Chapter 3: Some Knights, a Priestess, and a Lord Came

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Kazami even had a premonition that he was going to be killed.

But at that moment, with a great rustling sound and kicking up fallen leaves, a new actor came running over.

“O que faz voce (What are you doing)!?”

What came flying in was a small, fat man dressed in extraordinarily luxurious clothing.

He looked to be around the beginning of old age. A wealthy merchant with slightly graying hair—that was the impression that fit him perfectly.

The moment he came running over, the man balled his fist and sent the woman in the military uniform flying with a punch.

Kazami was startled that he would go that far against a woman, but the man’s actions were quick.

He brushed aside the saber and took Kazami’s hands as if worried that an important child had been injured.

“Nao ha o dano (Are you hurt)? Não era terminado o que era (Did she do anything to you)?”

Once again, words he had never heard before were fired at him like machine-gun bullets.

He could not understand the meaning, but from the tone it was certainly a voice of concern.

“What is this, one thing after another?”

Toward the man, who directed such strangely excessive worry at him that he wondered if something had possessed him, Kazami felt something akin to fear.

He avoided the man and looked away.

By chance, the direction he faced was where the woman who had been punched away was standing up with an expressionless face, without showing any sign of pain.

Even with blood flowing from the corner of her mouth, she clasped her hands behind her back, straightened her posture, and simply stared at him standing rigidly at attention.

“The girl was gravely wounded, the girl in the military uniform killed her, and this strange man punched her… What on earth is this situation? This really isn’t a dream, is it…?”

While slightly avoiding the man who was clinging to him, he looked around.

Until now he had not noticed at all, but at some point he had been surrounded.

There were many people around who looked similar to the woman in the military uniform, but without hats, each holding a single saber.

Even more strangely, some of them had ears and tails like dogs, cats, or other animals.

“Hey, hey, is this a cosplay prank…?”

Looking closely, the woman from before, whose hat had come off, had them too.

A splendid gray tail reminiscent of a wolf, and sharply standing beast ears.

Dressed in cosplay, he tried to return a broken laugh, wondering if this was really a prank made to look like an otherworld summoning story.

But he could not.

His hand, which felt a chill, was wet with the girl’s blood.

When he looked down, the eyes with dilated pupils were still staring into empty space without focus. Unlike when she had been alive, they were a color drained of life, like glass beads.

—Impossible.

Mere props could not reproduce a corpse to this extent.

A living person could not perform the act of being a corpse to this extent.

“Porque você não estava ferido, você feltro aliviou (I am relieved to see you are not injured).”

The man finally seemed to understand that there was nothing wrong, and laughed and patted his shoulder.

But Kazami, on the contrary, felt a chill freeze him from the core of his body.

A girl was dead before his eyes, and yet that face? It was as if he did not see people as people at all.

“…?”

As he looked back and forth between the girl and the man, the man seemed to notice as well.

“Leve Mulher. Isto é obstrutiva (Move this woman. She is in the way).”

When the man said something to those around him, several people moved and carried the girl away.

As she was lifted, her dangling arms swayed in the air. That sight was deeply engraved in Kazami’s eyes.

And while he had stopped thinking, he again heard the sound of fallen leaves being stepped on with a rustle.

Looking up, a girl wrapped in a pure white robe was approaching, led by several people in military uniforms.

She was perhaps fifteen or so.

With blonde hair braided from around her shoulders, she was a girl who, unlike anyone around her, looked like a picture of purity.

She had the appearance of a Jeanne d’Arc, if there ever was one.

The girl forcibly suppressed her ragged breathing, gave the man a bow in accordance with etiquette, and then bowed even to Kazami.

“A, ah… Can you speak English?”

“En, English? Normally… you can speak it?”

At the words he unintentionally returned, the girl clapped her hands together with an “Ah!” and opened her clear blue eyes wide.

“Yes, that’s right! You are a speaker of this language, aren’t you? It was Japanese, if I recall. Marebito-sama, I have been slow to introduce myself. I am the priestess Chloe List Welch. Please call me Chloe.”

“Prie, stess…?”

She nodded yes, and then reverently gestured toward the man.

“This is Doni Ast Lavan-sama, the lord of this land.”

The man called Doni spoke something while extending his hand.

His cheerful attitude could be guessed to be social courtesy, but Chloe translated it for the time being as meaning, “Keika, I meet you for the first time.”

“Keika—wasn’t that a religious honorific like His Holiness or His Grace?”

Finding it strange, Kazami returned the introduction somewhat hesitantly: “I’m Kazami… Shingo.”

Chloe seemed to have realized that he still could not grasp the situation.

She said something modestly to Doni and obtained some kind of agreement.

Seeing his generous nod, Chloe offered to lead the way, saying, “This way, please.”

“I imagine you are surprised by all these sudden things. First, please let us take you somewhere you can rest. After that, we will explain properly. Please do not worry about your belongings over there either. We will be sure to deliver them to Keika-sama.”

Chloe showed the utmost humility.

When he looked at what she called “over there,” several things that should have been in the laboratory were lying on the ground.

Kazami could not very well voice an objection to such an attitude, and with Doni nodding to him as well, he tried to quietly comply.

But there was just one thing he absolutely could not overlook.

The two of them tried to walk off briskly, but Kazami remained standing still. Then, as if pulled by the hair, they turned around.

“Wait. That girl… what was she?”

“Eh…?”

Chloe, who had no recollection of the girl Kazami mentioned, turned around with a face that did not grasp the point.

He would not be swept along by the situation in his confusion.

Putting strength into his eyes and voice, Kazami asked. Whether this was a dream or an illusion, he could not overlook this girl who had been killed.

Glancing toward the direction she had been carried off earlier, the girl lay on the ground beyond the fog. Chloe, following his gaze and seeing it, had gone pale.

“Keika-sama, that is—”

“I’m not used to being called that way. Kazami or Shingo is fine. I’m still more used to being called a veterinarian. Don’t call me that.”

“Y-yes. Then, um… Juui-sama. She is—well, Doni-sama’s property, a slave. Their blood was necessary to summon Juui-sama here. …You must have been displeased to see such a sight. I cannot ask you to accept it now, but could you please come with us? We will bury her respectfully, so please…”

“Slave? Summoning, you’re saying that’s really what this was?”

“Yes…”

Chloe affirmed while shrinking as if being scolded.

She was clearly different from Doni beside her, who merely looked puzzled about what was being said. In both clothing and atmosphere, she differed from the people around her.

“Would anyone here be able to use Law? If so, please show this person what it is like.”

This time Chloe said something in a language he did not understand.

As he wondered what it meant, the girl in the military uniform from before replied.

Then Chloe pointed and said, “Please look at her.”

As Kazami wondered what on earth this was about, the girl touched the ground and muttered a few words.

At that instant, brown light ran as if drawing some kind of pattern, and suddenly the earth thrust out like spears, forming a giant needle mountain.

“What—”

The kicked-up fallen leaves danced with a rustle.

The girl then put her hand on her saber and cut through the needle mountain with a single flash. The cone that slid with a zzu was made of leaf mold all the way through, and when it fell it returned to ordinary soil.

Kazami was speechless at that technique, which was just like magic.

“There are many kinds of techniques like that one. Please think of it as one of them having summoned you.”

Kazami tried to say that such a thing could not be, but this seemed to be genuine beyond doubt.

At least, as far as he knew, it was not a trick.

And the girl lying over there, her blood and her death, were unmistakably real as well.

Hoping it was a nightmare, he checked the girl’s pulse—and as expected, there was none. He had only reconfirmed that she was growing cold.

After all, this was real. It was not a prank or anything else.

“…There’s no point in saying I don’t understand any of this, is there?”

Kazami was no longer bewildered.

Since he could find not a single piece of evidence to deny this reality, there was nothing to do but believe it was real.

He closed her eyelids, then wiped her clean just a little with his handkerchief, prayed for her repose, and observed a moment of silence.

It was far too sad that such a girl would be mourned covered in blood.

“Um, um, Juui-sama! Please use this!”

To Chloe, who had panicked and pressed her pure white robe on him, he tried to confirm with his eyes whether that was all right.

But Chloe had already clasped her hands in front of her chest and seemed to be offering a moment of silence.

He had the robe laid over the dead girl.

“…I wish you’d tricked me by saying it was a joke, a prank. That would have been easier.”

“Do you dislike this sort of thing?”

“…Chloe, was it? In this situation, right now, I can only think that this girl became the sacrifice for that summoning. Is there anyone who would willingly enjoy being killed so cruelly?”

“N-no! That is, well…”

That was probably just Chloe having chosen the wrong words.

Exposed to his harsh voice, she trembled with a jolt and tried fearfully to correct herself.

Seeing that, Kazami, aware that he had let his voice drop more than necessary in a rather childish way, apologized: “Sorry. I said too much.”

Perhaps sensing that the air had loosened, her expression softened just a little.

“I am sorry… I felt relieved by Juui-sama’s character, and…”

“I don’t understand the situation well, but I hate it when something dies. Besides, my job is a job for keeping things alive. If anything, I wanted to save her.”

“Truly… truly, someone like that has come…”

For some reason he received a passionate gaze, but he was still in no mood to respond even with a smile.

After a short moment of silence, they proceeded to follow Chloe’s lead.

Along the way, Doni’s statements were translated many times, but his mind was elsewhere. That was because the girl in this forest had not been the only one lying there.

And not just one or two. There were enough to grow tired of seeing, all over the place.

Even with visibility limited by fog to less than a few meters, he encountered new corpses with every step.

All of them were sunk into the leaf mold with their necks slit, just like that girl.

“Hey, Chloe. What are all these corpses? Are all of these the same as that girl?”

“That is, well…”

Chloe faltered, as if the words were stuck in her throat.

Then Doni turned around.

Probably because Kazami had hardly spoken until now, he had been wondering what he said. Chloe interrupted her reply and interpreted some of it for him.

Her expression remained poor.

“These are people who committed crimes within the territory because of famine, plague, and such things, so their disposal was unavoidable.”

“Famine and plague—are things like that spreading?”

“Y-yes. It is… certain that ten or twenty percent of the population of the towns and villages dies from them each year.”

“But this is…”

“Keika. To my shame, my domain cannot be said to be in a good situation. No matter what kind of person one is, there are times when one commits a crime. But if such crimes are punished leniently, it will only increase crime further. Severe punishment is also unavoidable. And at the same time, this was done so that those lives would not be wasted.”

“People this numerous committed serious crimes that would lead to this…?”

By Kazami’s common sense, such a thing seemed impossible, but in this unknown land, he could not know.

When he looked at Chloe seeking an answer, she was silent, looking somewhat guilty—or rather, as if she had something caught between her back teeth.

But as for Doni, he was furrowing his brow as if worried about Kazami, who was troubled by it, so Kazami ended up thinking that perhaps that was just how it was.

Certainly, in fiction he had seen such worldviews before.

The strategy of killing the small to keep the great alive was by no means an incorrect theory. At least, it was a concept used in the basic concepts of nations and such.

That girl had been emaciated. He half-convinced himself that she must have committed murder due to the hardships of such a life.

If not, then this many people would have lent a hand to a mad act. Surely even so, that could not be possible.

In order to determine the truth, he could not help but follow and listen to the explanation.

But seeing a number of corpses that his two hands could never count changed his feelings as well.

Thinking of that many mass executions, he felt as if he were going to be sick.

“I’ve never even seen such a bloody otherworld summoning before…”

Seeing only this much, he could not help but harbor doubts: was what he had heard earlier really the truth?

Chloe responded to the corpses with a simple prayer as if making the sign of the cross, while Doni only surrounded Kazami and paid the corpses no attention at all.

There was still far too little material to judge what kind of people they were.

“…”

After that, he followed the two of them in silence.

Then, before long, they emerged from the forest.

What awaited him there was a dazzling carriage adorned with gold trim and ornaments.

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