Departure
Becoming a monster did not mean losing the ability to reproduce.
In fact, it almost seemed as if reproduction grew even easier once something became a monster.
For one thing, once a creature turned into a monster, it could produce offspring through breeding with beings that had once belonged to entirely different species.
Daun, whose scholarly curiosity had been glowing brighter by the second, asked with shining eyes after hearing me out, “That’s fascinating. If they’re different species, how can that even work?”
How could it work? Well.
“How would I know? I’m not a monster scholar, and I’m not a biologist.”
“Ah, right….”
I’d lived in this world long enough that it was only natural I knew more than Daun did about some things, but knowledge was another matter entirely.
Earth probably wasn’t all that different in that regard.
The reason I’d suddenly started talking about this was that, while we were busy dealing with the monsters rushing at us, the thought had crossed my mind all at once.
“It must’ve been a good place to live once.”
Considering how many monsters were swarming here, anyway.
Apparently thrilled to have finally found prey untouched by Magi, they kept throwing themselves at us with a persistence that was almost maddening.
Just like this.
Swish.
With a light slicing sound, the monster charging at me lost its head to the sky.
The creature had barreled toward me with its jaws wide open, all greed for prey, and met death without even having time to close its eyes, those pupils soaked through with gluttony.
Its corpse would become food for the starving monsters around it.
The fate of the one that rushed in to eat was to be eaten in turn by others.
That was an ironic end, if nothing else.
“What a nuisance, honestly.”
It was too wasteful to bleed mana all over the place, but killing every single thing that rushed at us one by one was a nuisance beyond words.
I wished they’d just leave us alone. Did they really have to charge in so stupidly? Couldn’t they at least read the room?
Looking at them made me think that the saying about wild animals having a sharp instinct for danger might be wrong after all.
“Maybe the fact that Canaria is small and cute makes her seem easy to bully beyond whatever instinct tells them?”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“What…?!”
Daun’s eyes went wide.
“So you’re finally admitting you’re cute, Canaria?”
“…Huh? More nonsense?”
“Nonsense? You’re the one who said it made sense….”
“That’s not what I meant.”
It looked like she’d grossly misunderstood me, so I kindly set Daun’s mistake straight.
“I meant they thought I was easy to bully. So of course they’d charge in all smug just because I’m small, right?”
“....”
Daun pressed her lips together.
Watching her eyes roll back and forth without stopping, I could tell she was looking for a way out of the situation.
Then Daun shut her eyes tight.
“If telling the truth is a crime…!! Then I shall gladly bear the punishment for that sin…!”
“Ah. I see.”
She said it with the solemnity of a knight riding into battle for the sake of a kingdom, and somehow that only made the wind go out of me.
I knew I should probably just ignore obviously teasing remarks like that.
But ideals and reality were always different things.
“Hm….”
One hand span, two hand spans.
I moved my hands slowly, measuring.
“What are you doing?”
“Measuring length.”
“Length? What length?”
“How much I’d have to cut off for us to be the same height.”
Was it about here?
I was tilting my head at my outstretched fingers when a heavy weight suddenly latched onto my waist.
“Save me!”
“You wouldn’t die from cutting off just a little. Do you know how many people live after losing a leg?”
“But shock can kill you too…! A lot of people die from losing a leg!”
“I see. I didn’t know that. Then how about the upper half instead? As long as I can shorten the overall length, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the top or the bottom.”
“...That would actually kill me. Definitely kill me, with no chance of recovery whatsoever.”
“But you come back to life, don’t you?”
“Oh… I didn’t think of that.”
Daun muttered that I’d caught her off guard.
Usually, when we had conversations like this, Celine would come to stop us—and this time was no exception.
“The two of you should probably stop there, if you don’t mind.”
“Stop where?”
“...It was a joke. Please say it was a joke.”
“Y-yes… it was a joke. It was a joke.”
Even after I gave her exactly what she wanted, Daun still didn’t look any less uneasy.
But taking care of that was not my job, so I drew my sword.
Not to perform some surgical procedure to shrink Daun’s height, of course, but to deal with the scum drooling as they charged at us.
The monsters’ heads naturally went flying a moment later.
* * *
A new day dawned, and our journey toward the center of the land still continued.
We had walked quite a long way by then, it seemed, because the Magi pressing in from every direction was so much stronger than what we’d encountered near the shore that there was no comparison at all.
On top of that, monsters of an entirely different caliber kept throwing themselves at us.
Shhhk!
A massive shadow fell across my field of vision.
It had moved quickly enough to leave a faint afterimage, but my eyes never lost track of what it was.
A huge claw, thick with Magi.
If that thing merely grazed someone and left even the smallest wound, wouldn’t they die of Magi poisoning immediately?
No, for most people, wouldn’t the body simply split clean in half before Magi poisoning even became the issue?
Even as the thought crossed my mind, I made no attempt to block or dodge the claw lunging at me.
The moment it was about to touch my body—
Bang!
Golden light flashed, and the claw that had been barreling toward me came to an abrupt stop.
-Grrr?
The monster was visibly flustered, apparently unable to understand the strange golden wall that had suddenly appeared and held it back.
Its menacing face turned dazed in an instant, and it was rather funny to watch.
“Don’t get it? That’s fine. You don’t need to.”
I didn’t have a hobby of explaining things at length to dead things, anyway.
Some people might have a taste for corpses, but I wasn’t one of them.
Click.
-Thud!
I sheathed my sword and turned away from the monster.
Something large hit the ground behind me with a heavy thump, but I didn’t bother looking back.
Daun applauded me enthusiastically.
“Was that how I’m supposed to do it?”
“Yep! A true powerhouse never looks back at an explosion.”
“...Is that so?”
I’d acted according to Daun’s request, but I still didn’t understand what meaning this had.
Romance really was a difficult thing.
“So it’s romance, isn’t it?”
“Hmm… is it?”
If Daun said so, then I suppose it was.
Whatever the case, if the client was satisfied, wasn’t that enough?
I turned away from the question that had no answer and said to Celine, “Thanks to you, we took that one down easily again.”
“Not at all. I merely did what I was meant to do.”
At first, I’d planned to handle all the charging monsters on my own.
But at some point after she helped me repel a series of ambushes, Celine had made a suggestion.
“I may not be of much help, but… would it be all right if I assisted you when you fight, Canaria-sama?”
At first, I refused her offer.
Whether the monsters attacked in groups or came at us without giving us time to breathe, they weren’t really a threat.
Just annoying.
In that situation, borrowing Celine’s strength too felt like overkill—and overinvestment.
“What if you think of it not as overinvestment, but as efficient investment? Sometimes a situation that would require three units of strength from one person can be handled with just one unit each if there are two people. And honestly, watching you fight while doing nothing makes me feel guilty.”
That was how Celine kept persuading me.
Honestly, I wanted to preserve Celine’s combat strength in case something unexpected happened, but I couldn’t argue against her when she said, “Aren’t you the same, Canaria-sama?”
Daun also strongly supported Celine’s position, and in the end, I gave her permission to join the fight.
There was nothing to be done about majority rule.
It wasn’t as though it would cost me anything, and I knew how powerful a priest could be in battle, so there was no reason to stubbornly object.
In fact, because I didn’t have to worry about getting hurt like this, it was even easier to cut the monsters down.
With Celine there, I could pour everything straight into offense instead of spending any of my effort on evasion or defense.
“You don’t deserve to be called an apprentice saintess.”
“Thank you for the praise. Canaria-sama is an excellent fighter as well.”
“Well, fighting’s the only thing I’ve done all my life, so of course I should be good at it.”
“I’ve also trained my whole life to serve Lady Edel, so it only makes sense that I’d be capable too.”
“...You really never lose a step, do you?”
Even though this was the sort of exchange in which we were essentially showering each other with praise and there was no point in declaring a winner.
I shot her a sidelong glance, and Celine covered her mouth lightly before letting out her trademark soft laugh.
Shaking my head, I remembered the original purpose I’d almost forgotten thanks to the monster attack.
The house standing a little off from the road.
We had meant to take a look inside.
“Still, this one’s empty too, huh.”
I poked my head in and peered inside.
There was no need to feel guilty about looking into someone else’s house without permission.
It wasn’t as if there was a door to knock on, or a homeowner who could grant permission, was there?
The traces that a door had once existed were still there, but even after I looked around inside, there was no sense of life at all.
“Cough, cough! Ugh, all this dust… Celine, do you happen to know a Holy Magic spell that clears dust?”
“Sh-should I make one…?”
“Huh? No, no! There’s no need to go that far….”
After looking over the furniture, coated so thickly in dust it had turned from white to hazy gray, I stepped back outside.
I’d come out of a dirty place into a clean one, so I should have felt refreshed, but the dense Magi made it hard to notice much difference.
The farther we traveled toward the center, the more frequently we saw ordinary houses that hadn’t appeared on the continent’s outskirts.
That told us we were heading in the right direction, but it also felt strangely wrong.
Every house we saw was empty, as though everyone had agreed to vanish all at once.
“If the Magi gets stronger toward the center, shouldn’t people actually be living farther out on the edge?”
That made sense to me, but what I could actually see was the complete opposite.
I wondered if I was the one who had things wrong, but fortunately the other two didn’t seem to think differently.
“Whatever the case, we’ll know soon enough.”
Once we reach the center, we’ll have the answer to all of this.
Thinking that, I cast my gaze ahead.
Toward the ominous mass of Magi roiling beyond the horizon.