Chapter 371:
That Happened Before!
“MR. DRUID AND SWEET IVY, EH?”
Sweet Ivy? The nickname sounded so weird to me that all I could do was stare dumbly at Fische in reply.
“Sorry, he has a daughter the same age as Ivy,” Garitt explained apologetically. “He calls her Sweet-this and Sweet-that all the time, so he probably did it without thinking.”
I smiled and nodded in understanding. I didn’t mind being called sweet; I just wasn’t used to it. Besides, I had been called sweet in the past.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind.”
Garitt smiled in relief. He must have been worried about his companion getting in trouble.
“So, any idea what happened here?” my father asked.
Garitt looked off into the forest and said, “Mr. Druid, did you sense anything out in the woods?”
“I did. It wasn’t an aura or magic energy, but something’s out there.”
Zinal nodded. “We think the same thing. What about you, Miss Ivy?”
“I didn’t sense anything, sir.”
“Aha. I guess it’s only the elite adventurers who can sense it.” Zinal let out a tiny sigh. His hair was light blue and fell to his shoulders, and his eyes were a brilliant blue.
“Only the elite adventurers, you say?”
“Yeah, we asked a few mid-level ones, and none of them knew what we were talking about.” Garitt’s short hair was green, and his eyes were black. Both men looked like they were in their forties, and they had a calm aura about them. Fische, the one who had called me sweet, was probably their age, but his flippant personality made him look a bit younger than the other two. He might have been the youngest, actually. His most prominent features were his long silvery hair and his green eyes.
“What does it feel like to you all?” I asked the trio.
After a moment’s thought, Zinal answered, “It’s like a chill… I sense something scary and eerie.”
Garitt nodded. “Same here. I always look around whenever I feel it, but I never see anything. There aren’t any auras or even a quiver of magic energy, either.”
“Oh dear.”
“It’s a bit different for me. I feel like a presence is there, watching me.”
Watching him? Does that mean whatever this thing is gets close to people?
“What? Fische, you should’ve said something sooner!”
Uh-oh, he didn’t tell them?
My father chuckled softly as he watched the three bicker. Garitt and Zinal both heaved loud sighs of frustration.
“You don’t sense an aura, and you don’t sense magic energy… Wait a minute…” I felt like I’d said that phrase once before. Where was it? I think it was at that dump in the forest…when that monster attacked me. “Oh! It was that monster that attacked me in the forest!”
“What?!” all four men gasped.
I was so scared from the attack that I forgot about it, but it was that monster! It happened at the illegal dump we found in the forest on the way to Hatahi Village. The monster that attacked me then had no aura and no magic energy. Oh, but I was able to sense something out there that day, and Ciel could spot where it was when it got close enough. So it was similar, but maybe not quite the same?
“Ivy, what’s on your mind?”
The voice calling my name snapped me out of my thought spiral. I looked around to see four pairs of worried eyes staring at me.
“You okay?” My father looked worried.
But I couldn’t be bothered with that now. There was something I needed to know. “Dad, remember how we found that illegal dump in the forest on our way to Hatahi Village? The really big one.”
“Yeah… Yeah, I remember. It was big for an illegal dump, too… Oh, it was that monster!”
Oh, good. He remembers.
“Exactly! Remember how we got attacked by monsters over and over when we were near that dump? I feel like those monsters are a lot like whatever we’re dealing with right now.”
Though there were some differences, of course.
“Mr. Druid, Miss Ivy, can you tell us more?” Zinal looked grim.
“We were attacked by some monsters on the way to Hatahi Village,” my father explained. “And we didn’t sense any auras or magic energy coming from them. The only difference was that we could sense their presence if we got close enough.”
“I could tell there was something there, too, once it got near me,” I added. “So I don’t think we can say it’s exactly the same thing.”
You know, what did I sense back then? It wasn’t magic energy, it wasn’t an aura… Wait, maybe it actually was magic energy?
“Do you know what breed of monster it was?”
“I don’t think the breed matters… I think it went through a sudden change from the magic energy at the illegal dump.”
“From the magic energy in the trash, then…” Garitt got a sour look on his face.
“Yeah, we just might be in the middle of a worst-case scenario.” Zinal sighed and scratched his head.
I gave him a funny look. Why was magic energy in trash such a big problem?
“Is there something special about magic energy from trash, sir?”
“Did you know that trash-disposal powers have decreased quite a lot in the past few years?” Fische asked.
My father and I nodded yes. We knew that problems had started cropping up a little while earlier.
Zinal looked at us and continued, “Monsters in Kashime, the town near the capital, have eaten magic energy from the trash and are going berserk.”
“They have?”
But I thought there were lots of tamers around the capital. Was I wrong?
“There are a lot of tamers around there, but their waste-disposal powers have gone way downhill over the years. Meanwhile, there are more and more people living in the capital and its surrounding areas. Well, I think you know how that’s turned out. And it all happened because we didn’t put restrictions on the people.”
Now it made sense.
“Sometimes monsters eat magic energy and go berserk, but this particular monster possessed an unusually powerful kind of magic.”
“An unusually powerful kind?” my father asked.
Garitt nodded. “That’s right. It was fire magic. It turned several adventurers to ash in the blink of an eye.”
To ash? But isn’t it incredibly hard for even the highest-level monsters to vaporize a person that quickly?
“Is it on the level of a fire dragon, then?”
“Sounds like it, yeah.”
A fire dragon was a high-level monster that specialized in fire magic. Could a monster really get that powerful just from eating magic energy at a dump?
“Um, I have a question…”
Garitt looked at me. “What is it?”
“Isn’t the magic energy at dumps incredibly weak? It’s hard to believe that a monster could collect enough of it to get as powerful as a fire dragon.”
Unless there was just that much trash? In a way, that would be the most frightening thing of all.
“The inspectors from the capital had similar doubts, but there have been several cases of these abnormally powerful monsters going berserk now. So they’ve formed a theory that eating magic energy from dumps might infuse monsters with large amounts of powerful magic.”
“The investigation isn’t finished yet, so we don’t know for sure, but that’s what the scientists are saying.” Fische shrugged his shoulders.
“Looks like they’re done,” Zinal said.
I looked toward the gate and saw that the wounded adventurers and the watchmen were headed back into the village.
“Let’s go back to the village. It might be dangerous out here.”
I looked to the gate. Oh, look. There’re more gatekeepers now.
“They beefed up security. That’s three times as many as usual, I think.” Zinal took off for the gate, and Garitt gestured to me and my father that we should go ahead. With a little bow, we followed after Zinal.
“We were right. It looks like the adventurers were wounded by some unknown monster,” Fische said.
Zinal and Garitt nodded. I remembered the pile of injured people on the ground and thought back to the time when I was attacked. I’d really been scared then.
“It’ll all be okay,” my dad said.
I looked up at him, and he gently patted my head. “Yes, it will,” I answered. As his hand lightly stroked my head, I felt the pent-up tension I’d unknowingly been keeping there melt away. “I’m glad I remembered.”
“Hm?” My dad peered into my face, overhearing my little remark to myself. I gave him a reassuring smile, and he gave my head another pat.
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