Chapter 18

Mel-san sat facing Clara-sama, while Yoshioka and I stood at attention behind her. It felt pretty cool, like we were official aides.

“Akito, can you ensure our voices don’t leak out of this room?”

“Yes. I’ll cast a Wind Barrier spell.”

Amazing! Yoshioka can use magic like that too?

“It’s basically like an application of noise-canceling technology,” he whispered to me. Since our voices are sound waves, he uses magic to hit them with opposing phases to nullify the sound.

“Complete. Not a single sound will leak now.”

“Good work. Let me introduce her properly once more. This is Lady Mercedes Heize. To me, she is a maternal cousin.”

Mel-san and I exchanged a polite nod.

“For now, I am simply Mel of the adventurer party ‘Silver Knife.’ I’d appreciate it if you kept the Heize family name under wraps.”

Undercover operations, huh?

According to Clara-sama’s explanation, Mel-san was a knight enlisted in the Royal Army. Unlike Clara-sama, who was a landed Knight Bachelor with her own territory, Mel-san was the type of knight who received a formal salary. While the distinction wasn’t strictly rigid, it seemed Clara-sama held a slightly higher social rank as a noble.

“I suspect you two have already gathered as much, but Mercedes-dono is conducting a secret investigation. …It concerns Zombies.”

Zombies—the so-called “walking dead.” They attack the living, feast on flesh, and anyone bitten becomes one of them.

“A viral infection, maybe?” I wondered aloud.

“Could be. If it’s a virus, we wouldn’t know without an electron microscope, and even if we found it, I wouldn’t have a clue how to treat it anyway,” Yoshioka added.

Clara-sama and Mel-san listened to our exchange with puzzled expressions.

“Ah, my apologies for interrupting. Please, continue.”

“Umu. It began with a sighting by a single Circuit Priest.”

In the Kingdom of Saxens, Nordism is recognized as the state religion. The Church of Nord has branches everywhere, appointing priests to oversee each one. Even a tiny village like Ebba-berg has a temple and an appointed priest. However, it’s simply impossible to station a priest in every single settlement. Those who travel to regions without a resident priest to perform religious rites and legal proceedings are known as Circuit Priests.

Clara-sama continued her explanation.

“North of here, past a mountain trail, lies a small settlement called Dortranfur. It was in that village of fewer than forty people that the Circuit Priest witnessed the Zombies.”

The priest made his rounds through the nearby villages roughly once a month. He had headed toward Dortranfur as usual but noticed something was wrong immediately. Since the path into the village crosses over a mountain, he was able to look down upon the settlement from a high vantage point—a fact that saved his life. Upon seeing the Zombies wandering about and groaning, the priest turned and fled in a panic.

“If only he’d wiped them out on the spot, it would have saved us the trouble. But he was a mere preacher, not an Exorcist,” Mel-san said casually. Though she made it sound easy, I figured taking on multiple targets alone would be a nightmare. It seemed “Exorcists” were combat-trained priests who specialized in fighting monsters and evil spirits.

“Well, I can at least credit him for not blabbing about the Zombies to everyone and reporting it immediately to his superiors.”

If word got out that Zombies were appearing, the common folk would descend into a total panic. But was keeping it a secret really the right move?

“Um, wouldn’t it be better to inform everyone about the Zombies so each settlement can stay on guard?”

“That is the intention, of course. However, our country is currently at war. Superiors worry that this kind of information could be exploited for military purposes, so they want to keep the spread of info to a minimum. That is why we have come to cull the Zombies under the guise of adventurers.”

I see.

“So the members of ‘Silver Knife’ are actually soldiers of the Royal Army?”

“Correct. This area is under the direct jurisdiction of the Kingdom, so we are the ones who must handle it.”

Zombies apparently don’t have much offensive power individually. They are strong, but their movements are sluggish; as long as you don’t get surrounded, they aren’t considered terrifying opponents. That’s why Mel-san and her six-man squad had come to eliminate them discreetly. Even if every villager had turned, there were fewer than forty of them. A group of six was more than enough.

However, no matter how secretly they handled it, they couldn’t avoid warning the neighboring villages. The problem was that they lacked the manpower to spread the warning while also carrying out the extermination.

“Truth be told, I’m at the point where I’d take help from a dog. I have twelve subordinates, but if I divert all my manpower to zombies, there’ll be no one left to police the town’s crimes. I’ve requested reinforcements from the neighboring garrisons, but even by optimistic estimates, they won’t arrive for another three days.”

So, it would actually take four days or more.

“Ideally, I’d head for Dortranfur this very moment, but if we pushed it, we’d have ended up camping in the mountains tonight. Crossing paths with the enemy in the winter mountains… the thought alone is terrifying, isn’t it?”

Personally, I’d hate every second of it!

“And so, just as I was at my wit’s end, my dear cousin conveniently showed up.”

Clara-sama gave a wry smile.

“I have military duties in the Royal Capital, you know.”

“But you’ll help me, won’t you? Especially since you’re accompanied by such capable-looking attendants.”

Oh, she praised us!

In short, it meant we just had to make the rounds to the surrounding villages and spread the warning. But what should we do if we actually encountered zombies?

“Um, what should we do if a village we visit has already fallen to the zombies?”

Mel-san let out a heavy sigh.

“I’d rather not think about it, but in that case, I want you to exterminate them if possible. Gather the corpses and cremate them.”

I figured it would come to that.

Back in the communal room, we sat on the edge of our beds. Even by the small flicker of the hearth, I could tell Yoshioka’s face was pale. His first real battle was looming right in front of him. It was only natural to feel the terror of a first campaign.

I was committed to following Clara-sama, but Yoshioka—who had been turned into a Summoned Beast as a set with me—probably didn’t have that resolve yet.

“Yoshioka, you can wait here if you want. It would be a big help if you just watched the luggage.”

“…It’s okay. I’ll… I’ll go with you.”

Even if he said that… Yoshioka’s fingertips were trembling.

“Think it over carefully before you decide. I’ll ask you one more time tomorrow morning.”

Resolve, huh… Come to think of it, I didn’t exactly have much resolve myself. But I had a contract with Clara-sama. If I quit halfway, I’d lose “Gecko Hand.” It was a handy Skill. More than the Skill, though, I hated the idea of losing Clara-sama’s trust.

I woke up to the presence of someone nearby. I felt like something was moving in the corner of the room. The sun hadn’t risen yet—who was it?

I thought I heard a small sigh… Yoshioka? Had he been unable to sleep because he was overthinking things? The fire in the hearth was already dying out and the room was dark, but my eyes gradually adjusted.

Looking at the next bed over, Yoshioka wasn’t there. It seemed the person in the corner was indeed him. Wait… was he not alone?

Straining my eyes, I realized it was the silhouettes of two people entwined. Was that Yoshioka and… Petra-san!?

Yoshioka was sitting on the floor, and the figure of a person on all fours—their head seemingly buried in his lap—floated faintly in the darkness. I couldn’t see the face from here, but that red hair was unmistakably Petra-san’s.

…If I recalled correctly, Yoshioka was a twenty-three-year-old virgin. He used to say, “If you protect your virginity until you’re thirty, you can become a mage.” Since he’d become a “Sage’s Egg” instead of a mage, had he decided to just toss it away?

Jokes aside, he was probably just scared. I’d heard that when humans feel their lives are in danger, their sex drive spikes. Apparently, the instinct of the species tries to leave behind offspring. Whether that’s true or not, it was certain that a sort of excitement had messed with Yoshioka’s mental state. He might have been seduced by Petra-san, who just happened to wake up at the same time.

I quietly rolled over and closed my eyes. Even without me knowing, it wouldn’t be strange for there to be some romantic exchange between the two. …Though, it really only looked like a predator devouring its prey. It was the literal definition of “getting eaten.”

“Mngh…”

“Ahhh…”

Faint sounds of their activities leaked out from the darkness. Yoshioka… this is exactly when you should have used that Wind Barrier spell! Even so, he was probably just panicking.

The sounds of the two writhing in the dark continued for about fifteen minutes before silence fell… or so I thought, until it started again. And then… silence once more. Or so I thought, until again…

The next morning, as everyone began to wake up in the communal room, the image of Petra-san’s satisfied, sleeping face as she indulged in late slumber—and Yoshioka sleeping curled up like a child—was quite striking.