Chapter 42

It was a bizarre sight.

The first to notice was a knight who, having finished his share of the Orc subjugation, was about to head off to assist with the perimeter.

Suddenly, a shadow fell from above, and something plummeted right in front of him. It landed with a dull, wet thud. For a split second, the knight was seized by a frantic fear: Did an Orc just lob a piece of dung at me?!

He had never heard of Orcs launching such a depraved psychological attack, but he’d heard there were animals with such habits. Despite possessing such trivial knowledge, the thought of filth raining from the heavens was, in a sense, terrifying beyond imagination.

The knight immediately checked the object to confirm the truth— and recoiled.

“Hieee?!”

There, he came face-to-face with the severed head of an Orc, staring back at him with resentful eyes as it twitched slightly.

Having only just been separated from its body, the head’s mouth opened and closed as if trying to squeeze out a final word—before falling still. Even for a knight accustomed to seeing Orc heads and corpses, the sheer rawness of the event happening right before his eyes left him speechless.

Then, he noticed more heads falling in other spots nearby.

“Whoa?! Severed heads are falling from the sky?!”

“Gah! Ow! Hey, my shoulder! It hit my shoulder!!”

“Who is it?! Is it Varna?! Or Varna?! Actually, it could only be Varna!!”

An Orc subjugation site that had finally reached its end was suddenly being showered with Orc heads.

Unless today’s forecast was “sunny with a chance of severed heads,” there was no reason for Orc parts to be falling. The knights, noticing the anomaly, all turned their eyes toward the place the heads had flown from. There, they saw—

An expressionless Varna, his face stained with arterial spray and a dripping sword in his hand, looking down at them.

“…”

“…”

“…”

A cold, ruthless expression that gave away no emotion.

A ghoulish presence that didn’t even bother to wipe the blood from his face.

And the fact that, amidst this brawl, he alone had scaled a cliff with horrifyingly bad footing to reach the top—performing a feat born of excessive murderous intent to insta-kill the Orcs who hadn’t descended, all before an order was even given.

Bathed in backlight and draped in shadow, the onlookers thought one thing about “Beheader” Varna:

“”“Terrifying!!”““

A few minutes later, Varna was thoroughly chewed out for climbing the cliff on his own initiative and making the recovery of the corpses at the top difficult. To add insult to injury, he was subjected to a “penalty game” where Myun-myun (the Veera) blasted the Orc blood off him with a high-pressure water jet.

“Myun!!”

“Bugh?! Wait, the water pressure is too… urgh!”

“Honestly! Nonoka is very angry! No matter how much of a hurry you were in, Orc blood is toxic! If you let it sit on your skin for a long time, it’ll swell up and cause all sorts of health problems! Come on, Veera-chan, hit Varna-kun with more water!”

“Myun? Myu… Myun!!”

“Gbobababa?!”

There were later eyewitness accounts claiming that Nonoka then used her small hands to smear medicinal ointment all over the skin where the Orc blood had touched, and that Bevion’s eyes bulged out like a shocked chameleon at the sight, but the credibility of these reports remained low.

While the actual subjugation had ended easily enough, the cleanup was an immense ordeal.

First, because the strategy couldn’t prevent Orc blood from splattering everywhere, the battlefield was a gory mess. Despite there being fewer corpses to collect than usual, the workload didn’t decrease at all. Furthermore, because the ground was parched and hard, the blood-soaked earth had hardened like stone, requiring it to be broken apart before removal.

The top of the cliff was also a nightmare. Since it wasn’t a place humans could easily climb, I—the one who went up first—was forced to create a climbing path using stakes and ropes. The fact that the cliff was made of solid rock made blood recovery even more difficult.

However, fortunately or unfortunately, the blood that hadn’t splattered too far dried and hardened instantly, so the volume of contaminated material to be removed was smaller compared to the ground below.

…Needless to say, I bowed and apologized profusely to the recovery team.

I truly can’t hold my head up high around those people.

By the way, when they opened the sluice gates of the blocked waterways after the operation, several drowned Orc corpses reportedly drifted out. They were likely Orcs that had fled into the tunnels because they couldn’t stand the smell. It was speculated that they drowned when the water level rose while they were still inside, and they got stuck trying to turn back in the narrow passages.

Given an Orc’s lung capacity, you’d think they could have swum back without drowning, but there are individual differences, and turning around in a cramped tunnel takes time. To find your path blocked, see the water rising, panic, and drown… As the one who caused it, it’s a bit much for me to say, but I certainly wouldn’t want to die such a painful death.

So, after being feared by everyone and mistaken for a user of teleportation magic, we moved to the following day.

“Nonoka-san, watch your footing. You too, Bevion.”

“It’s fine! Nonoka’s footwork is perfect when wearing ‘Lift-Me-Up’ shoes!”

“Senior, in the unlikely event that Nonoka-sama should trip, I, Bevion, shall—!!”

“Ah, this part looks slippery. Here, take my hand.”

“Wao! Varna-kun, look at you, learning how to handle a lady! ♪”

“A double-ignore?!”

I was accompanying Nonoka-san on a survey of the water source, heading into the vertical shafts where those Orcs had lived. Since the Orcs had been coming and going freely, there were surprisingly enough footholds that climbing up and down wasn’t a major problem.

The Familiars had already checked the interior to confirm no surviving Orcs remained.

The goal, naturally, was to survey the water quality, collect any Orc droppings, and one more thing…

“Caliban, you’ve got the heaviest load. Don’t drop Myun-myun!”

“Roger that!”

“Myun!”

Yes, we were here to decide the future of Myun-myun, the Veera.

Soaking in a bucket with a belt strapped to Caliban’s back, the Veera looked a bit weary from the rough travel, but her spirits seemed to be picking up now that her home was in sight.

According to Myun-myun: “Myun! Myun? …Myuuuuun-myun!” Since I didn’t understand, I had Caliban translate. Apparently, “The other Veeras fled into the underground veins, so they might return once they sense the Orcs are gone.” Caliban’s translation skills were truly formidable.

“Now that the Orcs are gone, the source of contamination is cut off… Once we remove the Orc droppings and such, the spring water will naturally purify the environment on its own.”

“That’s right! ♪ Though I am a bit worried about whether the underground fruit trees they ate have withered or not…”

“Myun…”

“It’s okay, I’m sure you’ll see them again!”

“Myun… Myun!”

Oh, I could actually sort of understand what she said just now.

Even so, Caliban likely understood far more nuanced meanings than I could imagine.

I managed to scrape by in my studies and my swordsmanship was better than most, but I felt a twinge of regret that I lacked even a spark of magical talent or the aptitude of a Familiar User. Well, regarding my studies, it wasn’t that I was “smart,” but rather the result of being ruthlessly hammered with information by Sedona and Astrae, who were at the top of the class.

People around me called me a genius, but Sedona, who took first place in the academy without much effort, and Astraea in second, were the real geniuses. I fell from there to fifth. The numbers might look close, but in reality, there was a massive gap between the third and fourth place scores.

It goes without saying that the public perception of “fifth place is amazing” was entirely part of the image strategy orchestrated by that bearded old man, Commander Luger. Good children shouldn’t be fooled.

While I was lost in idle thoughts, we arrived at the water source in the depths of the cave.

“This is…”

“Beautiful…!”

“Myun!”

The water was so transparent that the bottom was clearly visible.

There were small sandy islands and trees, looking like a deserted island floating in the middle of a vast ocean.

The scene, with light filtering in from the sky above, was as ethereal as a painting.

…However.

“The fruit trees look fine, but…”

“Leftover scraps, Orc dung, hemp sacks of food stolen from town… if you look closely, there’s weird trash scattered all over the edges.”

“Myun… Myuuun!!”

Myun-myun let out a reproachful cry, her anger visible at seeing her homeland defiled.

From an outsider’s perspective, it just looked like a mermaid child growling, which was honestly just cute.

Though it was somewhat expected, I couldn’t help but feel a hollow sense of futility.

It seemed they had at least tried to pile it up—perhaps they didn’t like leaving a mess—but evidently, Orcs lacked the intelligence to appreciate atmosphere or beauty. It was like seeing locals carelessly littering a beautiful tourist spot.

Still, having it all in one place was convenient.

I stepped into the shallow water and began diligently collecting the debris and dung.

“Put the dung in this rubber bag, please! I’m going to use it for research!”

“Nonoka-san, you even research poop?”

At Caliban’s slightly recoiling question, Nonoka-san replied with a blank, innocent look.

“Eh? Of course I do. I mean, it’s dung, right? Whether it’s natural science, biology, or paleontology, dung is a mountain of information. You mustn’t look down on it. Bad boy! Understand?”

“I see, that makes sense.”

“As expected of the seeker of knowledge, Nonoka-sama!”

“Ugh…”

“Myuuun…”

Bevion and I had some understanding of that side of things, but Caliban and Myun-myun were plain disgusted. I could sympathize with them, but Nonoka-san was the type of person who would perform dissections or anything else if it were for the sake of research.

…Still, I wondered about a maiden who poked around at poop in a laboratory.

Unless she found someone with a similar understanding, I had a feeling Nonoka-san wouldn’t be getting a new boyfriend anytime soon.

By the time we finished gathering the trash by dividing the labor, a fair amount of time had passed, but in exchange, we had managed to recover all the filth. Part of it was luck—the Orcs hadn’t lived here long—but Orcs are also surprisingly fond of clean environments. It was likely they had been flushing their waste into the waterways periodically.

“If so, that flushed waste went into the town’s waterways… urgh.”

“Most of it probably flowed straight into the river without issue, but some likely seeped into the domestic water supply. There were a few reports of foul odors. Right now, Nagi and the others are secretly cleaning the waterways.”

“For the sake of the residents’ feelings… well, we decided not to tell them. …Regardless, calling the Militia leader by his name without an honorific? You two have certainly become close. I think male friendship is a wonderful thing!”

‘Senior and me…? Impossible! Even if it’s a request from Nonoka-sama, I, Bevion, cannot permit that one thing!!’

“…? What’s wrong, Bevion?”

“Nothing at all!!”

For some reason, Bevion turned his face away from Nonoka-san with all his might and gritted his teeth, but I wondered what was up. Aside from his love for young girls, I thought he was the type who wouldn’t be averse to male friendship.

That aside, Nonoka-san scooped some spring water into a small vial, attached a piece of paper, and mixed in a purple liquid, sloshing it around. She then called out to Caliban.

“I’ve done a simple water quality check. The environment is still maintained well enough for Veera to live in. Now, Caliban-kun.”

“…Yes.”

“Myu…”

…I suppose the time had come.

With a somber expression, Caliban dipped the bucket he was holding into the spring and slowly tilted it.

Myun-myun looked at Caliban and Nonoka for a moment as if reluctant to leave, then slowly entered the water. She swam a little, then came back near Caliban.

“…The water seems fine.”

“Myun…”

“Can you… feel your friends?”

“Myuuun…”

“…I see. They’re nearby, then.”

According to Caliban, the Veera species could use primitive magic, though their power was slight. Myun-myun’s incredible water-gun pressure was apparently because she was “kneading” water mana into it—or so she told him.

And by using that mana-detection ability, they could sense the presence of their kin across a certain distance through the water. It seemed that, just as Myun-myun had guessed, the Veera pod had been waiting nearby for the Orcs to disappear.

The water quality was fine, and Myun-myun could return to her pack.

Both sides had achieved their goals. This mission was complete.

And yet, neither of them looked happy at all. In fact, they showed such low spirits that they weren’t even trying to hide their loneliness… They really didn’t want to part ways, did they?

Even if it was only for a short time, they were comrades who had met after she was separated from her pod. Above all, Caliban could talk to her. It was only natural to be sad about saying goodbye to a friend he’d finally made.

However, many missions in the Knight Order are once-in-a-lifetime encounters.

Unless the person lives in the Royal Capital or belongs to the same Order, you almost never meet them again. In fact, for a rare species like the Veera, which is prone to poaching, the very information that they live here must not be made public.

Let’s pretend we never met each other. That was the meaning behind this parting.

Since they were the two who least wanted to say goodbye, I figured I should let them be alone for the end.

Thinking that, I gave Nonoka-san a look and approached the two. My unspoken message seemed to reach her, as she followed behind me, bringing Bevion along.

“Caliban… We’re heading back to the main camp first. Dragging it out might only make it harder, but just make sure you’re back by sunset.”

“Yes… I know.”

“Myun-myun, stay healthy.”

“Myu~n…”

I hadn’t known her long, but she still seemed to regret the parting, her round eyes following me sadly. I could only hope she would grow up to be a fine lady.

“Then, it’s goodbye from Nonoka too… When you get back, act like a baby with your mama and grow big, okay?”

“Be careful not to get caught by birds next time! …Now, Nonoka-sama, allow me to carry your luggage!”

The three intruders carried the trash and headed up the cliff path. Two beings who never would have met if not for the Orcs were now facing a separation because the Orcs were gone.

It felt like a cheap dime novel, but perhaps that’s just how the world works.

At sunset, Caliban returned to the carriage.

With an empty bucket on his back, and the weight of a painful goodbye—or so I thought.

“Myun~♪ Myun-myun-myuuu~n♪”

“…So, it turns out she’s coming with us!”

“Wow! Nonoka-chan, I’m starting to get surprised by how much I’m not surprised by your total lack of explanation!!”

My junior had nonchalantly increased the word count of my report.

As for the reason, I’m still waiting for the additional report regarding the Veera to be finished… but for now, Myun-myun looked happy wearing that ring, so it seemed some kind of arrangement had been made with the Veera pod.

I could only hope that the content of that arrangement wouldn’t further agitate Vice Commander Rony’s stomach.