kscans

Chapter 25 - # The Adventurers' Guild and the Little One

"The monsters in the forest cave are acting strangely."

The little girl declared nonchalantly while sipping tea in Romel’s office. Romel blinked in surprise, but grasping the implications, he sighed internally.

Ugh. Please stop making ominous statements that reveal the entire situation in two lines.

An unwitting, weary smile spread across his face, and Romel asked the Little One for the details.

"The monsters inside the cave were in a frenzy. Even a wild boar was acting weird."

"I see. There’s a possibility of a stampede. I will have it investigated immediately."

If it was the Lord’s forest, it was practically a dungeon. An anomaly there could be a sign of a stampede. Romel called a subordinate and handed him written instructions for the knight order. Glancing at it, Chihiro muttered wearily.

"They just appeared from the back and attacked all at once. I wonder why."

"That would be because you two possess a great deal of magic, wouldn’t it?"

"Oh…"

That was right. The reason monsters attacked humans without question was to obtain magic. They were food. The Little One clapped her hands with a look of understanding, but her ears caught Romel’s suspicious muttering that followed.

"But if they were in a state of rage, it might just be an instinct to defeat the strongest ones first."

Instinct?

As the Little One looked on with a quizzical "hmm?", Romel explained the behavior of monsters. According to him, monsters in a frenzied state, such as during a stampede, had a habit of cooperating to take down the strongest opponent.

"To the monsters, their fear of you may have stimulated their instincts, making you appear as a powerful enemy that must be defeated."

Wow. What a pain.

In the eyes of the monsters, the twins were a walking feast. And on top of that, they ganged up to attack the strong, and that was their instinct. It was all incredibly troublesome. But if that was the case, it made sense why the monsters had attacked the demon-like Dorfen without fear.

All monsters in Arcadia were mutations. They were either mutations born from ordinary wild animals or chimeras born from the mating of different monsters. Therefore, they had no specific species or individual names. As long as their sizes matched, there were all sorts of monsters, like hybrids of bats and rats. They had general classifications based on appearance, but since there was no breeding within the same species, their appearances were quite unique.

Wolf-like monsters, bat-like monsters, and so on. Their mixed appearances could only be described with "-like."

Only the monsters called Lords, who held territories, belonged to a unique species. They reproduced asexually, so while there were individual differences, there was not much variation between individuals. There were differences in size and color, but not in form or ecology. This was apparently a subject for upper-level students, and they had not learned it from their tutors before their baptism.

"Come to think of it, you’ve only studied up to the intermediate level. Since it was before your baptism, there were limits to what could be taught. Now that the baptism is safely over, I will arrange for a new tutor."

There were many things that could not be taught until after the baptism when one was granted an element, so those studies had been put on hold. Conversely, all other studies were complete. The Little One was more eager to learn than to play, and Chihaya, following her lead, had spent several years quietly at his desk. Of course, they also played like normal children, but the two, who had lived a life free from idleness, were seen as monstrous children by those around them. They had never spent a moment in pointless idleness.

At the mention of a new tutor, the Little One’s cowlick shot up with a pikon. Curiosity welled up in her eyes. The sparkle was age-appropriate, but the intent behind it was not that of a child.

Well, she was an adult woman in the world called Earth. I suppose I can’t treat her the same as a normal child.

Previously, when the Little One had explained the matter with the gods, Romel was the only one among the bewildered onlookers who had realized it.

He had remembered the sense of unease he had felt before, that she was not acting her age. So when he was alone with Chihiro, he had questioned her in detail.

What kind of world was Earth? What kind of life had she lived there? Her gender? Her age? Her education? University? What? A school you can attend even after you turn twenty? Wait, tell me more about that! And so on.

He had questioned her relentlessly, and the Little One had explained as much as she could.

Therefore, a different set of values existed between the two of them.

The little girl’s eyes shone with delight, her cowlick bobbing. Drago was a chef, and Sakura didn’t know Frontier. Naya and Sasha were also outsiders who had only been learning about noble customs for a dozen years or so. The Georges family, who were only lower nobles for a single generation, did not know the ways of middle-ranking nobility and had simply gathered whatever they were given and provided it to the twins with all their might. However, a certain commoner sensibility inevitably crept in, leading to various shortcomings. Chihiro had done her best with what she knew, but even she did not have a proper understanding of Frontier, and in her previous life, she had merely bulldozed her way through using the authority of the Golden King. It was Romel who filled in the gaps in her knowledge and common sense, the customs and etiquette she lacked.

No matter how one polished the exterior, if one did not know the meaning, the substance would be lacking. The Little One was truly grateful to Romel for correcting these incongruities. If he was the one choosing the tutor, there would be no problem.

Watching the child squeal with delight, Romel also felt a sense of bliss.

A child who was a joy to teach, who responded to every lesson.

For a teacher, there was no rarer existence. In fact, there was an endless line of tutors who wanted to teach the twins. Recently, mages had begun to appear here and there in that line. They were the ones who had seen the Little One’s spirit at the Tower of David. He had forbidden the tower’s researchers from speaking of it, but they likely couldn’t suppress their burgeoning spirit of inquiry.

There was no malice between the two of them as they schemed.

The Little One and Romel discussed what to learn first. Some things were urgently needed, while others could be put off and learned slowly.

Unbeknownst to them, a suspicious shadow was cast over this happy new development at the royal palace.

The source of it was the Pharmacology Guild.

Hearing the report from the Adventurers’ Guild, they were trembling with shock.

"Why did they go so deep? This flower grows closer to the entrance, doesn’t it?"

One man, flustered and moving his hands busily, looked up resentfully at another man.

"Apparently, there was a boar near the entrance. They went deeper to avoid it."

The man who was asked also narrowed his eyes with vexation.

"An investigation is inevitable. I don’t think they’ll figure it out, but the completion of the magic formula may be delayed."

Each of them voiced their thoughts.

They had been secretly conducting an experiment.

An experiment that had to be hidden from public view and could only be done in the limited environment of a cave. With the help of a mage, they had created a barrier deep inside the cave, filled the interior with a toxic substance, and sealed it. Monsters could not get outside the barrier. There, they would eat poisonous grass to survive, engage in cannibalism, and through natural selection, a new monster would be born. It was an experiment that could only be done in the forest of a Lord, a place where disaster-class beings existed. Even if it failed, the Lords would take care of the mess.

Though their intentions were different, it was, in fact, a Kodoku curse.

The result would be a powerful monster.

The three of them, who had planned to have the Adventurers’ Guild capture it for use as research material, were now holding their heads in their hands at this unexpected turn of events. They had never imagined that an adventurer would venture so deep into a cave in the Lord’s forest. Most would collect from a side path near the entrance. The presence of a boar wandering near that side path was outside their calculations.

"It’s an essential flower for heart stimulants. It can’t be helped that a request was posted, but we were careless."

Now that it was public, there would be an investigation, and entry would likely be prohibited for a while. If the mage’s magic formula was discovered, it would be assumed that some kind of plot was afoot, and the scope of the investigation could widen. If they got caught up in that, it would be a disaster.

Although it had been convenient for the experiment, the Lord’s forest was near the royal capital. This experiment carried the risk of, in the worst-case scenario, causing a stampede. Of course, the Lords would not let such a thing happen, but the responsibility for conducting the experiment while knowing that possibility was heavy. Depending on the circumstances, they could be charged as criminals for plotting to overthrow the state, with execution at worst, and a life sentence of forced labor at best.

Still, as researchers, they had wanted to try this experiment. They had desperately wanted to see what the results would be, what kind of monster would be born, and what achievements it would lead to.

"Acquiring this book was our undoing, I suppose."

On the table where the three sat was a single book.

In it, an ancient magic formula from the Age of the Gods was written in an ancient language. They decoded the difficult ancient language, supplemented the moth-eaten descriptions with predictions and experience, and became engrossed in their research. They wanted to test the resulting construct, but they lacked the necessary funds. The magic to perfectly seal a single cave was complex. A run-of-the-mill mage would be useless. Hiring a high-level mage would cost a fortune. Moreover, it was a dangerous experiment that could cause a stampede. There would likely be no eccentric mage willing to cooperate.

Just as they were about to give up.

An unexpectedly eccentric mage appeared. With a sponsor.

He said he wanted to cooperate with the three of them for the purpose of mastering barrier magic. He was a very famous mage. A high-ranking noble, he had offered to cover the costs of the experiment, and the three of them had jumped at the chance without a second thought.

And now, this was the result.

What should they do?

Whether there was malicious intent or not was not the issue. They had known about the dangers involved, ignored them, and conducted the experiment. That alone was like signing off on a death sentence. Furthermore, knowing this, they were now struggling to cover it up. Even if the magic formula was discovered, there was no proof that the three of them were the ones who did it. The mage might be identified from the magical traces, but fortunately, he was a high-ranking noble. He had just put up a barrier. He could make any number of excuses, like wanting to test its strength and duration. That it had merely resulted in an unforeseen situation.

As long as the existence of this ancient text was not known, there were ways to handle it. And even if it were to become known, decoding it would be impossible. It had taken even them several years to decipher it.

The three of them exchanged glances and remained silent. There was no way anyone outside would find out.

However, at that moment, they had misjudged.

They had no way of knowing that there was someone who knew of the Kodoku curse without ever having seen the ancient text.

The ever-carefree Little One.

Unknowingly, she begins to dance in the midst of the trouble. The three of them never imagined that the Little One, on a request from the Adventurers’ Guild, would go to the cave, see through the barrier, meticulously explain all the related details to the knight order and the Adventurers’ Guild, and lay out the danger of a stampede and the worst-case scenario predicted by the presence of the barrier.

They could not have imagined a future where the knight order, made aware of the gravity of the situation, would conduct a massive, grassroots investigation.

Unaware of the impending catastrophe, the three from the Pharmacology Guild hide the ancient text and feel relieved.

A toast to their dubious future.