

“Hm?”

After thinking things through this far, I grimaced. I realized something rather strange. After killing another student, I didn’t notice my mana change. So how did Juumonji notice? “I get it now.” That was what he’d said. So, according to Juumonji’s statement, his foreknowledge allowed him to feel that nine sacrifices were equivalent to a ten percent increase in mana. Would he be able to tell if it was five percent, though? What if he didn’t know beforehand?

It wasn’t like he was staring at a measuring glass in a science experiment. Besides, with only two or three sacrifices, it definitely wasn’t noticeable. So didn’t that mean he had to have killed ten or twenty people at once to find this out? If that was the case, then it was strange.

Until Juumonji had left the Colony together with the first expeditionary force, there had never been a single instance of multiple people dying at once, murdered or missing, other than being killed by monsters. I’d never heard about it, at least. If something so major had happened, the expeditionary force wouldn’t have had the leisure to set forth in the first place. Meaning an incident like that happened after they had left the Colony?

That was difficult to imagine. Every member of the expeditionary force was a cheater. Juumonji was just a warrior. It wasn’t impossible for him to kill multiple people at once, but it was difficult to picture. Iino, who was probably making her way through the Woodlands now, and the deceased Watanabe never mentioned an incident like that. Above all else, judging from the way those two were in high spirits and acting like heroes, they didn’t show any signs whatsoever of experiencing such a tragic event. Their journey had been smooth sailing, until Watanabe’s head flew off, at least.

Thinking about it carefully, no one else had the opportunity to figure this out... Would it actually be more constructive to view this from a different angle? Any fact required someone to know of it first before it could be shared as knowledge. What event, and what human, could’ve realized this? There couldn’t have been one before the expeditionary force departed. And there wasn’t one after the expeditionary force left. Meaning... I suddenly felt a cold sweat.

There was one. Just one. A tremendously huge incident that fits the bill... That was the only thing that came to mind. Back then, someone must’ve noticed their mana amplified after killing several humans. It wouldn’t be all that strange, considering the scale of death wasn’t measured in ones or tens, but hundreds of students all at once.

The Colony’s destruction. On that tragic day, several people probably realized this fact. Juumonji was far away when it happened, though. He couldn’t have possibly learned of this.

Is it really impossible, though?

“Hey, Master.”

“...! Wh-What?”

Lily’s voice startled me. I turned to look at the side of her face, which was strained with a grim expression.

“There’s one monster ahead of us. We’re going to reach it soon. I’ll go ahead, so be careful, okay?”

“Y-Yeah...”

I nodded back to her warning and corrected my grip on my sword. My palm was wet with an unpleasant sweat.

It’s possible someone involved in the Colony’s destruction brought that knowledge to Juumonji... It sounded ludicrous, but after thinking it over, it felt plausible. For this theory to make sense, though, it required some means of long-distance communication. This world didn’t have anything as convenient as a cellphone, but they did have something that could substitute for a landline.

The reason Shiran had gone into the Depths on a rescue mission was because she’d received a magic communique from Fort Ebenus to the east after the expeditionary force got there. Meaning there was in fact a means of long-distance communication here.

The remaining question was whether there was someone out there who could use it with no aid. The people of this world couldn’t use anything beyond grade 3 magic, while there were cheaters everywhere who could use anything up to grade 5 magic. It wouldn’t be strange for them to be able to use the same magic the people of this world were capable of. In fact, I was able to maintain a sort of magical connection to my servants over a long distance. This had been fully demonstrated when Lily and Rose attacked the arachne nest. As such, someone with an inherent ability for telepathy being able to serve as a connection between the Colony and the first expeditionary force was well within the realm of reason.

This train of thought prompted one other suspicion. When did Juumonji and Sakagami get involved with each other? The first stage of this plan to murder students started when Sakagami had the bull wrigglers attack us before we reached the fortress. This meant their collusion began before we got to Fort Tilia.

However, Sakagami came to the fortress with the other students Shiran rescued. Their plan had to have taken shape after this fact, or it wouldn’t make sense. During this period, Juumonji and Sakagami were taking different routes to Fort Tilia. They didn’t have the opportunity to meet face-to-face. They shouldn’t have been able to work this out beforehand. And yet the bull wriggler attack happened.

This could be explained if there was something that connected them. In other words, “someone” leaked the information they’d gained from the Colony’s destruction to Juumonji, and they served as the connection between him and Sakagami to set the table for this disaster.

So long as they possessed some means of long-distance communication, there was no way of knowing where this “someone” could be. They could’ve been present at the Colony’s destruction, or they could even be at Fort Ebenus, treating themselves to some elegant tea time. There was also no telling if this “someone” was tying together more than just Juumonji and Sakagami.

When I realized this, I couldn’t stop a shiver from running through my entire body. Had the poisonous malice that destroyed the Colony infected the first expeditionary force? Would the abnormal beings extolled as saviors once more let their rule-breaking powers go wild? This time, not deep within the forest, but in the world of humanity?

I didn’t even want to think about it. The absolute tragedy of it was distinctly clear. I had no intention of ever meeting the expeditionary force. If they went off on a self-destructive path, it wouldn’t directly affect me.

However, a vague yet strong sense of anxiety was taking shape within me. The entire world was connected. People lived by influencing each other, no matter how small a thing it was. So, when there was a group that possessed excessive power, was there truly anyone who could remain completely unrelated to their rampage...?

“Okay, I’m off, Master!”

I guess thinking about it now won’t get me anywhere... I brought my thoughts to a close. Lily dashed off to intercept the monster who was coming toward us. I decided I would focus on that. However, the dark anxiety buried in the corner of my mind wouldn’t go away.

◆ ◆ ◆

To state the obvious, the closer we got to the outer rim of the fortress, the more monsters we encountered. I lost count of how many battles we’d faced to get here. We had expected to meet the remaining defenders of the fortress, but most of them had already been wiped out. We barely found any survivors.

“Looks like reinforcing our troops is hopeless,” I said dejectedly, stifling a sigh.

In other words, we had no choice but to somehow manage with the twenty or so people we had.

“But you know, Takahiro,” Mikihiko said, “if we did meet any survivors with you leading monsters around like that, it’s pretty much guaranteed they’d draw their blades on you just like before. At least we’re getting by without anything troublesome like that.”

“I guess. Besides, any reinforcements might end up having doppelgangers in their ranks.”

“Oh, that’s true.”

As we continued to talk, Lily, who was running in the front, glanced back at us. “You don’t really have to worry about doppelgangers. It’d be hard to identify one in a big crowd of soldiers like on top of the inner wall, but there aren’t that many people around anymore.”

This conversation was somewhat depressing. How many people were actually left in this fortress? How many of them would be able to help us undo this siege and escape? We could only do so much, and it was far too little.

“Oh, enemies again. This time there’s three.”

I didn’t know how many times it was now. We once more charged into battle in a corridor filled with dead soldiers. Lily acted as our vanguard, but when there were multiple at once, we couldn’t leave everything to her.

“Please take care of the bull wriggler! We’ll handle the rest!” I shouted to the commander.

“Understood!”

Lily charged ahead and gouged out the firefang’s throat with her spear. Ayame kept the bull wriggler restrained by spitting a fireball at it, and the knights slammed into the caterpillar with their large shields. As for me, I set Asarina upon a monster that looked like a chicken with feathery arms called a gutsgallaz. She succeeded in biting the chicken’s face.

“Oooh!”

Asarina contracted her body, yanking me into the gutsgallaz at high speed. The monster let out a strange scream and lunged at me with its fist. I stooped over to dodge the blow, and even as I lost my balance, I cut the monster’s leg as I passed by. I could hear a scream behind me.

“Whoa?!”

I tumbled across the hard stone floor, but Asarina let go of the gutsgallaz and helped me maintain my posture, so I was able to get to my feet without losing any of my momentum. I continued running down the corridor. I didn’t have the time to defeat everything I came across.

I could sense magic behind me, and Lily quickly caught up. It would’ve been problematic if the monsters had taken chase, so she likely finished off the lightly wounded gutsgallaz. However, there would be no end to this at the current rate.

“Have we still not caught up to Sakagami, Lily?!”

“I think we should catch up soon... Ah! More enemies!”

Monsters were gathering together further down the corridor. There were quite a few of them. Just as I clicked my tongue, Lily suddenly raised her voice.

“Oh! There he is!”

Just as she said, Sakagami was among the monsters. Perhaps thinking he was safe in the middle of so many of them, he was sitting on the floor, resting. When he spotted us running toward him, he bolted up to his feet.

“You won’t get away!”

We’d found our target, so we kicked things into high gear. Having said that, there was still some distance between us. What’s more, the monsters also came charging our way. There were a lot of them.

“Do it, Lily! No being stingy!”

Lily activated her grade 3 wind magic. A large number of windy blades tore down the narrow corridor like a storm, and Ayame followed up with a volley of fireballs. That brought our opponents’ momentum to a stop, and we charged into them as a single group. What followed was a melee.

The only thought on my mind was pushing through. I bashed bodies with my shield, repelled claws with my sword, and leaped over the jaws snapping at my feet. Danger assaulted me many times over, but thanks to Ayame and Asarina protecting me, I managed to break through the battle line.

“What about everyone else?!” I yelled.

“Still behind us!” Lily answered.

She was the only one to break through with me. We managed to deal a severe blow with our preemptive attack, but the sheer number of enemies was still a threat. The knights were burdened by their heavy equipment and needed to protect Mikihiko and Kei to the rear, so they couldn’t get through.

“Dammit. Lily, give them a—”

“Takahiro! Don’t worry about us! Please go ahead!” the commander yelled across the wall of monsters. “Capturing Sakagami Gouta is our utmost priority! Please!”

She was right. What’s more, we had significantly wounded the monsters with Lily’s magic already. The Alliance Knights were the elite. They could handle themselves.

“Fine. We’ll go ahead, so come after us when you can!”

Thus, I ran off after Sakagami with Lily by my side.

◆ ◆ ◆

Even though I had the assistance of physical strengthening, both my mana and stamina were nearing their limits. Regardless, I only had to hang in there a little longer.

“Be careful, Lily,” I said to the girl running half a step ahead of me. “Now that he knows he’s being chased, Sakagami might set more monsters on us. We should assume we’re definitely going to get counterattacked.”

“Mm. You’re right.”

There was a big gap between Sakagami’s physical abilities and ours. He had put a fair distance between us already, but we could still catch up quickly. Then the true battle would begin. As I braced myself, a large shadow appeared out of one of the corridor’s rooms. Lily picked up the pace.

“One bull wriggler! I’ll get it!”

“Okay. Pay attention to your surroundings.”

“Roger!”

Lily leaped high into the air and grabbed the insect’s head with her legs as it poked out of the room. She didn’t use magic in case this was a decoy for an ambush, that way she could unleash her magic at the ambushing force instead. The bull wriggler tried to shake her off by vigorously throwing its head about, but it wasn’t enough to loosen her grip. Lily held her spear in both hands and drove it deep into the caterpillar’s head. After repeating that motion several times, the enormous body of the bull wriggler convulsed, then collapsed. Lily quickly jumped back from the corpse and surveyed her surroundings. There was no sign of a follow-up attack.

“That’s it...?” Lily muttered anticlimactically as she swung the green blood off her spear. I caught up with her, and after waiting a few seconds, there really was no other enemy. “What do we do, Master?”

“No point in sticking around here. Let’s keep going.”

We weren’t going to get anywhere grumbling about something as trivial as not getting attacked. We started running once more, but I still had my doubts.

“What was that just now...?”

“It was a little poorly planned for a stall tactic, huh?”

One measly monster from the Fringes wasn’t really going to buy much time. It was pretty meaningless to split up his forces so thinly. We had killed quite a few monsters already, but even disregarding the ones keeping siege around the fortress, there were still supposed to be plenty of the beasts all over the place. There was no reason to spread them out at this point. A practical stampede of monsters wouldn’t have been strange at this stage.

“Maybe he’s trying to buy time so he can gather enough monsters?” Lily suggested.

“That’s about the only thing that comes to mind.”

Or perhaps he was letting us break through easily to loosen our guard. That thought in mind, I renewed my vigilance, but something still felt off. Lily had managed the bull wriggler with ease. It was as if it didn’t know we were coming. It wasn’t getting in the way of our chase, but rather it just happened to come out of that room by coincidence.

Was that even possible? Sakagami passed through this corridor mere minutes ago. It was hard to believe he wouldn’t order the monsters on his path to intercept any pursuers. Why wasn’t he protecting himself? Something wasn’t right.

Thinking back on it now, Sakagami hadn’t brought a single monster along to guard him. No. Even before that, when Sakagami revealed his true nature and spoke to Juumonji atop the wall, he no longer had any reason to hide his monster taming ability. Despite that, he showed himself without a single monster by his side. Wasn’t that rather strange, all things considered...?

“There he is!” Lily yelled sharply.

I also managed to spot Sakagami running down the far end of the corridor. He looked over his shoulder at us with a panicked expression. As I thought, he didn’t have a single monster with him. I honestly didn’t get it, but a chance was a chance.

Considering that Sakagami could be using himself as bait to lure us into a trap, I needed to stay close to Lily. I wanted to attack him from a distance, but it was also a good idea to keep Lily’s magic, which took some time to activate, on standby as insurance in case things turned for the worst. Therefore, the best choice here was...

“Ayame! Stop him!”

“Graawr!”

Ayame puffed up her body on top of my shoulder and spat out several fireballs, sending them flying down the corridor into the walls and ceiling. Stone fragments scattered into the air. Sakagami screamed, covering his head. He came to a stop. I immediately thrust out my left arm.

“Masss—ter!”

Asarina complied with my will and stretched out, lunging at Sakagami and sinking her sharp fangs into his calf.

“Gyaaah! Aaaargh!”

Sakagami toppled over and writhed in pain. It was like countless knives had torn apart his leg. With this, he wouldn’t be able to run away unless treated with healing magic. We quickly arrived where he had fallen over. I had Lily keep a close watch on our surroundings as I kicked Sakagami so that he was lying faceup, then dug my heel into his stomach.

“Hak?!”

“We caught you, Sakagami. Make the monsters leave the fortress immediately!”

“O-Ow! Stop! I’m begging you!”

“Shut up and get to it!”

“Gyaaah!”

I stabbed my sword into his uninjured leg. We didn’t have time to take things leisurely now that we had caught up to him. We were just as cornered as he was, after all.

“Shiran will die if you don’t do as we say! Everyone in this fortress will die!”

“I-I got it! I got it, okay! So cut it out!”

“Then get rid of the monsters! Right now!”

“Th-That’s...” Sakagami faltered as he squirmed about. His mouth was chattering open and shut. I was just about to give him another stab when he sensed things were getting worse for him. “H-Hang on! I-I can’t do it right away!”

“You son of a... Are you still trying to buy yourself time?!” I roared at him.

“I-I ain’t lying! I swear I ain’t lying!” Sakagami pleaded with me desperately. “I didn’t say I can’t! I just can’t right away!” Tears streamed down his face as he screamed, his voice sounding pitiful. “I mean... I mean... All I can do is draw monsters to me!”

“What...?” I was left dumbfounded. It was a poor excuse, even for one he had to come up with on the spot. “Quit spouting bullshit!”

“I’m serious! I swear I ain’t lying!”

“So, what? You’re not going to tell me you didn’t give these monsters any directions, are you? This army wasn’t just mindlessly pushing in!”

I pulled my sword out of Sakagami’s thigh and thrust the bloody blade right before his eyes.

“Th-That’s not it! You’ve got it wrong!” Sakagami felt his death creeping closer and pissed himself. Then, with fear still in his eyes, he explained, “There’s a monster that orders the other monsters! I’ve only been telling it what to do! So unless I go through it, I can’t give orders to the monsters I gathered!”

“The hell’s with that?”

“You might not believe me, but it’s true. There’s this monster that can talk like a human. It’s the one who gives out the orders.”

I exchanged glances with Lily. A talking monster. It wasn’t entirely impossible considering my own experiences. The fact he knew of a monster this world’s people would consider nothing more than a fairy tale actually gave his story a strange sense of credibility. I myself had the inherent ability to tame monsters, but it didn’t mean I could manipulate them to my will. I didn’t know enough to deny that Sakagami’s own monster taming ability worked the way he explained it. I could accept that he wasn’t able to directly order the monsters around. After all, we could test the authenticity of his claim right away.

“Where is that monster now?”

“I-It should show up right away if I call it. It’s always somewhere near me. Oh, but...after we left the hut, it kept a bit of a distance ’cause that Shiran chick’s senses were too sharp or something...”

“So it’ll show up if you call it? Then call it. Right now.”

“O-Okay already, chill.” Sakagami no longer possessed the willpower to defy me. This was probably the first time he’d been shaken down like this. His heart was completely broken. “Berta! Berta!” Sakagami shouted. “Come out! Order the monsters to pull back! I’m gonna get killed at this rate!”

His pleading echoed down the corridor. Lily and I kept a close watch on our surroundings, ready for anything to happen. One, then two seconds, and nothing... After ten seconds, the entire corridor had fallen silent.

“Huh...? You’re shitting me.”

Sakagami’s dumbfounded voice reverberated in the air, but it was in vain. So he really was just blowing smoke. Or did something go wrong...?

Just as I started to ponder this, something showed itself on the other end of the corridor. It came running toward us at a speed quite literally like the wind.

“Isn’t that...?”

It had long white hair trailing behind it, white clothes, and bloodred eyes. Its peculiar footsteps were those of an eight-legged creature. Its face was that of a girl so beautiful it was bewitching, and it bloomed with an energetic and brilliant smile.

“Ooh! My Lord! I’ve finally found you!”

“Gerbera...?”

I stared in wonder. I never thought I’d see the white arachne in the fortress, but here she was right before my eyes.

◆ ◆ ◆

To think Gerbera had been behind this entire attack... Well, that was pretty much out of the question. Her name wasn’t Berta, and Sakagami looked absolutely befuddled. She was my servant to begin with.

“My Lord! Thank goodness you’re safe!”

Gerbera wriggled her legs about as she ran over and hugged me with vigor. Her white hair fell across my face, blocking my sight, and she pulled me in with such force that I had no way of resisting her strength. Her arms wrapped around me. I hugged her back on reflex and took in her beautiful features at point-blank range.

“Gerbera? What are you doing here? Where are Rose and Katou?”

“What are you saying? The fortress you’ve been staying at is swarming with monsters, is it not? Of course I’d come to save you. Oh, Ayame. Have you been well? Did you protect our lord properly?”

“Kuuu!”

Gerbera kept her hold on me while she petted Ayame, who was still sitting on my shoulder. She had apparently come to save me. I was grateful, but somehow, she was just as unlucky as ever. Thinking how she was perhaps similar to me in this regard, I wondered if she’d somehow inherited that trait from me.

“Although, it did in fact take me some time to get here. I can do naught but apologize for that. Rose was damaged pretty badly, you see. Oh, but there is no need to worry. I simply had to leave her behind in the cave we’ve been using as shelter.”

“Rose? Hey, slow down. She’s really okay, right?”

“Indeed. She’s currently repairing her body while guarding Katou. I couldn’t bring the two of them all the way here, considering the potential danger. In any case, after seeing that she finished her critical repairs needed to function in battle, I headed off to come and save you. But, well, it took a fair amount of time to reach you. It might have taken me even longer had I not heard your voice, and the one of this screaming little man.”

“Hm...? You couldn’t tell where I was from the mental path?”

“It seems to be strangely hampered at the moment,” Gerbera said, putting her finger to her lips and scrunching her beautiful face. “I don’t really understand, but the mental path may be a little unstable right now.”

“Unstable?”

“It does seem fine at this range, though.”

“What’s going on? Is there something out there affecting our connection? Could it be...?”

I turned my gaze to Sakagami. He began vigorously shaking his head.

“C-Cut it with the false accusations! I didn’t do nothing!”

In a sense, Sakagami’s power was similar to mine. I suspected he might have used some sort of jamming, but he denied my accusation. This guy didn’t have the backbone to lie through his pain. He was a petty little rat. Still, there was no guessing what a petty person would do given the chance.

“I suppose all is well now that I’ve managed to rendezvous with you like this,” Gerbera said, hugging me tightly.

“I wasn’t sure you were still alive, especially when a portion of the fortress crumbled. The mere thought of you being caught up in the fall...”

“Gerbera...”

“Actually, I nearly died on the way here,” Gerbera muttered absentmindedly. “Just as I reached the fortress, still unable to find you and at a loss at what to do next, I got caught in some outrageously large-scale magic all of a sudden. I wonder what that was? It’s fine, seeing as I managed to escape, but if I had reacted just a little late, I likely would have been blown away into the far-off skies.”

“...”

Gerbera had apparently gotten caught in Watanabe’s wind magic. Her timing really was the worst. Or maybe not. In the end, she did in fact manage to reach my side.

“So, Master,” Lily said, now that we had a grasp of each other’s situation. “Gerbera joining us is good and all, but Sakagami’s monster who controls monsters isn’t showing up. What should we do?”

“Let’s see...”

I asked Gerbera to let me go, then turned to face Sakagami once more.

“I-I ain’t lying dammit!”

“Yeah, yeah. Enough of that already.” I shook my head, then turned to my companions. “Sakagami’s pretty much useless at this point. Let’s get back to Shiran right away. With Gerbera here, we should be able to do something about Juumonji now.”

“Hm? Who’s this Juumonji fellow?”

“Gerbera. Juumonji is another student from my world, one of the members of the exploration team I told you about before. He’s also one of the humans who attacked this fortress.”

“Hmm.”

“A girl named Shiran is holding him back right now so that we could get away. Juumonji might be a little tough for you to handle on your own, but if you work with Shiran...”

In fact, we could escape the fortress now that Gerbera was with us. She could easily take out the monsters laying siege outside on her own. It’d be easy to get the commander and her twenty or so knights out with us. If we only wanted to survive, then that was the way to go. However, in that case, the remaining soldiers within the fortress would be wiped out. And we would end up deserting Shiran, who was waiting for us to remove the monsters. I couldn’t betray the trust she had put in me.

“Hmm. I don’t really understand the situation, but this Shiran you mentioned is risking her life to save you, is she? Then we must go help her.”

“Mm.” Lily nodded. “I also don’t want to abandon her. She believed in our master.”

Gerbera and Lily were in agreement. All that was left was to run over. We had to get there as quickly as possible.

“Oh...before that, we better finish him off,” I said.

Sakagami, who was trying to crawl to freedom, twitched. “E-Eeek! D-Don’t kill me!” He flipped onto his back and screamed while still pulling himself away from us.

Exactly how many people had died because of him? I had no reason to allow him to live. Besides, it was frightening to think what he would do if left at large.

“R-Right! I was threatened! So it ain’t my fault dammit!”

“Sorry, I don’t have the time to listen to your useless begging,” I said as I raised my sword. “We need to get moving and save Shiran.”

“In that case, you’re late,” a man’s voice said.

“—?!”

The moment I realized whose voice it was, I turned toward him. Lily and Gerbera were already looking that way, poised for battle. On the far end of the corridor was a boy with a large build, walking our way ever so casually. He smirked and threw what he had been dragging behind him toward us, sending it tumbling across the floor.

It was Shiran, completely soaked in blood.