Find the Hidden Picture (1)
"This was my mistake."
Having received the report, Count Read murmured the words with a grim, set face. He had clearly come running the moment the urgent dispatch arrived — his usual immaculate appearance was gone without a trace, replaced by rumpled clothes with nothing but a thin overcoat thrown hastily over them.
"So a troll really did make it onto our lands. But how on earth..."
"No one could have believed that ranger had truly sighted a troll, my lord. Your retainers thought the same. How could this possibly be called your mistake alone?"
Rus was quick to catch the Count's words and answer them.
"Even so, responsibility is responsibility. As lord of this land, it is my duty to guarantee the safety of my people. And yet I let a petty prejudice get the better of me, and in the end I cost three good soldiers their lives. How am I to explain that away?"
The Count let out a heavy sigh.
"Identify the fallen and see that their families are paid a generous compensation. If any of the dead was the head of his household, and those left behind are in hardship, I will take responsibility in my own name and guarantee their livelihood. Should their children later wish to enter our service as household staff or soldiers, or to join the knight order or the Mage Order, they will be given the highest priority in screening. Hudson, have this carried out the moment dawn breaks tomorrow."
"It shall be done as you command."
The instant the Count finished speaking, Hudson, who had been standing behind him, bowed his head in a deep nod and answered.
"Rus, Laurel. You two have worked hard as well. That lives were lost is a tragedy, without question — but looking at it another way, it is thanks to the two of you that the matter ended even as well as it did. Had that creature left the mountains and slipped into a village, I shudder to imagine what would be happening right now."
"I will grant the entire company a bounty and a week's leave. Those who faced the troll most bravely on the front lines will receive additional rewards befitting their courage, and that includes the two of you. It need not be now — but if you have any request you wish to make, come and tell me privately."
"You honor us beyond words, my lord."
"We're deeply grateful."
Hearing the Count's commendation, Laurel and Rus bowed their heads. At the word reward, a great beaming grin threatened to bloom across Laurel's face, and Rus, catching sight of it, smacked her on the arm and desperately shot her a look.
"Now then, let us finish what we were discussing. Laurel. You said you sensed something alien about the troll?"
"That's correct, my lord."
At the Count's question, Laurel hastily composed her expression and straightened her posture. She laid out everything she had seen and felt, holding nothing back — a body half again as large as any ordinary troll she knew, a formidable resistance to mana, and, most decisive of all, those crimson eyes gleaming with an ominous light. By the time she finished, the Count's face had hardened into something graver still.
"Crimson eyes... Then you're saying it may have crossed over from the cursed lands? But that makes no sense. For a monster dwelling in the Forbidden Zone to reach us here, it would have to pass through the wastelands and several villages along the border. Sightings should have come from that direction first."
"Who can say, my lord. A creature mutated under the influence of dense magi may well have grown that much more intelligent. If so, it could have learned how to move in secret, without drawing the eye."
When Laurel finished, Rus took up the report at once.
"There is something else strange, my lord. After the subjugation we examined the corpse, and found a great many marks that appeared to be wounds across its belly and back. Some of them had not even finished healing. They were clearly of a different nature from the injuries we inflicted."
"Furthermore, in searching along the ravine, we discovered traces of the creature having dug its way out of a burrow. It is my belief that the troll, wounded for some reason, fled its original habitat and drifted here, then dug itself a den in which to hide and recover. That would explain why it left footprints and yet went unseen for some time."
"While its wounds were healing to a certain degree, it would not have moved from inside that burrow, and any traces of the digging would have been washed away by the heavy rain a few days prior. The jagged ravine terrain is not easy to search; even if someone had passed nearby, the signs could easily have been missed."
"And there is no guarantee the creature necessarily came from the Forbidden Zone. Though they are scarce now, there remain lands on the Western Continent where magi still pools in the earth. It is also possible a monster was coincidentally affected by such a place and underwent further mutation."
"Either way, there doesn't seem to be anything we can know for certain at present."
The Count spoke as if the words themselves were a lament.
"For now, we'll send people to the various villages in the east to determine whether anyone has sighted a troll, and we'll have a few additional guard posts installed at key points throughout the region."
"Well. The soldiers are exhausted, and the hour is already late, so let us adjourn for today. The finer details can be taken up at the next meeting. Laurel, Rus. I say it again — you have truly done well."
The Count gave each of them a light clap on the shoulder, and Laurel and Rus paid him their respects in return. They made to leave the tent at once and dismiss the soldiers, but the Count, somehow, still seemed to have something left to say.
When the two of them began to glance at him questioningly, he gave a couple of embarrassed coughs, then brought up the subject that had been on his mind all day.
"Ah — but how was Edwin today?"
"Nnngaaaaah!"
I woke in the morning to muscle pain screaming through every inch of my body. What was I supposed to do with this pathetic, feeble excuse for a body?
Yesterday, once the subjugation was over and I had nothing left in me, Rus had sent me back to the estate first. I hadn't arrived until late at night, and Father, having received the report, had already gone out — our paths must have crossed without meeting. Adele had been asleep, as one would expect at that hour, and I, unable even to keep my wits about me against the fatigue that came crashing down, had collapsed onto the bed and blacked out. That was the last thing I remembered of the night before.
My body, which I had never gotten around to washing, felt thoroughly filthy. I decided to bathe before eating and dragged my feet toward the bathroom. The maids seemed to have drawn the water in advance; the whole chamber had turned into a hazy white landscape of steam rising off the warm bath.
I climbed into the tub, sank into the water, and lay still — and yesterday's memories began to chew themselves over of their own accord, regardless of my will.
The first thing to surface was the wretched state of those who had fallen to the troll. Necks snapped. Limbs torn away, still twitching. Bodies ripped in half while they yet lived, their viscera offered up at last as a monster's single meal — those poor soldiers. The mere recollection of that nauseating spectacle sent a tremor through me, even as I sat steeped in warm water.
I fought for a long time, desperately dragging other thoughts to the surface, trying to shove the soldiers' faces back down into the abyss of memory.
Still... it wasn't as though I gained nothing.
I had been too unskilled to do a thing in the battle against the troll — but looked at objectively, this subjugation had been a not-unwelcome experience. Learning the sensation of killing something was a considerable harvest. If I kept on like this, would there come a day when it all felt numb?
I turned my head toward the mirror. There, save for the lower half of me submerged in the water, my face and upper body were reflected back. Whether the controlled diet, the regular mana circulation, and the constant training had borne some fruit, I had lost enough weight now that even I could feel the difference.
Still a long, long way to go, though.
It was only "some progress," and nothing more. The mountain I still had to climb to reach where I wanted to be was a very high one. It was only because I had been in such a wretched state before that this looked like improvement at all — strictly speaking, I was still in the range of severe obesity.
I had wondered, once, whether I might as well keep losing the weight this way, without resorting to anything extreme. But past a certain point the pace had slowed to a crawl, and I had concluded that at this rate I would never make it in time to return to the academy. With less than two months of the suspension left, it was more urgent than ever.
And before then, I also had to find some way — any way — to treat the Mana Sclerosis.
Then... do I really have to use that method...
I did have a method prepared for a situation like this. But to accomplish what I had in mind, I would have to go to the Forbidden Zone on the Eastern Continent. And the one thing I absolutely needed to enter that place, swallowed as it was by magi, was Holy Water — which I was now waiting for, anxiously, to arrive.
Word should come today or tomorrow, I suppose.
Knock, knock.
"Young Master. The Count has asked that you join him for luncheon today. The meal will be ready shortly, so it may be best to finish bathing a little early."
"Yeah? All right. I'll be right out."
Father was always so busy that we almost never even ate breakfast together, so this was unusual. Had he made the time because he wanted to hear about yesterday? I hadn't really done anything, if I was honest... but if he wanted to hear it, I would have to tell him.
I climbed out of the tub and began fumbling my clothes on.
Just as I had expected, Father started asking about yesterday's subjugation the moment I sat down at the table. He had heard it from Laurel and Rus, but he seemed to want it from my own mouth as well.
At first he apologized over and over for exposing me to danger through his own mistake, but I kept insisting I had been fine, and he seemed to settle a little. I did my best to stay composed as I told him what I had been through — the ratmen, the goblins, and watching them take down the troll at the end. When I finished and looked at him, Father was nodding again and again, a thoroughly pleased expression on his face.
"Mm. Well done, Edwin. Truly splendid. Finishing off the ratmen and goblins so admirably goes without saying — but to keep such a composed bearing even when you unexpectedly came face-to-face with a troll! That's my son!"
"Father, if you put it like that, it only makes me more embarrassed. The goblins and ratmen aside, during the troll I was just... watching."
"Now, now. At your age, even watching is a great experience! And you don't know this yet — our house's knights and mages happen to be exceptionally skilled, but a troll is by no means an easy monster to kill."
"Never mind its physical strength. The roar a troll looses in a crisis is tantamount to a mental assault on anyone who hasn't been trained for it. Wetting yourself is the least of it; from time to time, the faint-hearted lose consciousness altogether. Think about it. Didn't that happen just yesterday?"
He wasn't wrong. The knights and mages, with their mental barriers already formed, had seemed barely affected, or only faintly so — but among the soldiers who had been with me, several had gone down.
"And yet they tell me that you, who have never received any particular training of that kind, stood firm and unshaken even in that situation. How could a father not be glad? You may allow yourself a little more confidence."
Whether I had been talked around by him without noticing, I found a small swell of pride rising in my chest. Though — had some of the soldiers who collapsed wet themselves? The thought made me feel sorry for them. That kind of ammunition for teasing would last a lifetime. Maybe I ought to count them lucky they hadn't lost their minds entirely.
"Wooow... wow..."
Adele had been listening to Father and me, and she was staring at me with her eyes gone round as saucers and her mouth hanging open. How could even the way this child looked surprised be so adorable? My heart, worn ragged by yesterday, felt as though it were healing a little.
"Dear Brother... you're amazing..."
"Amazing, nothing."
I gave a light laugh and stroked Adele's hair.
"When our Adele grows up, you'll be able to take down a goblin without breaking a sweat, you know?"
"Eek."
Adele's face scrunched up at that.
"I hate goblins... I hate trolls toooo... Adele doesn't wanna do stuff like that..."
She looked thoroughly appalled. She was still young, and a girl besides — creepy things were apparently not to her taste. I stroked her hair again and picked the conversation back up with Father, and through him I was able to hear the contents of Laurel and Rus's report.
A red-eyed troll... If it had been affected by magi, it might well be a precursor of the Great Invasion yet to come. The original story hadn't specifically singled out a troll, but there had been passages describing how, with magi stirring, a number of omens had begun to appear little by little even before the invasion.
Fortunately, Father had said he would inspect the entire territory on a large scale and increase the number of posts and guards, so even if something similar happened again for a while, we would be somewhat prepared.
"Father. Now that the subjugation is done, I'd like to go look into the territorial inspection and a solution for the wheat problem, as I mentioned before. I still have some lingering fatigue, so I thought I might rest a day and set out around tomorrow. Would that be all right?"
When I put the idea to him, Father looked at me with a worried face.
"My boy, will you be all right? Don't push yourself too hard. You could rest properly and move when you're ready."
"I'll be fine. I didn't exert myself that much, and I think moving around will help the muscle soreness ease faster."
Never mind the state of my body — perhaps because of the troll as well, Father still looked full of worry. I promised him again and again that I would do nothing dangerous and that I would travel only during the day, and only then did he finally give in, as if he couldn't win against me.
I had no intention of going anywhere remote anyway, and monsters were mainly active at night. If I moved only in daylight, the chances of anything going wrong would be next to nothing.
After that, I spent the entire day with Adele while I waited for the Holy Water to arrive. I read her fairy tales and played with dolls alongside her, and it felt as though we had grown even closer.
Unexpectedly, Adele was terribly fond of my chubby belly. According to her, it had a nice squishy feeling, like a teddy bear. Whenever I read to her, she would always rest both hands on my stomach and rub it back and forth.
What do I do, Adele. That belly fat might all be gone by the time this trip is over...
"Young Master. Someone has come from the Church. They say they've brought the item you ordered. What shall I do?"
"Send them in, and put the payment down in the ledger."
Early the next morning. After a long wait, the Holy Water from the Church had finally arrived.
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
The time to set out for the Forbidden Zone was drawing near.