Those Who Wear Skins (2)
After a full day of training her, she had simply left—leaving me in a rather awkward spot.
I spent the time training alongside Luna while she practiced. Of course, I didn't neglect the care of my precious firearms either.
"Haaah. Why can't I get used to this?"
"Because I keep gradually increasing the training load."
"Why?!"
Why? Because I was thinking of that belly fat of hers that had only just started to shrink.
A Dampyr's physical ability sat somewhere above a human's and below a pure vampire's. But I had confirmed she could grow stronger through training rather than blood-drinking, so I was ramping things up carefully, bit by bit.
"Are you saying that after looking at what I'm wearing on my body?"
"Th-that… I'm sorry."
After training with Leona yesterday, I had felt it myself—I still wasn't trained enough. And once you feel that lack, what's left to hesitate over?
I went straight to the forge and found a weighted training vest. Crude, pure load-bearing work, yes—but the point was to put stress on the body and expand the vessel that held mana, increasing how much I could hold.
Honestly, I hadn't expected them to stock anything like this. Turns out a surprising number of diligent students ordered them, so there were extras lying around.
I couldn't stay rooted in one place forever, and I hadn't had proper time for real training—so this time I was finally going to do the work I had put off.
"Whew. Feels good to work up a sweat for the first time in a while."
"Y-you have a lot of scars…"
"I'm an exorcist priest. Goes with the territory. They're scars of honor, so don't say anything that makes them sound tragic."
"I won't!"
Then why did she look away when she said that?
I thought I felt another gaze on me for a moment from somewhere else, but I ignored it.
"That Miss Lichte—I wonder if her training is going well?"
"What trouble could there be?"
Only the first-years had gone, but every one of them was a mana user, and the professors accompanying them had plenty of real combat experience. They at least fulfilled the bare minimum of a teacher's duty, so I wasn't particularly worried.
She was a coward, sure—but she wasn't the type to go somewhere, get beaten down, and start blubbering. She'd manage.
The Knight Department's curriculum included things meant to fill the gaps Dante had pointed out to Leona. One of them was the regularly scheduled field practicum.
It was also the reason the Knight Department produced more casualties than any other department—but there was no real way around it.
"There's no need to force a kill. What you need to learn out here is real combat against things that are not human and that do not use cold weapons."
Sword as the foundation, then spear and blade, axe and blunt weapons. Just as there were countless monsters, knights had to forge specialties of their own against those monsters—and the students who had inherited those specializations were no different.
"Scout with the campsite as your base, and never move at night. You people can barely handle monsters in daylight as it is."
It would be a lie to say no one's pride was stung, but affection for the students or not, the professors were people who had already walked this road. Listening wouldn't cost them anything.
Teams had been assigned before departure. Leona was one member of a four-person team—and its leader.
"Alright. Let's go!"
None of them were particularly outstanding, but none of them were rough edges either—solid, unremarkable people. Still, they were the kind who trained hard alongside Leona and made the most of the Academy as a place of learning.
"Miss Lichte. Are we going after the owl bear?"
Crane, the cautious one of the three, stepped forward carefully. Leona might have been something else, but the other three were all average.
"No. If it's dangerous, of course we run. But even if we have to strike while we flee, we need to understand why we had to run in the first place!"
"Ohh!" / "Ohh!" / "Ohh!"
Their noses lifted a little higher. In truth she was just adapting one of Dante's lines, but the three of them had no way of knowing that.
"By the way, where did Young Master Wolfgang go?"
Lucard Wolfgang. Youngest son of the margrave who held the northern front, and a man whose name had risen as a genius of the sword.
Training with Leona had taught the three of them just how strong she was as well—but they were always curious which of the two, her or Lucard, was stronger.
"Mm. I don't know. Rather than put my attention on someone else, I preferred to swing my own sword one more time."
The backs in her line of sight numbered only two: Dante and Yuri.
She wanted to stand and fight as an exorcist priest side by side with Dante one day. And to Yuri, who had given her existence a place in this world, she wanted to repay the debt by defeating Fiona.
Some northern "genius"? How could he possibly compare to a great swordsman who wielded a blade of light, or to an unbreakable man who bowed to neither evil nor demon?
"All of you, remember this. You're free to admire someone and chase their back—but you must never lose the will to surpass them."
"Haha. That's a heart any knight ought to have. Still, more than becoming stronger than anyone, I'd rather be someone who protects someone else."
Jonah tapped his shield as he said it, and Jena flushed shyly looking at him. A small envy rose in Leona at the sight of them, but she shook it off quickly.
"Th-then… we still haven't seen any of the owl bear's territorial marks. Isn't that strange?"
They had hired a tracker and come in already knowing the owl bear's habitat. Owl bears had strong territorial instincts and heavy appetites, so there should only be one in the area—but they should have seen a mark at least once.
Strange…
It might have been a trivial worry. But Leona, who had traveled with Dante even briefly, had seen how trivial worries could snowball into something real.
"We're going back."
"What?"
"We go back to camp and report that we found no owl bear tracks. For all we know, the tracker might have lied to us."
There was no need to stoke unnecessary anxiety, so Leona kept the wrongness she had felt to herself.
But what greeted them when they returned to camp was another team that had found owl bear tracks.
"Miss Lichte. Something you want to say?"
"Before the practicum, you told us owl bears have strong territorial instincts and leave their marks all over."
"That's right."
"But our team—and the other teams—couldn't find any tra—"
She looked over the faces of the other teams and found she couldn't finish. There were the ones who had once nearly died from the side effects of the medicine she had burned, and people who never showed up unless a class like field practicum made attendance mandatory. The team that had found tracks, on the other hand, was made of people who, like Leona and her three, trained and attended classes diligently even on ordinary days.
"Never mind. We must have just missed the tracks."
"Just as there are all kinds of humans, can't the same be true of owl bears? Start again at first light tomorrow and search thoroughly."
"Yes, sir."
She had felt something wrong, but the situation itself offered no explanation. A brief self-reproach flickered through her—if only she had power like Dante's—but Leona chose what she could do.
"Miss Lichte. You don't look well. Are you alright?"
"No. If I tell the others, it'll just sound like another one of my wild theories. But… would you believe me, just this once?"
Whether the position of leader had changed her, or the absence of anyone to lean on had forced her to become someone she could lean on herself—no one knew.
"Yes."
"If it's Miss Lichte, you wouldn't speak idly. We can trust you."
"Anytime."
At her teammates' trusting answers, a little of the unease in Leona's chest eased.
"Absolutely no one goes anywhere alone. Even if you need to relieve yourselves—embarrassing as it is—you go two at a time, and stay within sight of each other."
It was a humiliating request by human standards, but none of the people here were Dante.
"Huh? Th-then…"
"Jena and I will stick together. Jonah and Cled move as a pair."
She felt the wrongness, but still had no idea what had caused it. That left only one method: wait until the cause showed itself right in front of them.
"If we find the source of the anomaly, what do we do?"
"Once we confirm it, we report to the professor first."
"And if that still doesn't solve it?"
Fear settled on the face of Jonah's childhood friend, Jena. They trained their mana and were knight candidates in name, but for people who had never seen proper real combat, fear was only natural.
Leona quietly hid her own faintly trembling hand.
"Then we survive."
She hoped nothing would happen. But of course it would. On the train, and again while riding the carriage—she had never once imagined those things would happen either.
An incident would absolutely occur.
A peaceful night patrol for the first time in a while.
After a few scuffles, even the police were starting to act a little like police, so the streets were better than expected.
"So why call me in the middle of that?"
It would have been nicer if the witch hadn't summoned me at all.
"If it inconvenienced you, I'm sorry—but I thought you needed to hear this."
Needed to hear it, huh. When someone called an exorcist priest, it was one of two things: a genuine emergency, or a trap meant to put the priest in one. The odds of the latter seemed low this time—but I didn't fully let my guard down.
"You know the Knight Department went on field practicum?"
"I know. With your information network, you already know I have some connection to one of their students. So what?"
"From the Empire's ports all the way along the road to Babylenia—strange corpses have been turning up."
"Aren't there already too many strange corpses?"
Strange? This was a world where plenty of the dead got back up and walked around.
"Have you ever seen a corpse with both its heart and its skin missing?"
"…"
There were things that targeted hearts alone, and things that targeted skins alone—but cases that took both were extremely rare. Every so often you got mad mages who used a human heart as a sacrifice and then made a book from human skin for extra sacrilege, but history recorded only a single successful case.
"It isn't a mage. The bodies weren't found in some cave or underground—they were found in the forest."
"Any signs the corpses were eaten?"
"If anything, only the wounds needed to subdue the prey. Nothing else."
"Flayed alive, or killed first and then the heart and skin taken?"
"Flayed alive, then the heart taken. And look at this route."
It wasn't a detailed map, but simply possessing it could get you executed. The trail of appearing corpses started at the largest western port, and the end of that path—or the place it would pass through—was the problem.
"It's the site where Miss Lichte is currently on field practicum."
Along the road of incidents, each victim site had produced five to eight identical corpses. The number of whatever-they-were was probably at least two.
"Why tell me?"
"Call it goodwill for the help last time. Separate from anything I might ask of you later—I'm simply informing you."
"You just don't want any misplaced rage landing on your people."
"I won't say that isn't part of it."
The usual headache of those who claimed neutrality. I wanted to tell her her face was disgustingly thick. Plenty of exorcist priests had probably died because of people like them.
"And next time, just wear a veil when we meet. What kind of tavern has a garden in it?"
Leaving the witch still frozen in place behind me, I headed for the cathedral.
Judging by the intervals between incidents, there was a high chance victims had already appeared. The funny part was that the odds of Leona dying were almost zero.
Please—just don't go berserk.