The Trial in the Forest
“So, to sum it up, you’re saying we have to continue the mission.”
“That’s correct.”
The soldier from Hailon answered with an uneasy face.
And beside him, Cabin—
“....”
When my gaze fell on him, he lowered his head, looking either apologetic or embarrassed, his shoulders slumped.
He looked exactly like a dog that had shattered an expensive ornament and was now being scolded by its owner.
A dog with its tail tucked between its legs.
Come to think of it, Sylvia had also lost all sense the moment dogs were involved.
Ha. No help for it, I suppose.
Turning my eyes away from Cabin, I sorted through the situation.
He’d only wanted to give me more information, but in his eagerness he hadn’t thought of anything else at all; Cabin had gone and revealed his identity to the Hailon soldier.
It was obvious even without seeing it.
He had probably boasted that I was the captain of the Schupelben detachment and then urged the soldier to keep talking.
His intention—to bring me useful information—had been good, but the result was disastrous.
Behind the anxious soldier stood more than ten others, all wearing the same gloomy expression.
They were all from the Hailon Army, not the imperial forces.
From what I heard, the imperial army and the Hailon Army had joined forces to plan a monster sweep through the Akala Great Forest.
The soldiers who had come here now were an advance unit sent ahead before the main operation.
Though they had come together, the imperial army and the Hailon Army were still two separate organizations.
And with the imperial soldiers annihilated, it was only natural that the Hailon soldiers were on edge.
The imperial troops had even included mid-rank knights; they must have been several times stronger than these men.
Of course they’d be afraid to carry on the mission in a place where such people had been wiped out.
“Haah.”
“W-we’ve heard the rumors about you, Evan-nim, and the Schupelben army too! You’re the strongest of the city troops, and your swordsmanship as the detachment captain is practically on the level of a high-rank knight!”
As I let out a sigh, the Hailon soldier shouted in desperate haste.
“P-please, calm down first. I mean, that is to say—”
Cabin tried to step in and smooth things over, trying to stop the soldier, but it was useless.
Starting with the soldier who had first given us information, every Hailon soldier behind him wore the same expression.
In faces drained pale by fear and anxiety, they looked at me as though I were the only beam of light left to them, their smiles strained and pleading.
It was an expression that was hard to turn away from.
Damn it. This wasn’t the plan.
“First of all.”
“Y-yes!”
“What’s your name?”
“...Ah!”
The Hailon soldier, who had still not even told me his name, brightened a little.
*
“...I’m sorry, Evan-nim.”
“Enough. It’s already happened. What matters now is what we do next.”
Cabin apologized to me with a face that was still thoroughly wilted.
For a moment I’d thought he might finally stop wearing that expression, and then right at the crucial moment he’d gone and made a mess of things.
“Where was the place you sensed the presence of your kin last time?”
As I shifted my gaze to the rough map of the great forest spread across the table, Cabin’s eyes followed mine.
The job of the imperial troops and the Hailon advance unit had been to gather information about the Akala Great Forest.
And part of that information-gathering included mapping the forest itself.
In the end, agreeing to lead the remaining Hailon soldiers meant I could also look over the information they had collected so far, which was a fortunate development.
Cabin studied the rough map of the forest in thought for a while.
Then, starting from the entrance, he slowly traced a route with his finger.
“It was probably around here.”
“Not as deep as I expected.”
“Yes. That’s why I kept going back and forth around the area and even scattered my own traces on purpose, but there was still no reaction.”
“Hmm.”
The place Cabin pointed to was nowhere near as deep as I’d imagined.
It was a distance one could reach after only a day or two of travel.
But the problem was—
“It has nothing to do with the Hailon Army’s mission.”
“....”
Cabin fell silent again, wearing the expression of a man who had committed a crime.
I didn’t know what the imperial army’s mission was, but the Hailon Army’s was simple.
To determine the terrain of the great forest and draw up a map of it.
Only the areas outside the forest’s central region, which was considered relatively dangerous.
And so far, protected by the imperial army with its mid-rank knights, the Hailon Army had carried out that mission faithfully.
They avoided the central forest entirely, circled around the outer reaches, took in the terrain, and mapped it out.
Aside from the center, which had been blacked out, the map was already more than eighty percent complete.
And the place Cabin had just pointed to was an area the Hailon troops had already finished exploring.
In other words, there was no reason at all for them to go there again.
“W-wouldn’t it be enough to say we have our own mission and tell them to wait? After all, we’re from Schupelben!”
He’s not wrong. But still.
No matter how the process had gone, I was now the Hailon Army’s new commander.
Even if it was only a little more than a dozen soldiers, a commander was still a commander.
I couldn’t simply ignore the mission they were supposed to be carrying out—making a map.
One option was to tell them to wait here until we found the Meyer family vampire, which had been our original objective.
But that would take far too long.
If we were lucky, we might find Cabin’s kin immediately. But if we weren’t, there was no telling how much time it would take.
Last time, too, Cabin had sensed traces of blood but still failed to meet his kin in the end, so the odds were probably against us.
And if that happened, then even after we finished our own business and left the forest, we’d still have to help the Hailon Army complete its mission.
It was too long. Way too long.
We should be finishing everything as quickly as possible and getting back to Schupelben.
We had no idea when Sylvia’s awakening might suddenly occur.
“Wait.”
“Did you think of something good?!”
I could feel Cabin staring at me with an almost desperate expression.
Glancing at him briefly, I looked back down at the map.
An area where no information had yet been entered.
There was no mistake.
“Wasn’t this the direction where the imperial soldiers’ bodies were found at dawn today?”
“Y-yes! That’s right! It is!”
Cabin jumped as though he’d found hope and practically beamed.
The location where the imperial soldiers had been found this morning was near an area the Hailon troops had not yet completed exploring.
It seemed the imperial unit had set out before dawn to clear the way in advance, only to meet a grim fate.
“B-but what does that have to do with anything?”
Cabin still didn’t understand my meaning and asked carefully.
The place on the opposite side from where he had sensed his kin’s presence last time.
And the massacre of the imperial troops that had occurred there.
If I were a normal commander, I would have put off exploring that region until last, given the current situation and the fact that we had no idea what might be waiting there.
But my instincts were telling me otherwise.
There was something in that blackened region of the map.
It wouldn’t hurt to make sure.
Ever since we heard that the imperial army had been wiped out, the two incidents had been linking together in my mind no matter how hard I tried not to think about them.
It was also a chance to cut the suspicious thread connecting the two events once and for all.
If we found the monster that had brutally slaughtered the imperial troops in that blackened place, then at the very least it would be certain that Cabin’s kin had nothing to do with it.
“Let’s start by investigating the truth behind the imperial army’s annihilation.”
“Ah... yes, yes!”
Cabin didn’t seem to be following my reasoning at all, but he nodded enthusiastically anyway.
“It won’t be easy to travel while protecting those men, so be fully prepared.”
“Yes!”
Cabin answered with the relieved look of someone whose troubles had already been solved.
I’d have to give him a proper scolding once we got back to Schupelben.
If I told Sophia about it, she’d probably handle the rest on her own.
*
Somewhere in the forest where the imperial soldiers’ blood had been splashed everywhere and corpses had lain strewn across the ground.
The bodies had all been recovered by the humans and were gone now, but the brutal traces of blood still remained.
Just the marks left behind were enough to let anyone guess how savage the slaughter had been in this place.
The lush green area had been transformed far too violently into a field of red.
“T-that’s too cruel, sis.”
“It means Lady Essdelin was that angry.”
“Even so, this is...”
“Elle. No more complaining. Start now.”
The young girl called Elle closed her eyes tight at her sister’s words and brought both hands together.
Copper-brown skin. Pointed ears. Clothing of an unusual cut, unlike the styles commonly worn by humans.
Swish—
As Elle folded her hands, closed her eyes, and focused, the forest soon began to change.
The grass trembled with delight, and the trees vibrated as if in happiness.
The energy flowing out from Elle might at first have seemed ominous, because it was black and hazy.
But as Elle’s prayer continued, the forest that had been filled with cruelty was gradually restored to its original state.
Blood pooled on broad leaves evaporated into the air, and the thick stains on tree trunks slowly faded away.
“Phew.”
“Well done.”
Elle felt warmth at her sister’s hand as it praised her and gently stroked her hair.
The race that lived quietly in hiding within the Akala Great Forest—the dark elves.
Elle was a dark elf girl who, among her kind, could speak with grass and trees.
“Why did Lady Essdelin do that?”
“...She did it to protect us.”
“But the humans—!”
“Elle. I told you things are changing, didn’t I? Do you remember the humans waiting outside the forest?”
“....”
Elle couldn’t argue with her sister’s words.
Until now, only a very small number of humans had entered the Akala Great Forest.
Humans who wanted to pass through the forest.
Humans who came to feel the forest’s natural beauty.
Humans who wanted to study the forest and preserve its traces as history.
There had been wicked humans too, of course, but most had been friendly to the great forest and had never come anywhere near the villages.
But the humans entering the forest recently were by no means a small number.
What’s more, every last one of them carried weapons and radiated hostility.
As if they meant to kill every living thing in the great forest.
And in truth, they had already taken countless lives from the forest.
They burned with the will to take even more.
“Lady Essdelin will protect us.”
“...Mm.”
Elle nodded, even if only reluctantly, and tried hard to make sense of it all.
If Lady Essdelin hadn’t been here, the dark elves would likely have already fallen to human hands long ago.
If Lady Essdelin hadn’t protected them.
...Even so, this is still too cruel.
The grass and trees seemed to feel something similar to Elle.
They trembled together with her, resonating with her will.
“Let’s go back now. We never know when the humans might appear.”
Elle took her sister’s hand—offered to her—and started walking.
The hand that had always felt warm seemed somehow colder than usual.
“Humans have come this far into the forest...”
Elle turned her head away from her sister, who was muttering to herself with a face full of worry, and tried not to think about it.
How had things come to this?
Elle, still young by dark elf standards, couldn’t understand.
It would be so much better if everyone could simply live together in peace, just as they always had.
I should tell Lady Essdelin.
Lady Essdelin, who had appeared in the great forest one day out of nowhere.
Elle knew very well what a good person she was.
But lately, she had been acting strangely.
Her emotions had become much more unstable, and even small matters that she would once have brushed aside gently now provoked a fierce reaction.
Especially what had happened today—it was completely unlike Lady Essdelin’s usual response.
Normally, she would have stopped at nothing more than frightening the humans away.
She doesn’t seem to be in a good mood, but if I’m the one who speaks to her, she’ll listen!
The young dark elf girl believed that with all her heart, and hurried on, doing her best to keep her steps light and energetic.
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