Chapter 11
Monica was dreaming.
Before her was a table, with the dishes neatly arranged upon it.
When she ate alone, Monica usually made do with bread or nuts and never bothered to set the table. The only time she went to the trouble of arranging dishes was when Isaac had made something for her.
"Monica, dinner's ready."
When she looked up with a start, Isaac, wearing an apron, was walking toward her.
The soup bowl in his hands held a pea nearly as large as a human head.
"I'm especially proud of this one. It's pea soup."
Could one really call that sphere, nearly as large as a human head, a pea?
For that matter, even if he called it soup, where was the soup itself?
"W-wait, Isaac... That... that's..."
As Monica sat there, pale and trembling, Isaac scooped up the pea with a spoon.
Balancing the giant pea on the little spoon as if by a miracle, Isaac held it out to Monica.
Then the talented cook and self-appointed disciple gave her a meltingly sweet smile.
"Here. Say ah."
"I can't, I can't... No... Wait... waittttttttt!!"
...And that's where she woke up.
(Ugh... where am I?)
She lifted her heavy eyelids, but everything before her was pitch-black.
Her body felt sluggish, and moving even a fingertip required effort. On top of that, her head felt terribly heavy, and her thoughts were slower than usual. She had run out of magic power.
(That's right... I was swallowed by the pea... What happened after that...? Are Cyril-sama and the 〈Thorn Witch〉-sama all right?)
She had to get out of here quickly. She knew that, but her body would not move. If she let her guard down, she felt she might lose consciousness again.
"Hey! Hey! Monica! If you can hear me, answer me!"
Raul's voice came from the other side of the pea's vines. Ah, so he was safe.
She moved her lips to answer his call, but all that escaped was a feeble, wheezing breath; no voice came out.
(I have to answer... I have to tell him, I'm here...)
Despite her intentions, her head grew heavier and heavier, and the eyelids she had barely managed to keep open slowly closed.
(...No... sleepy...)
Just as her consciousness was about to sink away again, Monica heard a sharp, scolding voice.
"Respond to roll call promptly!! Accountant Norton!!"
＊ ＊ ＊
How were they going to find Monica, who had been swallowed by the pea?
This was the method proposed by Raul Roseberg, one of the Seven Sages—the 〈Thorn Witch〉.
"Hey! Hey! Monica! If you can hear me, answer me!"
They would simply call out as loudly as possible and wait for a reply. It was an extremely simple and primitive method.
The rampaging pea was being held in check by Raul's "White Hurricane No. 1." If they were going to rescue Monica, this was their only chance.
But no matter how loudly Raul called, Monica gave no answer. Had she lost consciousness?
Magic deficiency became more severe in people with greater reserves of magic power. As one of the Seven Sages, Monica naturally had far more magic power than an ordinary person, and if she ran completely dry, she should be suffering from severe physical distress.
Magic power that had run dry would gradually recover with time, but since she was trapped inside a magic-draining pea, recovery was impossible... In other words, this could threaten her life.
"Damn it," Cyril muttered as he ran toward the pea.
He filled his lungs with air and shouted from deep in his gut.
"Respond to roll call promptly!! Accountant Norton!!"
In his panic, he had blurted out the way he used to address her, prompting Raul to look puzzled and murmur, "Accountant Norton?"
Just as Cyril was feeling mortified, thinking, Oh no, I did it again..., he heard a tiny, tiny voice from above, quieter than an insect's chirp.
"Y-yes..."
There was no way he could mistake that pitiful voice. It was Monica.
The voice had come from a spot just above Cyril's head. Squinting, he could see a small hand between the pea's vines.
The hand, tiny as a child's, waved weakly, pleading for help.
It was just barely within Cyril's reach.
"Found her!"
Cyril carefully sliced through the surrounding vines with an ice spear, seized Monica's hand, and gave it a hard pull.
Like a turnip shooting out of the earth, Monica's body popped out of the pea and fell onto Cyril. He caught her small body and landed hard on his rear.
"...C-Cyril-sama..."
A frail voice came from his arms. When he looked down, Monica was gazing vaguely up at Cyril with the face of a child just waking from sleep. Her consciousness must have been hazy; her eyes were unfocused.
"You're all right now."
Still holding Monica, Cyril quickly moved away from the pea.
Once they had put sufficient distance between themselves and it, Raul rolled up his sleeves.
"We've rescued Monica, so we're done here, right? Then that's that."
Raul placed his palm flat against the white rose dragon.
The vines forming the white rose dragon, "White Hurricane No. 1," which had been squeezing the pea, swelled up in an instant.
Just as a person's muscles bulge when they tense their arms, the intertwined white rose vines expanded.
The rose dragon swung its thick arm and crushed the pea in its grip.
Crushed by sheer force and twisted apart, the pea dripped grass sap instead of blood.
"Pull it out! 'White Hurricane No. 1'!"
The white rose dragon seized the pea and slowly pulled it from the ground. The earth around it bulged and cracked as though a giant tree rooted in the ground were being uprooted. What prodigious strength.
By the time Cyril had retreated with Monica in his arms to avoid being caught up in it, the pea had been completely pulled from the ground and lay motionless.
Raul let out a breath and wiped the sweat from his brow.
"Well, that's that! Problem solved!"
"............Oh?"
Glaring at the chuckling Raul, Cyril looked around him.
The field was, naturally, a complete mess. On top of that, the remains of the giant pea and the white rose dragon dominated the surrounding area.
This devastation was about as far from "problem solved" as it was possible to get.
"How can you possibly call this 'problem solved'?"
"Plants infused with magic wilt on their own once the magic leaves them, so it's fine, it's fine. Once we've purified the soil, let's leave the cleanup until tomorrow and head home for today."
"............Yeah."
Thinking about the cleanup that awaited them, Cyril was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of exhaustion.
Cyril sighed and crumpled to the ground, still holding Monica.
"What's this? You don't have much stamina."
Despite having used such a powerful technique, Raul showed not the slightest sign of fatigue.
Perhaps it was because he regularly did farm work. Raul had an impressive physique utterly at odds with his handsome features.
As Cyril looked enviously at his well-muscled arms, Raul quickly purified the soil, then effortlessly dragged over the cart they had left a short distance away.
"Hop in. I'll pull the cart down the mountain."
"...I'll take you up on that."
A younger Cyril would have thought it utterly outrageous to make one of the Seven Sages—the nation's very treasure—pull a cart, let alone ride in it.
But present-day Cyril felt not the slightest inclination to hold back out of consideration for Raul. Besides, he had no confidence that he could carry Monica down the mountain, so he accepted the ride without hesitation.
The cart was cramped with the farming tools loaded onto it, but there should still have been enough room for the two of them to sit side by side.
Cyril sat Monica down with her back against the edge of the cart, then sat beside her and supported her so she would not fall over.
"Are you all right?"
When Cyril spoke to her, Monica moved her mouth sleepily.
"...Cyril-sama... Here is this month's budget proposal... The vendors for the school festival are on this list..."
It seemed the 〈Silent Witch〉 was dreaming about the student council.
Feeling strangely nostalgic, Cyril leaned against the cart and exhaled.
Before long, the cart began to move slowly. It jolted terribly as it rattled along, but Monica showed no sign of waking.
"Hey, hey, come to think of it..."
"What?"
Raul turned his head to look at Cyril as he pulled the cart.
"That wreath we used to make 'White Hurricane No. 1' was in such a pretty bag. Was it perhaps meant as a present?"
"............"
When Cyril fell silent, Raul's face suddenly lit up as though he had realized something.
"Could it be... a present for me!?"
"Wait."
"A wreath as a present before the winter solstice! Nice, that sounds so much like something friends would do!"
"Who said it was for you..."
Cyril began to say, then stopped and glanced at Monica. She still seemed to be dreaming, and was now murmuring numbers between sleepy breaths.
Cyril turned his face away from Monica with a huff and fell silent.
Raul, who still had energy to spare, kept talking to Cyril as he pulled the cart.
"Sorry for ruining such a precious token of our friendship. All right, this year I'll make you an especially beautiful wreath and give it to you, so look forward to it! ...Come to think of it, your wreath had white roses in it. Do you like white roses?"
His question received no answer.
When Raul tilted his head, Cyril and Monica, dirty with soil and grass, were leaning against each other and breathing peacefully in their sleep.
"Nice. You two look just like comrades-in-arms."
Raul nodded with satisfaction and began walking with quiet steps so as not to wake his sleeping friends.