Chapter 47
“The forest's been closed?”
“W-why…?”
Kariya frowned, while Roxanna looked flustered. In response to her question, the carriage driver shook his head vigorously and said,
“You really don't know? There’s a rumor that the entire forest has been cursed! Forget crossing through it—even if you just approach, murderous plants come rushing out to kill you!”
“Murderous plants?”
“What do you mean, murderous plants?”
“Oh my, you really don't know. They're plants that kill people and suck their blood! The moment a tree root pierces your body, it'll suck all the blood from you and you'll die!”
“S-suck their blood…?”
“Did you see it yourself?”
“I-I didn't see it myself, but….”
When Kariya pressed him coldly, the carriage driver looked flustered but quickly pulled some sort of paper from inside his coat.
“What is this…?”
“These are photographs taken by a photographer who barely escaped with his life! Some were badly blurred by shaking, but… by chance, one came out clear!”
After rummaging through dozens of photographs duplicated by magic, the carriage driver finally pulled out one.
“Here, this is it!”
“…What is this?”
Kariya narrowed his eyes when he saw the photograph. Though the image was somewhat shaky, unlike the other photographs, in which the subject was so blurred that its shape could not even be made out, this one was clear enough to show the subject's form distinctly.
It was a photograph of a man dying with a thick tree root piercing his heart, blood spilling from his mouth.
“So this tree root… sucks human blood?”
“That's what I'm saying!”
The carriage driver shouted, nodding repeatedly.
“Anyway, you understand now, right? I'm sorry to break my promise, but I'm a human being too! I can't send people into a place when I know full well they'll die if they go!”
After taking the photograph back from Kariya and tucking it into his coat, the carriage driver turned away.
“Hey, carriage driver. We may be trainees, but we're magic knights….”
“I know about the trainee-knight system, too! But aren't you still just five promising youngsters who aren't even twenty?”
Charlotte tried to persuade him, but the carriage driver was adamant.
“I have a child the same age as you students, so I know very well! I'd sooner entrust this to professional magic knights… but when the whole forest has gone mad, I can't in good conscience ferry five children into a place like that!”
Having failed to persuade the carriage driver, Charlotte muttered with a troubled expression,
“…What do we do now?”
“Should we look for another means of transportation?”
It was Miriam's suggestion. But the other carriage drivers had said the same thing.
Some refused to go, talking about their consciences, like the carriage driver from before, while others asked what they would do if their carriages were smashed after driving their horses into such a place.
Whatever their reasons… it was obvious that people were reluctant even to approach the forest's vicinity.
“Come to think of it, a forest coming alive… that's kind of creepy.”
Charlotte muttered.
“Are you trying to sound weak before the mission?”
“I'm not being weak! Think about it. No matter how impressive someone's magical accomplishments are! How could a single magic knight control an entire forest? Black Earthworm Forest isn't some little hill in a village.”
“…That’s true.”
Miriam nodded with a serious expression.
“Could it simply be a trick? Ordinary people could be fooled by a simple illusion.”
“No, illusion magic can't exert physical force.”
But Charlotte immediately rejected Miriam's suggestion.
“Controlling the entire forest may be bluster or a trick… but it’s a fact that he can use magic to control plants. You saw the photograph.”
“Magic….”
Miriam scratched her head vigorously and muttered regretfully, then clapped her hands and exclaimed,
“Right, magic! They say that guy used to be a magic knight!”
“Right.”
“There ought to be records of his military service and activity history! Do you know anything, Teacher Haru?”
“…Ah, well.”
Miriam smiled broadly and turned sharply toward me. The other children also turned to look at me, their expressions a mixture of hope and concern.
I opened my mouth, then let my words trail off.
“W-well, I did put in a request beforehand, but….”
“But…?”
When I uneasily broached the subject, Miriam's expression darkened as she sensed something ominous.
“Apparently, as a rule, the records of anyone dishonorably discharged are erased.”
“Whaaat?!”
“Officially, when a magic knight is sentenced to ‘erasure of records,’ even their name is removed from the records. The whole point of the punishment is to prevent them from enjoying the honor of being recorded in history.”
“That’s….”
Miriam muttered with an expression as if the world had collapsed, while Kariya, standing quietly behind her, folded his arms and snorted.
“Hmph, idiots. This is what you Kingdomers are like….”
“Y-you shouldn't make discriminatory remarks….”
As Roxanna stared at him and timidly shook her head,
I flashed a mischievous smile and added one more thing.
“…But?”
I deliberately tilted my head to one side and added,
“I think I remember hearing a rumor… that the man's name was ‘Papino Jakma.’”
“…?”
“And I also heard there was a ‘special magic’ used by a magic knight named Papino.”
“What’s the special magic?!”
Miriam cried out, her eyes sparkling.
I stared at her for a moment, then tilted my head questioningly.
“…I can't remember beyond that.”
“What?!”
“…I suppose even the instructor couldn't uncover anything beyond that.”
Charlotte said quietly to the flustered Miriam.
Then she looked at her and repeatedly winked with one eye.
“Uh… Ah! Ah, yeah. Then it can't be helped.”
Miriam nodded and answered in a stiff voice.
“…That ‘special magic’ must let him control plants at will by some means. And if my guess is right, it would fall under the category of sustained magic, or perhaps water-attribute magic.”
“How do you know?”
“He might use water-attribute magic to manipulate the sap flowing through plants and force them to move. Or perhaps use sustained magic to imbue the soil where the plants have taken root with a magical will, then control them. It has to be one of the two.”
Kariya shrugged as though it were nothing noteworthy and answered,
“But controlling an entire huge forest still seems hard to believe. From a common-sense standpoint, it’s impossible. He’s certainly using some kind of shortcut or deception, but unless we know exactly what magic it is….”
“G-guys!”
At that moment, Roxanna timidly stepped forward.
“I have a good idea…!”
“A good idea?”
Charlotte tilted her head.
“I-I think… if we use this method, we can easily complete the mission without having to go through the trouble of investigating or anything…!”
Roxanna nodded with a rare expression of confidence.
“Really?”
Miriam asked, intrigued. The odd thing was that Charlotte, who knew her well, looked anxious.
There was no way Charlotte could be displeased to see her timid friend gain confidence and boldly put forward her own opinion.
And sure enough, a bad feeling is never wrong.
“Yeah, it’s this…! We set fire to the forest!”
“Yeah, yeah…! …Huh?”
Miriam had been nodding along excitedly, but now she blinked blankly and asked,
“What are you going to do to the forest?”
Roxanna, her face flushed with excitement, continued,
“If what everyone says is true, there shouldn't be a single person left in Black Earthworm Forest by now, right? Except for that one magic knight…!”
“Th-that’s right.”
Even Kariya nodded with a bewildered expression, seeming flustered.
“Then we can just burn the whole forest down!”
In other words, if they burned down the entire forest, only that one magic knight would die and there would be no other casualties, meaning the mission would be complete.
Miriam silently watched her for a moment, then leaned toward Kariya's ear and whispered,
“…Was she always like this?”
“I don't know either.”
Kariya replied with an appalled expression.
Regardless, Roxanna continued even more excitedly.
“And you know how there’s slash-and-burn agriculture? You use the ashes as fertilizer to grow plants…! Just like that, after burning down the forest, we could plant trees and turn the whole place into a park. Two birds with one stone…!”
“Isn’t there any way to investigate the magic he uses, too?”
Charlotte abruptly turned and cut off Roxanna, who was getting carried away.
“…Hmm, that might be difficult.”
“Since it’s ‘special magic’… we can't confine our thinking to common sense. We'll just have to be careful.”
“G-guys?”
Kariya and Miriam replied one after the other in calm voices.
Turning away from the flustered Roxanna, Charlotte continued,
“Just in case, let me tell you that erasure of records is a punishment imposed directly by His Majesty the King. Investigating someone sentenced to erasure of records would constitute a crime of lèse-majesté.”
“…The instructor said what she heard was only an ‘uncertain rumor,’ anyway, so that should be fine.”
“Hey, guys? Why don't we just burn….”
“If we can’t even borrow a carriage… will we have to rent one outright?”
“No, we’ll have to buy one. There’s a good chance the carriage will be wrecked and the horses killed; who would willingly lend us their carriage?”
“That’ll cost quite a bit.”
“We’ll have to use the advance on the mission fee.”
“Guys…?”
Roxanna's plaintive mutter echoed hollowly.