I Helped the Beastmen
Behemoth set the sack down. To gather the Fluffy Fluffy Flowers, he had asked Lucy if she could lend him something to carry them in, since hauling each blossom back one by one with bare hands would have been absurdly inefficient. Lucy had, in response, repaired the tent she used on snowy days and turned it into a sack for him as a gift.
It was enormous, big enough to cover an entire roof. Behemoth had been thrilled, saying he could stuff it full of flowers by the armload.
He hoisted the sack and headed for the maple forest, with Soho padding along after him.
Looks like he isn’t that scared anymore.
Does he want to be friends?
He had kept cats as pets in his previous life, so far from minding it, he actually welcomed the company.
Behemoth lifted Soho up onto his shoulder. Soho didn’t resist. If anything, he purred and eagerly rubbed his cheek against Behemoth’s face.
“He’s such a total dog-cat….”
If this world had YouTube, a video starring Soho would have cleared a million views without breaking a sweat.
So Behemoth and Soho gathered the Fluffy Fluffy Flowers together. They looked like snow-white comforters that had been neatly rolled up and tucked away, and they were about three times larger than the other flowers around them. He packed the beautifully grown blossoms into the sack with enthusiasm.
Being so tall meant he had to do the work crouched down, but his hands were huge too, so he moved quickly.
Come to think of it, Lucy was a mage, huh.
When he’d watched her modify the enormous tent into a sack, he had honestly thought it was impossible. But to his surprise, Lucy had finished the whole thing in an instant with telekinesis. Anyone who had watched her work in real time from right beside her would have had no choice but to admire her.
Before long, the sturdy sack was filled with flowers.
The soft, fluffy fragrance brushed timidly against the tip of his nose.
Behemoth hummed an otherworldly melody the same way he did when he pulled up dead trees.
About thirty minutes passed like that.
Soho, who had been draped lazily over Behemoth’s shoulder, suddenly sprang upright.
“What is it?”
“Nya-nya-nyaa!”
Soho cried out loudly. There was no way the usually quiet little guy would meow like that for no reason.
Behemoth couldn’t understand Soho’s words any more than Lucy could understand his, but the urgency in the cries was plain enough. He grabbed the sack and got to his feet.
Soho dropped from Behemoth’s shoulder and started leading the way.
“Is there something over there?”
“Meow! Meow! Meow!”
Then he heard it.
Wolves were howling, bears were roaring in fury, and even an ogre’s vile battle cry was mixed in. The heat of combat was in the air.
Behemoth and Soho quickened their pace.
When they arrived, Han-ah was fighting an ogre, her whole body drenched in blood.
“Nyaa, nya-nyaa! Nyaa-nyaa!”
Soho rubbed against Behemoth’s leg with his front paws and meowed in a panic, as if begging him to save Han-ah, who had been thrown into danger.
Soho is a spiritual beast, but he’s still young. And though he looks fine on the outside, he was hurt before and can’t even use his strength right now. If he ever ends up in danger, I hope his friend can protect him properly.
“Stay back.”
Behemoth glared at the ogre.
The ogre flinched.
Under that overwhelming killing intent, it had no choice but to stop the club it had been bringing down. Han-ah had raised her sword as if to turn it on her own throat, but that was no longer the ogre’s immediate concern.
When the ogre met Behemoth’s pupils, warped like a cracked fissure, it felt a fear beyond words.
It was the first time in its life it had encountered a predator of such absolute caliber. Its terror, in an instant, crushed the Manticore’s brainwashing flat.
The ogre had been born to toy with human lives, born to trample innocent things under a club. But Behemoth was on an entirely different level from the Manticore that had tried to brainwash him, and the ogre’s thoughts simply stopped dead in their tracks.
Behemoth didn’t even give it time to beg for mercy.
Blue flames spilled from his mouth.
They were warmer than lava bursting out when a mountain grew angry.
Something like an ogre had no hope of enduring it.
The ogre turned to ash.
Even after the blue fire vanished, the suffocating heat still blanketed the forest.
Soho climbed back onto Behemoth’s shoulder.
Han-ah could only stare at the scene in silence.
When she looked at Behemoth, she felt exactly the same thing the ogre had felt.
Human fear began with the unknown.
The fear rising from the depths of her chest, from its very source, seized Han-ah’s mind.
And yet humans did not feel only one emotion at a time.
Behemoth was a tiny Mount Tai.
He was a catastrophe-beast that had reduced a monster she could never hope to defeat into a handful of ash.
Han-ah felt awe.
And Behemoth stood beside Soho, the guardian of the vanished beastmen.
Soho was the child of a great tiger and a spiritual beast.
He was stronger by far than Hanseong, who was counted as the fiercest warrior among the beastmen.
Soho licked Behemoth’s thick cheek and rumbled happily.
Han-ah understood it instinctively.
Lord Soho is submitting to Behemoth….
Aside from the human girl living in the hut, Soho had been so proud and aloof that he had never let anyone else come close to him.
And yet now he was perched on Behemoth’s shoulder, acting coy like a pet spoiled by its owner?
Once she understood what was happening, Han-ah lowered her sword.
Then she dropped to her knees.
“Please… please save my father and my people….”
She bowed before the only being who could possibly resolve this situation and begged him for help.
Even if the sight of her seemed pathetic, she could endure it.
“None of them deserve to die like this! My father may look like a stern, rigid man, but he’s kinder than anyone else, and he tries harder than anyone to understand and consider others… We beastmen can’t be called good, exactly, but we are absolutely not people who deserve to die at a monster’s hands like this….”
If he could save her father, who was trapped by the Manticore…
Then she didn’t care if the beast before her was a calamity meant to destroy the world.
“■■■.”
Before Han-ah could even finish speaking, Behemoth opened his mouth.
His voice must have sounded like thunder striking from the heavens, majestic and deep, like a silent ripple reverberating through a cave.
Han-ah could not understand his language.
And yet, for some reason, she felt as if she understood what it meant.
“■■ ■■■ ■■■■, ■■ ■ ■ ■■■.”
There was resolve in Behemoth’s voice.
Han-ah lifted her head.
Once Behemoth made up his mind, the guardian of the beastmen led him onward. The beasts that had been brainwashed by the Manticore fled the instant they saw him, their conditioning shattered. Even the powerful monsters could not leave so much as a scratch on his black scales harder than steel, so no thick rock, no deep river, no creature in the world could stand in Behemoth’s way.
To Han-ah, the one who had answered her desperate plea, Behemoth seemed almost like a god.
She followed the path he opened, trailing after him like a pilgrim watching a miracle unfold.
Behemoth and the others soon reached the den where the Manticore lived.
The Manticore revealed its hideous form.
The lion-bodied Manticore with a human face was not at all inferior in size to Behemoth.
Among monsters, it was especially cruel and intelligent, an ancient existence that had instilled fear itself into the hearts of the ancestors.
The Manticore, sealed long ago by the combined efforts of Daeho and the beastmen, had returned in the same form it had worn in its prime.
All the beastmen who had boldly pursued it were bound and restrained.
“A-a monster’s appeared… now there are two of them!?”
“Han-ah, Lord Soho, why are you here…? Please, run! It’s far too dangerous!”
“Han-ah, why did you come outside the village!?”
Fortunately, they were all still alive. That was only because the Manticore’s cruel nature delighted in making the beastmen despair as they watched the girl who had come to save them being eaten before their eyes.
“Dad….”
“Meow.”
Soho stayed close to Han-ah, whose voice was trembling.
He stared ahead, at the Manticore he himself could never defeat and at Behemoth, who had saved him.
“I clearly called only the beast girl.”
“■■■.”
“You seem to possess intelligence like we do. So why are you taking the side of the humans and helping them?”
“■■■.”
“A beast who can’t even talk, then. Fine. At least I’ve confirmed you’re not one of us, one of the ancient sealed monsters. That leaves only two possibilities: brainwashing or death….”
The Manticore invoked ancient magic.
Ancient magic generally carved away at the life of either the caster or the sacrifice to produce a cruel miracle—brainwashing, weakness, coughing blood, erasure, binding, and the like were classic examples.
The beastmen and Soho were no match for the Manticore’s magic and were defeated.
The Manticore’s life force was strong, and there were plenty of victims around it.
It was a favorable battlefield. The Manticore felt an inexplicable, unpleasant pressure from Behemoth, but it still believed it could win.
That was an arrogant mistake.
“The magic isn’t even activating!?”
The gathered mana shattered to pieces.
Before the miracle could even begin, the spell misfired.
Behemoth’s very existence rejected the possibility of magic taking hold.
The Manticore’s face twisted.
Its wrinkled old features crumpled even further.
“What in the world did you do? Fine. I’m actually getting excited at the thought of moving my body after so long! I’ll cram your body into my mouth and chew you to pieces!”
The Manticore’s body swelled.
In an instant, it became three times larger and let out a deafening roar.
Now even bigger than Behemoth, the Manticore was certain of victory as it opened its enormous jaws and lunged to swallow him whole.
BOOM──!
The lion-faced Manticore died in an instant.
Behemoth had merely thrust out his arm.
The scales on that arm were harder and heavier than all the metals in the world, and they smashed into the lion’s face with irresistible force.
The Manticore’s face burst apart, and it died just like that.
It was a pitiful end for a monster whose name had once spread infamy through the history books.
And to the beastmen who had witnessed the Manticore’s death, Behemoth offered his final words.
“■■■.”
His voice was terribly warm.
To the beastmen, it sounded as though he were saying, I saved you.
Behemoth asked for nothing in return from the beastmen, and he accepted nothing.
He simply finished what he had come to do and left the cave.
With Soho, the guardian of the beastmen, at his side.
The ancient monster Manticore has been subjugated. This was a feat the ancestors of the beastmen could not accomplish, and it will be recorded in the World Chronicle.
The beastmen directly witnessed Behemoth’s feat. They began to regard Behemoth as a Holy Spirit who had saved them from calamity.
The elves are spreading Behemoth’s Song throughout the Gehenna Great Forest.
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Total Faith:360
Faith in Behemoth was gathering across the entire Gehenna Great Forest.