Chapter 107

Toward securing one million gold coins, Frost and the others, who might hold important information, were properly alive.

Cole seemed to have restrained himself, and they had not even had a single nosebleed.

When Iiria patted him on the shoulder, Cole looked as though he had been rewarded by that alone.

Then, when we asked the two prisoners about abandoned mines, an answer came back immediately.

And it was an answer that made one think the darkest place was under the lighthouse, or rather, once it was said, it made sense.

“You’re saying the records of those abandoned mines are somewhere here?”

After hearing from Frost and the others, we headed, with Iiria in the lead, to the underground storehouse of the lord’s mansion.

There, various records left by successive lords were piled up haphazardly.

During the commotion with Nodon, when the matter of taxes had come up, we had gone through the past records once, but the ones we had deemed unrelated had been shoved onto shelves and left there.

For example, the large piles of ancient records of magic stone deliveries.

According to Frost and the others, what had once been governed under the name Jirenu was the entire sea area centered on this island, and there had apparently been several small magic stone mines there. They had been mined out over the course of history, eroded by waves, and finally sunk beneath the sea.

According to Frost, it was from quite long ago, from an age that even retired old men had heard about from their grandfathers.

Frost and the others knew about this because, after hearing that a dragon had emerged from Jirenu’s magic stone mine, they had investigated records on their side as well. Their reasoning was that if the mine was that fertile, magic stones might also be mined from the reefs around Jirenu.

I was impressed, thinking that was just what one would expect from a city where greedy companies gathered, but apparently there had been delivery slips in Roran’s old records from places different from the current magic stone mine.

“Thinking about getting covered in dust again makes me sick of it.”

Iiria had probably remembered the time we fought Nodon.

As I hunched my shoulders, Cole said,

“We will handle searching through the materials. These guys can read too.”

Cole indicated the two beastmen who were practically his brothers.

Taking the initiative to shoulder difficult work was Cole’s way of atoning.

However, Kururu cut in there.

“This is Iiria-sama’s mansion. I cannot leave it only to outsiders like you.”

Kururu, who had rolled up her sleeves, had wrapped cloth around her head so her hair would not get covered in dust.

Cole lowered his face at the word outsiders, but Kururu had said “only to outsiders,” and she had not told Cole to leave either.

“Come on, what are you standing around for?”

“Huh, ah?”

Ignoring the bewildered Cole, Kururu gave instructions to the two beastmen.

“You take from here to here. You take this side.”

The two beastmen looked at each other, then nodded.

“And the young master gets around here. It’s the dustiest place. You’re happy about that, aren’t you?”

“……”

She was exactly like a senior hazing a newcomer, but the two beastmen who followed Cole did not throw a lifeline to the bewildered Cole.

Rather, they were smiling a little, and seemed to have judged that things would be fine.

“Yorinobu, you go boil water for washing off the dust.”

“As you wish.”

At those words, Iiria, standing beside me, perked up her ears sharply and struck my leg with her bushy tail.

And so the work progressed, and on the following day—

It was Cole who dug up the treasure.

Based on the old records excavated from the lord’s mansion, we gathered stories from the town’s fishermen and elders, and grasped the approximate location of the abandoned mine that had sunk into the sea.

After that, since we had no choice but to actually search with our own eyes, we borrowed a fishing boat and went out to sea.

Since we would be going a certain distance into the open sea, the boat we borrowed was a relatively large fishing boat, but it seemed to be used for chasing large prey, and huge harpoons and such were placed on it.

“This is quite a heavily equipped boat.”

“You’re saying that while dressed like that?”

Kururu was dressed as Dorasutel and had brought magic stones too.

“If we believe the old story about the abandoned mine, this outfit is appropriate, isn’t it?”

The magician Dorasutel was the protagonist of a famous story in this world.

And in the documents left underground in the lord’s mansion, an unsettling old tale had indeed remained.

“I think it was a threat meant to deter illegal mining. You frighten children by telling them there are ghosts deep in the forest too, don’t you?”

The one rowing at the stern was Badadam, the beastman who had rowed the boat for us when we negotiated with Roran’s fleet.

Since he was skilled at handling boats, we had asked him to serve as boatman for this investigation as well.

“But I heard fish can’t be caught around there, and there are many boat accidents. They say it’s an ill-omened sea area no one goes to.”

“Fish have places they like too, and the reason there are many accidents is because reefs are hidden under the surface. No fisherman would go out of his way to such a place when there aren’t even any fish.”

At Badadam’s extremely reasonable words, Kururu looked dissatisfied.

“When the time comes, I am counting on you.”

Perhaps sensing the obvious consideration in my words, Kururu snorted.

There was, of course, a reason Kururu was fully armed.

In the old documents left in the storehouse, a monstrous fish that attacked ships had been drawn in an extremely archaic style.

There had also been the matter of the dragon that came out of the magic stone mine, so behind the boat we were riding in, another boat was following just in case.

On that boat was Gerario, sleep-deprived after watching the offshore fleet all night, snoring away.

The one rowing the boat was Dodol, who looked dissatisfied.

“Well, of course, it would be best if nothing happened.”

Kururu looked at me and hunched her shoulders as if to say I was a boring fellow.

According to the old records, the abandoned mine that had once existed could apparently be seen even from Jirenu’s harbor, but because of mining and wave erosion, it now seemed to have completely sunk below the sea surface.

Even when I looked into the sea from the boat, it was a deep blue, and I could not see the seabed at all.

I wondered if there really was a mine in a place like this.

Eventually, by the time even the seabirds that approached when they saw fishing boats disappeared, the creak, creak of rowing oars stopped.

When that happened, the sea was very quiet, and only the splashing sound of waves hitting the hull echoed strangely.

“Have we arrived?”

In response to Kururu’s question, Badadam, who had been communicating with Dodol behind us through some gestures, began rowing again.

“We rarely come here, you see. I want to avoid suddenly going thud into a reef that pops up out of nowhere. This boat is borrowed too. If I put a scratch on it, I’ll be working for free for a while.”

Of course, in such a case, we intended to cover the cost, but if the boat capsized, the distance was far too great to swim home.

As Badadam rowed cautiously, before long, even my eyes could tell that the color of the sea had changed. The change from deep blue to a brighter color was because the seabed was rising sharply like a cliff.

I could not tell from far away, but I began to see places where white waves were faintly rising, and I understood that the reefs had come almost up to the sea surface.

“Can you get close to that?”

Kururu pointed to the place ahead where white waves were rising. It was a little rough, but the plan was for Kururu to fire magic, break the rocks, and obtain a sample.

Badadam seemed reluctant to enter a reef area he was not used to, but he had no choice and began rowing.

The reefs were shaped like a canyon beneath the sea, and a depression like a channel ran through the middle of the reef zone.

Just after the boat moved into it—

Kururu’s tail suddenly stood on end.

“Huh?”

As I was startled, I heard some kind of voice from the boat behind us, and when I turned around, Badadam’s whole body hair was standing on end as well.

Beyond him, perhaps awakened by the abnormality, was Gerario’s face as he shouted something.

Then my field of vision suddenly tilted.

At the utterly unreal sight, I thought perhaps I had been dozing and was seeing a waking dream.

No.

By the time I realized the surface of the sea beneath the boat was swelling upward, Kururu, who was gripping a magic stone in her right hand, had shouted,

“It’s coming!”

Immediately after that, the boat tilted sharply, and I was nearly thrown out.

Badadam grabbed me by the collar there, and nothing happened.

Then, right before my eyes and nose as I turned around—

My eyes met with the thing piercing the heavens from the sea surface.

“Gyoaaaaaaaa!”

What opened its fang-filled mouth and roared was, of all things—

“Eat this!”

“Ah!?”

Immediately after a heat ray burst forth together with a flash, the sea dragon, its long, slender neck burned through, began tracing an arc without even closing its roaring mouth.

Before long, a huge mass violently plunged into the water and raised an extravagant splash.

It was not as much as when magic had been fired at Roran’s fleet, but the boat rocked, and we were soaked with spray.

However, Kururu’s cat ears, while her right hand remained raised, twitched smugly and flicked off the water droplets that had splashed onto them.

“Hmph. As if I would lose to something like that now—wait, what’s wrong?”

Kururu, who had slaughtered the dragon that appeared from the sea in an instant, turned toward me and looked blank.

“……N-no……”

When the sea surface calmed down, the dragon’s body, which had sunk once, floated up with its belly showing.

Unlike the dragon we had exterminated in the magic stone mine, it had dolphin-like skin without scales, and it was gray overall.

It had no wings or claws, and instead had fins like large fans.

As I stared blankly at its corpse from the boat, I unconsciously muttered in Japanese.

“……But it was a dinosaur……”

“What?”

It was not a fantasy-style dragon, but a dinosaur no matter how one looked at it—a plesiosaur.

Unlike the one in the magic stone mine, it was exactly like something from the illustrated encyclopedias I had devoured as a child.

That admired plesiosaur had become a pitiful corpse in an instant.

That fact shocked me to a degree that surprised even myself.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you hurt? Your face is completely pale.”

Kururu, slightly panicked, grabbed my shoulders and shook me.

My neck rocked back and forth, and I pressed the corners of my eyes.

“Sorry, I don’t even know what’s what myself……”

Of course, that was not an Earth dinosaur, and Kururu’s response had been wonderful. Running away would have been impossible, so there had been no choice but to defeat it.

Moreover, since the dragon must have been born from the influence of magic stones, even if it was still unclear whether it was fertile, there was no doubt that a vein existed beneath the sea surface. More than anything, dragons sold for a high price. Now that we needed a large sum of money to buy ships from Roran, it would be a considerable help.

From Kururu’s perspective, she probably thought she would be greeted with thunderous applause.

And yet the fool on the boat was, for some reason, making a face like he was about to cry.

I somehow held back the overflowing sadness and looked at the corpse of the sea dragon being rocked by the waves in its pitiful state.

“We have to bring the dinosaur……no, the dragon back, don’t we? Let’s return to the harbor for now to call for support boats.”

“Y-yeah.”

The bewildered Kururu exchanged glances with Badadam.

Badadam timidly looked toward the dragon’s corpse and stared hard into the seabed as though wondering whether there might be any others, but before long he took up the oar.

Kururu, who should have been triumphantly proud after defeating the dragon, seemed somewhat downcast as she glanced at me repeatedly.

And after all the fishermen in town had finished towing the dragon’s corpse to the harbor—

Only Kengo sympathized with my feelings.