In the midst of a depressing dark night, when the moon was hidden by snow clouds.
Three riders and three wild beasts, holding up their magic lamps, galloped along the road, which was almost drowned out by the snow.
They were beasts with large horns and rich white fur, somewhere between a polar bear and a deer. They were tamed Wendigos, a type of monster with a gentle temperament. They were suited for action in the snow and had much more stamina than horses.
The Wendigos were driven by three adventurers wearing winter jackets over their gear. They were the members of the “Dragon’s Throat”, with the exception of Iris.
“But it’s odd, once the response went away, I thought for sure it was a jamming charm. Why did it unjam? If they were traveling on an old road, out of the way, they could have used the detection jammer without hesitation.
“I don’t know. Maybe they dropped it and it broke. Those things are rather fragile.”
Diana and Hugh exchanged words as they rode side by side on the Wendigos.
The three had followed Diana’s detection, sensing that Iris’s whereabouts were moving along the old road.
Once they reached to Vonnay, the detection magic stopped working. Suspecting that they were moving with detection disruption, it was hopeless to search for them and catch up with them. However, after a short time, they searched again and found a response around the old road leading to the neighboring territory.
The three of them spent almost all of the party’s assets to acquire the beasts for the pursuit. They were expensive, but in the commercial city of Vonnay, they could scrounge up at least three of them.
And here they were, riding along the old road in the snow, just the three of them.
“Wait!”
Benedict, who was leading the way, suddenly shouted and stopped his Wendigo.
“What’s wrong?”
“The smell of blood…”
Benedict’s words made Diana’s blood run cold.
“Whose blood do you smell!?”
“Calm down, it’s a human man. Maybe an adult …maybe more than one.”
Diana breathed a sigh of relief at the words that followed.
At any rate, it didn’t seem to be Iris’s blood.
But that was only a comforting thought. It was certain that some bloodshed had occurred ahead.
“Iris… Please stay safe.”
“Hurry up. We can’t see anything out here, so look for signs of anything out of the ordinary.”
“Roger that.”
“It goes without saying.”
The three of them started riding again, slowing down just a little bit.
But before they could go any further, Diana groaned on top of the Wendigo.
“… Ittsuu…!”
Diana held her chest. The Wendigo, sensing that something was wrong with its rider, slowed down, and the two remaining riders also noticed Diana’s condition.
“Diana?”
“What up?”
Diana held her hand over her chest.
Under the winter coat, blood was slowly seeping down into the cleavage of the priestess’s robe that covered her chest.
“Hey, blood…”
“Don’t mind me, it’s just my constitution like that… Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
Diana, who clicked her tongue, pulled out a knife like something had just occurred to her.
Then she cut through the bust of the robe.
This surprised Benedict and Hugh a little. She had never been willing to expose her skin, except for her hands, left leg, and face. They had assumed that this was due to some kind of commandment, since she did not show her skin not only to Benedict and the other men but also to Iris.
Her gracefully curved front was exposed.
There, a pattern like a part of a magic circle was engraved. Blood oozed from it.
Diana jumped down from the Wendigo and walked around tracing the pattern. Then she pointed to the side of the road where snow was piled up in a pile.
“Down there, you’ve got a bunch of people buried who died a horrible death not too long ago.”
“Huh…? Wah, how do you know about that?”
“Oh yeah, I know it.”
Saying this evasively, Diana unwrapped what looked like a silver accessory that was wrapped around her arm.
Her fingertips emitted a magical light. Then a torrent of silver danced and assembled into a series of teeth.
What had been divided into several accessories was now a silver-colored whip with a long-barbed chain attached to the handle in the shape of a holy seal.
When Diana swung the silver whip over her head, a light resembling the flight of a firefly appeared in the air.
“[Boost Stigma] Activate … «Holy Arrow»!”
Dozens of bands of light were released from the light trail of the silver whip.
The arrows of light, which formed a complex and geometric trajectory in the air, rained down on the mass of snow.
The torrent of luminosity was like a waterfall of light.
The area turned white with the snow that flew off, like a smoke screen.
“Wha, what is this power just now!? Did you have this kind of magical power!?”
“I’ll explain later! Anyway, look!”
Benedict howled in the white snowdrift, and Diana yelled back.
Under the snow that Deanna had magically dislodged, strange things were being dug out.
Some were torn to pieces; others were charred horse-drawn sleds. The cargo was also in a pitiful state.
Some of them had once been human. There were mutilated and mangled bodies, charred corpses, and others who were seemingly unharmed but had died with anguish on their faces.
… All of them were folded over and trapped in a huge, crystal-clear sheet of ice.
Like amber trapping insects, or like bottleships, the scene of the tragedy was trapped inside the ice block.
“What is this thing …?”
Benedict and Hugh looked and gasped.
The ice block was partially cracked and shattered by Diana’s magic, but it was so large that most of it was intact.
“Impossible. It would take a magician of at least the 6th level to be able to create something like this. There aren’t that many of them.”
Magic was divided into levels for the sake of convenience according to the degree of difficulty in learning it.
Level 6 was the realm of a first-rate magicians who had been blessed with talent and had trained for many years. A court magician could also serve in this capacity. It was not a level that could be found anywhere in the world.
“These corpses…”
“Probably the Night Pythons. They were leaving Vonnay’s base and were about to flee.”
Earlier, Vonnay’s guards had detected something unusual about the Night Pythons stronghold and raided it, confirming that it was deserted. It seemed that they had made their escape in anticipation of the arrival of the Earl’s forces tomorrow.
The “Dragon’s Throat” had accompanied them on the raid. Since Iris’s detection had ceased, they hoped that she might have been concealed in some way.
When Iris’s response was discovered on the old road, they assumed that the Night Pythons were fleeing with Iris, so they chased after them… The result was this.
“But who is supposed to have killed the Night Pythons?”
No one could answer Hugh’s question.
Benedict climbed up onto the ice block, sniffing and looking from place to place to inspect the bodies that had been exposed through the magically scraped sections.
“What’s going on? This one didn’t die from ice magic. They were put on ice after they died.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it’s a preservative… smell-isolating, eh? The canine and I can tell if it’s just buried, but not if it’s been iced. The smell of blood was broken off around here. They could have used «Deodorant».”
“If so, what for?”
Diana looked around, caressing the area around her eyes, but eventually shook her head.
“The souls of the dead have also been exorcised. But there is no sign that they were mourned or purified. They were probably blown away by sheer force. That’s it, isn’t it? Whoever killed the Night Pythons was probably trying to hide the fact that there was a massacre here, right? Not just visually, but also by disguising it through olfactory and even spiritual detection.”
“What’s the point of all this? It’s as if … they knew we were coming and tried to hide it from us.”
Hugh was right, there usually wouldn’t be a need to go this far if you want to cover up the traces of a battle. It would be enough to bury them in the snow.
But against the “Dragon’s Throat”, that would not be enough to cover it up. The nose of Benedict, a Kobold, was sensitive to the smell of blood and burnt corpses, and Diana, a Priestess, could detect the souls of the dead.
The corresponding concealment methods had been used.
“Diana. Iris’s response isn’t one of these, is it?”
“Yeah. Probably beyond this point, when I first detected it.”
“Then what’s… moving her around? Was she protected by whoever killed the Night Pythons?”
“If so, that’s trickier than dealing with the Night Pythons. Or…”
Diana stared at the ice block with a grim look on her face.
Then she tapped the ice block with a knuckle.
She pointed to a seemingly intact dead body.
“Benedict. I just need a drop of his blood. Can you help?”
“That’s what you need to save Iris, isn’t it?”
“……Yeah.”
After saying hesitantly, Diana then added like she was talking to herself.
“If it’s not too late, that is. There are people who… shouldn’t be here.”
TLN: I have found some more Illustrations for character design (from vol 2 of the LN), some scenes from previous chapters and a side story. Would you guys like the side story tl + the illus for scenes in the past? And also adding character designs for the ones that will be introduced, when they are introduced + some that already have been, like Earl Keely?
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