Chapter 42
“…What is this.”
A bewildered voice escaped Maximilian’s lips.
“What do you think it is?”
With both hands shoved into his pockets, Igor replied in a cynical voice.
“The manticore we thought was alone was actually one of two… which means there could easily be even more than that. Our initial premise has already fallen apart.”
“You sure take the long way around to say it.”
Karen grumbled sullenly.
-Whap…!
The long tail, undulating like a whip, lashed the dirt, leaving a long afterimage. As if telling them to look this way.
“Grrrrr….”
There was the male manticore, growling threateningly in a low voice, and another small manticore hiding behind him. A tiny, weak cub that was barely a meter long and not even a juvenile.
Compared to it, the male manticore was huge enough to feel imposing, but it was hardly a threat to the students of Class A.
After all, they had Maximilian, sword in hand. Even without him, the other three could probably handle it somehow.
Their victory was assured. The only problem was….
“The manticore we thought was one was actually a pair, and they’d been churning out cubs nonstop. What’s so difficult about that?”
Having finished answering, Igor glanced at the uncomfortable-looking Maximilian.
‘So he really is a prince… in the bad sense.’
The second-highest-ranking man in the Magic Kingdom. That was Maximilian Markurd.
But that did not mean one should assume he had spent his entire life enjoying everything without paying a price.
As a prince, there were certainly things he had to sacrifice in exchange for those privileges. From the moment he learned to walk as a very young child, he had been given a small wooden sword instead of a rattle.
He had been sent again and again on actual combat missions rigorously selected by the knights of the royal palace, building up his instincts, and he had inherited the royal family’s secret magic, said to be the strongest in the kingdom, rising to a position that no one his age could approach.
Yet even he had weaknesses.
‘His head’s way too much in the clouds.’
It was a harsh assessment, but Igor thought it nonetheless.
Manticores were dangerous beasts. News of people being bitten by manticores surfaced several times a month, and because they wandered independently rather than living in groups, deliberately wiping them out was not easy.
Thus, whenever reports of one appearing came in, the best course was to dispatch knights on subjugation missions.
But right now, Maximilian was about to be swept up in his emotions.
A father desperately trying to protect its newborn cub. And the white fluid dried on the fur around the cub’s mouth—the traces left by nursing from its mother. It meant the cub had not even been weaned yet.
Maximilian felt sorry for the baby manticore.
The sight before his eyes was affecting him more emotionally than the simple fact that they were dangerous beasts threatening human lives.
Maximilian was still immature—as a ruler, as a knight, and as an adult. His strength had already grown enough to deserve the name Knight King, but inside, he was still just an awkward boy of his age.
And correcting that was the role of the rest of Class A, everyone except him.
“…Haaah.”
Igor let out a deep sigh. He wiped the sweat from his hands onto his trouser cuffs, then raised one hand and smacked Maximilian hard on the back.
-Thwack!
“Ugh…!”
Startled, Maximilian opened his eyes wide and glared at Igor. Igor spoke to him in a low voice.
“Come to your senses, Your Highness.”
“….”
“Manticores are dangerous beasts. They bite people to death.”
Igor turned his gaze from the prince and pointed at the male manticore, which was still growling and glaring at them.
“And subjugating that thing is our mission.”
“…Yes, you’re right.”
Maximilian nodded.
“If it’s difficult to understand, think of it this way. If we let it go just because we feel sorry for it, how many of the kingdom’s people would end up being caught and eaten by that one in a single year….”
“I said I understand, all right.”
Maximilian muttered with a sigh in his voice.
“You always have to say one thing too many, and that’s your problem.”
But there was no further hesitation.
“Let’s go.”
Maximilian declared it. The male manticore, instinctively sensing a threat, roared fiercely and raised one forepaw high, but that was all.
The severed forepaw flew into the sky.
=
The largest and most ferocious manticore was the mother manticore immediately after giving birth.
It was a fact so well known that even ordinary people who knew little about manticores were aware of it.
Of course, Miriam knew that much too.
“Ngh…!”
Sweating profusely and looking frantically around, Miriam squeezed her eyes shut and charged toward the fallen Kariya.
“Miriam?!”
There was no way the mother manticore could miss her movement.
[Where do you think you’re going!!]
-Fwoosh…!!
The manticore opened its eyes wide and held a mouthful of flames. Just as its breath was about to engulf Miriam—
-Boom!!
The flames exploded right before her eyes.
“Eek, eeeee…!”
“Roxy!”
“Now, Miriam!!”
Roxanna cried out in a shrill voice, and Miriam quickly scooped Kariya into her arms while it had the chance.
Kariya, slung over her back, muttered.
“What are you doing…? We need to complete the mission first…!”
“Don’t get the wrong idea?! I’m only clearing away an obstruction in my way!”
Miriam shouted back, not to be outdone, and Kariya fell silent.
[As if I’d let you get away…!]
As the manticore turned its head to chase her, two tomahawks flew in behind it.
-Kraaash!!
With an ear-splitting thunderclap, the two axes sank deep into the nape of the manticore’s neck. Blood spurted up like a fountain, but the manticore merely narrowed its eyes slightly and muttered.
[…You dare use something this ticklish…!]
“Charlotte!”
-Bzzzt…!
Seeing that the manticore was unharmed, Charlotte broke into a cold sweat and tried to retrieve the tomahawks by sending electric signals from both hands.
“…Damn.”
But Charlotte soon grimaced. The tomahawks were not responding.
“I can’t retrieve them…!”
The reason was simple. The manticore was gripping the tomahawks tightly with the muscles in the back of its neck.
Fortunately, Charlotte was not so foolish that she failed to notice. She immediately decided to abandon the tomahawks and scooped Roxanna up instead.
“Charlotte?!”
“Conserve your stamina.”
Muttering in a low voice, Charlotte ran in the opposite direction without looking back.
“Your bombardment magic is our last remaining option. Save as much stamina as you can so you can be sure to land your most powerful shot.”
Going into the mountains was out of the question. Considering the manticore’s massive body, one might think entering the densely wooded mountains would be more advantageous, but that conclusion would only be possible if one overlooked the manticore’s breath entirely.
In other words, it would be like walking into hellfire of one’s own accord.
Then what was the next-best option?
‘Urban warfare…!’
Hide in the residential area of the village, using the buildings as cover to strike and withdraw.
The houses would be smashed apart in the process, but the kingdom would pay for the repairs. She felt no guilt. The Valliere family paid tens of millions in taxes to the state every year precisely for things like this.
But Charlotte had overlooked one fact.
Or rather, it was difficult to call it overlooking. Since she had never seen it, it was only natural that she did not know.
She had assumed that a manticore’s breath came in only one type: one that projected flames. That was the worst misjudgment Charlotte had made.
Unlike wyverns, a manticore’s breath did not generate flame itself inside its body.
It generated flames in an organ inside its throat that synthesized biological mana. Its fundamental principle was the same as that of human magic.
In other words, a manticore’s breath was fundamentally identical to fire-element standard magic.
Just like bombardment magic.
[Krooooooar!!!]
The manticore roared and spewed flames into the air. The fire undulating in midair soon gathered into a single mass.
“A fireball…?!”
Roxanna, carried on Charlotte’s back, shouted.
“Charlotte, dodge!! That’s…!”
But it was too late. The fireball was launched far faster than Roxanna could finish speaking.
At the same time, Charlotte hid behind a building. The fireball crashed down over it.
-Kwooooom!!!!!!
With a deafening boom, Roxanna’s vision turned white.
=
‘Little miss, what brings you here?’
‘….’
‘Hahaha, she must be scared—your face is so fierce.’
‘Hey, damn it….’
‘W-what is that?!’
‘This?’
‘How strange. Why are you so interested in something like this?’
‘Well, I suppose it could happen. Now, miss. This is….’
=
Amid the ringing in her ears, Roxanna slowly opened her eyes.
“U-uu….”
Her entire body felt as though it had been scorched. It seemed she had fallen to the ground, and when she opened her eyes, half of her field of vision was the color of dirt.
Roxanna groaned and raised herself. The first thing she saw was Charlotte’s corpse.
“…!”
No, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be a corpse. That couldn’t be. Roxanna moved toward Charlotte.
She heard the sound of labored breathing. Relieved to find that Charlotte was still alive, Roxanna let out a breath.
But that relief lasted only a moment. Her gaze soon fell downward.
-Gush, gush.
She saw a piece of rebar embedded in Charlotte’s thigh. Blood welled from the wound and formed a pool.
“Char, Charlotte…!”
Pale-faced, Roxanna grabbed Charlotte by the shoulders and started to shake her, but stopped dead.
Shaking her violently might cause the wound to open further. She could make at least that much of a rational judgment.
Of course, an injury this severe could be healed almost perfectly through healing magic. But it was also true that healing magic would not stop the excessive bleeding right now.
Roxanna lifted Charlotte as carefully as she could, then dragged her along as slowly as possible without aggravating the wound.
With wet, scraping sounds, the blood stretched out in a long trail like a red carpet. Only after barely managing to lay Charlotte down at the edge of the collapsed house’s outer wall did Roxanna catch her breath and look around.
“Uh….”
Inside the collapsed hut, something familiar caught her eye.
It was a musket.
A weapon with Fireball, one of the basic formulas of fire-element standard magic, built into it, designed so that anyone could use magic as long as they possessed mana in their body, even if they were not a magic user.
Its advantage was that anyone could fire it, but unlike magic, it could continue firing even after its mana ran out, making it easy for the user to fall into a state of mana depletion.
Even so, the musket boasted such an overwhelming reputation for performance and versatility that it had been adopted as the standard weapon of the kingdom’s soldiers over countless other weapons.
‘Come to think of it… when I was young, I even dreamed of becoming a musket-wielding marksman.’
At the sudden recollection of that old thought, Roxanna picked up the dust-covered musket.
But she quickly returned to reality. This was wartime, and she could not leave Charlotte alone for too long.
‘Right, if I have this…!’
Just as she tightly gripped the musket and turned back toward Charlotte—
-Swish!!
Something that cut through the wind flew past, grazing Roxanna’s shin.
“Huh…?”
The feeling vanished from one of her legs. As the world spun before her eyes, Roxanna fell face-first to the ground while still holding the musket.
[Grrrrrrrrr…!]
At the same time, an eerie sound came from behind. With her face gone white, Roxanna dragged her numb lower body and turned around to sit.
The mother manticore stood atop the rubble of the collapsed house, silently looking down at her.