Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 9 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: The Knight’s Secret

Illuminated by the magic red fire, the objects scattered on the ground cast deep black shadows that swayed about. The azure hare meat that had been stored here was now in disarray. In this world, refrigeration was only available to a portion of the wealthy and to specialized facilities, so it was common to preserve meat by salting it. This meat had been in the middle of that process.

As it was now, it wasn’t suitable for consumption. Well, it was technically edible given the effort. So long as one could bite into, chew on, and swallow it, anything could be eaten, but nobody would normally do that. There was no reason to do so, yet half-eaten fragments of dehydrated and discolored meat lay scattered on the ground.

I looked down in astonishment.

“What the...?” a girl muttered behind me.

I turned around to see Helena trembling, her hand to her mouth. Due to the shock of the moment, I’d completely forgotten that she was with us.

“M-Mister Takahiro,” Helena said, her voice hollow. This must have been gut-wrenching for her. “What did...Shiran do? What...? Why...?”

Her words reminded me of a very important point—Shiran. Yes, this was Shiran’s doing. I didn’t know what was going on, but Shiran had definitely done this, which meant things could be pretty bad. The impatience building inside me woke me from the daze that had overcome me. I saw a flashback of Shiran stumbling out of this building. She clearly wasn’t her normal self right now. I couldn’t possibly ignore it.

“We need to go after Shiran,” I said, finally regaining my senses. “Lily.”

“Mm.”

Lily focused and sniffed at the air. I didn’t know where Shiran had gone, but Lily could track her scent. This was a race against time; we had to catch up to her right away. However, as I turned on my heels, my feet came to a sudden stop.

“Mister Takahiro.”

Helena looked up at me. Her face, illuminated by Lily’s fire, was still deeply marked by confusion, but there was another emotion there too.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

I’d predicted this, but I couldn’t allow it.

“No, you can’t.”

“Why?!”

“Because...”

I hesitated as she looked to me for a reason. There was no way I could tell her the truth. Why had Shiran done this to begin with? I had given it some thought, and only one thing came to mind: a side effect of turning into an undead monster—a demilich.

Shiran had once turned almost entirely into a ghoul, and my guess was that she was experiencing those symptoms again right now. If so, I couldn’t bring Helena with me. She didn’t know anything, so Shiran’s behavior was already abnormal to her. If we brought her along, she might see something much more disturbing. How much would it shock her? I was sure it would turn into the worst-case scenario, so I decided that she couldn’t come with us.

The one silver lining was that Shiran was acting far more docile than that time at Fort Tilia. If she’d truly turned into a ghoul, then she’d be attacking humans. Yet all she’d done was eat the azure hare meat. Sure, it was odd behavior, but she hadn’t crossed the line yet. There was still time. If we caught her right away without anyone finding out, we could settle this quietly. That was, of course, excluding the girl who’d already seen her.

In any case, Helena noticed I was hesitant to say anything, and she suddenly looked like she’d realized something.

“Do you maybe know why Shiran is acting like this?” she asked.

“Yeah...” I said, nodding. There was no point in denying it now.

Helena held her hand to her chest. “Is Shiran sick?” she asked.

“Something like that... She’s kind of having a problem with her body.”

“Is that so...?”

Helena bit her lip. She could tell that Shiran wasn’t simply sick. There was no fooling her after she’d witnessed the scene in the storehouse. Would I have to resort to sealing her mouth, even if I had to force the issue? I gritted my teeth. If I really wanted to, I had the means to do it. It was entirely feasible. I could just use my authority as a savior to order Helena to keep quiet.

Needless to say, that was the worst thing I could do. My original goal was to build trust with the villagers, and doing so would damage that trust. But to avoid the worst...there was no other choice. Shiran’s face came to mind, and I resolved myself for what I had to do. However, Helena opened her mouth just before I could say anything.

“Very well,” she said.

“What?”

“I will do as you say, sir,” she declared stiffly.

“Are you fine with that?” I asked, somewhat bewildered.

“Shiran trusts you, so I do too.”

Her reply was so simple that I had trouble gauging her true intent.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked earnestly.

From what I could tell, Helena didn’t feel any sort of revulsion toward Shiran, even after witnessing her acting like that. Helena genuinely wanted to help.

After thinking it over a bit, I said, “Then...can you handle things here?”

I was curious why she’d so easily backed down, but I didn’t have the time to talk it over. If she was offering to help, then I couldn’t ask for more.

“If we leave this mess like it is, it’ll be clear that something happened,” I elaborated. “Someone needs to clean up.”

“Please leave it to me,” Helena replied reassuringly. “I’ll clean it all up, but what should we do about the meat that’s gone?”

“Let’s see... It’s strewn about, but it doesn’t look like all that much is missing. We can just say that I took some in preparation for tomorrow’s journey. Please pass that along to Melvin.”

I gave out instructions, reacting in the moment. Now that it had come to this, Helena’s presence was actually convenient.

“As for the half-eaten bits,” I continued, “can you just throw them in a bag and deliver them to Rose...to my companions? We’ll deal with it.”

“Understood.”

“Tell Rose and the others what happened, and inform them that there’s nothing to worry about, so they can sit back and wait. Also...”

“Keep it a secret from the villagers, right? I know. I’ll do all that you’ve asked of me.”

Her eyes shone with a strong sense of duty and a hint of dependence.

“But, in exchange,” she added, “please take care of Shiran.”

“Of course.”

Judging that things would be fine here in Helena’s hands, Lily and I exchanged glances and left the storehouse behind.

◆ ◆ ◆

We left the cleanup to Helena and went after Shiran. I was connected to my servants through the mental path, and using it, we could sense each other’s positions and emotions. That didn’t apply to Shiran, though. As a former human, and with the special circumstances that made her my servant, our connection through the mental path was weak. I had to rely on Lily’s sense of smell for our pursuit.

After running for a while, we found a tall wall blocking our way.

“The village wall?” I muttered. “Did Shiran go outside?”

“Looks like it,” Lily confirmed.

The village was always on watch against monster attacks, even at night. If Shiran had thoughtlessly scaled the walls, it was highly likely that someone would’ve seen her. However, the night watch didn’t appear to be agitated in any way, so it seemed that Shiran had managed to slip out of the village without being spotted. She hadn’t had such a presence of mind the last time she’d lost control.

After we descended the walls, we found ourselves in the Woodlands. The forest was already gloomy during the day, so at night, visibility was basically zero. I asked Lily to make a magic fire to use as a light.

I was in a rush, but the forest at night was overwhelmingly dark, even with a light. It was frustrating, but we had to proceed with caution while being wary of monster attacks. We had been walking for ten or so minutes when we finally found her.

“Shiran...”

She was crouched on the ground, her back turned to us, but there was no mistaking her. I called out in relief, causing her to start, but that was all. She didn’t turn around to greet us.

Lily and I approached her. As we did, an awful smell assaulted my nasal cavities. It was a very characteristic smell—the stench of a living creature’s guts. I then realized why Shiran was crouching down.

A moment later, Lily’s light shone directly on Shiran. An ominous red being entered our vision. The girl lit up in the dead of night was stained crimson. Her blonde hair, her white armor—all of it was sullied with blood.

Shiran finally turned to us. “So it’s you, Takahiro.”

Her calm voice didn’t suit the situation at all. Her one eye swiveled to look at me. She was so tranquil that I almost believed that nothing was out of the ordinary. Nonetheless, the azure hare corpses on the ground behind her grounded me in reality.

There were three of them. One looked like a beast had devoured it, and Shiran’s lips, which so calmly spoke to me now, were so red that it couldn’t have been due to a spray of blood from the downed monsters. I didn’t even need to ask to know what had happened.

“You’re not surprised. Did you expect this?” she asked.

“It was kind of hard not to after everything that’s happened,” I said, smiling wryly.

Or, at least, I think I smiled—just as I always did. After all, during our search for Shiran, all my thoughts had run to that conclusion.

“It’s a side effect of turning into a demilich, right?” I continued. “I don’t know why, but you need to eat monster meat. That’s why you ate the preserved azure hare meat.”

“Yes... So you saw that? That explains why you’re here now. I was going to clean up after I got back to the village. What a mistake.”

Shiran smiled bitterly, ignoring the red blood staining her mouth. Her expression was the same as always.

“Did you clean that up for me, Takahiro? No, you got here awfully fast if that were the case. Have you maybe left it as is? If so, it might cause quite an uproar...”

“No, Helena was with us. I left the cleanup to her.”

“Helena...?” Shiran looked the slightest bit surprised by this, but her expression relaxed right away, and she smiled faintly. “I see... That’s a relief. She’s trustworthy.”

“Hey, Shiran? What exactly is going on?”

I was relieved to see her acting far calmer than I’d expected, but that only flooded my mind with even more questions.

“Did you leave the village to hunt monsters?” I asked. “Did you maybe suggest the nighttime patrols during our journey so you could do this too?”

According to Lily, Shiran had encountered an unusually large number of monsters for what were supposed to be simple nighttime patrols. In those instances, Shiran had smelled of blood. Seeing her now, anybody could have guessed what she’d been up to. She hadn’t been patrolling; she’d been actively hunting monsters. But that was as far as I could understand.

“Does that mean the preserved azure hare meat was no good?” I asked. Why would that be? I couldn’t figure it out, but something else bothered me far more. “If something was wrong, why didn’t you tell me?”

“My apologies, Takahiro,” Shiran said, lowering her head. Even smeared in blood as she was, she remained the image of an honest and noble knight. “I kept it a secret because I didn’t want to worry you. Yet I ended up both worrying you and being a bother.”

It was just like her to do that, so I lost my urge to criticize her behavior. A silence fell over us as she continued to bow.

“Master. For the time being, how about we calm down and talk it out?” Lily said after waiting for the right time to cut in. “I mean, look, Shiran is all dirty too.”

“You’re right,” I said, nodding. We wouldn’t make any progress like this.

Shiran raised her head, then said, “Very well. I will tell you everything.”

◆ ◆ ◆

Lily and I moved a little farther away to allow Shiran to clean up. It didn’t take her all that long. She’d diligently wiped down her blood-smeared body, so the only traces left were the rust-like stench and the stains on her clothes.

“I’m usually more careful,” she said, “but this time, things got a little hard on me, so the stains are pretty bad. These clothes are no good anymore.”

“Are you okay now?” I asked.

“Yes. Sorry for worrying you,” she replied, earnestly bowing her head. “Now then, allow me to tell you everything.”

“Go ahead,” I said with a nod.

“Just as you’ve surmised, I currently require monster meat to function due to my nature as a demilich.”

She’d likely already considered what she was going to say, because her explanation came out smoothly.

“My body is different from when I was human. It doesn’t need nutrition from food to move. I can eat, but it’s not necessary. Because I’m a demilich now, my body moves by using mana.” Shiran paused and looked down at her palm. “That’s why I don’t need to consume food. Well, that’s what I believed at first. However...”

“You actually need to?” I was beginning to see where this was going. “Nutrition doesn’t fuel an undead body; mana does. Meaning...”

“Yes. It seems my body can’t function without sustenance. I need to absorb mana in one form or another.”

Her physical health had been deteriorating because of a decrease in mana. When I thought about it, there’d been signs of this. After the commander was arrested, Shiran had withdrawn from the front line of battle for a while. She’d told me it was because of a decline in her combat abilities due to the imbalance of her mind and body from becoming a demilich. That wasn’t entirely the truth, though. The imbalance wasn’t a complete lie, but her mana deficiency was a far more severe problem.

“And that’s where monsters come in,” Shiran said, stealing a glance at Lily. “By eating the corpses of monsters, I can acquire mana. You’re already aware of this. This is how Kudou Riku’s monsters gain strength, and it’s how Lily increased her mana with all the monster corpses in the wake of Fort Tilia’s attack. I’ve been eating monsters following the same line of logic.”

“So...what? To stop your mana from declining, you’ve been eating monsters? You can’t just eat their meat; you need to ingest their mana. If so, then the meat that’s been preserved in salt for the last few days is no good?”

“Exactly. Be it because too much time has passed or because it has been treated in some way, I couldn’t get the mana I needed from it.”

“And that’s the reason regular food is a no go too?”

“Yes. For that reason, during our journey, I went hunting whenever I was on nighttime patrol. Fortunately, nobody noticed. Well, just once, Berta spotted me.”

“She did?”

“She was also hunting at the time.”

I knew that Berta had been hunting monsters night after night. In her case, the goal was to grow stronger, much like Lily, but Shiran had been doing the same. It was inevitable that the two of them would bump into each other. That was how Berta had noticed that something was up with Shiran before anyone else.

“Please don’t blame her for keeping quiet about it,” Shiran added. “I asked her to. She was simply being sincere.”

Berta was definitely sincere by nature, but her silence had also delayed us from finding out.

I didn’t know how to reply to that, so instead I said, “That’s enough about the nighttime patrols. What have you been doing during our stays in towns?”

“Basically, I’ve been holding it in. Whenever I got the opportunity, I went outside. Sometimes, I could act on my own, like when I contacted the army and prepared goods.”

Now that I thought about it, when Rose and I walked around Diospyro, I thought I’d seen someone who looked like Shiran coming back into town. I’d thought I was mistaken since it had only been for an instant, but maybe that had really been her.

“I thought I could keep going without anyone finding out, but it seems I was a little too naive,” Shiran said with a small sigh. “When we met with the villagers, I lost my chance to hunt.”

“I see. When we were traveling with the elves, you couldn’t go out on nighttime patrols.”

“Yes. Therefore, I couldn’t eat any monsters.”

Shiran had been starving, which was what had led to this incident.

“Is that also why you were acting strange during the battle this afternoon?” I asked.

“Yes. That was a little dangerous. I was just barely managing to hold it in, but after the ruby bear’s blood sprayed all over me, my sense of reason faltered. I somehow managed to endure until the evening, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer, so here I am now. I’m ashamed you saw something so disgraceful.”

Shiran bowed deeply once more.

“You hit your limit, right?” I said, shaking my head. “If so, there’s no helping it. But if you’d come to me for advice, I’m sure we could’ve helped you before it got to this.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. There’s nothing to apologize for. You can just rely on us from now on.”

Anybody was prone to failure. Even I’d come close to death because of failures that I didn’t want to think about. I couldn’t criticize Shiran for this. It wasn’t an irrecoverable mistake or anything, so we just needed to be careful from now on. As a splendid knight, missteps like this served her far better than they would someone like me.

“Let’s return to the village for now,” I said. “After that, we can talk it out with everyone. It’ll be fine. Eating monsters isn’t all that big a deal among our group.”

“Yup, it’s pretty much an everyday thing for me too,” Lily added, changing her fingers into slimy feelers. “It’s much too late to care about that now.”

“Lily’s right,” I said. “We can manage your need for monster meat too. It’ll work out somehow if we help. Everyone is sure to give you a hand.”

“Thank you very much...”

After all that, Shiran finally smiled. Hers was the reliable face of a knight, one that could give anyone unconditional peace of mind.

Finally feeling a sense of relief, I led the two of them back to the village.