The Capital And The Frontier

“Haa, haa… anyway! We hate humans. Getting along with them is impossible.”

“Is even letting them go not an option?”

“Why should we have to put up with that? What do we gain from it?”

“What do you gain, huh…”

“I’m telling you, from our perspective humans are vermin. Vermin. They’re not much different from goblins.”

Even as he thought, She’d really go that far, huh, something caught in Kikori’s mind.

If humans and goblins were treated about the same… then goblins were vermin too?

Even though they were both monsters?

“…From the human side’s knowledge, I’d heard that fairies are monsters too, and that monsters normally don’t fight each other.”

“Normally, no. That’s because the hierarchy is mostly pretty clear. There’s just no point in fighting. Things were mostly stable too… well, though I don’t know what’ll happen now.”

“And that’s, after all…”

“Because of the labyrinthization. If I had to guess, all kinds of things have probably been scattered apart. If that’s the case, then naturally there’d be things like wanting to regroup with your own kind, or wanting to return to the place you originally belonged. I think that kind of phenomenon is happening.”

“But the ‘place’ itself doesn’t change, right?”

“That’s true. But the ‘position’ is different, isn’t it?”

Once she said that much, Kikori realized a certain fact.

Maybe, just maybe.

Had the very idea that monsters “came near the Hero Gate looking for weak humans” been wrong from the start?

That was how it had been explained, so he had assumed that was just how things were… but to monsters, the area around the Hero Gate should have been the front line against the hostile creatures called humans.

And yet, weak monsters were distributed there?

“The capital and the frontier…”

“Huh? What did you say?”

“Is there a ‘center’ where strong monsters gather, and the area near the human city is like the countryside or the frontier to monsters?”

“Ahh… it’s pretty much like that, I guess?”

That certainly felt much more convincing.

But at the same time, it also suggested a single fact.

Could it be that monsters were not all that eager about the “subjugation” of humans?

If that were true…

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but monsters always want to kill humans.”

“Huh?”

“They just don’t do it aggressively because they can kill them anytime. Also, there’s no benefit in taking regions with thin mana.”

He could understand that.

But that made no sense.

Then what had that goblin army that attacked the Hero Gate been?

“But the goblins attacked, didn’t they? Led by a General…”

“Well, sure, those guys are hated. Maybe they thought they’d get themselves a nice house.”

“And the reason humans call this place the Contaminated Region is—”

“Isn’t it accurate? It was humans who used idiotic magic and made an environment they themselves can’t live in, right?”