174

Night fell.

The darkness of night instinctively stirred fear, but for me, with this body that was no longer human, even in the forest it only became dim.

“…No good. I’m completely lost.”

I stood there at a loss in the forest.

A dark forest was unsettling all on its own.

And a monster like this was stomping around in it.

If this wasn’t horror, then what was?

If I weren’t me, I’d be running away—said the very center of the horror element, shouting in denial.

“Honestly, this is not even remotely funny,” I muttered, bleakly staring into a future that was literally pitch-black, and for now set a goal: move east and find the river.

I couldn’t proceed until I got a grasp of my current location.

Once I suspected I might be lost, moving around was a mistake.

Maybe my confidence in my physical abilities had unconsciously permitted reckless behavior.

(It’s not life-threatening… but still—yeah, I got careless.)

Keeping my reflections on how I’d ended up here in mind, I found east by the positions of the moon and stars and started walking.

Since this was probably unexplored territory, I moved while searching for any old-Imperial facilities.

Unfortunately, I didn’t discover anything, but around midnight I did reach the river safely.

“Now then, the problem starts here…”

Should I go north or south?

After thinking a little, I decided to head north.

The reason was that to the north there were recognizable landmarks—terrain I’d seen before, ruins of bases, fortresses.

So I lightly ran along the winding river.

On the way, I saw light on the far side of the river, so I used my telescopic vision to check—and there was a group that looked like hunters camping out.

Curious, I watched for a while, and it seemed there were probably three parties.

The first was a sweaty, cramped-looking team of nothing but men—musclebound.

It was a brainless heavy-armor lineup that didn’t feel like a magic nation at all, but from how the other parties clearly didn’t treat them well, it looked like this was still a country where mages ran the show.

The second was a team composed entirely of beautiful women.

Their composition was well-balanced: a knight, a mage, and a lightly armored hunter who looked like the scout.

I couldn’t tell about the knight because of the metal armor, but the female mage had the same off-the-shoulder style as that boob lady from before.

Not quite as big, but still better than average.

As for the scout—tragically flat.

Lastly, there was a harem party: one man and three women…

But the man never came out of the tent, and only the women kept going in and out.

I wonder what they were doing?

I felt like storming in and punching someone, but I held back.

I didn’t have time for that.

Right as I got over that impulse, a shirtless man finally came out of the tent, called out to the women’s party, and got chased off by a fiery arrow.

It wasn’t hard to imagine what he’d said.

(A joint job involving multiple teams… a big target? Or a large-scale subjugation?)

With only visual information, this was about the limit.

Just thinking that I might need to learn the Seizeria Kingdom language too made me feel drained.

Since it was a nation built on magic, wouldn’t it be simpler to just avoid getting involved?

That thought crossed my mind, but I’d already gotten involved with a few people, so it was too late to pretend otherwise.

Keeping in mind that there were multiple hunter parties here, I left.

It wasn’t like I had any particular premonition, but it was enough material to consider the possibility that Seizeria had started expanding westward.

(They’ve definitely been exploring for a while using hunters. Even so… ah, I see.)

In Seizeria, hunters were essentially “exterminators.”

They were groups that hunted monsters, not explorers or adventurers who made a living pushing into uncharted territory.

If so, it made sense that Seizeria’s movements—apparently centered on hunters—were slow.

At the same time, with Canaan turning its attention south, I could also see the background for why Seizeria had begun expanding west in haste.

If things had reached this point, suspicion naturally arose toward the Republic that wanted to bring the former Imperial territory under its control—or rather, toward the Zesat clan, which was likely involved.

And in the south, the Furon Council-State continued steadily pushing north.

(An era of upheaval, with the surrounding nations starting to move as if encircling this Great Forest—and I just so happened to awaken at the exact right moment. That’s a bit too convenient to accept without doubt.)

I didn’t think everything was on someone’s palm, but maybe some kind of future-predicting computer had been created.

While thinking about that and heading north, I finally found terrain I recognized.

“So I finally got back to the start.”

I let my shoulders droop and took a breath.

I would start over once it got light—so I finished hunting and eating before dawn.

Securing meat took less time than expected, so I used the extra time to train magic and resumed my search.

Last time, my movements had been far too sloppy.

So this time, after confirming the position of the military base ruins, I would search near the river in order to find the point where I’d first encountered goblins.

Time had passed, so it was unlikely any traces remained.

At best, I could probably find terrain I remembered.

But given how few leads I had, it was a better plan than nothing.

If only my memory were a little better—but what I didn’t have, I didn’t have.

So I backtracked along the route I’d taken north last night.

It really was easier to grasp terrain in daylight.

No matter how good my night vision was, it wasn’t as clear as daytime.

I reflected that I should have accounted more for that small but significant difference in the way I moved.

Looking around restlessly, I proceeded through the forest near the river.

After a while, I heard a sound like a whistle going pee.

It was probably the group I’d spotted yesterday finding me, but…

There were no people within my detection range, and neither my sense of smell nor hearing reacted to anything like them.

“Hey, hey… how did you find me?”

As I muttered, another possibility occurred to me.

(Ah, right… it could be that they’re encountering something else.)

There might be a reason they had been dispatched here.

And if there was even a zero chance that it was a test subject, I wanted to avoid ignoring it and regretting it later.

Partly out of genuine curiosity, and partly by giving myself a plausible excuse, I decided, “I’ll just take a quick peek,” and hurried in the direction the sound had come from.

If they were in the middle of a fight, watching was also on the table—it would be a good sample of the hunters’ current strength.

After running for about ten minutes, my ears picked up human voices.

I didn’t understand what they were saying, but their tone sounded like they were in a panic.

“An opponent that makes a hunter group struggle—or makes the situation drastically worse… huh…”

Contrary to my hope that it would be something like that, what entered my view was a single ogre.

And it was red.

The battle situation was in terrible shape—plainly speaking, they were on the verge of annihilation.

As for the musclehead team, they had just been wiped out.

With the fifth man’s head smashed in, the frontline was clearly lacking, and the man from the harem party screamed something and ran away, leaving the knight woman as the only frontliner.

It was only a matter of time before the hunters’ side collapsed.

I hadn’t even gotten to properly watch the fight, so there was nothing good about this.

The four women stared blankly at the back of the man who had abandoned his comrades and fled, while the knight woman shouted something at them.

Unless that knight woman was exceptionally skilled, the outcome was already decided.

All they could do now was scatter and run to reduce casualties.

Ogres didn’t use women as toys like goblins did, but they did eat people.

And many of them tended to prefer eating women, with the usual method being while they were still alive.

In a case like this, with multiple women present, it was common for the ogre to devour one or two on the spot and immobilize the rest for storage.

A cruel end, but unless I had a reason to save them, there was no benefit for me either.

The knight woman shouted something, and the other members ran—but as if it had read their movements, the red ogre slipped past the frontliner and reached out toward those trying to flee.

The scout woman succeeded in shaking off that hand, but the mage woman got caught when the ogre hooked its claws into her cloak.

The cloth she wore was torn away, and its teeth were about to sink into her exposed shoulder—

Just before that, the man-eater’s back popped in a small explosion.

Enraged at having its meal interrupted, the ogre threw away the mage it had caught.

Then it fixed its aim on the other mage—still young enough to be called a girl—and charged, but the girl herself seemed frozen in fear, unable to move.

Of the four members of the harem party, two had managed to run away, one chose to resist, and the last one was too terrified to even move, standing there completely still.

They were still young, judging by their builds—but losing and dying was the same in any world.

As if refusing to witness any more tragedy, I turned to leave—and then I stopped dead.

It was really for no particular reason.

Maybe it was only because her hairstyle was similar, but unconsciously—like I needed to confirm—I used my telescopic vision to look at the girl’s face.

A powerless girl who could do nothing but stand frozen in fear.

If it were the girl I knew well, she wouldn’t show such a pathetic sight, and her hair color was different too.

But even so, she looked similar.

“Serine?”

My younger sister’s name slipped out of my mouth.

She should have been a stranger—someone who merely resembled her in facial features, hairstyle, and height.

My family had fled south.

It should have had nothing to do with them.

Even though my head understood that, my legs were already sprinting.