The White Smoke That Quelled the Flames
The flames, which had faltered for a brief moment, roared back to life with stubborn fury. As time dragged on, the people fighting them grew weaker and weaker.
Thud. Thud.
More and more villagers collapsed where they stood, sobbing. A red glow washed over their faces, each one twisted with despair.
That was when it happened.
A carriage and several carts arrived in a frantic rush, and people came pouring out.
“Make way!”
The newcomers, each carrying a heavy red metal cylinder, charged straight toward the heart of the blaze without the slightest hesitation. Among them was the lord of Grace herself.
“My lord! It’s too dangerous!”
Red Bear, spotting Chloe late, bellowed at the top of his lungs, but the lord never even glanced back.
Her silhouette looked as fragile as a moth flying into a bonfire. An inexplicable anxiety seized Red Bear, and he sprinted after her with everything he had.
“My lord!”
Right behind Chloe, the servants of Grace Castle and the residents of Condal Village streamed forward like a tide. Red Bear caught sight of Scrooge among them and reached out to stop him, but the old steward shook off the knight commander’s hand, muttering that he was busy.
It looked as if every last one of them had lost their minds at the sight of the fire.
“Form a line! Pull the pins exactly as I showed you!”
At Chloe’s command, the people yanked the gleaming pins from the red cylinders.
“Fire!”
Hssssssss!
Whoosh!
With the lord’s shout, a massive cloud of white smoke erupted and tore into the black fumes like a living thing.
No one could say how long it lasted. The inferno that had refused to yield even under mountains of sand began to shrink, then vanished completely, leaving only a few wisps of black smoke hovering like ghosts.
“Waaaaah!”
“The fire’s out!”
“Long live the lord! Long live our lord!”
The roar of cheers was so thunderous it seemed to shake the entire field. Overcome with relief, people hugged one another and wept openly.
“Thank goodness…”
Chloe, who had kept a death grip on the fire extinguisher hose until the very last second, felt her legs turn to jelly. She sank to the ground. Her once-pale face was now streaked with soot, yet her expression had never looked brighter.
A short while earlier, inside the convenience store.
The instant Red Bear burst in with news of the fire, Chloe’s first thought was to call 119. But of course there was no fire station in this world, and certainly no fire hoses.
“Fire extinguishers!”
The idea struck her almost simultaneously. She raced upstairs, shouting for the status window as she ran.
Skilled Assistant! Do you require one? Right here, a fully prepared assistant is available. Taking into account labor intensity, simplicity, and other factors, Taechang’s usage fee is as follows…
Chloe cut the status window off before it could launch into its usual automated spiel.
“Shut up and charge me whatever it costs—just hurry!”
Breath ragged, she never slowed down until she reached her room, burst through the door, and dashed straight into the convenience store.
“Fire extinguishers! Fill the entire inventory with them!”
Unfortunately, the store only had two units in stock. Still, two were far better than one. In a situation where every second mattered, doubling up was the best option.
Once again, Taechang was dragged out against his will, but one look at Chloe’s tearful, desperate face and he obeyed without complaint.
The inventory filled at a speed impossible to achieve alone. The moment all eight hundred slots were packed with fire extinguishers, Chloe burst outside and began demonstrating how to use them. Those who learned from her immediately taught others, spreading the instructions even as they hurried toward Morta.
A few villagers had no idea what the red cylinders actually did and simply nodded along. Many assumed they were magical tools designed to extinguish flames.
When they first saw the towering inferno, most had thought charging in without water was suicidal. But watching their young lord race ahead without fear, they found they couldn’t stay behind.
“What in the world is this thing?”
After the fire was out, Delma sank down beside Chloe and stared at the fire extinguisher in her hands, visibly awed. She couldn’t believe anything could put out flames faster than water. The fact that it released smoke rather than liquid was even more astonishing.
“It’s a fire extinguisher.”
Chloe lay sprawled on the grass, staring up at the sky.
Any other day, Delma would have scolded her mercilessly for lying on the ground. Today, however, the head maid lacked the energy to nag. Delma, who normally avoided physical exertion, had found even the short sprint from the carriage to the hill exhausting.
“A fire extinguisher… I see. But where did you get something like this?”
She had never seen anything remotely similar anywhere in Grace Castle. If such a wondrous object had been there all along, she would have known. Delma turned the cylinder over in her hands, still marveling at its smooth shape and handsome red color.
“From my magic pouch.”
“Pardon?”
“I have one. A magic pouch that can produce anything I need.”
Chloe had tossed the answer out half as a joke, half in earnest while trying to think of a better excuse. She expected a scolding, but Delma remained strangely quiet.
Feeling uneasy, Chloe sat up a little and glanced at her. The head maid was still examining the extinguisher with open admiration.
“So it really was a magical tool. I suspected it wasn’t ordinary. But this magic pouch of yours…”
Chloe hadn’t expected Delma to believe her immediately, but the serious tone snapped her to attention. Still, she couldn’t tell the truth. And honestly, “magic pouch” was the only description that fit.
“I suppose… it might have been a gift from my father.”
On the first day she had opened her eyes in this world, she had believed it was a nightmare. She had resented whatever cruel fate had thrust this ordeal upon her. But as time passed, Chloe had begun to wonder whether this moment might actually be a special gift—one her father had given because he couldn’t bear to watch his daughter struggle all alone.
“Did the marquis leave it for you?”
Delma, who thought she knew everything about Chloe, tilted her head at this unfamiliar story.
“I don’t know. It just appeared one day. That’s all I can tell you.”
That was as much as Chloe could say. She worried Delma might press for more details, but fortunately the questions ended there. The villagers had begun crowding around their lord.
“Long live the lord!”
“Our lord saved Morta!”
“May the gods bless our lord abundantly!”
Leaving the cheers and grateful cries behind, Chloe rose to her feet to examine the defensive bushes more closely.
“My lord, it’s still dangerous. If monsters emerge—”
“You’ll protect me, won’t you, Sir Red Bear?”
Chloe winked, but the knight commander couldn’t hide his worried frown.
He tried several times to persuade her to return to the castle, but her stubbornness would not be moved. With no other choice, he tightened security and accompanied her on an inspection near the Black Forest.
“Still, it’s a relief that not all the defensive bushes burned.”
Chloe placed a hand over her heart as she looked at the roughly one-third of the bushes that remained. Because the thicket’s coverage varied across the hillside, some sections had only been half-burned while others were completely destroyed.
“Even so, this is too risky. Tell Builder to halt all other work and begin constructing protective walls around the village immediately.”
“Wooden walls will not be able to stop every monster attack.”
“I know. But they should at least buy the people enough time to escape.”
Even with the surviving bushes, it was uncertain whether they could hold back the monsters in such reduced numbers. Fear flickered in Chloe’s eyes as she gazed at the blackened hillside.
“Tomorrow, clear away the burned bushes and spread fertilizer so the remaining ones can spread.”
“Yes, my lord!”
“Also, we must discover exactly how the fire started. There is no chance it ignited on its own.”
Chloe stared at the scorched hill with a heavy expression. Her voice, different from before, carried a clear undercurrent of anger.
Bartre and his men, who had been hiding in the forest watching until the operation ended, could not hide their shock.
“What the hell was that? Where did that cloud suddenly come from?!”
“Sit down.”
Uno had forgotten he was supposed to be hiding and jumped to his feet. At Bartre’s command he sank back down, but the leader himself was equally stunned by the bizarre phenomenon he had never witnessed before.
Thanks to years of drought, he had assumed a fire would be impossible to control. It should have been the easiest, least-effort way to turn the village into ash. Instead, an unexpected variable had ruined everything.
“Was the lord of Grace a mage?”
There was no other explanation.
“That can’t be right. The rumors all say she’s the biggest idiot in the empire.”
Bartre had heard those rumors, of course. Yet the woman who had bravely charged toward the flames could never be called a fool. No one with eyes like hers could possibly be stupid.
Not only had she used mysterious magic to extinguish the blaze in moments, she had refused to stay safely in the rear simply because she was a noble. She had not pretended to ignore her people’s suffering. The image of that young lord smiling brightly despite a face covered in soot refused to leave his mind.
“Retrieve whatever they were using. We need to know what it is.”
“Yes, boss.”
Uno was just as curious about the red objects, so he answered without hesitation.
“Still… the first plan failed. What do we do now?”