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The more the knights and the mercenaries swung their weapons, the thinner the swarm of Kyulen overhead grew. The beasts had thrown themselves in on instinct, drawn by the smell of humans, and they fled again at exactly the same speed.

They had worked out that sharp fangs and hide alone could not beat humans armored from head to foot. That quickness of judgment was also the reason the Kyulen, a weakling even among monsters, had survived in the Black Forest this long.

“Gone? Have they gone now?”
“Y-yeah. I think so.”

Once the last one was confirmed gone, sighs of relief broke out all around. A fair number lost the strength in their legs and sank down where they stood, half collapsing.

“Oh, thank goodness. We’re alive.”
“Thank you!”

The workers, who had been shielded from start to finish, could not thank the knights and the mercenaries enough.

The attacks had come at random from overhead, but the knights and the mercenaries had fought for their lives to protect the workers, and the logging team came away with nobody seriously hurt. A few mercenaries had been raked by Kyulen claws or had their skin torn open, but the wounds were not grave.

Urun looked over the injured, the ruined weapons and the state of the carpenters in turn. For an attack out of nowhere, the defense had held up rather well. Satisfied there were no serious casualties, the vice-commander let out a great breath of relief and settled quickly on what had to be done next.

Whatever the scale of their strength, monsters shunned other species by instinct, so several kinds never lived mixed together in one place. Little chance, then, of anything but Kyulen making a home here.

Urun spoke to those still scanning the surroundings.

“Collect the Kyulen’s fangs and gather them in one place! Anyone who takes a fang without permission will be punished severely!”

Kyulen fangs were hard, and much used as material for spears and daggers. They were also dear, the kind of material that commoners, or knights who were not nobles, could not so much as dream of.

Regret sat thick in the eyes of the mercenaries who heard the order. They were too busy scraping a living to ever turn one into a weapon, but they knew that carrying a single fang out and selling it would feed a family comfortably for a month.

“Heave-ho!”
“Why won’t the thing come out!”

From every side came grunting and straining as fangs were worked loose from Kyulen jaws. The carpenters could not go near the corpses and stayed huddled together in the middle, while the knights and the mercenaries, beside themselves with delight, had no attention to spare for anything but the pulling.

The fangs came to more than a hundred and twenty in all. Four to a Kyulen meant they had dealt with at least thirty of them.

“What shall we do with the corpses?”

Nor were the fangs the only prize. A Kyulen’s wings were among the hides that traded dear.

Urun thought the question over a moment, then set the sack packed full of fangs up on the cart. Fangs though they were, each was the size of a grown man’s index finger, and the sack had a solid weight to it. Urun shouted, loud enough to carry.

“For now we concentrate on the Komo trees! We collect the Kyulen corpses on the way back, once the logging is done!”
“Other monsters could damage the corpses in the meantime!”

The shout came from one mercenary with a hand thrust into the air, plainly grudging the loss of the Kyulen hide.

The waste of the hide was not lost on Urun either. But carrying out the lord’s command came first now.

“We concentrate on the Komo trees.”

Groans broke out here and there at the flat answer. Leaving their regret behind them, the logging team set off deeper into the Black Forest.

Julia and Monel were finer tailors than anyone had expected. Less than half a day after the order to try making the skirt-trousers, the two of them were knocking at the study door with the result in their hands.

“You’ve finished already?”

Dong-hui asked the two of them again as they stood there with something draped over their arms. At the lord’s disbelieving question, Julia gave a bashful smile.

“The design is a very simple one, and Julia’s hands are quick, so we were able to make it faster than we expected.”

Monel had stepped forward to answer for them both, and even so, made a point of turning the credit toward Julia.

“That really is something!”

Dong-hui lifted up the skirt-trousers the two of them had made, admiring them in earnest. The legs were cut so wide that unless you looked closely you would never know they were trousers. Exactly as she had asked.

“I have to try them on this instant!”

When Dong-hui stood up with the skirt-trousers in her hands, Anna rose to attend her. She had been about to say she would put them on by herself, and changed her mind at once. However plain the design of the dress she had on, she was still not used to getting out of one alone.

At the lord’s word, the quick-witted Monel took Julia, who was standing there with her face full of expectation, and led her outside. Julia hung back, not understanding why she was being dragged along, then caught Monel’s meaning a beat too late and hurried to shut the door.

Out of her dress with Anna’s help, Dong-hui hurried into the skirt-trousers.

“Oho! These are seriously comfortable!”

She turned this way and that in front of the mirror, admiring herself. If there was a fault, it was only that the waist-tie had been set at the back so the line of the garment would show to better effect. She could tie it herself easily enough, but having it come round to the front would surely be more comfortable.

Dong-hui was not the only one looking at the skirt-trousers as a curiosity. Anna’s eyes went wide at a form of clothing she had never seen before, and she studied the garment closely. The legs were wide and the waist deeply gathered, so that unless you looked hard it was a dress and nothing else. Only, set against the other dresses that spread out wide as umbrellas, it did look excessively subdued.

Still turning back and forth in front of the mirror, Dong-hui called Julia and Monel in from outside. The two came in with their faces tight with nerves, and only then, at the bright look on the lord in the skirt-trousers, did their faces ease into relieved smiles.

She spun round to face the two tailors.

“Bring this tie at the back round to the front. So I can tie it myself.”
“To the front? But then the look of it…”

Monel said it with a troubled face.

“No, it’s fine. Make the tie very pretty and it’ll be a splendid ornament. Vary the color and the shape of the ribbon, and just changing the tie will make it look like a different design, won’t it?”
“Yes! Understood.”

Julia and Monel answered loudly, thrilled by the boldness of the lord’s order.

“And I’d like a top to wear with the skirt-trousers as well. Nothing too close-fitting, and nothing hung all over with frills and lace. Especially not on the sleeves. They get in the way of moving.”
“Yes!”

The more Dong-hui talked, the more the color drained from Anna’s face beside her. Because turning her ladyship out prettily was one of her own most important duties.

“Oh, and if you have time left over, make me a few dresses for going out, too. Buy whatever materials you like. As I said before, lace is not welcome.”

She needed formal clothes as well, for an official occasion that might come up, or for when guests arrived.

“B-but if clothes as important as that were made by us…”
“It’s fine. Just make them so they suit me. Show me everything the two of you have got hidden away.”

Honestly, she had no idea where one went to have a dress fitted and no time to go out either, so she had said it more or less off the top of her head. Julia and Monel looked genuinely overcome.

“May we really buy whatever cloth we like?”
“Mm-hm. Take the chance and make as much as you want to make. Ah — after all the children’s clothes are done, mind. Understood?”
“Yes! Understood.”

The two of them answered with such force that the sound rang round the study.

That was when it happened.

A blue window blinked into being, and thick white letters rose up glittering.

The Hidden Shop!

Glad at the sight of it, she was about to nod when she remembered she was not alone in the room.

“Off you go, then. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

At that the two tailors smiled broadly, made their bows and left the study. Then she told Anna as well that she wanted to rest a while, and went into her room alone.

Alone at last, Dong-hui called up the status window again, and the window put up the line asking whether to open the Hidden Shop, as though it had been waiting for her. She had kept the alarm tone muted and so had not been paying attention, but favorability must have climbed a great deal.

Her heart fluttering with excitement, Dong-hui opened the Hidden Shop.

“Yeah, open it!”

Two thousand points, no less. The most she had ever been given until now was a thousand points, and she was full of expectation for what two thousand might do.

Dong-hui nodded quickly.

Customer reviews, of all things.

The item had not been there before.

Does that mean somebody besides me has used the Hidden Shop?

Dong-hui glared hard at the last item, then answered.

“Best customer reviews first.”

Perhaps because she had points to spare, she did not start from the lowest price the way she had last time.

The status window’s crooked salesmanship, out to squeeze sorting points out of her on top of everything else, left Dong-hui speechless. Irritation shot up, but two thousand points had put her in a very generous frame of mind, so she called out a leisurely ‘go’.

“There’ll be no reselecting. Customer reviews, go-go.”

Dong-hui was terribly curious about what sort of people besides herself had gone through this process.

Did they open their eyes and find themselves dropped into this world, the way I did?
And could they go back and forth through the front door and carry things over?
I was told there was nothing left alive in that space but me — was it the same for them?

Questions shot up every which way until her head was a tangled mess.

She was trembling so hard it felt as though her heart would come leaping out through the pit of her stomach.