Toward the Holy Kingdom
“Ugh, my back hurts, my legs hurt… My whole body feels like it’s been smashed to pieces….”
“….”
“...Kana. What was that laugh just now? You weren’t making fun of me, were you? No, no, our sweet Kana would never do that.”
“I was making fun of you.”
“Aren’t you being a little too shameless?!”
Was there any reason I shouldn’t be shameless?
People said a gentleman’s revenge was never too late, even after ten years, but my revenge, as someone who was definitely not a gentleman, had been settled much faster than that.
Of course, that didn’t mean my resentment was completely gone, but seeing Journey looking so dead inside did make me feel a little better.
Her face hadn’t looked like that when we first set out.
Like weather that had been cloudy for days before suddenly clearing the moment we left, her expression had been bright and fresh at the start too.
But as time passed, dark clouds had gradually gathered over it, and in the end it had turned into this.
“I had no idea riding a horse could be this hard….”
Journey muttered as she got down from her horse, just as painfully as she had climbed on.
“If I got as strong as Kana, I could probably ride without any trouble, right?”
If horseback riding required Master-level skill, then the horse would have to be a dragon or a unicorn in disguise.
Even little kids much younger than her rode just fine, so no matter how I looked at it, this wasn’t a matter of mastery.
“Like Kana?”
“…No.”
Besides, Apostles had absurdly good physical abilities compared to their rank.
They could probably take a few hits from an orc’s club and still keep standing, so there was no way a little horseback riding would leave them wrecked.
Conclusion: Journey was struggling because she was a scrub.
Bang, bang, bang.
“…Isn’t that conclusion weird?”
“A scrub is a scrub.”
“Kana suddenly turned into a mean little gremlin…?”
Ignoring Journey muttering in Arkish, I went on.
“If you’re that tense while riding, of course it’s going to hurt.”
Being tense meant your muscles were clenched.
She’d been holding herself stiff for hours, so of course her muscles were complaining.
Tension could be a kind of lubricant, helping you respond smoothly to what came next, but only when it was moderate. Too much tension, and even things that should be easy would stop working properly.
“…If you knew that, you should’ve told me sooner.”
“Journey.”
“Yeah?”
“You usually understand things best when you experience them yourself.”
In other words, one firsthand lesson was more effective than a hundred lectures.
I was speaking from experience, after all, having raised many people into functioning human beings. She could trust me.
And every time I said something like this, she always—
“I would’ve listened if you’d just said it out loud!”
“Yeah, I don’t believe you.”
There it was again.
I’d heard it so many times it wasn’t even new anymore.
At first, I had believed her and tried telling her again verbally, only to become more certain that my original judgment had been right.
“Tension, you mean tension? ...Agh! F-for now, let’s rest a little. I’m hurting too much to keep going….”
Journey, looking very serious, tried to mount her horse again, then gave up with a groan as the muscle pain hit her.
Watching her while chewing on jerky, I shook my head.
She really was trying hard.
* * *
When we’d gotten off our horses and were taking a short rest.
“Huh?”
Journey’s eyes went wide as she spotted something.
“A herd of water buffalo?”
“That’s a group of monsters called Rain Buffalos.”
“Monsters? They look like cows.”
“Not much difference.”
In the direction she was looking, a herd of about several dozen Rain Buffalos was passing by.
“Rain Buffalos are delicious.”
“…Does Kana divide monsters by whether they taste good or not?”
“?”
“…Sorry. Was that too harsh?”
“Then what else matters besides taste?”
“Ah, so that was the issue.”
Journey nodded as if she understood.
“Well, with Kana’s skill, I guess no monster would really be dangerous.”
“That’s not true.”
She was overestimating me too much.
No matter how strong I was, there were still plenty of monsters I couldn’t just kill as easily as slicing a steak.
Leviathan, Kraken, Peridis, and more… There were so many of them.
Dragons were classified as monsters too.
“Dragons were monsters? No, never mind that. Leviathan or Kraken or Perry, what?”
“Peridis.”
“Right, Peridis. I don’t know how strong those things are, but you’re saying monsters have to be at that level. Just from the names, they don’t sound like ordinary monsters.”
“That’s true.”
If things like that wandered around casually, then the Ardeena Continent would already have become a monster paradise.
I’d only seen them through stories and books, so I didn’t know exactly how strong they were, but based on the descriptions alone, they definitely didn’t sound weak.
“But they’re really delicious.”
Unlike orcs, Rain Buffalos were premium ingredients that didn’t split opinion at all.
There was even a saying that while there were people who had eaten them once, there were no people who had eaten them only twice.
“…Huh? Isn’t it, ‘There are people who’ve never eaten it, but nobody who’s only eaten it once’?”
“Rain Buffalo meat is expensive.”
You might get to try it once in a while, but it was too pricey to buy again and eat a second time.
All you could do was suck your fingers and think wistfully of the taste in your memory.
Well, in reality, far more people had never eaten it at all, so you could just take it as an expression meaning it was that delicious.
If that still didn’t make sense, maybe it was easier to think of it as the kind of meat served at royal tables.
“And the milk is good too.”
“Mm-hmm. Milk is important.”
“….”
“…I didn’t say anything?”
“You did.”
“I wasn’t teasing Kana. I just said it was important!”
Sure, and maybe that’s exactly what you meant.
Anyway, the meat I’d already mentioned, the milk, and even the hides and horns.
Every part of the Rain Buffalo corpse was used efficiently, with not a scrap wasted.
It would have been nice if they could be domesticated, but since that wasn’t possible, there was nothing to do but regret it.
“Huh? Why not? They don’t look that ferocious….”
“They’re monsters.”
According to people who’d thought the same way as Journey and tried it, there were usually only two endings.
Either they got skewered by a Rain Buffalo’s horn and went off to Edel’s side, or they failed in a life-or-death business venture and went off to Edel’s side.
There was a reason Rain Buffalos were classified as monsters.
They looked tame enough most of the time, but when it rained they became extremely strong and wildly aggressive.
They ran around trying to smash everything they saw, so you couldn’t confine them, and they were too strong to stop lightly.
“Then why not raise them in a region where it barely rains?”
“Barely rains doesn’t mean it never rains.”
And if you raised them in such a place, another problem came up.
“Rain Buffalos die if they don’t get rained on.”
They turned vicious when it rained, but if it didn’t rain, they died. What kind of defective creature was this?
“Wouldn’t plain water work?”
“Nope.”
Those things only reacted to rain falling from the sky.
I didn’t know why, but since when had monsters ever needed something to make sense?
“Hiss… now that you put it that way, I am a little curious. What would they even taste like?”
“If you’re curious, you can always try one.”
“…Huh?”
“What are you waiting for?”
Why weren’t I moving?
When I stared at her, Journey broke into a cold sweat.
“…You’re not telling me to catch those things, are you?”
“You said you were curious.”
“Just because I’m curious doesn’t mean I have to solve my curiosity right away, kyaaa!”
“You talk too much.”
Before she could finish, I gave Journey a shove in the back, and she went tumbling across the grassland.
The Rain Buffalo herd, which had been peacefully grazing, noticed her and pricked up their ears.
“I, uh… if I attack one, will the others charge too?”
“? Of course.”
“So you’re saying all those dozens of them are going to come at me at once?”
“Yep.”
“…How am I supposed to do that? Why are you doing this to me?!”
I shrugged.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“They really are delicious, though.”
“I’m not eating them! No, I can’t eat them!”
With a shriek, Journey hurriedly backed away.
The Rain Buffalos lost interest and went back to grazing.
“Hmm.”
Was this difficult?
Leaving Journey behind, I walked forward at an unhurried pace.
When I’d covered about the distance she had rolled, the creatures lifted their heads, but after confirming it was me, they dropped them again.
...That irritated me a little.
They said monsters and beasts had good instincts, but maybe that was just a rumor, or maybe these guys were especially bad at it.
The difference from how they’d reacted to Journey made me feel oddly offended.
When I stepped a little closer, they finally looked at me with wary eyes.
Even if they’d tried running, I would’ve chased them anyway, but they weren’t even running away when I got this close.
That meant they thought they could respond even if I threatened them.
“How insolent.”
Crack!
I raised a hand and brought it down on the head of the closest one.
My motion had been feather-light, but the result was anything but.
With a dull impact, one buffalo’s skull caved in and it collapsed.
“WOOOOO—!”
Seeing their companion fall, the herd’s mood changed instantly.
Their leisurely grazing vanished without a trace, replaced by beasts scraping the ground with their forelegs and snorting hotly through flared nostrils.
Anyone could see they were about to charge.
“You want to fight?”
I grabbed the horn of the buffalo lying on the ground and lifted it.
The limp body rose into the air, following my hand.
“WOOO—!”
“Really?”
“…Wooo.”
Their calls had clearly lost their earlier force.
Even if they were low-intelligence monsters, they’d probably realized something was very wrong.
They’d been slow to understand and had lost one companion for it, but that was better than having the whole herd wiped out, wasn’t it?
Before long, they were too busy glancing at one another to do anything else.
If they’d been human, maybe a conversation like, “You go first,” and “You’re in front of me,” would’ve been taking place.
When the silent exchange of looks finally ended, the buffaloes’ wavering eyes sharpened.
At last, they had made their decision.
...Moo.
They turned away from the corpse of their limp companion as if nothing had happened and resumed grazing.
Satisfied, I nodded and dragged my trophy back toward Journey.
“MOOOOO—”
“MOOO—!”
Starting with one creature’s cry, the others soon began bellowing too.
Before long, the chorus of dozens of Rain Buffalos filled the grassland.
Were they frustrated at being unable to avenge their fallen companion?
Their cries sounded strangely mournful.
“Keep it down.”
I didn’t care about their sorrow, and they were noisy.
“Or do you want to come at me right now?”
“….”
The grassland that had been full of bellows fell silent as if nothing had happened.
So noisy, and yet they didn’t even have the courage to get revenge.
“Kana….”
When I dragged the Rain Buffalo corpse over and stopped in front of Journey, she looked down at me with a complicated expression.
“I don’t know if I should say this or not, but….”
“…?”
“...You, uh, no, never mind.”
Journey, who seemed about to say something, swallowed it and trailed off.
After making me curious like that, she was just going to dodge the answer?
“What?”
“Kana might get hurt if she heard it.”
“I don’t care.”
“R-really?”
I nodded.
It wasn’t like there were only one or two people who’d said harsh things to me; I was used to most insults by now and didn’t care much about them.
More than that—
“If I get hurt, I just make sure to hurt them back.”
It’s just that I wasn’t good with words, so I returned the favor with physical injuries instead.
It was a competition in our respective strengths, so they probably had no complaints.
Journey trembled after hearing me, then let out a shriek.
“…You’re scary!”
In the end, Journey never told me what she had swallowed back.
...So what was she trying to say?