Chapter 59

Accompanied by the men who had been completely drained of their hostility, Lucas and the others rushed to the vineyard in question, only to gasp at the devastation spread before them.

“This is…”

A grotesque sight lay there, one that would make any faint-hearted person or lady collapse on the spot.

The grapevines, which should have been proudly spreading their branches and leaves while bearing heavy clusters of fruit, had rotted away in that entire section.

Clusters had crumbled to the ground, leaves were withered, and the branches were covered in ugly, bulging lumps, snapped in various places.

“Unlike ordinary moths, Demon Moths grow and hatch at an incredible speed. There certainly weren’t any eggs until last night… They were likely laid this morning, and in just a few hours, it’s come to this.”

The lumps overflowed with eggs of a hair-raising shape, and from within them, sticky, thread-like substances undulated slowly back and forth.

It appeared to be a mucus designed to protect the eggs, but it was said that the substance itself acted like mycelium, infesting and rotting the branches.

The sight of the tiny insect eggs densely packed onto the branches was hideous to look at, but the people of the territory did not turn their eyes away; they set their jaws and continued to prune the rotten wood.

They struggled to cut down the branches without touching the Demon Moth eggs and stuffed them into bags—nearly letting out groans at how the mycelium was eroding the wood faster than anticipated, but they suppressed their voices.

They had no time for despair.

If they didn’t deal with the eggs immediately, they would be discovered and attacked by the Demon Moths, which had the habit of checking on their eggs once a day.

Whether the Demon Moths were affectionate toward their young or not was unclear, but they showed no interest in eggs that had already died.

However, if living eggs were attacked by an outside enemy, the moths would display a terrifying level of aggression.

A few of them could be managed.

But if an angry Demon Moth were to draw in the rest of its swarm, it would be more than anyone could handle.

“Erich! Did you get permission for the fire!?”

The men processing the eggs noticed their arrival and waved.

Despite their bodies and most of their faces being covered in cloth, it was clear that a sudden joy had washed over them.

That was how much they had been yearning for permission to use fire—the signal for an offensive against the Demon Moths.

Noticing Jonas, Kevin—and a beautiful, unidentified girl with a large chest—along with Lucas and the rest behind the man named Erich, they wore expressions that were a mix of confusion and relief.

“The Lord himself came all this way…? Uh, and who is that handsome man…? And that beautiful girl who looks just like Lady Elisa, she couldn’t possibly be…?”

Clearly, they were failing to grasp the situation.

Lucas and Deborah gave brief introductions.

“We are visitors from the Royal Capital who happened to be nearby. Hearing that Demon Moth eggs appeared, we came to see if we could be of any help.”

“I am the Brand New Deborah.”

Each finished their self-introductions concisely and quickly shifted the conversation back to the Demon Moths.

“About the fire; the Margrave has decided not to permit its use. We will deal with the Demon Moths through another method.”

“We will handle things from here, so please, all of you, step back. You’ve done well up until now.”

The people of the territory, who had been wrestling with the eggs until a moment ago, stared back with wide, blinking eyes.

They looked stunned for a second, but their expressions darkened in an instant as they turned on the Lord’s family.

“What do you mean, you won’t permit the fire!? Even you people must surely understand the situation we’re in by now!”

“Of course Father and I both understand the situation. However, before pointlessly setting fires, we first intend to handle the Demon Moths using a method passed down by these people from the Royal Capital—”

“Young master, stay out of this! We don’t care about the armchair theories you’re so fond of as a sickly noble; we are appealing to the Lord right now about the crisis facing the fields before us! To this gloomy Lord who does absolutely nothing!”

Kevin’s attempt at mediation was ignored without a second thought.

On the contrary, the men threw away what little remained of their respect for the ruling house and snarled.

“Hurry! We need to burn the eggs as quickly as possible before the Demon Moths notice! You understand that, don’t you, Lord!?”

“Or are those rumors actually true?! You’re making our fields into fodder for the Demon Moths just to get Lady Elisa’s soul back!? Don’t screw with us… we won’t let you!”

“Excuse me.”

As Jonas failed to offer a rebuttal, the men grew even more irritated, their voices rising further.

In the middle of this, a small maid quietly raised her hand, but they were too agitated to notice her.

“Fine, then! Just stay there and watch in silence! To hell with permission; I don’t care if I’m slapped with heavy taxes later, I’m setting fire to this place right now!”

“But remember this: we’re the ones cutting ties with an incompetent and lazy Lord…!”

“Excuse me.”

The excitement finally turned into a fierce resolve, leading the men to decide on a revolution.

They began to emit an aura as if they were about to swing the hoes and spades in their hands as weapons.

“Jonas von Frenzel. As the guardian of the sacred vineyards, the glory of the Frenzel family that has led us ends here today.”

“We judge you a sinner who has fallen to evil, and here, we—”

“——Excuse me.”

“Wha—!?”

At the exact moment they were about to declare their severance from the ruling house with those menacing words—their rowdy mouths were suddenly clamped shut by a pair of cool hands.

Startled, the men turned their eyes toward the owner of the hands, finding a small, plain-looking girl whose glasses glinted over a deadpan expression.

“That particular routine has already been done to death. More importantly, while you’ve been having this leisurely chat—”

She abruptly let go of the men’s mouths and pointed a slender index finger toward the sky.

“The Demon Moths have arrived.”

Accompanying her rhythmic observation came a sudden sound.

—Sshhh…

As if a sudden rainstorm had begun, the sky grew dark.

The men, realizing the true nature of the shadow looming over their heads, lost all color in their faces at once.

“Demon Moths…!”

“In such a massive swarm…!”

In the direction of their gaze, green Demon Moths were surging in so densely that the original color of the sky was invisible.

“Hi…! Hieee…!”

The men let out pathetic screams at the sound of the wings—a hum so intense it almost felt like heat—and at the occasional drift of toxic scales fluttering down.

Lucas immediately barked orders for everyone to cover their bodies with cloth before looking up at the sky with a look of loathing.

“What an incredible number…”

The scale of this swarm was dozens of times larger than the one they had seen in the forest yesterday.

Though each individual moth was quite small compared to a magical beast, it seemed impossible to evade every single one of them when they attacked in such a massive horde. Naturally, trying to bag them was out of the question.

Deborah, with her miasma-weakness, and Kevin, with his lung issues, had turned deathly pale. However, perhaps having tempered their spirits over the past day, they bravely stood their ground and shouted to the commoners.

“R—Run! We… we will handle things here!”

“D—Demon Moths respond to high-pitched sounds and voices! I… I’ll be the decoy, so the rest of you kill your footsteps as much as possible and escape indoors!”

“Lady Deborah… Master Kevin…”

Protected by those they least expected, the men stared at the siblings in open bewilderment.

The “Ugly Daughter” with a weak constitution and the sickly young master.

They never imagined that the siblings—rumored to be the stains on the Frenzel name—would show such conduct.

As for Jonas, whom they had been cursing as a gloomy Lord fallen to evil—

“—Everyone, fall back.”

Radiating an intensity that made everyone gasp, he stared calmly at the swarm of Demon Moths.

“Demon Moths respond to sound. I have continued my research for over ten years to clarify those habits. Now is the time to put those results to use. I will not let a single Demon Moth attack our precious grapes. All of you, leave this place as quietly as possible.”

His voice was full of the dignity of a Lord, and overflowing with the responsibility and spirit of a lineage that had guarded these sacred fields.

Truly, he was the head of this frontier yet fertile land.

Everyone present forgot their hatred from moments ago and instinctively turned their gazes toward Jonas in supplication.

“—Elma, was it?”

Jonas asked the maid beside him calmly, undeterred by the fact that the swarm was gradually closing the distance.

“You mentioned using ultrasonic waves earlier. Had you also noticed the habits of the Demon Moths?”

“Yes. The Ringing Chains are tools that emit sounds of a specific pitch that the moths loathe to drive them away. Furthermore, after applying Master Kevin’s voice to the frequencies of the equal-tempered scale, I confirmed that the moths show a strong reaction at every multiple of 440. Therefore, I inferred that if the frequency is theoretically maximized at those multiples, a more powerful appeal is possible.”

“I see. I understand perfectly.”

To the people around them, it made absolutely no sense.

However, the two of them—Jonas and Elma—continued their rapid-fire conversation like two researchers who shared a complete understanding.

“Among the characteristics of the Demon Moths, I noticed the reaction to sound—specifically the possibility of ultrasonic waves—a long time ago. However, I struggled for a long time with a method to generate ultrasonic waves with sufficient intensity and particle acceleration. It was only this year that I finally thought of utilizing the piezoelectric effect.”

“I see. You’re referring to a Langevin transducer using the piezoelectric effect.”

“Precisely. But in terms of portability—”

From their mouths flew a succession of nonsensical terms like hydrodynamic cavitation, implosion, and acoustic impedance.

The two understood each other perfectly, showing a synchronization like partners who had overcome countless experiments together, but then—

“—And so, Elma. That dog whistle you have. You intend to generate the ultrasonic waves with that, don’t you?”

“Eh? This is just a spare I carved to keep my hands busy.”

Suddenly, their pace fell out of sync.

“…A spare?”

A bewildered expression crossed Jonas’s face as he stared at Elma’s hand.

There was the wood-carved whistle she had been working on while eavesdropping.

However, to call it a whistle was a stretch; it was shaped like a fist, and at the end was a handle made of silk thread knitted into a chain, perfect for swinging it around.

Jonas furrowed his brows.

“Aren’t you going to generate ultrasonic waves by swinging that around?”

“No. In an emergency like this, one wouldn’t ordinarily do something so tedious, right?”

Asked back with a straight face, the laboratory-minded Lord stammered, “Eh?”

Elma looked at him dubiously, then suddenly glanced up at the sky.

“Oops. While we were talking, the distance has closed considerably.”

She then hopped lightly onto a small mound of piled dry branches and straw, and for some reason, deliberately began to remove her glasses.

“—Hey, wait! Why are you taking off your glasses now!?”

Lucas and the others, left behind by the development, barked out a question.

The surrounding people were blinking and rubbing their eyes repeatedly, stunned that the maid before them had suddenly transformed into a peerless beauty, but Elma was unbothered.

“Because they’ll break.”

“Huh!?”

It made no sense.

However, facing the approaching Demon Moths, Elma seemed to have decided to skip any detailed explanation.

Staring fixedly at the swarm, she took a long, deep breath.

Like a musician gently stroking their beloved instrument, she lightly touched her throat, and then—

—Ah…

Next, she slowly spread her arms and began to weave a singing voice.