Chapter 10

"Father really is something. Dragging a guest into a monster hunt? Does he have that little faith in us?"

Izella, House Head Rug's only daughter, grumbled in disbelief. Dressed in a practical-looking tunic and trousers instead of an elaborate gown, she turned to Turan.

"Oh, that's not a criticism of you, our guest. I just mean Father's making too much of a fuss."

"Saying the House Head is making a fuss is going too far, Cousin."

"Mind your own business."

The other noble standing beside her, Rug's nephew, had rebuked her in a low voice. Their eyes met, and for a moment sparks seemed to fly. Then the nephew turned to greet Turan.

"This is our first proper meeting, isn't it? I'm Marvin Valtas. I look forward to working with you."

"As do I."

After greeting Marvin, Turan looked at the twelve knights standing behind the two nobles. Unlike their masters, who looked as though they were out for a stroll, every one of them was visibly tense. Naturally so, given that they were setting out to hunt an unknown enemy that had already devoured four knights without leaving a single survivor.

Soon, the force of three nobles and twelve knights set off majestically toward the north gate. Every resident they passed fell to their knees and bowed low.

The only ones who remained standing, merely lowering their heads, were people wearing armor and carrying swords. Turan now knew they were called the police: commoners given weapons to maintain order within the city...

Of course, they were utterly useless as troops, whether for hunting monsters or fighting wars between houses. Even Turan, inexperienced noble though he was, could probably kill thousands of armed ordinary people like them.

Beyond the city walls, a brick road built in the days of the old empire welcomed them northward. With the monster having attacked people for ten days, there were no travelers in sight.

"I want to get this over with and go back to rest."

Izella grumbled as she kicked at stones beside the road. Turan was walking a little behind her, gazing absently at her back, when Marvin sidled up and spoke quietly.

"Turan, do you happen to be interested in my cousin?"

"No."

Turan immediately shook his head. Over the past few days, Izella had continued flirting with him even after their shocking first encounter, though it was lighthearted and joking rather than serious.

But he did not find her particularly attractive. Her manner, so frivolous it bordered on flippant, was far removed from his ideal. More importantly, wouldn't marrying someone of a different bloodline mean marrying into her family? Splendid though the library here might be, he had no desire to tie himself down for life for its sake.

"That's a relief."

Marvin's face brightened at his reply. Turan had no idea what lay behind the question, but his answer seemed to have satisfied the young noble.

* * *

After roughly an hour of heading north and chatting, the hunting party discovered a broken cart and several torn, bloodstained garments in the middle of the highway. They were signs of an attack.

"Was it that thing?"

"Probably. We've forbidden anyone from heading north all this time, so they were likely attacked on their way down from the north..."

While the others talked, Turan examined the wreckage, trying to identify the monster. The blood did not smell particularly foul, suggesting the attack had happened a few hours ago. The tears in the clothing suggested something sharp had pierced it. The grotesquely large handprint on one side of the cart had five fingers, just like a human's... That final clue settled its identity.

"It's a monkey."

"A monkey?"

"The shape of this handprint."

"Ah."

In truth, Turan had never seen a monkey in person either. He had only mentioned it because this matched an illustrated example in the monster encyclopedia exactly. Without having read the book, he would probably have dismissed it as some unknown monster.

"It looks as though it attacked the peddlers and returned to the forest. We should be able to find its trail and follow it."

"Tracking... I'm hopeless with that sort of magic. What about you, Marvin?"

"I'm not much good either. Perhaps one of the knights—"

"Let me try."

Izella brightened when Turan volunteered.

"Oh, is that your bloodline's specialty?"

"I've used it often enough to be familiar with it."

Having lied with a perfectly straight face, Turan immediately cast Search. His criterion was the bloodstains on the torn clothing. As the spell expanded his senses, the smell of blood grew sharply stronger, and he picked up a trail leading off to the left of the road. More precisely, every scent except this unknown victim's blood had been blocked out, allowing him to distinguish it.

"This way."

Following Turan's lead, the hunting party left the road and entered the forest. The lack of a proper path hardly mattered. Never mind the three nobles—even the knights could easily leap four or five meters from a standstill.

After following the blood trail for thirty minutes, they reached a stream. Several deer drinking there bolted in alarm at the sight of them.

"The trail ends here. It must have washed itself."

"A mere beast did that to throw off pursuit?"

"It probably just wanted a bath."

The encyclopedia had also mentioned that monkeys were among the animals with a habit of bathing. Turan first dispelled his blood-tracking magic to try a different search. At that instant, a strong body odor struck his restored sense of smell. He whirled around and saw enormous golden eyes glaring at them.

"Behind us!"

A piercing shriek rang out with his warning.

SKREEE!

An enormous monkey, standing some two meters tall, burst through the undergrowth. The creature, humanlike yet strangely alien, scooped up handfuls of gravel and hurled them.

Its hands were disproportionately huge even for its great bulk, sending dozens upon dozens of stones raining toward the party. Charged with powerful mana, they flew far faster and struck far harder than anything an ordinary person could throw.

"Aagh!"

"Dodge!"

Several people were struck and sent tumbling, but Turan had fortunately leaped aside the instant he shouted, avoiding the barrage. Looking back, he saw to his astonishment that Izella and Marvin had each used a knight as a shield to take the attack.

"Ugh, a-are you all ri—"

"Attack!"

Izella shouted shrilly, flinging aside the knight injured in her place. The eight unhurt knights immediately drew the swords and spears at their waists and charged, but the monkey let out a shriek.

OO-KEEEK!

It sprang into the undergrowth and fled, leaping from tree to tree. Despite its enormous size, it moved like the wind, far too fast for the knights to catch on foot.

As everyone stopped in dismay, a single stone flew after the fleeing monkey. It was Turan's sling shot, imbued with his three most familiar spells: reinforcement, acceleration, and pursuit.

The stone swerved this way and that, brushing past several trees before slamming into the monkey's lower back. It screamed and tumbled to the ground. Perhaps its back was broken; it could only writhe, unable to rise.

"Die, you bastard!"

Izella shouted and thrust her hand toward the monkey writhing in pain. Flames bloomed before her fingers and took the form of a serpent with a body as thick as a log. It sank its teeth into the monkey, burning the surrounding forest for more than ten meters. Its speed and range were on an entirely different level from anything Turan could create. This was the power of the Pyromaniac bloodline that House Valtas boasted.

'So that's what it looks like...'

Any wizard could kindle fire, even instinctively, but that was nothing beside those whose bloodline magic specialized in it. Marvin followed up by creating more than a dozen flaming spears and driving them down, reducing the monkey monster to ashes. Everyone in the hunting party sighed with relief.

"Wow, those stones gave me a fright for a moment."

"Were you scared, Cousin?"

"Shut up. You're the one who screamed like a little girl..."

"I did no such thing!"

While the two nobles bickered, Turan checked on the knights felled by the hail of stones.

"Ugh, I think my arm's broken..."

"His head won't stop bleeding. What do we do?"

"Put this medicine on it first."

Fortunately, none of the knights seemed to have died. Those who had served as shields for the two nobles were the most badly injured, but even they had only been knocked unconscious by stones to the head or suffered a broken bone or two.

Turan clicked his tongue as he recalled what Izella and Marvin had just done. Since physical abilities grew stronger with mana, their bodies had to be at least several times tougher than an ordinary knight's. Yet they had used far weaker people as shields for fear of getting hurt themselves?

His mother's words—that to nobles, knights were mere dogs to sacrifice whenever they pleased—felt painfully real. Noticing Turan's gaze, Marvin asked in puzzlement,

"Hm? Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing."

Though he brushed it off, a trace of contempt lingered in Turan's eyes as he regarded the two cousins. Just then, Izella waved him over.

"Anyway, come over here, our guest! Let's absorb the mana!"

"Yes."

The three nobles stood side by side next to the monkey, its burned body half reduced to a mound of ash. As they reached out to absorb its mana, the now-familiar pale-green radiance flowed out and seeped into their bodies.

Even as he shuddered at the surge of pleasure, Turan checked how much stronger his mana had become. The growth he gained from absorbing the monkey's power was greater than what the leopard had provided, but less than the rabbit's. Considering that the monkey had not been exceptionally powerful, it was hard to believe he had gained this much while sharing the absorption with two others.

'It really does seem that absorbing it together doesn't reduce the gain, just as I heard...'

When absorbing a slain monster's mana, up to four people could do so together and each receive the same full amount. He did not know why the limit was four rather than three or five, but apparently that was why houses with many nobles formed hunting teams of four.

The fact that they would not let a knight join them despite having a space to spare revealed their sense of superiority.

"Ah, I can't absorb any more."

"Neither can I."

As Izella and Marvin spoke, they released some of the pale-green radiance they had absorbed back into the air. That was the process of "dispersing" mana. Once someone reached their innate mana growth limit, they absorbed only a tiny fraction of it and expelled the rest like that.

Turan could feel their envious gazes on him as he absorbed all of his share.

* * *

On the way back to Orem City, Izella and Marvin repeatedly recounted the fight with the monkey, going on and on about how heroically they had fought. It was laughable considering how they had used the knights as shields, but Turan humored them.

"Come to think of it, I doubt we could have caught it without you, Turan. From tracking it to the attack that knocked it down, that was all your work."

"You're giving me too much credit."

Modest as he sounded, he privately agreed. Without him, the party would have taken the first blow completely unaware and suffered greater losses, and they could not have chased down and killed the fleeing monkey. What could they have done against repeated hit-and-run attacks without any means of tracking it?

Izella and Marvin might have saved themselves by getting back onto the highway and running like mad for Orem City, but every last knight would surely have died under the hail of stones. Even those two would not have escaped unscathed if they had each been hit by a large rock rather than a shower of small pebbles. Favorable circumstances had made it easy to kill, but it was certainly a monster capable of devouring four knights without letting them put up a fight.

"If anything, I regret noticing it too late and letting it strike first. I didn't realize it had a Search ability too."

"A Search ability?"

"Yes."

Turan recalled the monkey's appearance. A massive body and exceptional physical abilities were typical of nearly all monsters. What had stood out on this one were its grotesquely large hands and eyes.

The shadow leopard he had encountered before had developed its ability to hide until it could turn its body into shadow and move about. The bucktoothed rabbit had dramatically developed its knack for gnawing things, awakening the ability to slice through anything in its path.

He suspected that the monkey's large hands had developed into an ability to throw things with great force, while its large eyes allowed it to see farther or through the forest. When he explained this, every member of the hunting party exclaimed in admiration.

"Wow..."

"To think you noticed all that in such a short time!"

Everyone was looking at him as though he were a sage without equal. Apparently not one person here had read the monster encyclopedia in the library. When he asked about it in a roundabout way, Izella tilted her head.

"The library? That stuffy old place... Nobody goes there."

According to her, the Sky Library served as a famous cultural monument, but few people took any interest in the books inside. Access was difficult to begin with, since it required the House Head's permission, and there were far more things people needed or wanted to do than spend time reading. At most, people like Turan came to look around once every few years, or someone visited to consult relevant material when something unusual happened. Come to think of it, he had not seen a single other patron over the past few days.

"I did go in once out of curiosity a while ago, but all the books were difficult. I left before finishing even half a volume."

That taught Turan one more thing: not everyone in the world found joy in gaining new knowledge.

"If you have another chance, try asking the librarian whether there are any easy books to read."

Thinking that he too might have quickly lost interest in reading if he had started with a difficult book, Turan offered the friendly suggestion without much thought. But the reply was entirely unexpected.

"The librarian?"

"Yes. The person who looks after the library."

"Does the library have someone like that?"