Promise (4)
“They turned into blue particles… and vanished?”
Only then did I understand why Shut-in Honey was this deep in shock and terror.
Turning into blue particles and disappearing the moment food touched your lips was a player trait. At least, that was how it had always worked.
Other NPCs, unlike players, ate the ordinary way—biting, chewing, swallowing. So if you watched a monster that wasn’t even a player devour a person and saw the exact same phenomenon, of course you’d be confused.
“Why do you think they did that?” Shut-in Honey asked, restless.
“Could they be players too?”
“How would I know if you ask me?”
“You’re smarter than I am!!”
So this guy’s the type who gets objective the second he’s cornered. Not that I had any real guess either. By the time I’d arrived, I hadn’t even seen the monsters eating anyone.
Just figuring out why they’d bolted at the sight of me was enough to make my head hurt. And now their “eating method” was the same as ours?
“For now… I think I’d have to see it with my own eyes before I could say anything.”
The lukewarm answer made Shut-in Honey leap up from his seat.
“I saw it clearly, I’m telling you!”
“I’m not doubting you. It’s just that there are things you only feel when you witness them yourself.”
Shut-in Honey had asked whether those monsters were players too—but just because something that touched their mouths turned into blue particles and vanished didn’t mean you could call all of them players.
Even the horned rabbits I’d seen on a previous hunt had crunched the cookies I’d set out as bait, so maybe that ability belonged only to the ones he’d just watched.
“Anyway, those alien monsters already have the ability to heal wounds with moonlight. Even if they can heal by eating something, it’s not that surprising that—”
I cut myself off mid-sentence. Shut-in Honey looked at me with the expression of someone who knew exactly why I’d stopped.
“You felt it too while you were talking, right? That something’s off.”
“……”
I looked down at my own body for a moment.
Right after the possession, I just thought this was the world inside the game, so I never dug that deep…
As if he’d read my mind, Shut-in Honey asked, “These bodies we possessed. Where did they come from? Have you ever thought about it?”
Looking back now, even the word “possession” was strange. If we had truly possessed someone, there should have been at least one person who knew the previous owners of these bodies.
Even Anton hadn’t managed to find a single person who knew me—that was why he’d been so suspicious of my past. Which meant these “bodies” we were wearing now had popped into existence from somewhere the day we possessed this world.
“So that’s why you asked if those monsters were players.”
I looked at Shut-in Honey. “What are you really trying to say?”
His face turned more serious than I’d ever seen it. “I think… we’re monsters.”
I stared at him for a while, then let out a long breath.
“Hah……”
“Hey! Someone’s talking seriously and you sigh? Doesn’t your body seem weird to you right now? It is weird. This body has absurdly high physical ability!”
True enough—while fighting those large-class monsters earlier, I’d thought the output was beyond what a ten-year-old body should be able to produce. I’d assumed physical ability and healing were player privileges, but… there could be some other secret.
Still.
“We’re not monsters. For one thing, we don’t have gems.”
“Ah……”
Mention of the gems seemed to bring him back a little. What separated monsters from humans wasn’t just appearance or healing ability—most of all, it was the presence of a gem.
Monsters born from meteorites each had a core gem. Even if a rabbit with a horn on its head was running around, if there was no gem embedded in its body, it was just a mutant rabbit. Our bodies didn’t have gems stuck in them, so calling ourselves human-form monsters was a stretch.
Shut-in Honey seemed to mull something over, then whispered, “But those things… their intelligence was weirdly high. What if there are players who possessed large-class monsters?”
So he was convinced, one way or another, that those monsters were connected to players. I took this idea seriously, at least.
“What you’re saying isn’t completely ridiculous. There seem to be people like the Unicorn Area players who possessed adult bodies, so other exceptions could exist.”
“Right?!”
“Which is exactly why I need to see them with my own eyes even more. If those things are players, I’ll make them regret clowning around in my front yard. If they’re not……” Over Shut-in Honey’s shoulder I saw the Commander and Meursault filing out of the tent one after another, so I wrapped it up quickly. “We’ll think about that when we get there. Whether we’re human or monster, it doesn’t change the fact that we have to clear this world.”
Shut-in Honey didn’t look fully convinced by “human or monster, it doesn’t change anything,” but he still nodded obediently. I watched him for a moment, then asked, “But… doesn’t it seem strange to you that the monsters ran when I showed up?”
If their way of eating was strange, the normal reaction should have been to question why they’d fled the moment I appeared. Shut-in Honey answered with a face that said he genuinely found nothing odd about it.
“What’s strange about that? I’d run too if I saw you.”
Hmm. Between Meursault and this guy, what exactly did they think I was?
Once the reorganization was finished, we went back out on search. Originally the plan had been to re-form the teams, keep searching until the wounded returned, and then head back. But after hearing Shut-in Honey’s story, I felt we needed to catch at least one of the four that had fled and check for ourselves.
Whether they really could turn food into blue particles at their mouths and heal wounds with it. Why they moved in a pack. Why they’d run when they saw me. If I didn’t pin down even one clear answer, this uneasy feeling wouldn’t go away.
I glanced at the combat rations on my belt. No idea if combat rations even register as food for a monster. If they didn’t, I’d have to risk injury and offer up one of my own arms.
The real problem was how to turn a simple search into a pursuit of those four monsters while stuck with a team that included the Commander. And as if things weren’t bad enough, the snow that had started a little while ago was falling thicker by the minute—we weren’t going to be able to keep searching for long.
The signal flare we fired when we found monsters was white. Once the snow got any heavier, it would be impossible to tell it apart from the snow itself.
“Lord Haydam.”
Second Lieutenant Platon, former leader of Team 9, who had been reassigned to Team 1 with me, came toward me with shining eyes. The reason he was speaking to me was obvious. The other guys who’d joined Team 1 had been taking turns gushing about my earlier performance, one after another.
How had I driven off four large-class monsters with nothing but a look? I didn’t even have an answer for that myself, and I was already tired of making things up.
“You want to know how I chased them off too?”
When I looked at him with already-exhausted eyes, he waved both hands as if to plead innocence.
“Ah—no, Lord Haydam.”
“No?”
“To be honest… I don’t understand why everyone’s making such a fuss.”
Now that was a new take. I looked at him with interest, and Platon continued.
“Driving off three or four large-class monsters is nothing for you, Lord Haydam. Even the monsters themselves knew they were no match and ran—yet the soldiers of the same zone still don’t know, and that, more than anything, is a pity.”
Mmm. You’re the one making the biggest fuss here, though?
“In any case, what I meant to ask is something else.”
“What is it?”
“The gem location identification method. Was it you who taught it to the military, Lord Haydam?”
I had made sure the gem location identification method was trained into the new officers ahead of the subjugation campaign, but I had never specifically told the army or the new officers that I was the one who created it. It was the same reason Meursault, not I, was known as the operations officer for this campaign.
This was the first year the method was being used. If word got out that a freshly turned ten-year-old had devised it, would the soldiers really trust it and follow it? That had been my thinking. The new officers had seen and dealt with me directly at the academy, but regular soldiers were different. Most of them barely even knew my face.
Even in the engagement just now, they hadn’t followed my orders immediately—only moved after checking Meursault’s reaction. So the gem location identification method had been passed to the soldiers through headquarters only after the Commander and Meursault had finished verifying it thoroughly. Platon, though, clearly believed I had made this method as well.
“Why do you think I was the one who taught it?”
“We were trained in the method as well, but when we actually faced several large-class monsters, almost no soldier applied it properly. Yet the moment you arrived at the front, Lord Haydam, you fired only two shots and killed two of them.”
Mm. Meursault had helped with the first one, but that detail seemed to have already vanished from people’s heads.
“Say I was the one who taught it… why does that matter?”
“I said almost no soldier applied the method properly… but I saw one soldier hunting monsters with movements nearly on the same level as yours, Lord Haydam.”
As he spoke, Platon glanced behind us. His gaze landed on Shut-in Honey, trailing a short distance behind. Our team was so small that if the two of us stuck together, that idiot would definitely say something stupid, so I’d told him to keep his distance.
Platon looked away from Shut-in Honey and back at me. “The large-class monster that was taken care of before you arrived, Lord Haydam—that friend is the one who killed it.”
“Is that so? I didn’t know.”
So he’d taken down a whole large-class monster and then come to me just to complain that the monsters were strange. That must have been how shocking it was that they “ate” the same way we did. The Commander hadn’t brought Shut-in Honey into Team 1 simply because he’d run out to help me, either.
“You two seemed to know each other… is that correct?”
That Shut-in Honey and I were close was already something almost nobody didn’t know, so I didn’t bother denying it.
“Yeah. We know each other.”
“Then……” Platon hesitated, uncharacteristically, then asked in a low voice, “The one my father kidnapped… was that child, by any chance?”
I stopped walking and stared at Platon.
How does this guy know about that?
Don’t tell me. Was this bastard digging into his own father’s past for my sake now?