The Smart Ones Will Find It
"A trap! Let's make a trap! Zeroa, you know how to build one. Meat! Let's eat some meat!"
Unable to endure her hunger any longer, Cesset thrust her hand into the air with a proposal — but the reception was less than enthusiastic.
"Traps take a long time to catch anything. And with this many people in the forest, the wildlife is going to be on extreme alert..."
"Set one up and maybe we'll snag something the day after tomorrow."
The moment Zeroa and Rai each put in a word, Cesset sank to her knees with a look of profound tragedy. She collapsed face-down on the ground, hid her face, and rubbed her stomach, mumbling apologies to it as though she were a neglectful owner. Rai was watching her with a look of pure pity when a rumble turned his head the other way.
Aria's face had gone scarlet. She clutched her stomach and twisted her body away to hide it. She hadn't said a word the way Cesset had — but she was hungry too.
They had eaten dinner early the day before. They had gathered ingredients in the forest, true, but the original rations they'd been issued were meager to begin with. Even adding what they'd foraged on the way to the rally point, it had been barely enough to keep hunger at bay. On top of that, they had night-marched until sunrise — and then had every last scrap of food stolen from them.
"Hey, that's so unfair, Mr. Brown!"
Cesset jabbed a finger at him and raised her voice. Brown was sitting well apart from them, watching the group while he ate.
"Skipped breakfast."
His expression was utterly unbothered. He looked at Team 7 and chewed his bread at a leisurely pace. He didn't seem to be mocking them, exactly — but the sheer indifference of it was infuriating.
"Grrh—!!"
Cesset was beside herself, but she could hardly take it out on Brown, so she flopped onto her back instead. She was staring up at the sky through the trees when Rai came over, crouched in front of her, and looked down.
"So what now, Captain?"
"We find traces."
The look of bottled fury vanished from Cesset's face, replaced by something calm. Zeroa dropped to one knee beside Rai, and Aria crouched with her knees together, looking down at Cesset as well.
With the sky behind them and three faces hanging over her, Cesset spoke quietly.
"So this is a loser's point of view."
"A real loser wouldn't even have the wits to open their eyes."
At Rai's words, Cesset shut her eyes and folded both arms neatly across her chest.
"Then I'll be dead, so please load my corpse onto Raikkang's back. And revive me once we get some food."
"Quit the nonsense and tell me what we're doing already."
"Please find traces."
She opened her eyes and looked up at Rai. She was whining — but it had only been a joke. There was steel in her gaze.
"What kind of traces?"
"Water. I'd love some meat, but water comes first. Then animals. Rabbit, mouse, anything we can put in our mouths. We search until the sun hits its peak, and if we find nothing, we give up and move. While Raikkang is out looking, the rest of us wait here and forage nearby. I believe in our surprisingly all-purpose Zeroa. Once we've secured food, we find the main force."
"Aren't you working me a little too hard here?"
"Can't be helped. Besides, I'm working Zeroa just as hard, so don't worry about it."
She grinned. Rai nodded, glanced at the map once, handed it back, and vanished into the forest. Cesset offered up a silent prayer that he would find both drinking water and meat, then looked at the other two.
"I'll leave the foraging to you two. Given that we were ambushed, Zeroa gathers and Aria keeps watch on the surroundings."
"Yes, understood."
Zeroa, who knew the forest, would search for food; Aria would take the watch and conserve her stamina. Cesset remained sprawled on the ground as she sent them off, looking for all the world like she was taking it easy — but the moment they were gone, she spread the map Leila had given them and began studying the terrain.
The map showed the direction the army had originally been heading, along with the location of the first rally point.
They had marched at night with no visibility to speak of, so their current position was a mystery. If this was all part of the training, they had almost certainly been led on a deliberately confusing route to make estimating their location as difficult as possible. Cesset studied the marked rally point. Factoring in the speed of an army on a night march, she drew a large circle around it, then a smaller one inside that.
Instructor Rai estimated our current position the moment he looked at the map. We're not far from the rally point.
His attitude was delinquent, but at times like this he was faithful to his role as an instructor — and he never, ever gave them the answer first. Cesset thought that was cheap, considering they were on the same team, and marked several spots where there might be clearings. Then she looked at the direction the army had been scheduled to move and checked the terrain at those points.
Her teammates were sacrificing themselves to conserve her stamina. The least she could do was give everything she had to presenting them with a direction to go.
Absorbed in the map, Cesset assumed situation after situation, checking possible camp locations one by one. Countless points appeared on the map, only to be crossed out with an X, over and over again.
Time passed. Zeroa and Aria returned from foraging, and Rai came back after them. In his hands were several lizards.
"Lizards... you really do like those, don't you..."
Zeroa, who had trained at Rai's house, had seen him roasting lizards often enough. He gave a wry smile.
"I caught them because there was nothing else to eat, not because I like lizards. I prefer sweet stuff."
"Uwaaah— I want cake. I hate mushrooms~"
The mere mention of sweetness set Cesset wailing about cake. Zeroa had done well enough at foraging, but most of what he'd brought back was mushrooms or bitter-tasting plants.
Zeroa glanced at Aria in secret, worrying whether a girl who looked like she lived on dew could possibly eat a lizard — but she regarded them with a perfectly even expression, not a flicker of change on her face.
Even with a decent haul, they hadn't had much time, so the food Zeroa had brought amounted to less than half a picnic basket. For Cesset, who ate so little, it was a quantity she could finish by herself if she put her mind to it, and the lizards Rai had brought weren't even half the size of a hand.
Split four ways, it would barely register. Half a day's effort for less than a single meal — they might have been disappointed, but Cesset didn't particularly care, as if she had expected as much all along.
Eating what they had managed to find, she showed the map to her teammates.
"The marks on this map are where I expect the base might be."
"..."
Zeroa looked at the map and couldn't open his mouth. The check marks and X's were so numerous the map itself was barely visible. Notes of analysis scribbled in the corners and lines predicting routes made it obvious how hard she had worked planning their path while they were out foraging.
He decided there were simply too many marks and it was making his eyes swim, so he ignored the X's and counted only the checks. Counting only those, there weren't that many.
Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.... still a lot, though?
While Zeroa sat flustered by the sheer number of predicted points, not voicing a word of it, Aria spoke.
"That's too many."
"Yeah, yeah. After assuming every possible situation, I have no idea where it is."
She answered Aria's honesty with honesty of her own, scratching the back of her head and offering a sheepish little grin.
"Would they set up near a water source, the most basic option? Or since they were ambushed and fleeing, would they hide somewhere deep? Or maybe..."
Zeroa stared blankly as Cesset recited assumed situations one after another.
Hearing her lay it out, there was simply too much to consider. But if you assumed every situation, the predicted points multiplied without end, and all you did was expand the search area.
Zeroa, who had never learned a thing about tactics before coming to the academy, had been thinking how impressive she was — but she seemed to take his silence for worry, because she laughed and patted his shoulder.
"Don't worry. I'm too dim-witted to find it, but the smart kids will sniff it out just fine."
Zeroa wasn't sure that was something you were supposed to say with that much confidence. Beside him, Aria spoke.
"The same approach as the beginning."
"That's riiight~ Our concept has always been: let's use the smart kids. So we're going here."
The place Cesset pointed to on the map was the tip of the arrow marking the unit's direction of travel. Zeroa thought they were going ahead to wait, but she continued.
"This is the highest point in the area. A place where we can take every predicted point into our field of view. We're going after the smart kids' dinner."
"Good thinking. A bit early, but I guess it's Aria's turn to suffer."
"It's fine. Thanks to that, I've been able to rest this whole time."
Rai and Aria both praised it as a good idea.
Zeroa, however, still looked blank. He understood the part about taking the predicted points into view — but going after their dinner? He had no idea what that was supposed to mean.
Everyone else understood, and he alone did not. A strange sense of being left out crept over him. For someone who had only begun learning tactics after entering the academy, it was only natural — but he couldn't quite put a name to this peculiar feeling he was experiencing for the first time.
"If we stop by the water source, the timing's going to be a bit tight."
"You've got this, Aria!"
Rai looked up at the sky as he said it, and Cesset, already perched on Aria's back, pumped a fist with gusto. Zeroa had gotten to his feet but had no idea what they were doing, so he simply stood there watching until Rai filled him in.
"We're going to the place we just mentioned before the sun sets."
"This distance?"
"Yeah. If we want to see the fires of the kids who arrived early, celebrating and enjoying themselves, we need to walk hard starting now. Even if it's rough, we're taking the shortest route — so keep watch on the rear and keep up."
Zeroa finally understood and snatched up his pack. A camp wasn't a camp without tents, a fire, and a fence. The carelessness of the academy students who arrived first would serve as their guide.
Rai took the lead. Aria, carrying Cesset, held the center. Zeroa took the rear, erasing their traces as they went.
It was the most basic of formations — but Rai's pace was so fast that Zeroa, who had started out carefully wiping their tracks, gradually fell behind, gave up on erasing anything, and focused simply on keeping up.
It didn't look like running. But Rai was so at home in the forest that Aria and Zeroa had to move their feet at a near-scramble just to match him.
Zeroa was struggling. Aria, who was unfamiliar with the forest, had it far worse.
She had been raised with a father's fanatical doting, and aside from official functions she had scarcely ever been outdoors. Even hiking was a first for her; a single day's experience was never going to be enough. And she was carrying Cesset on her back. By weight alone it wasn't so different from Zeroa's pack — but carrying a person and wearing a backpack were entirely different things.
After they had been at it for a long time, they arrived at the water source Rai had mentioned, and Aria was breathing hard. She was doing her best not to show it, but Cesset on her back and Zeroa watching carefully from behind both knew exactly how much it was costing her.
"Let's fill up on water here."
"...You're not talking about this mud puddle, are you?"
Cesset stared at water so thin it was better described as soaking the ground than filling anything. It wasn't deep enough to cover a finger joint. Zeroa looked at Rai without a word, and Rai looked back as though they were the strange ones.
"No matter how thirsty you are, don't drink sketchy water. You'll be shitting yourself for real."
"Would you stop with the shitting-yourself talk already?! It's so childish, I swear. Then what are we supposed to drink?"
Leaving the fuming Cesset where she was, Rai grabbed a vine tangled around a tree and cut it with a shovel.
Water poured from the hollow stem. Rai drank it as it came. Everyone stared blankly at the unfamiliar plant, and Rai, having gulped his fill, wiped the water running down his chin with the back of his hand and asked,
"Not drinking?"
"That's... water? Plant sap?"
"There's some sap mixed in, but it's clean water. Try it."
He held out the vine, and Cesset caught the falling water in both hands and drank. After a sip, she worked her mouth as though tasting it, then looked at Rai.
"There's a subtle astringent sweetness, but it is water. Amazing. And it's cool, too."
"Right? Tasty, isn't it?"
"No, it's not tasty. The subtle sweetness is kind of annoying."
She said it with complete conviction — but drinking water was not something they could refuse. When Cesset practically put her mouth to the vine, Rai cut another and handed it to Aria.
While the three of them drank, Zeroa looked around.
"A wetland? No... what is this place? We're in a forest, but it's hot?"
Zeroa, who had never been to another region in his life, felt a deep sense of wrongness in the surrounding terrain.
He had never felt a hot, humid climate that made it hard to breathe. The ground held moisture like a wetland, and the rotting wood was damp. He had never seen moss covering an entire enormous tree, and the plants around him were all ones he was seeing for the first time. Unease crept through him.
"Never been to a tropical rainforest?"
"A tropical rainforest?"
At Rai's question, Zeroa asked it back — the term itself was unfamiliar. Rai scratched his chin at the reaction.
"If you go south... the Empire doesn't have similar terrain, so if you've never been outside, it'd be unfamiliar."
"Do you mean a jungle?"
"It's a bit different, but as a region it works. There are jungles in tropical rainforest regions."
Cesset, who had read about such forests in books, asked, and Rai corrected her.
While the two of them talked about climate, Zeroa found himself thinking that Rai had a remarkable amount of knowledge and experience.
He said he was in the military... does he have a lot of experience traveling other countries...?
The Empire's borders were vast, and except for the years of war with the Caylen Kingdom, imperial forces spent most of their time inside their own territory. Unless you were a diplomat, there was no reason to go outside, and the neighboring countries had climates similar to the Empire's.
After a moment's thought, Zeroa decided Rai had probably left the military and wandered the world for a few years, dismissed it as nothing special, and turned his gaze to Aria.
She had the vine held over her head, receiving the water as it fell. Her wet hair clung alluringly to her skin, and a thin stream of water traced an elegant line along her jaw.
"If you're tired, switch."
Rai said it looking at Aria, and she shook her head.
She looked exhausted, but the gaze she met his with was strong. Rai held it for a moment, then shrugged as if to say suit yourself, and filled the water flasks.
After they had drunk and secured their water, the party set out again without a rest.
They would have to move hard to reach their destination. After walking with his eyes fixed ahead for a long time, Rai checked the map, looked up at the sky, then turned back.
"Once the sun sets it'll be harder to go further, so from now we go at a fast march."
"..."
The walking until now hadn't been fast? Bewildered Zeroa barely had time to think it before Rai — as if answering him — began traversing the forest at a much greater speed.
He was clearly not running. He didn't swing his arms or drop his stance to generate speed. It was nothing more than a walking gait — and yet the ground Rai stepped on seemed to occupy a different space entirely, and he simply kept advancing, on and on.
To keep up, Zeroa and Aria broke into a run, and they headed for their destination without rest even for a moment.
By the time the sun was sinking, Aria's hair was still wet and clinging to her skin. The difference was that this time it was soaked with sweat pouring from her entire body.
Sweat ran like rain. The clothes of Cesset, riding on her back, were soaked through.
No one at the academy had ever seen Aria like this. The girl who always seemed noble and beautiful was half out of her mind, gasping for air.
She had been running for hours already without a single rest, carrying Cesset. No matter how light Cesset was, the clothes she wore were armor, and unlike a backpack, she was a living human being.
Aria's stamina hit its limit. Her eyes went vacant from time to time — but she immediately came back to herself, shook her head, and drove her numb legs forward.
Zeroa, though familiar with the forest, was the least skilled of them and was gasping just as hard. He worried for Aria, but he had no energy to spare to help her.
Clutching lungs that felt like they would burst, Zeroa ran with his teeth clenched.
When the sun went down and darkness settled over the forest, Rai stopped dead.
"We're here."
The words had barely left his mouth before Zeroa and Aria collapsed to the ground, the force of their running carrying them down.
They hadn't lost consciousness, but their bodies were so heavy they could only keep gasping. Cesset, who had been carried the entire way, was full of apology and worry as she checked on them.
"Get a blanket from the bag and spread it out."
Rai said it as he lifted Aria, and Cesset quickly rummaged through the fallen Zeroa's pack and spread the blanket on the ground.
After stripping both of them of their armor and laying them face-down side by side, Rai climbed onto Zeroa's back.
"You get on Aria too and copy me."
Cesset carefully climbed onto Aria's back and followed what Rai did. He massaged Zeroa's thighs while instructing Cesset how to do the same.
After they had worked on the two of them for a long time, the moon was already in the sky. As the quiet of the forest settled around them, Rai and Cesset pitched a tent and put the two inside.
Sleeping in the same tent as the academy's goddess was a stroke of fortune for Zeroa — but he was so wrung out he couldn't think straight, and he was in no condition to enjoy it.
After getting them inside and tidying the surroundings, Rai walked slowly over to Cesset.
She had climbed a nearby high rock and was looking out over the area. She turned to him with a stiff expression.
"Raikkang... what do we do...? I can't see traces anywhere."
She looked like she might cry. While Zeroa and Aria had run for their lives, Cesset had come the whole way comfortably on someone's back.
She had watched them suffer for hours from that perch, and her own easy body had felt heavy as lead. The moment they arrived, she had seen the two of them in a state close to collapse, and her heart had dropped.
They had suffered to get here — and the main force was nowhere to be seen.
Whether she had expected teams using her method to find it or not, the silent forest held not a hint of light, not even the sense of people gathered.
"Don't be impatient. You need confidence in the tactics you devised to be able to command."
"But..."
"Keep a cool head. Use everything around you, and if you fail, think of the next move. And don't forget you have an excellent scout right next to you."
Rai patted the head of Cesset — who looked ready to cry if he said even a little more — with his palm, then slowly scanned the wide forest.
Except for an owl's cry from far off, the forest was silent. Moonlight laid a mysterious sheen over the trees, but nowhere was there any light other than the moon.
The longer Rai looked at the forest without a word, the heavier Cesset's shoulders became.
She had made them suffer with her plan. She had come along in comfort. And it was going to end in failure. What she felt was too painful for words.
After looking at the forest in silence for a long time, Rai looked down at her.
"Found it."
"What? Really?"
"Yeah. It's over that way."
Cesset looked in the direction his finger pointed, but seeing nothing, she climbed onto his shoulders, bringing her face close, trying to overlap their lines of sight.
For Cesset dangling there, he brought his hand closer and pointed to a single spot.
"Animals are scattering from that area."
"You can see animals?"
The trees themselves looked like dots. There was no way she could see animals. Cesset squinted, trying to look closer, but still saw nothing but trees.
"You can see the birds flying, right?"
"Yes. One just flew off."
"There are so many people that the beasts are avoiding it."
Still seeing nothing but trees besides the bird that had crossed the sky, Cesset looked for a long time, then gave up and turned to Rai, whose face was right there.
"Only that area has a different presence. Leila, maybe? I guess that's a hint in its own way."
"We can't use mana, can we?"
"Presence and aura aren't something you feel with mana. It's more like a sense of touch."
"...Anyway, it's there, right?"
"Yeah. It's there."
Cesset trusted Rai's abilities. Not simply because he was an instructor — she had watched from the side how he operated in training, and that had given her a deep faith. When she asked him to find something, he found it. When she gave an order, he carried it out as given.
If he said it was there, it was there.
"Waaah! I'm so happy to be on the same team as Raikkang!"
"Gack— hey! Neck— my neck!"
Cesset, hanging off him from behind, squeezed him in a tight hug. Rai, choking, hit her arm and told her to let go — but Cesset, overflowing with joy, didn't listen, and only hugged him tighter.