The One Who Guides Wind and Flame (1)

The grassland stretching across the eastern part of the continent really is vast enough to be called the Great Grassland.

Apparently, it even has names of its own, such as the Purha Great Forest, but since the name used isn't consistent from place to place, Great Grassland will do for now.

The people who live in the Great Grassland are halflings and human nomads.

...The word nomad sounds somehow peaceful to me, but in reality, they are fierce horse-riding peoples who apparently raid and plunder the countries beyond the grassland.

Of course, not every tribe is necessarily warlike. Some apparently trade peacefully with the countries outside the grassland, so it would be wrong to lump all the nomads who live there together.

Incidentally, Darotte, a nation in the center of the continent known as an aggressor—or rather, a plundering nation—was apparently founded when a tribe defeated in a conflict on these grasslands crossed the desert and ice fields, washed up there, and seized a local country.

For the people of the conquered nation and the neighboring countries, having a powerful plundering nation arise nearby was extremely troublesome.

But that meant that people strong enough to seize a country despite being weakened by such a difficult journey had been nothing more than losers here in the Great Grassland—a terrifying fact.

In other words, the nomads, horse-riding peoples, and grassland folk who lived on the Great Grassland must have been that strong.

The grass swayed in the wind sweeping through.

The sky and grassland stretched on endlessly, both blue and blue-green.

For now, I set off east.

If I continued east through this grassland and made it out the other side, there was apparently a country called the Huanggu Empire, the largest in the eastern part of the continent.

But crossing the Great Grassland on foot would take months, and no matter how I looked at it, the food I had on hand—the meat of monsters I had hunted in the Man-Eating Great Swamp—would never be enough.

If I could hunt beasts or monsters, or contact nomads and buy food from them, I could continue traveling east. But if obtaining food proved impossible, I would have to leave the grassland for a while and stop at a country along the coast.

As I walked across the grassland, crunching through the grass, I saw a herd of horses in the distance.

There were no humans nearby, so they were probably wild horses.

But when I looked closely, I noticed that some of the horses had a single horn on their foreheads.

They were bay, dark bay, and black bay horses, so calling them unicorns would be a bit of a stretch, but they were unquestionably monsters, not ordinary horses.

And yet those one-horned horses, presumably monsters, grazed around the outside of the herd as if protecting the others.

The ordinary wild horses also seemed to have accepted the one-horned horses completely as members of the herd, which I found rather interesting.

When monsters live alongside beasts, they often reign at the center as the herd's rulers because of their greater strength or intelligence, but that herd seemed to have a somewhat different feel to it.

There were several one-horned horses, and the ordinary wild horses showed neither hesitation nor fear toward them.

I suspected that both kinds of horse were proud in their own ways.

Whether that made them equals, with one protecting and the other being protected, was another matter, but it seemed to me they were trying to be.

It was kind of fun.

Yes, I could feel my excitement rising.

Ah, I wanted to ride one of them.

I wondered whether they would let me ride them if I learned how.

No, surely I couldn't expect things to work out so conveniently.

Even now, the horses were beginning to eye me warily because I had been watching them for so long.

Mm, it couldn't be helped.

For now, I should move on.

I only wanted to interact with them; I hadn't meant to threaten their way of life.

Besides, I still had plenty of food with me.

Still, horseback riding...

Come to think of it, when Airena let me ride behind her before, I thought I ought to learn, didn't I?

But at the time, I believe I put it off because horses live much shorter lives than humans.

But now, maybe learning to ride would be a good idea.

I live for a long time, meet many, and part with many.

Some farewells will be caused by death, while others will be little more than partings after our paths briefly cross.

Even if a few horses were among those meetings and partings, surely that would be all right.

Just then, as I walked along thinking that, a great wind swept across the grassland.

It blew hard—hard, as if desperately trying to convey something to me.

Then the wind spirit whispered in my ear.

"Over there."

"Help them."

...or something like that.

That was the wind spirit asking me to help.

It was an exceedingly rare occurrence.

After all, spirits generally have little to trouble them.

In the first place, interfering with spirits was nearly impossible.

It was technically possible to harm them by destroying or polluting the environments where they dwelled, but in that case, the spirit itself would likely fly into a rage and rampage before asking me for help.

Thus, even in the more than two hundred years I had been alive, this had hardly ever happened.

Naturally, I had no reason to refuse.

If anything, I was even a little curious about what awaited me.

Someone needed help.

But the wind spirit itself couldn't do so.

That was entirely possible.

Except for exceptional spirits that possessed considerable power and had accumulated experience over a long time, spirits could not make good use of their own power.

No—more precisely, they simply did not know how to use it beyond the ordinary workings of nature.

The water spirit dwelling in the spring I had encountered before was one such exception.

That said, since spirits were so numerous and those with both power and experience made up only a small fraction, exceptions were relatively easy to find if one actively looked for them.

For example, suppose a wind spirit, acting alone and on its own initiative, tried to save someone being attacked by a pack of wolves.

Of course, that would hardly ever happen, but let's suppose it took it into its head on a whim.

A wind spirit could blow a strong gust to startle the wolves, but attacking in a way that actually injured them would be difficult.

If it tried to force the issue by generating wind strong enough to hurt the wolves, it might create a tornado or something similar and end up sweeping the person it was trying to save into it as well.

The attacks and delicate, varied actions I had the wind spirit perform when I asked for its help were possible only because it received the images I conveyed and recreated them.

In other words, that was also why, according to myth, high elves were created after spirits.

Spirits possessed great power, but they existed to keep nature running and had no notion of using that power for any other purpose.

That was why high elves conveyed images to spirits, allowing them to use their power in ways more suited to each situation.

As a result, spirits could produce phenomena beyond the ordinary workings of nature.

Of course, the spirit arts used by ordinary elves and by humans whose wavelengths matched those of spirits worked on exactly the same principle, differing only in scale.

Moreover, for spirits, wielding their powers this way was also an opportunity to gain experience and learn.

Still, there were many spirits in this world and few people with the talent to use spirit arts, so unless a given spirit stayed by the same person's side for an exceptionally long time, the results of that learning were rarely apparent.

Incidentally, a powerful spirit that had accumulated a great deal of experience could wield power beyond the bounds of ordinary natural phenomena without receiving anyone else's images.

However, spirits' sensibilities differed greatly from those of other living things, so their ways of using power differed just as greatly.

This was only my personal impression, but spirits did seem to use their power broadly and rather crudely.

For example, that water spirit dwelling in the spring had seemed ready to wash away the entire town at first.

I had strayed far from the subject, but if a spirit took a strong liking to someone and danger threatened that person, it wasn't inconceivable that it would ask me, who happened to be nearby, for help.

It truly was rare for a spirit to show such strong interest in someone, though.