The Toll Road Party
With the appearance of those who had escaped the Cat Tribe’s heavenly curse, the feast—already unraveling—finally ground to a complete halt.
Even after that, more people recovered their sight, and each recovery brought another tearful reunion of long-separated families. The whole place dissolved into pure pandemonium.
But whether Northerner or Cat Tribe, no one felt the least bit disappointed. They were simply, genuinely happy.
In place of the broken-up banquet, I ended up sitting down for a private audience with the man who claimed to be the Cat Tribe’s Third Claw—Arun.
“Grrrr. Thank you.”
The moment we were alone, Arun offered his gratitude first. Then, fixing me with those sharp, unblinking eyes, he made his declaration.
“I, Arun, Third Claw of my people, swear that I will keep our covenant—even if it costs me this life.”
Right. Arun had been among those who regained their sight.
A covenant, huh.
I felt the weight of that unshakable vow settle reassuringly on my shoulders, yet I still threw out something that edged close to a nitpick.
“I’m grateful to hear you say so. But not everyone has escaped the heavenly curse yet, have they?”
“Grr.”
Dozens of Cat Tribe members had recovered their vision. That also meant hundreds more were still living as the blind. When I pointed out how thin the claim of a fulfilled covenant looked under those circumstances, Arun shook his head.
“A heavenly curse is not called that for nothing. From the beginning, no one truly expected to cast it off completely. Even if some did, none of us imagined it would happen this quickly. We knew you were sincere—so we resolved to answer with sincerity of our own. That is all.”
Fair enough. I hadn’t expected results this fast either.
I nodded.
“Understood. In that case, I suppose it’s time I told you.”
“Grrrr. Told us what?”
“The true nature of the heavenly curse that was laid upon all of you.”
“…I am listening.”
Well, “listening with reverence” was a bit much. In truth, the curse on them was nothing so mysterious—if you looked at it a certain way.
Because—
“Do you remember the food you ate at the feast?”
“Grr? Not clearly. It was unfamiliar… and yet somehow familiar.”
“That makes sense. You almost certainly haven’t had any since you withdrew into Jangbaek Mountain. And that is exactly what caused the heavenly curse you suffered.”
“…You’re saying—?”
“Yes. The culprit was fish.”
“Fi…sh?”
“That’s right.”
The culprit was fish—more precisely, the taurine contained in it.
For cats, taurine is critically important.
Taurine isn’t found only in fish. Chickens have it. Shrimp have it. Even insects have it. The reason fish became the problem anyway was simple: fish are especially rich in the stuff.
Per unit of weight, fish can hold anywhere from twice to six times the taurine of beef, or something like that.
When a cat becomes deficient in taurine, its eyesight deteriorates. If it gets bad enough, the animal goes blind. Fertility drops as well. The symptoms lined up perfectly with everything the Cat Tribe had endured.
House cats raised on commercial feed back in the modern world run into this all the time.
Cat food is usually a mix of grain and meat, which is why. The barracks cat our unit raised used to devour every leftover scrap raw, guts and all, so it never showed a single sign of taurine deficiency.
The half-wild Cat Tribe, living much like that barracks cat, had suffered the same affliction for one reason: their home was Jangbaek Mountain.
Jangbaek Mountain is a place where even fish are scarce—and where the weaker insects can barely survive.
A catastrophic taurine shortage had swallowed the entire tribe.
When I laid the truth out for him, Arun gave a hollow little laugh.
“Grr… So it truly was a heavenly curse after all.”
I told him it wasn’t, but he only shook his head harder.
“No. This was a heavenly curse. It may have been the work of our ancestors’ generation, but our people earned the wrath of many races of the North and were driven into Jangbaek Mountain for it. Had we not piled up that karma, would we have been crushed by a heavenly curse simply for suffering the same bitter cold as the Northerners? This was a curse born of our own sins.”
…Well. When he put it like that.
Once he knew the truth, Arun looked even more at peace—almost enlightened. A chronic illness caused by nutrient deficiency meant those who had already gone fully blind would not recover easily. But those less affected—the young, the ones whose lives had barely begun, the ones least tangled in that old karma—still stood a real chance of regaining their sight if they took in taurine, even belatedly. Call it anything else and the word still came back to heavenly curse.
“At least the heavens showed a little mercy. They delayed the punishment as long as they could from reaching the children, who had no part in the old sins.”
Whether that was belated regret or simple gratitude that things weren’t worse, I couldn’t quite tell. He wore an expression I couldn’t fully read—then bowed his head to me once more.
“I thank you again. And I will regard you as a benefactor of my people.”
A benefactor. Whatever the exact meaning, I had clearly maxed out the affinity track.
But I had no intention of hogging the credit.
This time I was the one who shook my head.
“What you ate was fish caught by the fishermen of the North.”
“That much I already know.”
“No. You don’t.”
“Grr?”
“Our Northerners have only recently carried out reforms that let them eat their fill. Before that, everyone lived half-starved. To people like that, fish are a vital food resource. And yet—even with my order behind it—they still offered those catches to you without hesitation. Do you understand what that means?”
Arun’s face hardened in an instant. Then he murmured, almost like a sigh.
“…A punishment sent down by heaven… lifted by the strength of human hands.”
I nodded in turn.
“It is people who forge the chain of blood—and people who break it.”
Northerner and Cat Tribe. No one could say anymore who had struck the first blow in that endless cycle of hatred. The loathing rooted between them ran too deep, too dark, for anyone to trace its origin. But in this moment, it was crystal clear who had moved first to snap the chain.
“I am not the only one who held out a hand to you. It was the entire North. Do you remember what I said before you came? I swore I would take your people in as family. Put another way—that means I am asking you to regard the North as family as well.”
“Family… Can we… truly do that?”
“It isn’t a question of whether you can. It’s something you must.”
Not because of a contract. Not because of a covenant. Because anyone who came under my wing was family.
Family looks after family.
The words of the three-star General Octopus suddenly rang through my head. Why they surfaced now, I had no idea—but I looked the Cat Tribe warrior in front of me straight in the eye and went on.
“From now on, the Northerners will help you as kin. You will need a steady supply of fish, and even beyond that, the young of the Cat Tribe will need a balanced diet if they are going to grow up strong. Managing all of that with Cat Tribe hands alone will not be easy.”
Fishing is never a trivial trade. No matter how hardy the Cat Tribe might be, the sea is a monster that swallows people whole. You need skilled helmsmen and experienced fishermen—and among the Cat Tribe, that kind of expertise had long since dried up. On top of that, the Cat Tribe were enormous eaters. Meeting their demand for fish on their own would be like plucking stars from the sky.
And what did that mean?
“…A debt we can never repay will only keep growing.”
To overcome the heavenly curse, they would have to keep relying on Northern help. Realizing that, Arun’s expression grew heavy.
But—
“Well, there’s no need to think of it that way.”
“Grrrr… Is it not the truth that we would be receiving one-sided aid?”
“Ah—that’s the part I mean. You don’t have to see it as one-sided at all. There are plenty of other ways you can help us.”
“Grrrr?”
One-sided debt piling up forever? I couldn’t stand for that. In any group, the moment even one person starts freeloading, the weight on someone else piles up without end.
“Of course we have no intention of sitting idle… Would hunting be enough?”
Arun, who clearly had no desire to freeload either, unsheathed a claw as he asked.
No… that isn’t the answer either.
Beastmen were one-man armies, no question—but using them as an auto-hunt squad felt somehow, well, wasteful. Hunting and monster-clearing were already well within the capabilities of the Grand Duke’s soldiers and cavalry as they stood.
And I can’t just throw them at the Great Wall either.
Beastman combat power was at least on the level of a full knight order. Adding that to the Great Wall would help, sure—but considering the Wall was the North’s eternal burden, it would be like trying to neutralize the sea with a single cup of water.
So their talents needed to be put to use somewhere else.
“Hunting would be fine, but—have you ever heard of comparative advantage?”
“Grr?”
“Put simply: even if a Cat Tribe warrior could cook gukbap better than one of our supply battalion soldiers, during hunting season it’s still better for that warrior to focus entirely on hunting and just collect a bowl of gukbap from the mess hall. The profit he can earn from hunting in the time it would take him to cook is greater. In that case, the warrior’s hunting is said to hold the comparative advantage.”
“Is that not simply telling us to focus on hunting?”
“Ah—that was only an example. The Cat Tribe has a far better comparative advantage than that.”
Every Cat Tribe warrior was an outstanding hunter because of their physical gifts. Their senses far outstripped an ordinary person’s even as newborns; they could see at night as clearly as at noon; and they moved with something close to acrobatic grace. That was how they had survived the brutal terrain of Jangbaek Mountain—and it was far too precious a set of gifts to waste on mere hunting.
The only reason they’ve lived as hunters until now is that hunting was the only place they could pour those gifts into.
The moment I heard about the Cat Tribe’s traits, I realized they were squandering their talent—and it drove me half mad with regret. If it were me, I could put that ability to so much better use!
“Here. Look at this.”
I unfurled the map I had prepared. A map of the North—the winter kingdom, white from edge to edge.
People think the North is nothing but snowfields, but there are plenty of mountains scattered through it as well.
They were one more factor making an already miserable place even harder to live in.
“Until now, Northerners have always had to go around these mountains when traveling between villages. As you can see, taking the long way costs far more time than a straight line ever would.”
“Grrrr. That sounds right. We of the Cat Tribe think nothing of rough mountain country—but humans are different.”
“Exactly. So how wonderful would it be if we could cut straight across these mountains the way your people do?”
Every idea started from there.
“So I thought: we put roads through these mountains. We build bridges spanning the gorges between peaks. We cut highways through what amounts to pure badlands—and then we maintain them, continuously.”
“Grrrr… And you want us to do that?”
A look of open reluctance crossed Arun’s face. Debt was debt, but the mountains of the North were not few, and asking the Cat Tribe to manage them not for a moment but forever was labor on a brutal scale.
I waved a hand to set him at ease.
“Ah—I’m not asking you to do it for free. While the roads are being built, the Grand Ducal territory will pour in support, so you’ll be expected to work without pay at the start. But after that, you collect tolls from everyone who uses the roads. I intend to leave the whole operation in Cat Tribe hands.”
It meant the Cat Tribe would take on duties as members of the North—and at the same time gain rights as Northerners. Arun understood that at once; light kindled in both his eyes.
“Grrrr. You’re giving us a voice of our own?”
“Exactly!”
A comparative advantage that squeezed every last drop out of the Cat Tribe’s strengths. Its name—
“It’s called the Toll Road Party.”