Operation Fruit Frost (3)
I saddled up with Vitten to take a look around my brother's farm. Thalia, however, had to stay behind — without her, the knights' order simply didn't function.
"Lily, where is my brother's farm?"
"One moment, my lord. Let me check the map and show you."
Lily brought over a map of the Esterzy Duchy and marked the likely location of the farm with her pen.
"The places I know of are these three. All of them are close to the holy city."
I tucked the map Lily handed me into my bag, settled Ruby on my saddle, and rode out of the castle with Vitten.
I hadn't bothered to pack snacks or money. The place was close enough that a stumble would land you face-first at its doorstep, so I planned to tour the farm and be back before sundown.
We had just passed through the western gate of the holy city when a stench hit my nose, sharp enough to make my eyes water.
"What in the world is—"
The source of the stench was people. A refugee camp sprawled endlessly beyond the gate. The refugees seemed to be using the moat as a garbage dump; it was brimming with filth.
"Milord, please, just one coin!"
"My wife and children are starving. Show us mercy, I beg you!"
Refugees swarmed around us, begging.
"You wretches! Who do you think you're blocking!"
When Vitten bellowed a threat, the refugees scattered in every direction, terrified out of their wits.
"You didn't have to go that far, Vitten."
"...It was a safety measure."
Vitten scratched his head sheepishly.
"It's fine. I'm not so weak that a few beggars could take me."
My father is like a shield for the duchy. Because he stands guard over the north so steadfastly, the people here can live without being ravaged by the demons.
But a shield alone cannot make people happy. For people to live a life worthy of the name, the harvests must be good, they must have sturdy homes, and the markets must overflow with quality goods.
Unfortunately, the duchy has been going through hard times lately, battered by one famine after another. As the Duke's son, I couldn't simply dismiss the scene before my eyes as an unpleasant sight and move on.
"To be honest, it doesn't sit easy with me either. I was a vagrant once myself — no home, no nothing."
"From before you became an adventurer?"
"Yes. Though calling it 'adventurer' makes it sound far grander than it was. It's really the other way around — life was so precarious that adventuring was the only option left. Even after I was lucky enough to awaken an Awoken Ability, before that I had no idea how I'd scrape by from one day to the next."
"Was there famine in the duchy back when you were young, too?"
"Not then. The famine got bad only in the last ten years or so."
How convenient — the duchy's fortunes had begun to sour right around the day I was born.
I kept surveying the refugee camp as I talked with Vitten. Houses cobbled together from planks and rags were less homes than windbreaks.
The squalid sanitation and housing were dire enough, but the scarcest thing seemed to be food. Children with ribs showing through their skin were everywhere, not just one or two.
Lucian was apparently running charity work in my name, but the supplies would fall woefully short of helping all these refugees.
In the end, what mattered was a fundamental solution to the famine — and how was Mavel, as acting Duke, handling this crisis?
We rode for quite a while longer before finally reaching a farm on the outskirts. As Lily had promised, it was enormous. A banner proclaiming the estate as property of House Esterzy fluttered over the buildings, and barns and storehouses stood in neat rows.
As we drew a little closer, the state of the crops became unmistakably clear.
"Pweeeeek......"
Ruby slumped dejectedly across my shoulder.
There were no crops to speak of on my brother's farm. Where the plants should have been, there was nothing but weeds — and such weeds, they had grown taller than I was.
"Looks like he didn't even bother to farm it."
"Perhaps he was simply too busy? He took on the role of acting Duke, so he must have set the farm work aside for a while."
"Then where did the Sparkling Bay he sent me come from?"
"...Oh. Good point."
"Let's try the next farm. Maybe things are different there."
We headed for the second farm marked on the map. After a long ride, we arrived to find things were far worse. The land here was so parched that not even weeds could grow.
"Looks like this place had a bad harvest too."
It might not be a simple bad harvest, though. I pressed my hand against the earth, dry as a turtle's shell. The earth qi — the energy of the land itself — had been utterly drained.
"Vitten."
"Yes, my lord."
I gestured toward a farmer passing along the road.
"Go ask him whether anyone's been managing this farm. Don't reveal who I am."
"Understood."
Vitten urged his horse over to the farmer and struck up a conversation, gesturing as he went. He tossed the man a coin and returned to me.
"Lord Mavel doesn't come here at all, apparently."
"Is that so?"
"Instead, the man says he's seen him loading a cart full of fertilizer and heading off somewhere to the west. Multiple times, no less."
"So my brother has a farm in the west as well."
I checked the map, but there was no farm marked anywhere to the west.
Still, Lily didn't know every farm my brother owned, and the map wasn't guaranteed to be accurate — there could well be farms out west.
Which raised my question:
Why was my brother leaving the farms near the holy city to rot?
"What direction did he say?"
"The man doesn't know the exact location."
"Then let's have a look around the western plains. We've come this far; I'm not going back empty-handed."
"Or shall I put my abilities to use?"
"How?"
"I can transform, can't I?"
Vitten said hesitantly.
"When I take my wolf form, my sense of smell becomes extraordinarily sharp. Sharp enough to track Lord Mavel's trail."
I stared at the man, dumbfounded.
"Hey, how can you mention something that important just now?"
"Er... I thought you'd find it distasteful, Lord Iden."
"Why would I?"
"It's just common sense, isn't it? Who likes a subordinate who turns into a dog?"
Vitten scratched his head sheepishly again.
"You keep jumping to conclusions about me, and that's a bad habit. I have no prejudice against Awoken Abilities."
"I apologize. I'll have to change my thinking, then."
"Good. If you have an ability like that, use it early and often. We'll need to cover these farms quickly if we want to be back in the holy city before dark."
"Understood."
Vitten dismounted and unleashed his transformation. His leather clothes split at the seams as a mane and fur sprouted across his whole body.
"Awooooooo----!"
When he threw back his head and howled, a ferocious killing intent radiated in every direction.
I could see why he'd been nervous about it. For one thing, both horses bolted back the way we'd come, and I had to gather up every last piece of gear that had dropped to the ground myself.
Sniff, sniff.
Vitten flared his nostrils toward the direction the farmer had pointed.
"This way."
He set off ahead of us.
"Come on, Ruby."
"Pweeee—"
Ruby and I followed behind Vitten. Even while tracking the scent and navigating at the same time, the man moved so fast I had to use footwork techniques just to keep up.
So this was why I couldn't do without an Awoken Ability user at my side. A Daoist can transform into a dog, sure — but he can't have a dog's nose.
Except the direction he was heading wasn't west. It was south — a region so ravaged by crop failure that nothing but parched earth stretched to the horizon.
"Vitten, are you sure we're going the right way? You didn't take a wrong turn, did you?"
"This direction is certain."
Vitten spoke with utter conviction. I trusted him and pressed on for a while. The surroundings grew ever more desolate, until at last there wasn't even a road left to speak of.
The farms nearby had been scorched bare by the catastrophic harvest failure. Bleached bones glinted here and there. I saw broken cartwheels, and farmhouses that looked ready to spit out a ghost at any moment.
I felt a chill crawl up my spine — and that was when I seized the back of his neck and yanked him backward.
"Kghk—!"
"Shh."
I pressed my index finger to his snout.
"It's a trap."
"...What?"
I jerked my chin toward the ground ahead of him.
"One more step and you'd be dead."
The scene before us was bleak, certainly, but nothing about it looked lethal enough to kill an Awoken Ability user on the spot.
But it was all an illusion.
I pointed forward and chanted a short mantra. At once the apparition that had looked like scattered leaves melted away, revealing an enormous spear trap in its place.
"Wh-what is this? Why would there be a trap in a place like this?"
"That's my question too, Vitten."
Anyone — even a high-rank Awoken Ability user — who triggered such a crude trap unprepared would have no hope of escaping death.
The illusion was probably the work of a mental-type Awoken Ability user, and given how skillfully it was crafted, I'd guess the maker was at least mid-rank.
A trap engineer collaborating with a mental-type Awoken user.
This was no individual's handiwork. An organization was involved.
"Are you really sure this is the right direction? My brother's scent could have rubbed off on someone else's clothes or belongings, couldn't it?"
"Certain. I can even tell you exactly how many times Lord Mavel passed along this road over the past four months."
"Then from now on, we move only after I've confirmed it's safe. There could be any number more of these traps."
"Yes, my lord."
Vitten's manner grew far more cautious.
More traps kept appearing after that — all of them intricate, lethal mechanisms clearly designed with Awoken Ability users in mind.
The illusions grew more cunning as well. No longer content merely to conceal the traps, many were arranged in blatant patterns meant to lure intruders toward them.
We advanced one careful step at a time. Whenever I dispelled an illusion, Vitten found the correct path.
The path did not run straight. It twisted this way and that, but there was no doubt Vitten was making for the heart of this dead zone.
It wasn't just the abundance of traps that made it a dead zone — the land grew progressively more parched as we went, as if we were groping our way through the middle of a desert.
"This is it, Vitten."
I called a halt to the man walking ahead.
"Are you certain it's here?"
Vitten asked, his voice trembling.
At last we had arrived at the center of the dead zone. This place was shielded by a vast, sprawling illusion. What Vitten saw now was a drying swamp, and within it, countless monsters writhing.
But deceiving me was beyond it.
"Begone."
The moment I spoke the spell, the dried swamp vanished without a trace, revealing a farm lush with greenery and fields rippling with waves of emerald.
The disharmony between the desolate surroundings and the fresh vibrance of the fields.
And just as the staggering spiritual energy pouring from the flowers was leaving me stunned—
"Pweeeeek---!"
Ruby shot out from my shoulder.
I snatched his tail in a flash. Ruby spun round and round like a top, tail still in my grip. There was no doubt this farm was the very place he'd been dreaming of day and night.
"So it was all an illusion."
Vitten swallowed hard.
"Why would Lord Mavel hide a field all the way out in a place like this?"
"That's exactly what we're here to find out."
I approached the field.
"No Sparkling Bay here. They're just flowers."
"They're no ordinary flowers, Vitten."
I bent down and gently caressed a petal.
They were not udumbara flowers. The shape was slightly different — these had shorter stems, and their petals were red.
But the energy they held was no less potent. Flowers that, in the Central Plains, would be lucky to bloom once in a thousand years had taken root in this earth and were greedily drinking in the land's qi.