Incident at the Lake
Southeast of our manor runs a river. Follow it far enough and you'll reach the spot where the island once stood — the very place Baron Karaton and I had held our so-called Friendly Exchange.
Keep going a little further and a long, narrow lake appears, stretched out vertically across the land. It's so absurdly elongated that several neighboring domains share it as a communal fishing ground.
Being at some distance from us, we don't use it often, but I still remembered the place — every now and then someone would come back from there hauling in a monster catch.
"My lord, would you care to join me for a bit of fishing sometime?"
"Fishing? Hans, since when did you have a hobby like that?"
"I do indeed, my lord. My son as well. Whenever we have time on a holiday, we make a point of stopping by."
It was at Hans's invitation that I first cast a line in my life at that very lake. Its sheer size — a child seeing it for the first time would probably mistake it for the sea.
But enough digression. This lake supported daily life in a dozen different ways. I'd even heard that some people made their entire living off the fishing done there.
And now, at a place like that... an incident had occurred that, no matter how I turned it over in my mind, could only be the work of a monster.
The incident began roughly ten days ago. A foul stench rose near the reed beds along the lakeshore, and an investigation of the area uncovered the first corpse: the carcass of a deer.
The carcass had been split open from belly to flank, every one of its organs torn out and devoured. It was bloated and swollen from the water, and...
I stopped reading and shut my eyes without thinking, turning my head away. Merely reading the words was enough to summon that gruesome image into my head unbidden.
This is exactly the problem with the documents Laura prepares. The girl has an unnervingly vivid way with prose — the images just keep coming.
Still, it wasn't as if I could simply not read it, so I pressed on.
In the days that followed, further corpses of animals — wolves, foxes, and the like — were repeatedly sighted around the lake.
If only animals had been found, a report like this would never have been drawn up in the first place. I hurried my eyes to the latter half of the document.
Four days ago, the first human corpse was discovered. The victim was a farmer living in one of the neighboring domains. With no family to speak of, his body went unnoticed for some time; a fisherman visiting from elsewhere found him and raised the alarm.
The state of the body differed little from that of the animals.
That closing commentary did the imagining for me, and I couldn't stop the picture from forming.
After that came a string of grim entries: two more farmers' bodies — men who had gone out fishing alone — followed by one more, a traveler from another domain.
As each victim was confirmed to have died in identical condition, a single perpetrator is presumed responsible. The neighboring domains have likewise launched investigations and are said to have dispatched personnel in an effort to apprehend the culprit.
'Rip open the belly, eat only what's inside, then dump the body nearby and move on... is that it?'
If a human had done this, the evidence of organs being devoured made no sense. If a beast had attacked, the total absence of tracks made even less.
'The odds are high that a monster did this. And the way it attacks — killing its victims with this kind of savagery — its disposition almost certainly falls under [Ferocious].'
Under the system I'd set up, monsters were classified into five dispositions: [Harmless], [Cooperative], [Neutral], [Hostile], and [Ferocious].
The categories were intuitive enough that they needed no explanation. But if you asked which was the most dangerous of the lot, Ferocious stood in a league of its own.
If [Hostile] was a growling stray dog baring its teeth and warning you to stay back, then [Ferocious] was a wolf that had been starving for days on end.
The vast majority of monsters I'd captured so far had been Hostile — even the werewolf, of all things! — but this was the first time I'd seen one flaunt a Ferocious disposition this brazenly.
The one mercy was that its habitat appeared to be the lake itself. It was a monster that lived in the water, so perhaps it simply couldn't leave?
That was no reason to relax, though. Even if our domain had suffered no losses yet, as long as people kept visiting that lake, there was no telling when or how the next victim would fall.
"Laura, I'm going to step out for a bit."
"Destination?"
"The lake. Figured I'd get some fresh air."
At that, Laura rose from her seat as well and began gathering her things with brisk efficiency.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Is that even a question, my lord? Your aide accompanying you at your side — isn't that simply expected of me?"
"You never have before, though?"
"Because until now there was far too much paperwork to process. Thanks to Luena, we finally have some breathing room, so I can finally do my actual job as your aide."
"You put a lot of emphasis on that 'finally,' don't you? Or is it my imagination?"
"No, it is not your imagination. I emphasized it deliberately."
"Ah-ha. So that was a jab."
Trading our usual banter, we left the office together — Laura, thanks to the rare spare time, perhaps a shade less venomous than usual(?)
"Once the finances loosen up, I really ought to buy a horse or something."
"And the reason would be?"
"Because walking is brutal, obviously. It hasn't even been half a day and my legs are already aching."
"In that case, wouldn't paving new roads be the more efficient investment, my lord?"
"Huh. That's... actually a pretty good idea?"
Walking along an unpaved road full of mud puddles turned out to be labor far beyond anything I'd imagined. It was nothing like the neat brick sidewalks of my old world.
Once things settled down, I'd have to get the roads near the manor properly paved at least. I was mulling this over when the lake finally came into view in the distance.
The lake that had always struck me as clear and blue on past visits now seemed dark and opaque, its depths invisible — a positively ominous presence.
Not a single person in sight, though I could have sworn we'd seen three or four as we approached. Not even small wild animals stirred; only the cry of insects drifted up through the desolate air.
'Is it somewhere in there?'
The monster that had turned this once-peaceful lake into a scene of slaughter. I walked slowly toward the shore, but no notification appeared.
It was possible the culprit wasn't a monster at all — or the lake might simply be too vast for my detection to register anything.
Neither possibility was good news. Restless, I began walking along the water's edge.
"You came because of the lake corpses, didn't you?"
"That obvious, huh?"
"You were staring gravely at an official document one moment and suddenly declared you were off to the lake the next. How could I not know?"
Seriously, nothing gets past Laura. At this rate, wouldn't she figure out I'm a Mage sooner or later too?
"I know you're only in a good mood when you're personally rushing off to solve some problem or other, my lord. But this time, it won't do."
"Are you worried about me?"
"Of course I am. If you proposed sticking your nose into a matter involving dead people and I didn't worry, wouldn't that be far stranger?"
"Laura, you really are a good person."
"Wha—! Wh-what kind of nonsense are you spouting!! This is merely the perfectly obvious—!"
Leaving Laura to her sudden crimson face and spluttered protests, I turned my eyes back to the lake.
The lake's expanse was considerable. This elongated L-shaped body of water took quite a while to circle even once.
And simply walking the shoreline wouldn't be enough — we'd have to examine the water itself. Only then would the culprit's true nature become certain.
Thank goodness Luena had come when she did. Ever since she became treasurer, I could feel our workload dropping off noticeably.
'I should thank Nerga properly later, too.'
But that was neither here nor there — right now, the truth of the lake incident came first. If we didn't resolve it quickly, there was no telling how many more would die.
We'd made it roughly a quarter of the way around the lake when we were passing a stretch of densely grown reeds, and then—
"Ugh?"
A sickening stench washed over me. One breath of it was enough to know something was deeply wrong.
'Don't tell me...'
A bad feeling settled in my gut. Laura must have caught the smell too, because she stopped in her tracks, her face gone rigid.
"Laura, stay right there."
"I'm sorry, what?"
I left her standing and moved toward where the smell was strongest. I was the one who should go — after all my time making compost, I'd grown grimly accustomed to odors like this.
As I pushed the tall reeds apart by hand and pressed forward, the stench thickened with every step, and the whirring drone of flies grew louder and louder.
Damn it, I muttered under my breath, snapping the last clutch of reeds aside — and what lay beyond was enough to make me screw my eyes shut.
"My lord, what on earth is—"
"You can't look!!"
Of all the moments — Laura, unable to restrain herself, appeared behind me just then.
Beyond the broken reeds, two soldier's bodies lay heaped together in the mud. Skin blanched bone-white, waterlogged from who knows how long beneath the surface.
Obvious as it should have been, their bellies had been split open and every organ torn out and devoured. Swarms of flies were feasting on what remained.
"Ah... ah..."
"Laura!!"
She froze solid on the spot, and then her eyes rolled back and she crumpled backward. I sprinted to her and caught her body just in time.
Clapping a hand over my mouth, I staggered back and barely fought down the rising bile. That made six victims now.
According to a fisherman we found wandering nearby, the two dead soldiers had been dispatched from another domain to investigate the string of corpses.
What they'd managed to learn, I couldn't say — but one thing was certain: they had walked the very same road as every victim before them. Damn it. That scene still hasn't left my head.
I held the transcendent power of magic, but at my core I was still just an ordinary human being. Death, corpses — I could never quite get used to them.
I'd laid Laura gently against a nearby tree. I couldn't blame her. Anyone who came face to face with a corpse that butchered would... well.
The queasy feeling lingered deep, but mercifully, the trip hadn't been for nothing. The moment I saw those two bodies, I understood at once.
'That is not something a human or an animal could do.'
This was a monster's work. And to people who regarded monsters as creatures of pure legend, even a response would have been impossible.
'I should have installed the packs one at a time, examining everything carefully instead of loading them in bulk all at once. Hindsight's a cruel thing.'
Much as I wanted to recall which of my pack monsters lived underwater, that bulk-installation habit made it impossible to check.
In any case, one thing was now certain: something dangerous dwelled in that lake. Which meant... it looked like another night walk was in order.
First, I'd return and send letters to the domains whose soldiers had died, then track down the monster responsible and eliminate it. Busy, busy.
"Mmnh..."
"Laura! You back with me?"
"Ah... my lord? My lord, don't tell me that was—"
"It was. Looks like the death toll just climbed again."
"So I didn't imagine what I saw..."
Still struggling out of the shock, Laura pressed a hand to her forehead, her face pale as paper. I understood completely. If I'd been alone, I might have collapsed right there too.
"Let's head back for now. There's nothing more we can do standing here."
"Y-yes, of course."
I took her hand and helped her to her feet, and we left the lake's edge behind at once. All in all, a thoroughly unpleasant end to an outing—
Squeeek!
"Hyaaagh! M-my lord! Th-there...!"
"Whoa! What! What is it?! Calm down!"
Startled by the ear-splitting, scalded-cat shriek Laura had suddenly loosed, I nearly reflexively cast a spell before I managed to collect myself.
At her feet — legs gone, sprawled on the ground — a tiny squirrel was burrowing its way into the grass and vanishing. A profoundly awkward silence settled over the two of us.
"I... sincerely apologize. Over over s-such a trivial thing, making such a fuss..."
Head bowed deep, Laura apologized, her face flushed scarlet from ears to neck. Apparently she hadn't fully recovered from the earlier shock after all.
She tried to stand — her legs must not have come back entirely, because she wobbled and sank right back down. I caught her arm. This wasn't going to work.
"I-I'll be up in just a moment... my lord? What are you doing?"
I had crouched down in front of her with my back turned. An action whose meaning was unmistakable.
"Hop on."
"Wh-what? Hop on? That won't be necessary, I can stand perfectly—"
"Sure. And then a squirrel pops out and you collapse, and then you wait for your strength to come back, and then another squirrel scares you witless. Keep that loop going and we'll reach the manor sometime next month, right?"
At my open teasing, Laura grumbled something under her breath with a face full of protest, but unable to hold out any longer, she climbed onto my back.
"Your talent for talking your way through things has improved, hasn't it?"
"Naturally. I receive daily private instruction from the aide standing right beside me."
"You still have a very long way to go. Do keep at it."
"I'll learn at my own pace. We'll be together for a long time yet, after all."
"I'm sorry, that has wh-what meaning exactly?! Together for a long time?!"
"Well, because — lord and aide? Or were you planning to quit? Because that would genuinely be a problem for me."
"Ah... s-so that's what you meant. Yes. Of course that's what you meant. How silly of me! Yes!"
And so I carried Laura home on my back — Laura, who had been startled alone, flustered alone, cooled off alone, and was now fuming alone. Honestly, I'd never understand why that girl disliked me so much.