Episode 15

Armored knights moved through a dark forest.

Far from towns and villages, it was a deserted place no one approached without reason. If any humans were here at all, they would be either adventurers hired for periodic monster hunts, or people who made their living in forestry.

This time, the information sent to the knight order had come from a woodcutter.

“This is strange… why would a school of sahagin be in a forest like this?”

They were widely known as aquatic monsters—fish-men in appearance. With harpoons in hand and water magic at their command, some coastal regions even called them “sea gangsters.”

But that was a coastal story, unrelated to this inland area. A woodcutter who happened to be in the forest for work had spotted sahagin, panicked, fled back, and reported it to the knight order.

“This is brutal… what is this, an inter-species war…?”

A tall male knight frowned. In a good light he was slender and long-limbed; in a bad light, he was a scrawny, withered-tree of a man.

What the knights were looking at were numerous monster corpses. Sahagin, and forest orcs that lived in these woods. It was a horrific scene that looked like two packs had collided head-on.

“Mutual kill…? Was this good, in the end? What do you think, Luke?”

A nervous-looking man with glasses. Unlike the two knights, he wore clothes that marked him as a mage. He kept watch while using the staff in his hand to scan for presences.

“No idea. But their habitat is a long way from here. It’s hard to believe they’d come all the way into this forest on purpose. What about you, Skinny?”

Vivid blond hair and neat features. Though slim, he looked solidly built. The knight-order armor he wore had a different design from the others.

“If you two don’t know, why would I? Want me to cast some necromancy and ask these guys?”

Nahal frowned at the tasteless joke.

Necromancy—the art said to call the souls of the dead back to the living world. It remained in texts as a record, but there were no stories of anyone using it in the present age.

“…We can’t do more right now. Let’s return to town for the time being.”

Skinny and Nahal followed Luke’s order as their squad leader. Luke’s squad had been commanded to investigate the forest’s abnormalities.

“Yeah. Still… this mission’s just the three of us?”

“Calm isn’t here. And seriously—doesn’t it feel wrong that they’d send only us, barely two years in, on a mission this suspicious?”

The Calm they mentioned was a woman in the mage corps, a peer who had taken the entrance exam with Luke and the others and passed with them. This time, only Nahal had been dispatched from the mage corps side.

“If you want to look on the bright side, it means we’re being evaluated highly, but…”

Luke had achieved the feat of joining the knight order as the youngest ever. Expectations around him were huge, yet his accomplishments exceeded even that—and in only two years he became a squad leader.

Perhaps influenced by Luke, Skinny and Nahal—close to him as fellow peers—also showed rapid growth and were regarded as promising young talent.

“…My father—Regimental Commander Brink—told me to be careful.”

“For real…? Then this is actually bad.”

All three of them felt it. The indescribable anxiety hanging over this forest. A sense of being in a killing ground even though no monsters could be detected. Like the near-death line they experienced in the entrance exam two years ago was pressing right up against them again.

“It might be my imagination, but the mana here feels dense.”

“I think so too. Something abnormal is definitely happening.”

The three mounted their horses and left the spot behind.

With an unplaceable dread in their chests, they headed for town.

Night fell completely, and lights came on across the town.

As restaurants bustled, Luke and the other two were eating at one such place.

“No reinforcements from the branch, huh.”

“Just because we’re young, they look down on us…”

A provincial city west of the forest Luke’s team had investigated—Westen. Luke and the others had been dispatched from the royal capital under the pretense of cooperating with Westen’s local knight-order branch, but once they arrived, it was nothing but “we’re busy.”

They dumped everything on Luke’s team, and even after hearing the report, they treated it as a random coincidence without concern.

“Sorry. It’s only because I don’t have any pull.”

“Huh? Why are you apologizing? The idiots are them.”

“Yeah. If something really happens, the ones who’ll get hit are either Westen, or Osten beyond the forest. We contacted both this town and HQ. If anything goes wrong, the one losing his head is that branch chief.”

Skinny spat curses, while Nahal’s glasses gleamed suspiciously. From Luke’s perspective, both of them were older, but they had been told to treat each other as peers, and now they had an equal relationship. Luke found them reassuring.

“I want to hope for reinforcements from HQ, but just waiting isn’t a smart play.”

“Right. Something is definitely wrong. We have to do what we can now.”

“Yeah, but… investigating that huge forest with just three people is brutal.”

That was the painful part. With the full picture unknown, there was the fear of insufficient combat power—but beyond that, they were simply short-handed. Even if they discovered the abnormality, it was unclear whether they could respond immediately.

“For now, look—if Luke and Nahal’s scouting finds something obviously wrong, we drag those guys to the site by force. Then they’ll have to work, right?”

“…Am I imagining it, or did that sound like kidnapping?”

Hearing Skinny, Luke laughed—because it sounded like Zeke’s kind of thinking. That friend of his had always had a foul mouth and an evil-genius way of thinking.

“Huh? Why’re you laughing, Luke?”

“To Luke, that just sounded like a joke.”

“Sorry my face looks like a villain…”

“No, no,” Luke said, laughing as he denied it. Skinny only got more annoyed. Of course, he wasn’t truly angry. That closeness was part of their bond.

Other diners watched their exchange from a distance—especially the women, whose gazes at Luke were heated.

Like in the royal capital, Luke was popular with young women wherever he went.

“Tch, again? Our admired squad leader is drowning in attention.”

“More and more people see you off when you leave the capital. As a fellow peer, I’m proud.”

Luke himself had noticed it lately—being stared at more, being spoken to more. But nothing about him had changed. His goal was still far ahead.

“…So what’s the truth? Got someone special?”

“If you’ve been watching me, you already know. There’s no romance going on.”

Skinny and other colleagues asked him that all the time. Sometimes they even tried to introduce women, but Luke declined politely. It wasn’t that he had no interest—he just felt it was too early for that.

‘That reminds me… what about Zeke?’

Unlike Luke the commoner, Zeke was a noble, and as far as Luke knew, House of Lagias only had Zeke as an heir.

Given his age, it wouldn’t be strange if he already had a fiancée. Luke found himself wondering, and started plotting to tease him next time.

‘So… I really haven’t seen him in two years.’

After becoming a knight, Luke had been desperate to adapt to his new life. It was still hard, but he was no longer sent out alone as a rookie; senior and higher-ranking knights were always present. That meant there were not many moments he could truly relax.

Even so, he heard about Zeke often. Even within the knight order, Zeke was famous—for better or worse.

‘The royal capital’s only A-rank adventurer…’

When the capital’s adventurer ranks were revised across the board, only Zeke kept his rank—judged to match his real strength. Zeke himself had been dissatisfied, but Luke felt proud and happy. He even had the urge to brag: my best friend is incredible.

After a year, Luke had more room in both mind and body.

On days off he checked the capital’s Adventurers Association, and during long breaks he returned to Rent Domain and also visited the branch and Lagias Manor. But in the end, he never once managed to meet Zeke.

‘They say he sometimes disappears without even telling Simon-san where he’s going. He’s probably doing something reckless alone again.’

Before Luke was promoted to squad leader, a major incident occurred: a skirmish with a neighboring country threatened to break out.

The domain army guarding the border feared an international crisis and hesitated to attack—only for the enemy to exploit that and invade the territory.

The local lord’s forces, unprepared for war, suffered repeated retreats and could only wait for reinforcements from the kingdom’s army. Then the one who appeared was not the national army, but the “Lagias brat.” Zeke, claiming he had taken a request from a ducal house, fought the neighboring soldiers alone.

The result was a crushing victory for Zeke. Just as the domain army had been unprepared, the enemy soldiers were the same.

They hadn’t intended real war, but the ease of their advance stirred greed, and they overreached—only for Zeke to beat them senseless.

All enemy troops were bound and made prisoners by Zeke, and the incident ended with an exchange for a huge sum of money.

When they returned home, they spread the message at once: in the Kingdom of Diabalet there is a noble named Lagias—an actual monster.

Luke learned the details only after everything ended. He had been away from the royal capital on assignment. When he heard it from his father, Brink, he froze for a moment… then yelped in shock.

‘I’m working hard as a knight to stand on equal footing with Zeke. But at this rate, the gap just keeps widening…’

Luke sank into thought. How could he help his best friend? How could he erase the bad image? How could a House of Lagias, stuck in a precarious position, change? There were too many problems, and his worries never ran out.

“Skinny… Luke went quiet all of a sudden. What’s up with him?”

“Huh? Same as always. He’s just the kind of guy who cares about his buddies.”

As Nahal raised a question mark, Skinny kept eating, and Luke kept thinking quietly—when a man approached their table.

“Huh? What are three guys doing, eating together?”

A man in casual clothes, unlike his usual outfit. Brown hair, long and swept to the side, with the look of a soft-faced charmer.

It was Yorn Grin of the mage corps, eyeing the three with curiosity.

“R-Regimental Commander!? Why are you in a town like this?”

“Because this is my hometown. …Sorry it’s ‘a town like this.’”

Nahal asked Yorn in shock. To Nahal, Yorn—the mage corps regimental commander—was top-tier among top-tier. He couldn’t help tensing up.

“You don’t have to be so stiff. You used to talk to me casually, remember?”

“…That was before I enlisted.”

Yorn tossed out the barb with a natural expression.

He was famous for using many kinds of magic—and also known as a tricky piece of work.

“Are you the reinforcement, Regimental Commander Yorn? That’s very reassuring.”

“Hm? What are you talking about? I’m just home on long leave.”

From what they heard, Yorn had only happened to return to Westen, his hometown. He had arrived this evening.

“Man, don’t get my hopes up like that.”

“…You’re still an idiot, huh. So, Squad Leader Luke—did something happen?”

Luke explained.

That they were in Westen under knight-order orders. That they reported the abnormalities seen in the forest and asked the branch for cooperation, but were brushed off—he told him everything.

As Yorn listened, his face grew more and more grim.

“Contacting the royal capital was good. But asking this town for cooperation was nonsense.”

“Why is that? This should be a case the people of this town solve.”

“Because they don’t want to.”

Yorn said it as if it were obvious. Luke and the others were slow to process it, words failing them.

“As you know, this is a backwater with nothing. It’s got nothing to do with trouble.”

It wasn’t a region swarming with vicious monsters, nor was it on the border. It had no proud specialty products, and it wasn’t an important trade hub. Bandits didn’t come to places where people didn’t gather. It was a perfectly peaceful provincial city.

“So everyone’s awareness is low. They can live a decent life without trying too hard.”

“But we confirmed an abnormality ourselves. If we leave it, this town could be put in danger—”

“That forest is far enough away you need horses, right? There’s another town beyond the forest, too. So it’s probably fine—that’s what the branch really thinks. And I’m saying it as someone born here, so I’m not wrong!”

Seeing Yorn answer with total confidence, Nahal covered his eyes with a hand. He seemed to have endless headaches.

“So… what, then? Maybe it’s not actually that serious?”

“—Of course it’s serious. It’s an obvious abnormal incident.”

The atmosphere changed. The Yorn who had been cracking jokes looked like a different person now.

“Just like we can’t live underwater, aquatic monsters like sahagin have a hard time on land. And yet they could fight forest orcs on even footing. Why do you think that is…?”

“…They can act if it isn’t for long. Which means—”

“They were summoned in a healthy state, or they were born in that forest.”

“Huh!? Fish-men are born in a forest!?”

“That’s exactly what you’re here to investigate, Luke squad.”

Bad feelings tended to be right. Luke remembered his father’s words: always assume the worst.

“This isn’t a mission three people should be taking on. This is—someone’s trying to crush you.”

Yorn’s murmur was swallowed by the restaurant’s noise and disappeared.