Chapter 15
#15. Is This Subjugation or Logging?
Sshhk! Sshhk! Boom!
As the knights charged in, the monster trees collapsed backward like helpless scarecrows.
Whenever the Northern Grand Duke's golden slashes swept across the forest, the Trients, infamous for their tough hides, transformed into sleek construction materials.
Cedric, the First Knight Commander of Winterwald, watched his liege, Kylan, carve through the forest at a monstrous speed and found himself wondering.
'Since when… has he been able to make such a warm expression?'
The Northern Grand Duke Kylan Winterwald whom Cedric remembered was a solitary ghost of the battlefield.
No matter how vicious the monster, it knelt before his sword, yet the invincible Monster Grand Duke had always looked lonely.
Even when silently guarding the ramparts against the North's flesh-cutting winds, he never opened his heart to the knights.
He had never once offered a warm greeting to the people of his territory—or even to the servants of the Grand Duke's castle.
However.
'What about now, with Princess Eleanor by his side?'
Cedric's gaze turned toward his liege's stalwart profile.
Affection for his territory and determination to feed his people radiated from Kylan's face as he felled the trees.
Every one of the radical policies he had introduced was impossible to conceive without love for his people.
"Don't let a single one escape!"
Cedric followed his liege as well, sweeping away the monsters with sword aura imbued with sun mana.
Sshhk!!
The Trients' bodies, which could only be cut by sharpening aura to a razor's edge, were sliced apart helplessly before the golden sword.
‘They said he was a bastard abandoned by the imperial family. What a joke. Princess Eleanor came, and the North changed. The frozen land thawed, and spring came to my liege's face.’
Overcome with emotion, Cedric's eyes reddened as he shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Become stepping stones for Her Highness's city plan, you monsters!"
"For Princess Eleanor!"
When the knights' booming battle cries shook the forest, the adventurers raised their axes and swords and shouted as well, unwilling to be outdone.
"For the Princess!!"
"Woooooo! Long live the Princess!! Long live hot meat soup!!"
The rough adventurers who had crossed over from every corner of the continent called Eleanor's name as they charged the trees.
They had not forgotten the blessing of the meat soup that had filled their starving bellies.
For the new city's occupancy rights and the princess's special meals, an army of fanatics willing to risk their lives followed behind the knights.
***
The logging… no, the subjugation proceeded smoothly.
The advance of the Northern men, empowered by the princess's buff, was nothing short of a natural disaster.
But.
'The humidity is gradually increasing.'
The deeper they advanced into the Howling Forest, the more the surrounding air clung stickily to their skin.
That was impossible in the North.
It meant that the culprit raising the humidity was somewhere ahead.
It was then.
The ragtag Trients that had been charging mindlessly began suppressing their presence and forming ranks.
Crack! Crunch!
"Aaargh!"
Sez, an Expert-class knight who rushed to the new-city construction site during every leave to make an impression on Kylan, was sent flying through the air with his steel shield after failing to withstand the concentrated attack.
"Sez!"
The knights hurriedly formed a defensive line.
The enormous Trients surrounding them from every direction gradually tightened the encirclement.
Dense vines began covering the sky above the forest.
In an instant, darkness engulfed the surroundings.
"Reform ranks!! Cedric! Bring out the item we prepared!"
At Kylan's command, Cedric pulled a scroll from inside his coat.
It was a prototype of the illumination-flare magic Eleanor had created in collaboration with the North's only small magic workshop.
This time, they had received an especially powerful one for monster subjugation.
"Receive the light of Her Highness the Princess!"
Rip!
Cedric tore the scroll open without hesitation, and sun mana burst forth as a blazing sphere shot into the sky.
Fwoooooosh!
The small sun that rose through the vines illuminated the forest brilliantly.
"Yee-haw!! It worked! I told you my calculations were perfect!"
At that moment, a woman who had been protected in the middle of the knights raised both arms and cheered.
Wearing cracked glasses and her dry, frizzy hair tied up carelessly, she was Rumiela, the owner of the North's only magic workshop.
Her skill as a combat mage was ordinary, but she had a talent for researching and developing magic.
She was an eccentric who developed magic that seemed to have no particular use, so she had failed to receive a budget from the North more than once.
Recently, she had apparently been impressed after seeing Eleanor's magic at the new-city construction site, and the two had become very close.
"K-kikikikit!!"
"Kieeeek!!"
While Rumiela celebrated, the Trient ranks descended into utter chaos.
Exposed to the powerful sunlight, the monsters that had been tightening the encirclement twisted their bodies and scrambled to flee.
As the trees scattered in every direction, several large Trients gathered together and moved deeper into the forest.
"Pursue them! Their leader is hiding in there!"
Since the small sun followed the unit led by Cedric, the Trients could not put up a fight and were driven back.
When they pushed all the way in, the boss hiding among the enormous trees revealed itself.
"…My lord, what is that?"
Cedric muttered with a bewildered expression.
Among the giant Trients, each nearly ten meters tall, a small tree no bigger than a child was being protected.
Yet a tremendous amount of mana, enough to command hundreds of Trients, could be felt in the roots of that little tree.
The small Trient glared at them with flashing red eyes.
"That little one is the leader of this forest!"
Kylan shouted as he extended his sword.
"If we cut it down, the sky over the forest will clear, and the Trients will no longer raid all the way to the ramparts!"
At the Grand Duke's words, the knights simultaneously tightened their grips on their weapons and drew up their aura.
The subjugation was entering its final stage.
"Kikikigig!"
The boss Trient lit up its red eyes as well and stamped the ground hard with its short legs.
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
At that moment, dozens of thick, sharp, thorn-covered vines burst through the ground and lashed toward the knights at the front like whips.
"Defend! Don't retreat!"
Bang! Kraaang! Clang!
The aura-coated shields crumpled with a cacophony of noise.
It was no opponent to take lightly just because it was small.
The creature itself might have been weak, but the enormous Trients gathered around it had received a share of its mana and grown several times stronger.
To make matters worse, the monsters began stretching out their tentacles recklessly, targeting the small sun.
More than twenty giant Trients fell to the ground screaming, but in the end, the small sun also lost its strength and crumbled.
When the sunlight vanished, the surrounding area grew cold.
The Trients began closing in.
'This is dangerous…!'
The situation could easily result in a growing number of casualties.
The brutal vine whips knocked down the knights in the vanguard one by one, and the adventurers began losing their nerve and stumbling backward.
"Rumiela! Were those all the night-illumination scrolls Cedric brought?"
"Yes! We're out!!"
"Tch! Can't be helped! I'll open a path, so prepare to retreat…"
"But I brought a more interesting spell! It's still a prototype, though!"
At Rumiela's bright cry, veins bulged on Kylan's forehead.
The front line was collapsing and knights were being sent flying, yet she was talking about an interesting prototype.
"Does this look like the time to play around…!"
"Her Highness said that even Trient corpses need a little time to dry, and that if they took that long, the construction period would be extended!"
Rumiela pulled a scroll from inside her coat.
She had tied her own hair up carelessly, but she had done an excellent job tying the scroll attractively.
"So Her Highness and I created a special spell that only reacts to plants! We call it [Dry the Trees!!]"
As the knights retreated one by one, Rumiela dramatically unfurled the scroll.
A powerful blast of hot air shot through the scroll toward the Trients.
The gale, like a baptism of flame, somehow avoided the people and poured only over the Trients.
"Kikikigik!!"
"Kgegegegegek!"
After the hot wind swept through the surrounding forest,
Even after the magic had completely ended, the forest remained silent for a while.
The Trients that had been swinging their roots like whips could no longer move even a single step.
A knight cautiously approached and nudged a bone-dry Trient. The tree toppled backward helplessly, and a clear, refreshing note rang out.
The Trients that had lost their lives to the hot wind retained their light yet sturdy bodies even in death, as though they had been born to become construction timber.
"Ki, kik…! Kik…!"
Ironically, the only one to survive this disaster was a single small Trient.
It hurriedly moved its roots and ran away.
"I'll finish it!"
It was just as Cedric started running forward with his sword drawn.
Kylan remembered something important and shouted angrily at Cedric.
"Cedric!! Put away your sword!!"
Cedric looked back with an expression that seemed to say, Did I hear that right?
'Idiot. You heard me perfectly, so put the sword away!'
The mana controlling the entire forest was compressed into the one magic stone possessed by that creature.
This was only the second time since transmigrating into this body that Kylan had defeated a boss monster.
The first had been the slime, whose magic stone he had had no choice but to damage for the sake of the subjugation.
But that small, nimble creature was a different matter.
‘If I preserve that magic stone in S-rank condition, the masters of magic towers from every kingdom will come to the North carrying tens of thousands of gold coins.’
It was an opportunity to secure both financial stability and connections with the masters of magic towers at once!
"Everyone, take your hands off your weapons!"
At the Northern Grand Duke's urgent shout, the adventurers turned around with puzzled faces, still holding their weapons.
"Your Grace? Its defenses are so formidable that we should concentrate our aura, yet you want us to put away our weapons?"
"What have I always told you!?"
Kylan shouted, rolling his eyes.
"Didn't I say that every time we break a magic stone, one of our territory's people starves to death!? With a magic stone that valuable, even a single scratch changes its price by hundreds of gold coins!"
After his shout, silence descended over the forest for a moment.
Oh no. Had he gotten too excited?
'A crack in my dignity as the Northern Grand Duke…'
But contrary to Kylan's concerns, the Northern knights and adventurers had already adapted completely to his policies.
In short, everyone gathered here was at least half-crazy about money.
"Hundreds of gold coins for a graze!?"
"Holy crap… How much is that tiny tree worth, then!?"
The damp forest began boiling over with greed.
The Northern knights' eyes changed from those of hunters into those of collectors.
"Protect the funding for Her Highness's city plan!"
"Capture it alive!! Don't damage even a single leaf!!"
The adventurers threw themselves into the fray with excitement as well.
"How much will they give us if we catch it!?"
"Of course they'll share it with us! After stuffing yourself with meat soup, you still doubt His Grace the Grand Duke, who thinks of adventurers!?"
From that point on, the situation took a very strange turn.
The burly men who had tossed their weapons to the ground dodged the boss monster's thorny vines with nothing but their bodies and pounced on it.
"Kikigik?!"
When the humans who had seemed ready to chop it apart suddenly charged at it with grotesque expressions and empty hands, the boss Trient was quite bewildered and increased its speed.
"Got it! You ten-thousand-gold bastard! Urgh! My nose!"
"Move! If not, I'll even cover it with my underwear…!"
The ugly commotion among the money-mad men ended absurdly easily when Rumiela raised a finger.
The small boss Trient rolled across the ground, bound by steel wire.
"It's a spell for tracking and capturing rats…"
As Rumiela smiled awkwardly, the beastly men who had even been about to strip off their underwear to use it in place of rope cleared their throats sheepishly.
Kylan smiled with satisfaction as he watched the adorable tree tremble, bound tightly on the ground.
That little thing was worth tens of thousands of gold coins.
"Rumiela. Keep getting along well with my wife from now on!"
"Hehe! C-can I perhaps hope for a workshop budget too?"
Wasn't that obvious?
Kylan laughed heartily and announced their victory to everyone.
"From now on, the Howling Forest is the North's logging site!"
The clear Northern sky welcomed the subjugation party as it returned laden with magic stones and timber.