Chapter 147 – A Parasite Within the Lion

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Translated by Sylph

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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[Orto]

Dodging the charge of the gigantic boar, I slashed the backs of its knees. Suddenly deprived of one of its forelegs, the boar plunged headfirst into the ground. It rolled along with a rumbling impact and swung its tusks wildly. It was a desperate action, but that huge body and those enormous tusks had enough force to mow trees down with ease.

“Mechanical bow!”

“Right!”

I leaped one large step backward and gave the order. Answering lightly, Kusara fired three arrows in succession from atop a tree. The arrows struck the boar’s head as if being drawn into it, and the giant body bounced once or twice before going still.

“All right! This one’s tasty!”

“Much obliged. Those field rations don’t give you any strength.”

One of the comrades supporting us said that while laughing. But Plurier, who had been hiding farther back, wore a dissatisfied expression.

“It’s been nothing but meat for an entire week now, you know? It’s about time we gathered some fruit and mountain greens.”

When Plurier, fed up with meat, proposed that, Kusara made his brows into a figure eight and shrugged.

“Even if you say that, with magic beasts coming at us this often, we can’t exactly take our time looking for mountain greens, can we?”

Thus Kusara objected. However, Plurier too seemed to have reached the limit of her patience.

“That one just now was still the sort of opponent Orto could handle on the front line while Kusara just shot arrows, right? If you’d attach guards, I’d at least go gather some mountain greens in the meantime.”

“No, we can’t really do that.”

At Plurier’s logic, I ended up speaking out without thinking. At that, a severe gaze was turned my way. I’m not trying to start a fight. Showing that by raising both hands, I opened my mouth.

“If it’s one or two, there’s no problem, but if different magic beasts show up one after another, two people won’t be enough. And besides, our duty is guiding the route and assisting the march. The worst thing possible is to let any magic beasts slip through.”

When I answered, Plurier furrowed her brow and looked to the rear. There, one could see the knight order walking in armor along the steep mountain path.

“To begin with, shouldn’t the knight order be able to handle anything short of truly fearsome magic beasts? Do we really need to deal with all of them?”

She knows what she’s saying. Plurier said it in a way that somehow made that clear. In response, I sighed and waved one hand from side to side.

“No, that’s impossible. Because it’s us, we’re able to fight with almost no losses, but if the knight order had to face them one by one, not only would it affect the march, there’d also be a fair number of dead and wounded. If they had prepared like the Yerinetta army and brought even lower-grade dragons along after taming them, then hardly any magic beasts would show up, but they didn’t make preparations like that.”

When I said that, Kusara gave a wry smile and spread both hands. In them he held the knife and mechanical bow Lord Van made.

“The reason all the war with Yerinetta used to happen over by Scudetto is because passing through this mountain path was outrageously difficult. To put it simply, it’s only working because Lord Van’s weapons are absurdly high-performance. If we just had ordinary weapons and armor, we’d all have died long ago.”

“…Especially this mechanical bow. Even without a magician, it can subjugate magic beasts from long range. I get it. I was in the wrong. I was just irritated for a moment.”

“Yeah, good thing it didn’t turn into a fight.”

Laughing, I answered like that. Plurier is smart. Just from this exchange, she’d probably bring her feelings under control and go back to doing her job properly.

“…Even so, we’re not even halfway there yet, and I’m uneasy about what’s ahead.”

Looking at everyone’s backs, I sighed and muttered softly.

The adventurers are helping the royal army’s march, which stretches out vertically in long groups. Our team, handling the very front, bears the heaviest burden, but the other groups are surely having a hard time too because of the breadth of the area they cover.

The knight order is loading the containers onto wagons and transporting them, but because there is so little rest time, the fatigue is high. After all, while the knight order rests, our role is guarding the surroundings. It doesn’t become anything you can really call a rest.

We talk with the other groups every day too for information exchange and schedule checks, but like Plurier, the other adventurers have also built up dissatisfaction. After all, they’re people who usually explore and subjugate magic beasts freely in small groups. Being ordered around by a knight order is a cause of irritation too.

If possible, I’d like to just get to the destination as fast as possible, finish the mission, and go home. But because there are so many people, the march progresses only at a painfully slow pace.

We’ve been building the bases one after another while receiving instructions, but we ourselves never get to rest in them.

“…I just hope it doesn’t turn into some sort of infighting somewhere.”

Saying that, I headed over to Kusara and the others.

The next day, the very thing I had feared happened. An adventurer party overseeing the middle portion of the marching line had clashed with some knights.

We had the march halted at once, and headed to the site of the dispute. When we got there, there were knights shouting angrily. Looking around, a short distance away stood the adventurers glaring back at the enraged knights.

“What is it? What happened?”

When I approached and called out, one of the adventurer men looked this way. Then he pointed at the knights and opened his mouth.

“Those bastards smashed the base we made. We were cutting into the little rest time we had while still keeping watch all around to build them those bases… and then what is this crap about the way it was built being bad.”

“Seriously, they’re so damned high and mighty.”

Hearing those words, I tilted my head involuntarily.

“Smashed the base… but that’s a pretty sturdy thing, isn’t it? How in the world…”

When I asked, the man clicked his tongue and glared at the knights.

“They’re saying the base we built collapsed on its own. But from the side that built it, we know once it’s made it doesn’t break easily. To fold it up, you have to lift the ceiling from the inside. If you’re using it normally, there’s no way it would break.”

The man spat that out.

“…Wait a second. Are you saying the knights on our own side deliberately made the very base they were using unusable? For what reason?”

“How should I know?”

“Did the knight orders have some kind of falling out among themselves?”

“If anything, it fits better that some knight who hates adventurers did it as harassment.”

When I asked, the men had a conversation like that, mixing in their guesses. Either way, if we don’t settle this problem, it’s certain to affect what comes next.

As I was wondering what to do, Plurier spoke from behind me.

“Hey… don’t you think maybe this isn’t about knight-order infighting, or harassment toward adventurers?”

“Hm?”

When I turned around, Plurier was standing there with a serious face. The other adventurers too were looking at Plurier with tilted heads.

After checking the gazes around her, Plurier opened her mouth.

“Making these temporary bases unusable and picking a fight with us guides doesn’t benefit the knight order.”

At that, we all looked at one another.

“That’s true.”

“No, there are idiots anywhere, though.”

“That’d be too idiotic.”

We gathered and argued while exchanging lines like those. We voiced guesses about who did what and this and that, but no answer that really fit came out.

Then Plurier spoke again.

“…I’ve got a thought or two, but I still can’t say for sure. Before that, can we talk to the knight who claims the base collapsed?”