What Changes, What Remains (19)

On horseback, I nocked an arrow, drew my bowstring taut, and let it fly with a sharp snap.

The arrow tore through the air and plunged straight between the brows of an armored, helmeted soldier.

For a human, that would be a fatal wound—the arrow had reached the brain.

Yet despite staggering from the impact, the soldier kept advancing toward me.

Yes, the one I'd shot wasn't human, despite wearing armor and a helmet.

Ah—more precisely, the soldier was no longer human.

"The undead are such a pain."

They were monsters made from human corpses that had begun to move.

Although undead were supposed to be rare monsters, three were now coming toward us.

I nocked another arrow and drew my bow.

Since the body was already dead, shooting a vital point would accomplish little.

The only way to defeat this monster was to inflict massive damage on its body.

The arrow I loosed with another sharp snap pierced one undead's leg, hampering its movement and sending it tumbling.

They were by no means powerful monsters.

They were hard to defeat and physically strong, but slow, and seemed to have no intelligence.

Unless someone let their guard down and was caught by surprise at close range, the undead shouldn't be particularly difficult to deal with.

Even an ordinary person could run away from them.

Still, facing them made me uncomfortable.

The very fact that such things could exist was unpleasant enough, and having to mutilate their bodies to defeat them felt like an assault on their dignity. I hated that.

The other elves in the caravan who wielded bows loosed their arrows all at once, bringing down the remaining undead.

They posed no great threat, but no one said a word.

Knocking them down wasn't enough; they'd eventually get back up, so we had to finish them off.

Well... I decided to deal with the first one I had knocked down myself.

Three months had passed since I joined the elven caravan.

The caravan was currently traveling through southern Zieden—in other words, the region that had once been the Duchy of Karkoim.

What I'd learned during our three months of travel was that, despite having become a powerful nation, Zieden was still straining itself considerably for the war.

Things were still better near villages and towns, but there was no doubt that we were encountering monsters far more frequently in the wilderness.

Since this was happening even while we traveled the roads by carriage, leaving the roads and traveling through the wilderness on foot would surely expose us to even more monster attacks.

This increase in monsters was probably happening precisely because Zieden was concentrating its military strength on the war.

I assumed they'd left at least some soldiers to protect the towns and their surroundings, but with so few troops, they could barely protect the towns themselves, let alone actively hunt monsters.

Or perhaps adventurers were being conscripted as soldiers and sent to the front.

If that was the case, the number of monsters would naturally increase little by little.

Then the flow of goods would be disrupted, and people's lives would grow poorer.

And all this despite the fact that few countries still traded with Zieden.

I didn't know why Zieden was devoting so much effort to fighting other countries.

I'd even heard of countries that had been destroyed in the past after monsters multiplied beyond control.

When a country is destroyed by monsters in that way, the surrounding countries have to unite and set out to exterminate them.

Otherwise, the monsters will multiply even further and swallow up our own countries as well.

I'd like to believe even Zieden's rulers aren't foolish enough to let matters reach that point...

What could be driving Zieden's blazing ambition to expand, heedless of the risks?

There had to be some reason for it.

And how could that expansionist ambition be brought to a halt?

I felt bad leaving it to someone else, but Airena would probably be able to investigate the matter properly.

Our journey around Zieden's elf-inhabited forests was already halfway over.

We'd spend another three months heading north as we visited the remaining forests, and then make for Zieden's royal capital.

Yes, the very capital where I'd blockaded the city gates.

Apparently, Zieden still hadn't managed to remove the rocky hill I'd used to seal the gates.

Removing it would, well, be my job.

The caravan's elves could remove it if they took enough time, but if they were seen struggling, Zieden might underestimate them.

Only by clearing it away swiftly, in the blink of an eye, could I maintain the threat Zieden currently felt from the elves—and make it seem even greater.

But I shouldn't have any role in the negotiations afterward.

Since the negotiations wouldn't end after one or two rounds, the elven caravan would continue traveling here and there, returning to Zieden's royal capital many times and advancing the talks each time.

The Kingdom of Rudoria, the Republic of Vilestrika, and the small states would all have a say as well.

How many years would it take to bring the negotiations to a conclusion?

After the first round of negotiations, the caravan would head to the Kingdom of Rudoria, so that would probably be where my journey with them ended.

I hadn't thought about what I'd do after visiting Kaeh's grave, but I wanted to spend some time at a dojo of the Yosogi school in the Kingdom of Rudoria.

The end of this long journey was surely not very far away anymore.