kscans

Chapter 110 - Chapter 1. Biological Information Analysis

Three days after our meeting with the chancellor, our surprise guest, I arrived at the director's office with the package I had received from Craig. In the room were the baron himself, the master of the place, and my senior, the butcher’s son. Both wore strained expressions as they looked at the contents of the box I had just opened.

Well, I couldn’t blame them. Sitting inside was a round, white lump about the size of an elephant's droppings I had once seen on TV.

"So this is the big state secret. We definitely can't show this to Rilka and the others," Dalgan muttered.

"We're counting on your expertise with animals, senpai."

"What a sorry kind of expert to be... Still, I’ve heard bits and pieces of what's going on."

He might complain, but I was truly grateful that he always agreed to do the dirty work.

"Normally, I'd never want something like this brought in here, but we don't have the luxury to be picky," Fulsy added. He was engrossed in the Knight Order’s other souvenir, a sketch of a footprint found near the scene.

Isn't this part of your salary, Lord Baron?

"Right, let's get this over with."

His eyes instantly turning to those of a professional, Dalgan began breaking apart the mysterious animal's droppings with a wooden spatula.

Indeed, we couldn’t afford to complain about the filth. The situation was far too serious.

Even with the Empire’s hostile actions now clear, the kingdom was carrying on with business as usual. The evidence was split up across different departments. The traces left by the mysterious animal were with Craig's Anti-Monster Knight Order, the coded documents from the imperial residence were with the chancellor, and the abandoned Imperial Princess was with the First Knight Order, who had captured her carriage. Everything was being managed in perfect bureaucratic silos.

"We're racing against the clock..."

I recalled the results from the tree ring samples taken from the wood that had attracted the slime mold weapon.

◇◇

"Just as I suspected, it seems these trees are a bit different from the ones in the kingdom. We had nearly a hundred years of rings, but I could only trace them back seventy years," Fulsy said, a measuring device in hand.

"This point here is fifty years ago, right when the war with the Empire ended. The Fellbach Rebellion twenty years ago is around here. And... this is the fluctuation over the last decade."

Fulsy’s usual joking demeanor was absent as he explained the data. Mia, who had been assisting with the calculations, remained silent. The record of the Empire's magical vein activity had been revealed, and its implications were far more grave than when we had discovered the signs of the Monster Flood a year ago.

"I’m from the west, so I've heard stories about the old war, and I can't forgive what they've done with the monsters this time, but is this really that significant?" Noel asked, tilting her head. She was the only one who couldn’t quite grasp the situation. Right, she hadn't been there for the first prophecy.

"It’s more than significant. Look. Just as the Empire claimed, their magical vein activity started rising steadily a few years before the ceasefire fifty years ago."

I pointed to the figure from fifty-five years prior. While the scales weren't necessarily comparable, their numbers started much higher than the kingdom’s and had only climbed from there. The Empire could no longer afford to wage war, and the kingdom, fearing monsters would pour across the border from imperial territory, something that had apparently happened before, agreed to the ceasefire. In any case, it had been a war with little to gain for the kingdom.

After that, relations between the two nations stabilized through trade in food and mineral resources. It was, for the kingdom, a period of relative peace, one ironically brought about by monsters. But the Empire's magical veins had continued to rise, albeit slowly. It must have been an agonizing time for them. Looked at another way, however, it meant the Empire had endured the escalating monster activity. No, they likely adapted and learned from it. The monster materials used in that carriage and their use of the slime mold as a weapon were undoubtedly the fruits of that labor.

The activity of their magical veins peaked around twelve or thirteen years ago. Afterward, it began to decline, and for the last five years, it has settled at a level just over seventy percent of its peak.

"In other words, the Empire spent forty years building up its strength to fight ever-more-active monsters, and now, it has power to spare."

"If the magical veins have calmed down, isn't that a good thing?"

The Empire certainly thought it was a good thing. But if you put yourself in their position, you couldn’t simply feel relieved.

"Noel, my dear. There's no guarantee the magical veins will remain dormant. What happens if they begin to rise again?" Fulsy asked.

"Ah..." Noel gasped, the realization dawning on her.

Exactly. For the Empire, this was a golden age, and they had no idea how long it would last. And just south of the great river, the kingdom, grown complacent from fifty years of peace, was lying with its belly exposed. Their prey.

"The Empire's intentions are clear," Mia said. "Despite the decrease in monster-related damage, they were demanding increased trade in strategic resources like food and salt. And they made sure to give us as few magic crystals as possible." That much was evident from the Shoken Festival data and Calest's ledgers.

"They called it the River of Hope," I said, remembering Princess Lisabet's words.

◇◇

"Hey, Vinder. I’m done," Dalgan’s voice pulled me back to the present.

"You were the one who asked for this, you know. By the way, there's no magical reaction from the substance itself," Fulsy said.

Damn it. I needed to focus on the information right in front of me. I looked down at the roughly sorted piles of droppings.

Dalgan pointed his spatula at a white, viscous substance. "This white stuff looks like bird droppings."

It was probably uric acid. Excreting nitrogenous waste in the form of uric acid was characteristic of reptiles and birds, or more accurately, dinosaurs. This made me wish I’d collected a sample from the Glutton Dragon we fought. Not that I had the presence of mind to think of that at the time.

"The brown part has fibrous bits left in it, similar to cow dung. This animal is an herbivore."

"...A cow? Isn't it closer to the dung of an animal that prefers aquatic plants, like a duck?" I asked. If this creature was what I suspected, that should be a closer match.

"Nah, the white part is like that, but this part is closer to a cow's. Even among grass-eaters, the fineness of the digestion is different. Well, that's just my impression from looking at it."

"So it ruminates?"

In terms of efficiency per unit of weight, eating meat is best, but per unit of area, it's a completely different story. Plants store massive amounts of energy by drawing it directly from the sun, without expending it through movement.

Furthermore, ruminants can derive nutrition from dietary fiber, a "lump of glucose" that humans can't process, by letting bacteria break it down. They eat grass, but what they actually absorb are the bacteria and their secretions. That's how a cow can maintain its massive frame on a diet of salad without dressing.

Of course, to get the marbling of Japanese Wagyu beef, you have to feed them grains.

A large, herbivorous animal that excretes uric acid and is strong enough to pull a carriage. It was slightly different from what I had imagined. But from the perspective of domestication, this could be an advantage.

I recalled that there was a ruminating herbivorous dinosaur related to Tyrannosaurus rex. The Chilisaurs, I think. That would fit the bipedal gait and three-toed feet we saw in the tracks.

"Is the grass it ate hay?"

"I can't tell you that much. My business is meat. But... I can ask a ranch about the difference between winter and summer dung."

"Please do."

The Empire had likely been maintaining this animal in the kingdom for several months. How they managed to feed it was crucial information, as it would be directly related to how they planned to "operate" these animals within the kingdom.

"Got it. All that's left is this..."

Dalgan separated some grain-like particles from the fibrous, mostly digested mass. Undigested seeds, probably from some kind of grass, not large like wheat.

"Director, could you check if these grains contain any magic?" I asked Fulsy, who was making a face.

"I can't be certain with such a small amount, but there's a faint trace in the center of the husks. I see. The fact that it favored these plants strongly suggests it's a type of monster," Fulsy said, quickly discarding the paper he had used for the measurement.

So, it was a magic-infused plant. The leaves might have even been red. This wasn't a case of an ordinary animal accidentally eating something strange. They must have brought the feed with them from the Empire.

"...It seems the Empire possesses the technology to domesticate a small, herbivorous dinosaur. A small dragon," I stated my conclusion.

That explained why the imperial carriage was so over-engineered. They probably weren't worried about us discovering just the undercarriage. What's more, the fleeing Biral had been riding one of these creatures. Dragoons, of all things.

"That's absolutely outrageous."

"We're supposed to fight a country that has something like that?"

Even Fulsy seemed to realize this wasn't the time for jokes or indulging his intellectual curiosity.

"The problem is how many the Empire can field," I said.

Five, or even ten, would have auxiliary tactical value. They could be used as couriers, for instance, capable of moving at high speed day or night, regardless of terrain. If they could deploy a hundred, they would have purely military significance. A thousand, and the kingdom itself could be destroyed. After all, conventional weapons would be ineffective against them, they would be far faster than horses, and they probably had much greater stamina.

"Domesticating monsters... how on earth do they do it?"

I took it back. Fulsy's face was now that of a child who had just discovered a new toy. Still, his question was important. No matter how powerful these creatures were, logistics would always be a bottleneck. If the Empire were to invade, they might try to seize control of the area around the Red Forests.

"Hey, if you're saying it's a dragon, wouldn't that pollen we have work on it?" Dalgan asked.

He was right. The animal’s respiratory system was likely based on air sacs. That pollen could be our trump card. Or maybe not...

"Excuse me, Dalgan-senpai, but I'd like to request some additional research on the pollen. Something like a duck, as close as possible..." I made another request, and Dalgan nodded.

"So how do we find out how many of these dragon-horses, these horse-dragons, the Empire can prepare?" Fulsy asked. Why did he sound so envious?

"Regarding that, I have one lead," I said, looking over at Mia. We had to investigate the second thing the Empire had left behind.