Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 9 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Uncharacteristic

“Eeeeeek!”

Leah was the one to scream. Her eyes shot open in fright, and she put her hands to her mouth and fell on her rear. Her expression, though stiff, was convulsing. She wasn’t overreacting either. She’d been happily chatting, and hearing a thud behind her, she’d turned around to find a severed arm on the ground. Anyone would lose themselves to fear and confusion in that situation. Some might even faint.

“Sh-Shiran! Y-Your...your arm?!”

That was all Leah could manage to get out. Kei and Helena, who’d been chatting with Leah just moments ago, also shrieked and turned pale. The three of them were looking at Shiran, whose eye was fixed on her own severed arm. Her normally tight expression slipped, and her face went slack as if she was in a daze. She froze in place for a good five seconds, then awkwardly raised her head to see that all eyes were on her. She shuddered.

“Ah...”

I had no idea what went through her mind in that instant. Perhaps she thought that she’d made an irrevocable mistake or that things were about to take a turn for the worse. I couldn’t see her face from my position, so I had only my imagination for reference. However, it was clear as day that she was terribly agitated, especially given the uncharacteristic reaction that followed.

Shiran picked up her fallen arm, then dashed into the forest to the side of the road. Her unimaginable behavior caught me off guard, and for a few seconds, I wasn’t even aware of the situation.

Coming to my senses, I hit the manamobile’s brakes. The wheels grated as the vehicle jerked beneath me. Finding the deceleration to a stop too slow, I jumped from the driver’s seat.

“Shiran!”

My heart grew impatient and heated. No matter how I looked at it, Shiran was making a big mistake. The unexpected accident had thrown her off, but running away wouldn’t resolve anything. Besides being thoughtless, there was no point to it. I had to bring her back as soon as possible.

“Master! I shall go with you!”

I could sense Rose giving chase behind me, but I couldn’t wait for her. I ran past the dismayed Leah, the petrified Kei, and the frozen Helena, and charged past the thickets that Shiran had vanished behind.

As soon as I left the path, the forest became dense. Rows of trees blocked my view, so I couldn’t see Shiran at all.

“Oh! Over there!”

I thought I heard a faint noise and ran in its direction. I pushed my way through branches and bushes, but I quickly came to a stop.

“Dammit...”

I couldn’t find her. I considered using the Misty Lodge’s perception magic, but that was a pretty advanced spell. Even with Salvia’s support, it would take a significant amount of time to gather the requisite mana, and Shiran could slip past its effective range while I did so.

“Master!”

I turned around and saw Lily and Rose running my way.

“Where’s Shiran?” Rose asked.

“I lost her,” I replied bitterly. “Lily, please find her.”

“Mm.”

Lily, having arrived just a few seconds after Rose, looked concerned. This was bad. Leah and Helena didn’t know the full details of our situation, and we couldn’t afford for them to see this. Last night, we’d managed to brush it off as a sickness, but that would be difficult to pull off this time. Katou was likely glossing it over for us right now, but we couldn’t dodge the issue forever. There was no excuse for an arm falling off. That wasn’t the only problem either.

“Master, what exactly is happening to Shiran’s body?” Rose asked from the back of the line as Lily walked forth to sniff out the trail. Rose couldn’t hide her bewilderment. “For her arm to suddenly fall off like that... She doesn’t have a body like mine. Some abnormal circumstance must be behind it.”

“I don’t know what exactly is going on either,” I replied as I continued to follow Lily. “But that wound was the one she got from Juumonji.”

“By Juumonji, you mean the exploration team member you fought at Fort Tilia?”

“Yup, that’s him... Oh, yeah, you weren’t there, huh?”

Right before the attack on Fort Tilia, Rose’s body had suffered major damage. Unlike Gerbera, she hadn’t faced Juumonji, so she hadn’t witnessed Shiran turning into an undead monster.

“Juumonji cut off Shiran’s left arm, but after she turned into an undead monster, she reattached it. The place where her arm separated just now was exactly where Juumonji cut her. It’s hard to believe that’s just a coincidence.”

“So, in other words, Shiran’s body is no longer able to maintain itself?”

Rose only had half the picture, but she’d arrived at the appropriate conclusion anyway.

“But wait,” she added, “yesterday, we discussed that mana maintains Shiran’s body. In that case...”

“She has a mana deficiency,” I explained, “and a serious one at that.”

“But Master,” Lily said, glancing back from the front. “Shiran told us yesterday that she was okay now, didn’t she? So why did this happen?”

“Well...” I sank into thought for a bit. “Normally, you’d assume that she didn’t actually get enough mana,” I said, brushing away the branch in my way. “In truth, she probably needs way more than she ingested. She needs to eat more monsters.”

“Mm-hmm. That’s what I thought. But why didn’t Shiran say so yesterday?”

“Maybe because if she needed more, it’d be that much more of a burden? This is Shiran we’re talking about. Hiding it from us to spare us trouble isn’t that—”

I scowled before I could finish what I was saying. It felt like the words slipped right off my tongue. Something wasn’t right. Shiran had hidden her condition out of consideration for us, which would normally make perfect sense, but that same consideration had accidentally revealed a shocking clue to Helena the other day. Would Shiran really repeat the exact same mistake one day later? Was she really that careless?

Before I knew it, my feet came to a stop. Once I realized this contradiction, my discomfort just kept growing. It was already unusual that she’d made a mistake yesterday. If she’d only consulted us, we would’ve told her that needing to hunt monsters wasn’t a big problem for our group. Yet she’d kept it all to herself and almost revealed her secret to Helena. Just as Rose had said, that wasn’t like her. So, was it really just an error in judgment? It was a little late to ask, but that question started bothering me now.

“Hey, Master?” Lily said, her expression dark. She was likely thinking the same thing as me. “Was Shiran really telling the truth yesterday?”

“Are you saying she lied to us?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just thinking maybe she didn’t tell us everything. I mean, if she was just being considerate, I doubt she’d ever mess up like this.”

I couldn’t refute that. On the contrary, Lily’s statement convinced me about Shiran’s earlier behavior. After her arm fell off, Shiran had run away. I’d thought she was reacting to the chaos of the situation, but thinking back on it now, that was uncharacteristic of Shiran. It would have been far more convincing if she’d had to run away rather than repeat the same mistake three times in short succession. However, if she had, then I was at a loss.

“What is Shiran hiding?” I muttered. I couldn’t come up with any ideas. “Why won’t she tell us?”

At this rate, I’d have no idea what to do even if we caught up with her. If we couldn’t do anything, that would be one thing, but we could say something careless and increase the burden on Shiran even more without knowing it.

I ground my teeth, and just then...

“Master.”

Mist formed in the air in front of me and took on the shape of a young woman, her golden-brown hair swaying in the air.

“Salvia?”

“May I have a moment?” she asked.

Unlike her usual carefree aura, the atmosphere around her was tense. She hadn’t shown herself since our time in Draconia. I hadn’t expected her to come out now, so I didn’t know how to react, but then something shocking happened.

“I have something to say about Shiran,” Salvia said.

“What is it?” I asked, my eyes wide. “Do you know something about this?”

“Yes. Just as you’ve surmised, she’s hiding something,” she declared.

Salvia did know something, then. She wasn’t really connected to Shiran in any way, so how did she know? I was a little curious, but that could wait for later.

“Please tell me,” I said, taking a step toward her. “What’s happening to Shiran’s body? Is there something I can do?”

“There is,” she confirmed. “Rather, it is something only you can do.”

“What...?” This was beyond my expectations. “Only me?”

“Yes. You might be the only one who can do anything about it,” Salvia said. Her words weighed heavily on me, but she continued. “All the same, Shiran may not want you to.”

“Huh...? What do you mean?” I was getting more and more perplexed.

Salvia gazed at me gravely. “If you truly wish to save Shiran, my dear...you must break her. Are you prepared to do that?”