Conquistador (3)
Conquistador (3)
"Pleased to meet you. I am Eugene Meyer, come from Britannia."
"I should have introduced myself sooner. My name is Yakson. I serve here as a healer and missionary."
Just as Eugene had expected, the man was a missionary.
In this world, religion was founded on divine power communicating, directly or indirectly, with mortals to varying degrees. The desire and sense of duty to spread one's faith were therefore anything but ordinary.
There was a reason warrior priests existed in such numbers. It was to break through monster territories and spread the word of God to just one more place.
"Yakson? Is that a nickname?"
"It is a treasure gifted to me by my friends here. It has also become my true name, as I have cast aside my past."
Yakson drew a religious emblem from his bosom and held it out. It was an object of love and hate that Eugene knew well.
"The Orthodox Church! So you are a missionary from there."
"It is a nearly ruined order, so few know of it. I did not expect it. I pray you are not bound to it by ill ties."
The Orthodox Church, with its characteristic exclusivity, had been completely pushed out of the established continent and was in steady decline.
Its line could not simply be allowed to die out. Competing with powerful religious orders in already developed lands was hopeless, so as a last resort it had turned toward an untapped market.
True to that strategy, it crossed the sea. With no money to organize voyages of its own, it hitched rides on fleets opening new sea routes.
For sailors, taking monks aboard as healers and laborers was no bad bargain either.
"I came to proselytize, but I have forgotten that mission along with my original name. Now I only wish to protect the natives here."
"Is that not an act of betraying your order?"
"Because after plague and monsters, the next most dangerous thing is my own brethren. The natives here are strong of body but pure of soul. Fanaticism would be more dangerous than deadly poison."
Considering the future if the Orthodox Church settled here, it was not a wrong statement. The danger that it would twist into something close to colonial subjugation was great.
Eugene recalled a saying satirizing missionary work that he had once heard.
"We possessed the land, and the strangers sang of the heavens. At their urging we praised God together, and so the land passed beneath their feet, and we were left with naught but the songs."
"So there is a way to dress up something so vile. It is exactly as you have spoken."
Yakson wore an expression of open admiration at the words of Eugene, who was a born knight by anyone's estimation.
"The ship was wrecked and all the comrades who came with me perished. I alone remained. By casting away my past, I erased the last possibility from the world as well."
"And having done so, you found yourself face to face with a monarch who brought a heavily armed army."
Yakson merely smiled calmly even when Eugene spoke in a slightly teasing manner.
"To me now, you look like nothing less than a messenger of God."
Yakson bent his waist and stretched out his arm as if to welcome them into the village.
Eugene had come as an advance party, bringing only a small elite force. Dragging a large-scale army into the jungle was madness.
Divide, as befitted a center for the nearby natives, was large enough that accommodating Eugene's advance party was no trouble at all.
"Having crossed that far sea, you must have endured much. Be it time, expense, or pain."
"Mm."
They were perfectly fine without a single case of stomach trouble, but Eugene kept silent, finding it too bothersome to explain.
"You will rightly need to achieve fitting results as a leader. In that respect, we share a common enemy."
"Because the Raksha love to adorn themselves with glittering things."
"Those fiends plunder everything they encounter. The dances, the songs, the cultures more precious than gold have already been trampled and vanished without number. But as salt remains when water evaporates, so too are gold and jewels eternal amid the ruins of destruction."
"They do make satisfying enemies to loot."
However Yakson dressed it up, in the end he was asking Eugene's army to fight in their place. Noticing Eugene's reaction, Yakson added.
"We have many capable scouts who can navigate this region with their eyes closed. A place to rest, provisions, herbs and tools for healing. We will provide anything and everything."
"Are the cat-people of no particular use as combatants?"
"They are already fighting within that dense jungle."
Just then, a monster's shriek rang out. The pain-filled voice did not sound like a fatal wound. But in a place like this, if not properly treated, it would lead slowly toward death.
"The cat-people are not suited to forming units and fighting head-on."
"Meaning guerrilla combat as hunters and assassins is their specialty."
"They can steadily add to the enemy dead, but that is their limit. The Raksha are so numerous that we are not even field mice to them—we are mosquitoes."
This was the reason Eugene's army was needed. It was a law of nature that only an army could destroy an army.
"Have you no thought that you are trying to bring in a tiger to drive out a wolf?"
"There are places where a tiger is absolutely necessary."
Yakson had agonized over this issue countless times, but in the end, he had concluded it was right. There was no other choice.
"There are humans native to this continent, people born different from those of the Old Continent. Their hair is black, their skin dark brown, and their brow ridges are flat."
From the description, they resembled East Asians. Hiding his delight, Eugene asked,
"And where are they? Everywhere I look in this village, I see only cat-people."
"They went extinct."
"Oh..."
The jungle itself was already a harsh environment called the green hell. In a world where monsters existed, that severity would be multiplied several times over.
If it were a conflict between men, an enemy might be enslaved, but they would not seek total extinction. But in the eyes of the Raksha, all intelligent species were nothing more than prey.
"If we do not borrow the tiger's strength, they will be next in turn."
Yakson pointed to the natives coming and going all around the village.
Yakson was an educated man. Villages and nations could fall; that was a tragedy he could understand as part of the world's order.
But extinction—the concept he had first witnessed on this continent—was something far more shocking. That experience was enough to make him accept even the dangers of foreign intervention.
* * *
Eugene's army temporarily unloaded their baggage at Divide and took time to reorganize.
"I've traveled all over as a mercenary, but I think this is the worst place of them all. Tch!"
Rampage furrowed his brows and kept brushing at his shaggy beard. It was because the jungle's characteristic dampness endlessly stimulated his sensitive tactile whiskers.
For a dwarf who perceived the world three-dimensionally, it was a sensation akin to wearing clothes sodden and clinging to the skin.
"If it is difficult, you could rotate with the main force's reserves..."
"No! I am fine. My senses are far sharper than usual, in fact."
Rampage was not lying. The dampness made his beard heavier, but it also let him take in more information, much as dogs caught scents better in humid air.
Those suffering more from the climate were the dark elves. Perhaps because they were a nomadic people and had dwelt in the temperate climate of Roman.
The same warriors who had laughed in the Samur desert as though enjoying a journey all wore sullen expressions here.
"Castle Lord."
"I am listening."
Cassandra glared in all directions with venomous eyes, a look she never showed before Eugene.
"When you conquer this place under the name of Meyer, will you entrust the clearing work to me?"
"So you can set it all ablaze and burn it to the ground?"
As Eugene wiped the nape of Cassandra's neck with a handkerchief, her fury subsided considerably.
The elf-folk had strong resistance to pollution and plague. The sweat would pour, but they would not suffer from skin diseases or endemic illnesses.
Her special mission female warriors were essential personnel for this task. Eugene did not even put on a show of suggesting they might turn back.
It was mealtime, so all the cat-people had gathered around a great bonfire.
"Ehe—iyaa!"
They were singing the deeply resonant songs unique to the natives and playing percussion instruments. He could not understand the lyrics, but he could feel their will to gather strength even in difficult circumstances.
"Is it truly true that there are many gold mines here?"
"You do not trust their words?"
"They might have told a falsehood because they need your lordship's strength."
"They would not be that stupid. If they did, they would later have to face our wrath. And as for treasure, we have already salvaged some, have we not?"
"The spoils from the last battle? That barely touches the sides."
Still, the spoils themselves seemed to please Cassandra, for she wore a pearl necklace she had obtained from it.
The pearls were large and beautifully colored, far superior in quality to those found on the Old Continent. The reason was that they came from a different species of clam.
-Whoa. Just eating one of these would fill you up, wouldn't it?
Everything here was large. When they first arrived, the clams caught by those who scouted the sea were the size of a human face.
"The treasure I spoke of is not plunder. It is this."
Eugene showed them something he had received from the storehouse. It was the crop the natives gathered around the campfire were now busily stripping and eating.
"It looks strange, but it doesn't seem particularly precious. Everyone's holding one."
"It is but a humble food, yet it is something that will change history."
An elongated crop studded with multiple yellow kernels. It was corn. The Old Continent had potatoes and sweet potatoes, but corn alone had been absent.
'It looks a bit peculiar, but the taste and cultivation process are the same.'
Compared to the corn Eugene knew, the kernels were fewer, but each individual kernel was twice as large.
"Eugene! Eugene! Come quickly and see this!"
From across the way, an utterly elated Varda, forgetting all decorum, bounced lightly on her feet as she called for Eugene.
She was beside herself with excitement in a place piled high with a vast array of vegetables and fruits.
As Eugene approached, Varda clung to his left arm.
Her fine skin was damp with humidity and sweat. Her neck and the hollow of her chest, where strands of hair clung stickily, were profoundly alluring.
Varda was just as susceptible to the heat, but she seemed entirely unbothered, burning as she was with scholarly fervor.
"This place is truly a treasure vault. Everywhere you look, it is overflowing with new herbs and fruits. Even when they are species we recognize, there are many differences in size and properties."
"Because the environment is so different. Many things will have undergone separate evolution since the world was opened."
Due to the nature of this world, where various intelligent species and monsters jostled together for survival, the theory of evolution had grown hand-in-hand with religion from the very beginning.
"If these are brought back to the Old Continent, your name shall be etched into history for all eternity. For they will save millions, perhaps tens of millions, from starvation."
"Like the First Era Elven Royal Family?"
The achievement of developing and widely disseminating the crops that became the ingredients for sanitary products. It was a deed revered across all cultures without exception.
The vague envy or fantasy most cultures held for the elves stemmed largely from their dignity, but the grace of their ancestors played a considerable part as well.
"...You're not comparing this to that, are you?"
"Your love for your husband is lacking, I see. Even if it isn't true, you are supposed to say yes at times like this."
"Ugh, but still..."
Faced with his wife caught between her pride and respect for her ancestors and her love for her husband, Eugene laughed heartily.
"I jest. Of course it cannot compare to soap and toothpaste."
"You tease!"
Varda's anger vanished the instant Eugene held an ear of corn in front of her face.
"This is?"
"The mightiest of crops, one that makes even the potato take a step back. Plant a single kernel of this, and when conditions are favorable, it can bear fruit up to several hundredfold."
"Sev-several hundredfold?!"
Varda was stunned by the absurd yield. With wheat, after all, they rejoiced and called it a bumper harvest if a single grain produced ten.
"But it has a weakness too. It consumes soil fertility enormously, so if you continuously crop it, the land will become barren."
"There are countless ways to compensate for that. The mere fact that we have more cards to play is a good thing."
Varda held an ear of corn in both hands and examined it closely. Her golden eyes and golden hair made her look perfectly matched with the yellow corn.
As a practitioner of forest magic, she had been providing Eugene immense assistance in land management, from clearing fields to coping with poor harvests.
As long as Varda supported him as the lady of the household, reckless depletion of the soil would never leave the land barren—at least within Eugene's territory.
"It tastes good too. You can steam it, grind it to make soup, or even make syrup from it."
Homi, who had been standing as Varda's escort, twitched her nose repeatedly. A gatherer's instinct seemed to have recognized the potential within the corn.
After the meal ended, Yakson brought out a large map drawn on animal hide. It was a quality unimaginable in such a remote place.
"You would be hard-pressed to find a map this good even in a proper city."
"It is a map we have been making since we first arrived in this blessed land."
Eugene gestured for his subordinates, who wore expressions that said 'In what way is this blessed?', to manage their faces.
"Yet no matter how I look at it, it reeks of military use."
"I cast aside the name, but not the skills."
"The Orthodox Church teaches the art of fighting as zealously as it does the faith, after all."
Yakson smiled a sorrowful smile. The map's quality went beyond mere excellence; it was densely packed with information meant to support combat.
"For the past thirty years, my hands have never been free of blood. Sometimes it was from treating the wounded or delivering children. At other times, I carried out the odd jobs God assigned me."
In Yakson's face as he stared at him, Eugene felt something vaguely reminiscent of Goffrey.
"To protect the good and innocent, someone must stain their hands with blood. Perhaps this too is fate? I, too, once belonged to the Orthodox Church and did the same work."
"...!"
Yakson always maintained his composure, but since meeting Eugene, he had found himself surprised time and again.
* * *
"There is nothing to fear. Others will stand around stammering in front of the brush, but we are dwarves. Our beards will tell us where the enemy lies hidden."
Rampage encouraged the warriors about to sortie.
"The small-folk are fierce, but are they any match for our hammers? Other enemies need their knees broken before you force them down, but there is no need with these bastards. Just smash their skulls the moment you see them."
"You all heard the Captain! Get moving!"
"We shall be the first to taste the gold mines of the New Continent! His Excellency has promised us!"
The armed dwarf warriors raised their hammers, their fighting spirit boiling over.
Watching them with an expression of trust, Yakson spoke.
"We are not the only ones driven out by the Raksha expansion and conquest. There are monsters, of course, and fiendish small-folk as well. We recently confirmed a large group gathering not far from here."
"Surely they are not planning to attack this place?"
"Everyone is worried about precisely that. To them, we are far easier prey than the rakshas."
If they had to fight anyway, now was the best opportunity, before they had properly fortified. They had to cleanse these creatures to secure their rear for the coming battle with the rakshas.
"I have heard tales of the loyal squire who attends the count. Unhappily, she has lost her voice, I am told?"
"We sought out countless priests and healers, but there was no solution."
"There are quite a few similar cases here. In a land with such a potent wild spirit, it is often a strong manifestation of beast blood."
"Do you mean you know a cure?"
Yakson nodded.
"I merely hope to repay a small portion of the grace we have received."
Once, countless people seeking salvation had journeyed toward the eastern holy land. But the salvation Eugene and Homi sought was hidden in the remote wilds of the west.
"First, we must carry out God's will."
As he spoke, the benevolent smile vanished from Yakson's eyes. A growling sound began to mix into his voice.
"What the...?"
To the astonished Eugene, Yakson showed him his fingernails, which were lengthening into bestial claws.
"I love the people of this place. So when children were born unable to speak, I wandered the entire jungle searching for a cure. After much hardship, I finally learned the secret from a druid."
It was not a method involving herbs or surgery.
"In that manner, I became a mage. I accepted the mystery of the beast into my own body."
Yakson had not abandoned the path of a priest solely to protect the people here from the oppression of the Orthodox Church.
It was to save those who had lost their voices. He himself had to become a mage who understood the mystery of beasts.
"That I possessed the talent to become a mage must also have been God's providence. And now, God commands that we destroy the enemies and protect the people of this land."
Eugene nodded and said,
"God wills it."
It was a common rallying cry in the Orthodox Church. At those words, at once affectionate and violent, heard for the first time in thirty years, Yakson smiled as well and answered in kind.
"God wills it."
It was the hour of the hunt.
End
ⓒ Gusojae#1wecx