The Cat Tribe (5)
Darius and the special operations team returned only after the ink of the paw print on the contract had finished drying.
"I'm back! Little brother, nothing happen while I was gone?"
...Something did happen, all right. On your end, by the look of it.
Darius spoke as if he had merely stepped out for a drink, yet his whole body was caked in bright-red blood and fluids of indeterminate origin. The rest of the soldiers looked no better. Whatever battle they had fought in a single night, it was enough to leave me staring.
"We went as far as the middle reaches of Jangbaek Mountain. The ecosystem has shifted more than I expected, just as I thought."
I had heard that Yumi's home lay in the deepest heart of Jangbaek Mountain. With the Cat Tribe driven from their homeland, the mountain's food chain must have dropped a whole tier. In other words, Darius and his special forces had punched nearly to the deep interior of Jangbaek Mountain in a single night and come back alive.
I don't know the details, but the gap in level between the people left behind here and that special ops team must be absurdly wide.
He had not said a word about it, but the signs were plain enough. Worried about his little brother, he had parked a token escort at the entrance and taken only his own people on the real reconnaissance run.
"Did you find the reason?"
"No idea!"
He said it with complete confidence. I nodded. I had figured as much.
"You've worked hard. I found the reason myself."
"Hm? Already?"
"Yes. In connection with that, I have secured a local partner. Miss Yumi, please come in."
As if she had been waiting for the cue, I ushered Yumi inside. The Cat Tribe girl had been wearing a languid expression at first, but the moment her eyes met Darius's, that look changed. Darius, for his part, regarded her with open interest.
"Cat Tribe? Not bad, though."
Not bad?
This was the same Yumi who had casually steamrolled five northern knights. To dismiss her with a mere "not bad"...
"Grrrng...!"
Yumi, however, did not take the remark as an insult or a slight. Instead she flattened herself low to the floor, every line of her body screaming extreme wariness.
That's full-on damn cat mode...
Even the fur on her tail stood on end—exactly the reaction I knew. And Darius, facing the same wariness she had never shown while surrounded by dozens of northerners, burst into booming laughter.
"Hahaha! Better than I thought, even. I wasn't even leaking killing intent, and she still sized me up. Don't tell me you're this generation's Great Warrior?"
Great Warrior? What was that supposed to be?
Unfamiliar terms kept flying out of him. Darius waved a hand before I could ask.
"Never mind that. The one beside you is this body's proud little brother. If my brother has chosen to receive you as a guest, then I will treat you as a guest as well."
He spread both hands in a gesture meant to prove he was completely harmless, but Yumi still showed no sign of lowering her guard.
In that case—
"Miss Yumi. Calm down."
"Hieeeek!"
—I would just have to force the issue.
I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and hauled her up. Only then did she snap back into the same lazy veteran who had been rolling around in catnip moments before. With the emergency suppression complete, I spoke.
"Introduce yourselves. This is Yumi of the Cat Tribe. And this is my elder brother, Darius Wintershield, Eldest Young Master of the house."
"Well met. Great Warrior girl of the Cat Tribe—I am Darius Wintershield, eternal guardian of the northern winter."
"...Great Warrior, Yumi, nyang."
Wait. It was real?
I still had no idea what a Great Warrior was, but it clearly was not some title you won in a game of slapjack.
"Brother. What exactly is a Great Warrior?"
"Beastmen are exceptional warriors one and all, but their numbers are far too few. So they choose a single warrior to carry out their collective will. That is a Great Warrior."
I understood.
In other words, Yumi was the Cat Tribe's equivalent of Darius.
"Miss Yumi. You were someone that important?"
The authority to decide an entire people's migration, the decision to leave Jangbaek Mountain alone to find medicine for her ailing tribe—I had already known she was no ordinary person. But this put her nearly on the level of an Eldest Young Master.
Yumi, however, shrank into herself and mumbled in a tiny voice.
"Yumi... is not a complete Great Warrior, nyang."
"Pardon?"
"I have not yet undergone the succession rite, nyang."
"Hoh. Is that true?"
The answer came from Darius.
No—would the two of you please stop having conversations only you understand?
"Miss Yumi and the people of the Cat Tribe are currently facing a problem that affects their entire tribe. That is why, after living in the deep interior, they were pushed back as far as the middle reaches. I took the opportunity to offer them migration while helping with that problem, and Miss Yumi, representing the Cat Tribe, has pledged to enter into a cooperative relationship with the North."
I held out the contract, its paw-print seal still vivid, and explained everything that had happened so far. Darius's reaction, once he had heard it all, was... odd.
"You're going to take in the Cat Tribe?"
I had expected resistance from the other northerners. From Darius, I had assumed a simple shrug. Don't tell me this man was a pureblood northern racist too?
"Is something about it bothering you, Brother?"
"No, nothing like that. It's only that every now and then I am reminded just how vast your greed is. To say you will feed and keep those Cat Tribe people..."
Those Cat Tribe people?
Something about the phrasing felt off.
...Wait a second.
"Miss Yumi. How much do the people of the Cat Tribe eat?"
In that instant, the Cat Tribe girl's eyes shook violently.
"W-we don't eat that much, nyang!!"
"...Pardon?"
"It's different from before, nyang! We're on a diet, nyang!"
On a... what?
"So how much do you eat?"
"Th-this much...?"
The Cat Tribe girl timidly spread her hand. Five fingers, neat and even.
"Five meals? That doesn't sound like much..."
When it came to appetite, we northerners were no slouches either. Last Gukbap Day I had watched them polish off a full geun per head like it was nothing.
The food used to be dry and bland, sure, but the sheer volume they put away was already monstrous.
Five meals should be manageable enough—
"Not five meals. Five head of livestock."
"Pardon?"
"A Cat Tribe member will finish five cows without leaving their seat. That is simply how they eat."
"Five head? Of cattle?"
Yumi corrected him at once.
"Slander, nyang! Not cows, nyang! Pigs, nyang!"
Cows or pigs—what difference did that make.
"And our whole clan is on a diet, nyang! These days we only eat five chickens each, nyang!"
"Five chickens? Hah. The Cat Tribe must be having a truly hard time."
"It is not easy, nyang."
Was this conversation even real.
The animals of this world were absurdly large. In a world where reindeer ran the size of compact cars, a wild chicken was easily the equal of an eagle back on Earth.
I can barely handle one whole chicken to myself.
I found myself reconsidering why the Cat Tribe lived on Jangbaek Mountain, a place that was essentially a monster preserve. Perhaps it was not northern contempt that kept them there at all. Perhaps it was simply the only place they could afford the grocery bill. At least on Jangbaek Mountain, food was lying around everywhere.
"Even so, nothing changes."
Unexpected expenses had not merely appeared—they had flooded in. The plan to take them in would not shift for that.
Why?
Because these people were never meant to be used the same way as ordinary northerners in the first place.
The fuel a heavy armored vehicle burns is never going to match what a government-issue compact car drinks. Different roles deserve different treatment. That was only right.
"Really? You'll take care of all our meals, nyang?"
"Of course."
It was written clearly on the contract. With the entire Cat Tribe relocating their residence into the Northern Grand Duke's domain, we would support their food, clothing, and shelter in full. The exact location would need negotiation, but from their perspective they were starting from bare ground—settlement support was the least we could offer.
And if that support mostly takes the form of food costs, it actually works out cheaper.
This was the North. Whatever else we lacked, meat came out of the ground until you were sick of it.
So that part barely mattered.
What mattered was this.
"So then—what are the symptoms of this disease that has struck the Cat Tribe?"
What kind of plague were they suffering under.
If it's a waterborne epidemic, that would be rough.
This medieval world lagged badly in chemical technology in more ways than one. Medical science lagged right along with it, and that was more or less a law of nature here—nothing to be done about it.
Gods actually exist in this world. Trying to analyze nature scientifically is basically a waste of effort.
Unlike the modern world, where gods were only concepts, this medieval realm had living deities who exerted real power over the material plane. That changed how people read every natural phenomenon. Modern minds saw a lightning bolt and thought about the flow of electric charge; people here read the wrath of a god. Modern minds traced the first spark of fire to oxygen, fuel, and heat above the ignition point; people here called it the merciful grace of a deity who pitied humanity.
The problem was that none of that was exactly wrong.
As a result, the scientific habit of doubting everything, breaking it down, and rediscovering it from first principles never even got the chance to take root. Someone fell ill? You went to a temple, paid, and got better. In the time you might have spent hunting invisible pathogens, you simply decided it was divine anger, made a generous donation, prayed—and the disease actually vanished. If your family was dying and you insisted on researching germs no one could see, you would look like the madman.
Naturally, medicine never advanced.
And that left me in a bind.
If it were something like cholera, I could at least start them on oral rehydration and go from there. For anything else, all I can really say is wash your hands and stay as far from the source of infection as possible.
Offering them a change of residence had been for the same reason. Even when the Coros was spreading, the first thing the military had done was isolate individuals and separate them from the infection source. I had hoped I might squeeze a little benefit out of the same approach.
So I asked, hoping for something manageable—
"Our eyes go dim, nyang."
"Pardon?"
"At some point, the older Cat Tribe folk started having trouble seeing at night, nyang. Some of our kin can't see at all anymore, nyang. And our numbers... have fallen a lot, nyang..."
"Numbers?"
"I don't know, nyang. From what I heard, not even half of us are left, nyang."
Half.
"How long has this been going on?"
"You mean since we moved, nyang? Like I said earlier—before the moon changed twice, nyang!"
"No. I mean the illness."
"I don't know, nyang! I only heard it was a very long time ago, nyang!"
Right. Of course.
I was starting to get a handle on how to deal with this girl.
Ask her a question and she answers it honestly, exactly as asked. The answers just happen to come in fragments.
Not an easy way of speaking, but not a difficult one either. And as those fragments clicked together like pieces of a puzzle, a complete picture took shape.
"I have heard that long ago, the Cat Tribe were called the terror that came by night across the North. You were not living on Jangbaek Mountain then, I take it?"
"That is what I was told, nyang!"
"Then everything the Cat Tribe is suffering now began after you relocated to Jangbaek Mountain."
Putting together everything I had learned so far produced the following:
One. The Cat Tribe's collective loss of vision, outright blindness, and population collapse were not ancient history.
Two. The disaster had struck them after they moved their homes to Jangbaek Mountain.
Three. And every part of it was confined to the Cat Tribe alone. Why? Because no one had ever claimed that other monsters were going blind en masse.
Line those up, and only one conclusion remained.
"I see."
"Nyang?"
"I mean I have identified the culprit that drove the Cat Tribe to the brink of mass blindness."
"R-really, nyang?!"
"That's right. And that culprit is none other than...!"