Chapter Two: Amano Yukinari

Four men were walking along the main street that ran from north to south through Friedland.

Of course, there were plenty of people walking along that street, but these four stood out. They were wearing full suits of armor and had swords at their hips. Any one of them would have drawn attention; all four together couldn’t fail to get noticed.

Friedland was not in a state of war, so they had their visors up, but even so they were quite intimidating. Their armor bore pockmarks and dirt, but when one considered that these showed the men had been in battle, even these details were unsettling.

Leading the four was a golden-haired young man. His neat facial features always seemed to bear a somewhat imperious expression—he didn’t come across as especially approachable.

His name was Arlen Lansdowne.

Originally, he had been a missionary knight of the True Church of Harris who had come to convert the people of Friedland to his religion. Actually, “originally” was the wrong word. If you asked him, even now he would say he was a missionary knight of the Church. Indeed, his armor still bore the Church’s emblem.

But as far as Friedland was concerned, the Church was their enemy. Arlen’s unit had failed to convert the town and had even lost the statue of the guardian saint, which was supposed to be a civilizing expedition’s trump card. They and their statue had been defeated by Yukinari, Friedland’s own guardian.

Hence, one would not normally expect them to be walking freely through town. But Yukinari and Fiona had come up with a plan that had won them over. If the unit had reported to headquarters that they had failed in their mission, they would certainly be disgraced. Hence Arlen and the others reported that they had succeeded in converting Friedland and would garrison the town with Yukinari and Fiona as their subordinates.

Arlen and the other defeated soldiers had few options. In the time since the plan had been proposed, the knights and the Friedlanders had come to a strange kind of coexistence. When a demigod attacked while Yukinari was away, Arlen had fought to protect the town—and he had done so again when Angela Jindel and her forces assaulted his new home. As a result, Arlen and several of the knights close to him had been given back their weapons and equipment and charged with protecting Friedland, as well as escorting the trade caravans to Rostruch. Within the boundaries of these responsibilities, they were given free reign.

But Arlen could feel the townspeople watching him as he walked along, and see their various reactions. Many of them scuttled away as the knights drew near, and more than a few looked deeply anxious. Yukinari and Fiona had made it clear that they felt indebted to Arlen, so there was no longer open hostility toward him. But many of the Friedlanders still seemed afraid of him, or at least of the way he presented himself. After all, they weren’t very experienced with armored knights.

Most of the work Arlen and his companions did took place outside the town walls—patrolling the fields and looking after trade. It was unusual for them to walk the city streets in full regalia. Public safety and order was primarily the responsibility of the community watch, and Arlen’s group generally left them to it. Generally.

There was one other thing. Some of the villagers’ anxiousness could be attributed to the strange goings-on of late. That was, again, supposed to be the purview of the community watch, but as they were unable to figure out what was happening, these armored knights had begun patrolling the town streets. It was as good as telling people that the community watch could no longer handle things on its own, and that naturally made people wary.

“Captain!” From across the street, a knight who was supposed to be in a different group called out and came over.

“What is it?” Arlen asked, intensely aware of the stares of everyone around. He gestured the knight closer.

The other man got so close their helmets could have touched, then whispered, “They found another body. A house on the eastern outskirts this time.”

“Another one? How many does this make?” Arlen frowned.

It was a series of murders. When a man who had been working on the new fields was found dead, his wife had been suspected as the killer. But before they had managed to crack that case, another one had occurred. New victims continued to appear every three to five days. The modus operandi was always the same: the heart pierced by a single blow from a thin blade.

Whether or not the first victim’s wife was the killer, this clearly went beyond a minor conjugal dispute. They had never announced the details of the first victim’s death, so it was unlikely that these were copycat crimes perpetrated by someone else. Most likely, they were all the work of the same person.

But why? The MO made this look like the work of a serial killer, but the victims didn’t appear to have anything in common. Gender, age, occupation, where they lived—not one of these things was common to all of them. And that left everyone in the dark as to who could possibly be doing this and why.

Perhaps the one thing that could be said of all the victims was that they were residents of Friedland. That meant the next target was likely to be located in the town as well.

“Sir knight.”

Arlen turned, surprised at the voice. He found a strange-looking middle-aged man standing behind him. From the neck down he looked perfectly ordinary, but his head was clearly different from that of a human. He had green hair and horns bearing a striped pattern.

He was a familiar of Yggdra, the erdgod who watched over the neighboring town of Rostruch. In that area, they took the elderly, injured, and ill who had no hope of recovery and offered them to Yggdra as living sacrifices. Unlike animal-based erdgods, Yggdra did not eat them as such, but planted sprouts in them and made them familiars, like branches that had been grafted onto her.

Ulrike was her representative here, but at the moment there were several of Yggdra’s familiars visiting Friedland. They were helpers sent at Yukinari’s request.

“Another victim has been found?” the familiar asked.

“So it seems,” Arlen said with a grimace. He found Yggdra’s familiars made him uncomfortable in a number of ways, but this was no time to be worried about trivial personal preferences. “I’m going to visit the scene now,” he said. “Perhaps you could be so kind as to let the deputy mayor know?”

“Understood,” the middle-aged man said with an exaggerated nod—and the next instant, he had set off running at a fantastic speed. It was not the way a human would run; no one could go flat-out like that for very long, but the man showed no sign of slowing down. These familiars generally retained their human appearance, but their human lives were long over. Now they were animated by Yggdra’s spiritual power, like dolls. They were no longer subject to things like physical exhaustion.

Arlen found it profoundly strange to have creatures like that wandering openly around town. It made a few knights in armor seem unremarkable.

He turned to the men with him and said, “Let’s go.” Then he set off for the site of the murder at a quick clip.

●

“So we’re up to six now.” At the Schillings mansion, Yukinari sighed when the familiar brought him the report.

It had been perhaps twenty days since he had found the ring and armband inside the xenobeast. But the case had gone unsolved, the body count was mounting, and time was dragging on. Fiona and Yukinari were working with the community watch, Arlen and his companions, and Yggdra’s familiars to make the town as secure as possible, but even so these cases kept multiplying.

The specific details of the incidents had been kept from the townspeople, but there was a palpable unease all the same. Yukinari came to town nearly every day, but generally slept at his sanctuary, so it took him several days to notice the change in the atmosphere.

“This is bad...”

“That’s for sure,” Fiona said. “We can’t find any commonalities in the victims or in the frequency with which the murders occur. We’re completely on the back foot here.” She and Yukinari were in the living area, along with Dasa, Berta, Ulrike, and the middle-aged familiar. It was he who had brought them the report of this sixth death.

“Maybe we’re making some kind of mistake?” Yukinari said, sinking into the sofa and staring up at the ceiling.

At first, he had thought perhaps the wife of the first victim was continuing to kill. But the fact that the murders had gone on so long without them being able to do anything suggested they were missing something—perhaps even investigating the wrong things.

“The dead body was just left there, right?”

“Yes. That much is the same. And I have heard that there were no injuries to the body other than the chest wound.”

“Meaning we’re not dealing with the work of a demigod or xenobeast, here...”

Demigods and xenobeasts would eat highly intelligent creatures to increase their own intelligence and spiritual power. But the other side of the coin was that this was the only reason they had for attacking humans. Since the brains—the seat of intelligence and spiritual power—were left undisturbed, it was hard to imagine this was the doing of some demigod or xenobeast who had snuck into town.

“So is it the work of some outsider...?” he muttered.

“I kind of doubt it,” Fiona said. Very few visitors came to Friedland. If anything, a stranger walking along the road would be noticed immediately. Friedland was not such a minor settlement that every single person knew every other person’s face, but still, there was a good sense of who was and wasn’t familiar. If any strangers had been seen, rumors would have spread. But then who was perpetrating these incidents?

“There’s even some superstitious talk that it’s a ghost stalking the town and killing people.”

“Superstition, right...” Given that Yukinari was now an actual god, he thought maybe it wouldn’t be right to smirk at the mention of folk beliefs.

Whatever the case, a killer with no name and no face could cause untold trouble. It only started with the actual murders. It continued with the fear and unrest this would sow among the townspeople. If things went on and these feelings got out of control, the people could easily begin to doubt and suspect each other.

Were we wrong to ask Arlen and his knights for help? Yukinari thought suddenly.

If a spirit of suspicion took hold, its first targets would be the people’s former enemies. They were patrolling the town in full armor for safety, but if people began to think of them as missionary knights of the True Church of Harris, an unfavorable reaction could soon ensue.

He had considered that scenario before asking for their help, but simple necessity had dictated his priorities—there were simply not enough people to keep everyone safe.

Anyway, with everything that’s happened, they’ve turned pretty friendly...

If anyone said it to his face, Arlen would probably have spit and cursed and denied it, but he had gotten rather used to the routines of life in Friedland. When the flying demigod had attacked, he was the one who had fought to protect the children from the orphanage, making him a particular favorite among Berta’s younger sisters. Yukinari had even heard rumors that when Arlen was done with his duties, he would go to the orphanage of his own volition to help with any physical labor that needed doing. He seemed to be taking his current patrol responsibilities very seriously, as well. He still loved to act haughty, but Yukinari had begun to suspect that this was a way of covering for a certain shyness on his part.

However, Arlen’s change of heart was probably not reflected in all of the missionary knights. Those who had been “domesticated” by the Friedlanders accounted for no more than half of the missionaries who had first come to the town. The remaining number still considered Yukinari and Friedland to be their enemies and were still imprisoned in a warehouse on the outskirts of town.

Then there was the possibility that some of the knights were outwardly cooperating, but still harbored ill motives in their hearts. In fact, Yukinari suspected they were the majority, and he suspected the townspeople knew it, too. If the people started to suspect them, there would be no way to keep the discord from spreading.

Yukinari and Fiona, as the town’s god and deputy mayor respectively, might have declared Arlen and his companions innocent of wrongdoing, but that was hardly going to be enough to allay suspicion. After all, they could only make that declaration because they were in positions of power.

If things went wrong, Friedland might start to destroy itself from the inside. And that would be bad. Very bad.

“Have we told everyone to make sure they lock their doors at night and don’t go out when the sun is down?”

“Yes, we’ve done that.”

Yukinari could remember in his previous world, in Japan, hearing that out in the country, there were some people who didn’t even lock their doors when they went to sleep at night. Everyone in these little villages knew each other, and being overly cautious was actually seen as rude. Or something like that. There were some villages where pretty much everyone was more or less closely related, making the entire place feel like one extended family.

Yukinari, thinking the same might be true of Friedland, had recently suggested to Fiona that they recommend that people lock their doors at night and avoid going out when the sun was down. But this wasn’t something that would have a dramatic effect on safety, and now another incident had occurred regardless.

“Also, and this is only a way of treating the symptoms, but I thought we could move over here from the sanctuary and stay in Friedland. We could help with security. I don’t know how much, but...”

Yukinari normally stayed at the sanctuary on the outskirts of town because it was a geographically convenient place from which to protect the village from xenobeasts and demigods. But of late he had only encountered the one xenobeast, and it was now dead; there didn’t seem to be much external danger. If anything did show up, assuming he was careful and prepared, he could deal with it even while based in town.

“I think it would help,” Fiona said. “I’d appreciate it.”

“And in town, I can be even quicker to get Yukinari information,” Ulrike said, looking at Yggdra’s other familiar.

Friedland, of course, didn’t have anything in the way of telegraphs or telephones. Sending information required a messenger. But because Ulrike was connected to Yggdra’s other familiars via a sort of spiritual net, she was able to send information “wirelessly.” The familiars made excellent messengers, and with everyone on high alert, information would travel even more quickly.

“If need be, I could bring several more familiars here.”

“No, I think we’re fine for now,” Yukinari said. “Just make sure you’re keeping a careful eye on Rostruch. Until we know what’s going on, we don’t know it won’t happen there, too.”

“In Rostruch... too?” Dasa said, cocking her head. “Yuki, you mean—”

“Do you mean you think the Missionary Order might be behind this?” Fiona said, picking up on Dasa’s hesitant words.

“I don’t have any proof. But we can’t discount the possibility. That’s all.”

“But Arlen—”

“No, no,” Yukinari said, shaking his head quickly. Fiona seemed to think he suspected Arlen, but Yukinari was concerned about a completely different unit of the Missionary Order. “We didn’t finish off all of Angela Jindel’s followers. They could be hiding out in the wilderness, exacting their revenge. Admittedly, it’s not a very strong possibility.”

The members of the Ninth Missionary Brigade had abandoned most of their equipment and provisions when they fled. But if they had gone into the mountains, they might be able to subsist on fruit and nuts, or maybe hunt small animals. It wasn’t yet getting so cold at night that anyone would freeze to death. These were trained warriors; they might not last against a demigod, but there was a chance they could take down a xenobeast. Ambush was a possibility.

But then again, Yukinari was making periodic patrols to ensure that no demigods or xenobeasts were anywhere around town. He was not, of course, specifically looking for human remnants, but it still seemed likely that if they had spent long in the wilderness, he would have found some trace—the ashes of a campfire or something.

“With everything that’s been going on, I’ve been putting it off,” Yukinari said, sinking into the sofa. “But I need to try to interrogate Angela Jindel again.”

●

When he descended the stairs to the basement storeroom, he found himself face-to-face with the guard—Veronika.

“Well, well. What brings you here?” the mercenary said with an air of irony.

Perhaps her smirk had to do with how long the interrogation of Angela had been delayed. Maybe she thought that Yukinari shied away from the idea of having to face someone who deliberately tried to anger him. She wasn’t entirely wrong about that.

The other part of it was that the serial murders had kept not just Yukinari, but many of them horrendously busy, and there hadn’t been time to interrogate their prisoner. Incidentally, the reason Veronika hadn’t been put on guard duty in town was because they had needed somebody with strong fighting skills to keep an eye on Angela. On the off chance she tried to escape, only Yukinari or Veronika would be likely to match her. Such was the judgment of Yukinari and Fiona, and so Veronika had found herself cooped up in the Schillings residence, watching Angela closely.

“I’m here to interrogate Angela Jindel.”

Veronika nodded and opened the door, and she and Yukinari stepped inside.

“I could do it for you, if you tell me what you’re trying to find out,” she said.

“No, it’s all right. Well... If I snap again, stop me.” There was a bit of a smirk in Yukinari’s voice as well. “Or... when.”

“When. Sure.”

The exchange made clear what Yukinari had in mind.

The underground room was surprisingly large. Angela was in the far corner. The two of them made no effort to hide their footsteps as they entered, and they heard a rattling from her direction. What was she doing? They glanced at each other, then came farther into the room, where they found Angela with her back to the wall, watching them alertly.

“And how are we doing today? Not well, I suppose,” Yukinari said, walking up to Angela.

It might have been wiser, normally, to keep some distance. The door of the underground storeroom was so sturdy that they hadn’t bothered to manacle Angela’s arms or legs. If she’d had a mind to, she could have attacked him barehanded. But instead...

“Of course not,” she said, glaring at Yukinari. “But it doesn’t matter. Why are you here? Come to have your way with me?”

“Have my way...?” Yukinari repeated in annoyance. “Huh. Well, I guess that depends on you.”

Angela shivered. In anyone else he might have taken it for fear, but Yukinari could see her eyes shining with excitement. Assuming he wasn’t just imagining it, then Veronika must have been right—the girl had some strange tastes.

“There’s something I want to ask you.” He briefly explained the situation in Friedland. And then he said, “Is there any possibility Harris Church people are involved in this?”

His question was simplicity itself. But such typical tactics were unlikely to work on a girl like Angela.

“And if I don’t answer, what do you have for me?” she said, staring up at him. “Another slap...?” A mocking smile played across her lips. She probably imagined this would provoke Yukinari. “You enjoy beating defenseless women, don’t you! You’re just a fallen angel, you show the influence of that contemptible alchemist who created you. You’re twisted inside—”

Yukinari kneeled in front of Angela, looking directly into her eyes. Silent. Expressionless. Nothing more.

“Twisted and... and...”

Angela opened and closed her mouth, finally frozen in place by Yukinari’s stare. He looked at her a moment longer before he said, “What’s the matter, you insect?”

“I—Insect!”

“Nothing else to say? Is that all your empty little head can come up with? I guess a good brain really does go to waste if you don’t use it. You missionaries really have it easy, you know? Don’t wonder, don’t think, just invoke the name of God over and over like a yapping dog. It’s so simple, even a bug like you can do it.”

This time it was Angela’s turn to fall silent.

But Yukinari insisted, “Say something!” And then he slapped her face again. The dry sound echoed around the basement room.

Angela’s head snapped to the side with the force of the blow; then she turned back toward him, amazement on her face.

“Wh—What the...”

He grabbed her head, pulled her face close to his.

“Looks like you were right. I will slap you if you don’t answer me. ...Well?”

He let go of her and then delivered another blow, this time backhanded, in the other direction.

“Ah... ahhh...”

“But I guess I would’ve hit you anyway.”

“...oww... ahh...”

“You should learn your place, you insect. But since you don’t seem to know it, I’ll teach you. It’s under my heel.”

“Wh-Who are you calling an insect...”

“You,” he whispered into the missionary’s ear. “You, Angela Jindel. Admit it: you are nothing more than a worm, than a fly. Have you learned that yet?”

“H-How dare you—”

“No? That’s what comes of having a bug-sized brain.”

Another strike.

Then, wordlessly, Angela looked at Yukinari. She was shaking. Were her cheeks red because he had hit her? Or...?

“Hm?” Yukinari noticed that Angela, still kneeling, was moving her knees a little. He studied her lower body. “Had a little accident, have we, Angela?”

“What?! N-No...”

“Am I wrong? If you haven’t sprung a little leak, then what has happened? Answer me!”

“This... is...”

He was silent.

“This... It’s...”

“...I see.” Yukinari nodded and stood. She was keeping her thighs together, trying to hide her crotch. He looked down at her coldly. “Well, fine. I didn’t expect an insect to be able to answer my questions. It was a waste of effort.”

“You all right with that?” The question came from Veronika, who had been watching the exchange silently until that moment.

“Yes, I am. I have no more interest in Angela Jindel. I’m leaving.”

Angela’s face snapped up. “W-Wait right there!” she practically shouted. “H-How can you humiliate me like this and then just—”

Yukinari kept his back to her, silent. He took a step, was about to leave, but Angela shouted from behind him:

“V-Very well, let me t-tell you a secret!” She was practically groaning. Yukinari ignored her; he began to walk out without even turning around. “Hold it! Wait, I tell you! I thought you wanted to know if the Missionary Order was behind what’s happening in your town!”

Yukinari resisted the urge to turn around; he stopped where he was.

Whatever Angela made of this gesture, her breath grew harsher, and she went on. “These incidents are trivial—they are meaningless—how could knights of the Missionary Order ever concern themselves with something so small? If they have the time to play these little pranks, they should return to Aldreil and summon reinforcements!”

Yukinari was silent.

“The Missionary Order may be invincible, undefeated, but even we know that sometimes we may be forced to make a temporary withdrawal because of some underhanded tactic! I promise you, the surviving missionaries have gone back to Aldreil! In fact, even if some derelict has remained, he would be far too proud to haunt a town of ignorant cultists, picking them off one by one!”

Angela’s voice was so high it was beginning to crack, but she hardly seemed to notice.

“The True Church of Harris is righteous! And we are the agents of its justice! Why should we hide? Instead, we walk the true path boldly, sweeping away the barbarians before us! We will point out your foolishness to your faces, and if you lack the intelligence to listen to us, we will exhaust every measure to correct you by force. All who attempt to interfere will be dispensed with. That’s all there is to it!”

Now, at last, Yukinari looked back over his shoulder at Angela. The knight’s face was shining. She believed her shouting had stopped him, made an impression on him.

“You’re awfully noisy, insect.”

Angela’s breath caught in her throat.

“But I like the noise you made. Maybe later I’ll get you out of this hole and let you see the sun. Collared, of course.”

“C-Collared...?” Angela clutched herself with both arms as if shocked. Yukinari spared a glance at her as he and Veronika left the room.

●

“Now, that was an interrogation,” Veronika said with a smirk when they had ascended the stairs.

She had promised to stop Yukinari “when he snapped,” but in the end she had never intervened. It wasn’t that she had betrayed her promise; rather, she knew that Yukinari had been under control the entire time.

Yukinari let out a long sigh and leaned on the wall. “That really took it out of me...”

“I bet.”

“I know maybe it looks like I’m not one to talk right now, but I hate violence. Whether that means hurting someone with my words, or actually raising a hand against them.”

“I know that,” Veronika said, leaning against the wall next to Yukinari. “But you had to do something, or you would never have gotten through to that girl. Frankly, it was what she wanted.”

“I guess... I guess you’re right about that.”

Masochism.

It wasn’t clear whether she herself knew it, but Angela had clearly been excited to be slapped and verbally abused by Yukinari. The way she had brought her thighs together a little too tightly in an effort to hide something was most likely, as she had said, not because she had wet herself.

“She wants someone to be her master,” Veronika insisted. “She’s so strong and proud herself. She wants someone to walk all over her, treat her really savagely. You did great, Yukinari. As an observer, I was pretty impressed how you managed to come right up to the line. I guess that girl really is a good judge of people—or gods.”

“Please, stop it already,” Yukinari groaned, looking up at the ceiling.

The reason he had struck Angela, called her an insect and those other vile things, was because he wanted to see if they were right about her fetish and perhaps drag some information out of her as well. The saying goes, “If pushing doesn’t work, try pulling,” but on the assumption that neither physical nor verbal abuse alone would work, Yukinari modulated his approach, checking Angela’s reactions, figuring out exactly what kind of person she was looking for and then playing that part.

“You almost had her,” Veronika said, shooting a glance in the direction of the basement.

“What do you mean? Almost had her what?”

He had been able to get the information he wanted; he doubted Angela was in a state to lie.

“Falling from grace.”

He said nothing.

“Whenever you get an extremist believer—not just in religion—it’s possible that they’ll change who or what it is they worship. It can be pretty dangerous.” Veronika had crossed her arms and seemed to be remembering something. “People always want someone supporting them.”

“Even you, Veronika?”

“Good question,” she said with a wry smile. “Probably.”

People can’t endure absolute freedom or equality. It would be the same thing as leaving them naked in a barren field. They need something to cling to, they want someone who will grab them by the collar and say, “Look at me.” If all people are equal in the state of nothingness called freedom, then responsibility for every decision redounds upon the one who made it. But people are all too aware that they are neither all-powerful, nor absolute, nor omniscient; they know how frequently they make mistakes.

Hence, they are anxious. They seek something that will tell them what is right, something that will absolve them of responsibility for their thoughts and actions. It may be their parents, their rulers, or their gods, among other things, but when confronted by an existence overwhelmingly greater than themselves, people come to reverence and worship it. By abandoning choice and decision-making to these entities, they find relief from their anxiety, and life becomes easier.

In short, self-interest is at the center of it all.

So if they find some object that will make their lives even easier, they may switch allegiances. Yukinari understood this psychology, albeit dimly. After all, in his previous world he had lived with the dictionary definition of it.

“You’ve got to admit you’re a pretty imposing presence, Yukinari. When she saw you in that armor with those wings, maybe you already had her even then.”

“Ugh,” Yukinari grunted.

It was true that the body of the Bluesteel Blasphemer was one that had been intended to do “miracles” for the Church in order to more efficiently convert people to the faith. It looked very intimidating and seemed altogether inhuman—or so he gathered. Yukinari himself wasn’t really sure one way or the other, but that was what Berta and Fiona told him.

And on top of that, Angela had seen him fight. She had seen with her own eyes just how powerful he was. As Veronika suggested, if Yukinari had delivered that first slap in the form of the Bluesteel Blasphemer, she might have immediately converted to his worship.

“We’re expecting to have it out with the other Missionary Brigade from Aldreil, right? We could do with anyone at all on our side who had information about the enemy...”

“On our side, huh...?” He remembered a manga he had read in his previous world, where two men had started out fighting each other, but had ended up the best of friends.

“You’re a god, aren’t you, Yukinari?” Veronika was looking at him. “A god has to at least be able to watch his followers throw themselves into the flames while chanting his name, or he’s not much of a deity.”

“Is that how it works?”

So that was why she thought he should just convert Angela. Yukinari let out another long sigh, and then he and Veronika headed for the living area.

●

Yukinari looked up when he heard the sound of rushing footsteps, and the Schillings’s butler calling out for someone to halt.

He and the others had been continuing their discussion, still in the mansion. As he had suggested earlier, Yukinari, Dasa, and Ulrike would move into the Schillings residence for the time being. They needed to talk about how rooms and food would be handled, among other matters. It wasn’t something he’d had in mind when he left the sanctuary that morning, so they had come without any provisions or supplies. It turns out that humans need a surprisingly large number of things for their everyday lives. The group was also talking about what they would have to get from the sanctuary and what supplies were already available at the mansion.

Incidentally, because Berta had been living at the household already to look after Angela, she would simply continue to use the room she was already in.

“Another one!”

The pounding footsteps carried Arlen into the living room. He was in his armor and still carried his sword. The butler must have been trying to reprimand him on the grounds that this was not good etiquette. No doubt Arlen had not wanted to spare the time to remove his equipment.

“Fiona Schillings! There’s another one!” he shouted the moment he entered the room.

“Arlen,” she said with just a hint of exasperation. “First of all, calm down.”

“There’s no time to be calm! There’s— Hm?”

It was only then that he noticed Yukinari and Dasa in the room. He frowned. Cooperative he might have been, but he still didn’t seem especially fond of Yukinari and his friends on a personal level.

“Now, Arlen, there’s another what?”

“Another victim of the serial killer!” His tone suggested she should hardly need to ask.

According to Arlen, the scene of the crime was close to the orphanage where Berta had been raised. He had left two knights at the scene and come to inform Fiona as quickly as he could. He must have really been running, because a close look revealed that he was sweating under his armor.

“We only had time for a glance, but it looked like the victim died not that long ago. I left two of my subordinates there with orders to keep the townspeople away. Another one has gone to tell the community watch.”

“Good thinking. What do you make of this, Yukinari?”

“I’m not sure. Let’s go have a look.”

If it hadn’t been that long since the murder occurred, there was a good chance they could gain some useful clue by visiting the scene of the crime themselves.

“Dasa, will you come with me?”

“Of course.” She nodded, patting the bag she always carried. As the former assistant to an alchemist, she had a good knowledge of chemistry. It might not amount to scientific investigation or observation, but if there was anything left at the scene, she might be able to analyze it.

“And Ulrike, you too.”

“I understand,” Yggdra’s familiar said.

She had a perspective rather different from the average human. It was possible she would notice something that Arlen or the community watch had missed.

“Berta...”

He hesitated to bring her along; she wasn’t accustomed to blood and death. He’d figured he would have her stay at the mansion, but before he could say as much, Berta was on her feet.

“If you’ll allow it, I’d like to go, too. As much as possible, I want to be by your side.”

“Oh... Uh, sure...”

She looked so serious, it threw Yukinari off. Her attitude toward him had clearly changed since the battle with the Missionary Order—she had begun to take matters more into her own hands. These days he almost felt he sensed a rivalry in her; if Dasa and Ulrike went somewhere, Berta wanted to come, too. But perhaps he was just imagining it.

He felt a significant gaze from Dasa, but now was not the time to worry about these things.

“Cute little arguments later! Crime scene investigation now!” Arlen said, sounding annoyed.

“You’re right,” Yukinari said, “let’s go.” And then they followed after Arlen, who was already headed for the exit.

●

The victim this time was found in a little-traveled alleyway. It was the first time one of the bodies had been found outside.

The stiff was a man in his twenties. Hans Cutel and the community watch were examining the body, and Yukinari asked that he and his companions be allowed to join in. Of course, Hans was not about to refuse a request from Friedland’s guardian deity.

Still, whatever they might have known about science, forensic investigation as such was still new to Yukinari and Dasa. For the most part, they observed from the sidelines as Hans and the watch did their work.

The corpse had already been brought in from the street and set on a cart. Part of Yukinari felt the scene should have been preserved, but it seemed the watch was unwilling to leave the body where it lay. It was only understandable that they should want to bury it as soon as possible.

“One stab through the heart, just like the others,” Yukinari said.

“From directly in front of him, no less,” Hans said, looking at the corpse’s bloody shirt.

“Do we know what weapon was used?”

“A rapier of some description, most likely.”

“A rapier...? Not a dagger or some kind of sharpened stick?”

“Well, there’s an exit wound, meaning the weapon had to be fairly long. And on the wall behind the body, there are some marks that we believe were left by the point of the weapon. A sort of distorted diamond shape. It suggests a thin sword of some type.”

Hans went on to explain that without being at least as long as a grown man’s arm—about 60 centimeters, Yukinari supposed—it wouldn’t have been possible to leave a mark on the wall.

“It’s very strange,” Yukinari said.

“What is?” Fiona asked.

“All these deaths, all the warnings from us, even the townspeople on edge. Don’t you think people would be careful not to get too close to anyone walking around with a sword? And I assume that alleyway is narrow. It wouldn’t be easy to stab someone there.”

“You... might be right about that.”

“Any signs of a struggle?” Yukinari asked.

“None,” Hans replied.

Yukinari figured that the alley where the murder was believed to have taken place was just a little more than one meter wide. Enough for two people to pass by each other, but rather tight for someone to draw a sword and bring it to bear. If you weren’t careful, it would simply hit the wall.

“That at least is a commonality,” Hans went on. “The victims didn’t fight back.”

All the other victims had been found indoors. It obviously hadn’t been possible to glean too much from the heavily decomposed corpse of the first victim, but all of the bodies found after that had been examined, and none of them showed any sign of a fight. They had been taken completely unawares by their murderer.

“There have been no reports of shouts or screams in any of the cases thus far.”

“In other words, they didn’t know what was happening until the moment they were killed,” Yukinari said, crossing his arms. “If all of these murders have been committed by the same person, how are they getting close to their victims? Every single one of these people was killed when they seemed to least expect it.”

“Maybe they’re... invisible?” Dasa said.

“How?” Yukinari asked. “People can’t just disappear whenever they want, can they?”

Admittedly, in his previous life Yukinari had seen a movie about aliens from outer space who used invisibility technology to attack humans. But he very much doubted such devices existed in this world. Even alchemy wasn’t that powerful.

“Maybe they use smoke...”

In other words, they didn’t turn themselves invisible, but hid themselves long enough to commit a crime. It was possible.

“I don’t know. That might work outside, but I don’t think it would be feasible indoors.”

Wouldn’t smoke make people think fire, and wouldn’t fire make them call out or try to run? They wouldn’t just wait around for the killer to get close to them.

“Mn,” Dasa grunted, and frowned.

“It would make the most sense if the killer was someone they already knew... Is there any single person known to all of the victims? Someone they wouldn’t suspect?”

Fiona and Hans looked at each other. Then they both looked at Yukinari.

“What?” he asked. “Think of someone?”

“There is someone who might fit the description,” Fiona said.

“Who?” he pressed her.

She hesitated for a moment, then replied, “You, Yukinari.”

Yukinari said nothing, lost for words. Now that he thought about it, she was right. Just about everyone in Friedland knew his face. And they certainly would never expect him to harm them in any way.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Fiona said. “Trust me, I’m not suggesting you’re the culprit. I said ‘someone’ fits that description, but the same is true of me and Ulrike.”

“I guess you’re right,” Yukinari said. Fiona and Ulrike were also both well known to the people of Friedland. And, again, unlikely to be suspected of any malicious intent.

“Yukinari,” a voice called, drawing closer to the cart. It was Ulrike herself.

“Ulrike. Find anything?”

“We familiars are patrolling the area on the assumption that the ne’er-do-well may yet be nearby.”

“Have you seen anyone suspicious?”

“Mm. We attempted to ask the villagers if they’d seen anyone unfamiliar or strange lately... But we were told, ‘I would have to say you’re pretty strange.’”

“I guess they’re not wrong...”

Ulrike, who was so frequently seen with Yukinari, might be an exception, but the other familiars didn’t usually appear in town. The people of Friedland could see them as strangers, obviously unusual creatures. It was understandable if the villagers considered the familiars bizarre.

“I am sorry,” Ulrike said.

“No, it’s all right,” Yukinari answered, looking around and climbing down off the cart. He thought there might be more to learn from investigating the scene of the crime than the body itself. “Keep the other familiars watching the area for the time being.”

Yggdra’s familiars might not be able to catch the criminal outright, but their presence in town was hard to miss. With them around, maybe the killer would feel compelled to lie low. That, Yukinari hoped, might at least keep the immediate area—which included the orphanage—safe.

“I do not know how much good it will do,” Ulrike was saying, “but we will try.”

“Yeah, please d—”

Yukinari stopped in midsentence as he came out into the street. Something utterly unexpected filled his vision. He stood there, frozen—yet he was the only one who noticed it.

“Yuki...?” Dasa came up to him, no doubt having seen that he seemed upset. “What’s wr...ong?”

Yukinari couldn’t answer. He simply couldn’t find the words.

This is unbelievable...

Dasa followed Yukinari’s gaze. But even when she saw it, she could only blink in incomprehension. She didn’t know what it was that had shocked Yukinari so much.

Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t.

Was this... carved with the tip of a sword?

Hans had said there was some sort of scoring on the wall that appeared to have been left by a rapier. A series of spidering lines all connected together in a very small space. Up, down, sideways. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason at first glance, but in fact there was a logic to the scratches. They formed four kanji characters.

Had the criminal done this? If so, this could be a hugely important clue, but it was the clue itself, the four characters, that had pinned Yukinari in place. They said:

Amano Yukinari.

It was his own name, written in four Japanese kanji.

Nothing else. No other words or explanation. But this was obviously not a matter of chance. This was Yukinari’s name as it had been in his previous world. Other than he himself, no one in this world should have known how to write it.

●

In the end, Yukinari and the others decided not to go back to the sanctuary to retrieve their things. They wanted to be ready to help keep Friedland safe at every possible moment. Fiona would find something appropriate in terms of changes of clothes and other necessities. Yukinari also made plenty of extra bullets for the Durandalls he’d given to the community watch. Durandall and Red Chili used the same ammunition, .44 Magnum rounds, so this was easy enough, and if they started to run low it was just a matter of Yukinari making more. He could also produce accessories for Red Chili and more bullets for Derrringer if the need arose.

Ulrike was also quite capable of taking care of herself. Yukinari gave her a stern warning to do her morning photosynthesis somewhere people wouldn’t see her. He wondered how exactly she had been handling it in Rostruch.

No matter. They quickly concluded their discussions in the Schillings mansion, and Yukinari went back out into town. He couldn’t bear to sit still; he wanted to check every corner of the village with his own eyes.

Dasa had insisted she would accompany him, but Yukinari had told her that he needed to do some serious thinking and left her at the mansion.

“It’s Lord Yukinari!”

“Lord Yukinari!”

As he walked around town, the Friedlanders gave him smiles of relief. Yukinari had been trying to keep mum about the murders, but people will talk. So many deaths had led to dark rumors, such as that of a disembodied killer ghost stalking the streets.

Yukinari waved and tried to force a smile onto his face. It wouldn’t get him any closer to catching the killer, but anything he could do to ease people’s fears, he would. Even as he smiled at them, though, he was ruminating anxiously.

How could someone from this world have written in kanji? Written my name?

He couldn’t get the image of the crime scene out of his head. He considered the possibility that he had simply misunderstood what he was seeing. If it had been some simple character like the kanji for “one,” which was just one stroke, or “ten,” which was just two, then it might have been possible that some errant scratch simply happened to look like the character in question. But the kanji in Yukinari’s name were very complex, and it was unlikely that they were there by chance.

There was no such thing as kanji in this world, or if there was, Yukinari had never seen it. An old saying went that monkeys at typewriters, given an infinite amount of time, could produce the works of Shakespeare—which was about as likely as someone in this world accidentally producing the four characters of Yukinari’s name all in a row in this place at this time. Practically speaking, the odds were zero.

In other words, this was not an accident. It was a deliberate act by someone—most likely, someone who came from the same “previous world” as Yukinari did. Someone who knew him.

Yukinari might have been overjoyed at this—if the words hadn’t been carved into a murder scene. Yukinari was now surrounded by friends and comrades: Dasa, Berta, Fiona, Veronika, Ulrike, the children from the orphanage, and all the people of Friedland. It hardly left him with time to feel lonely. And yet, the fact that he had come from another world entirely was always in the corner of his mind.

It was his experiences in that other world that had forged his personality. He could never forget them. It had not been the best possible life, yet he looked back on it fondly. If there was someone else in this world who felt the same way as he did, that should have been a comfort to him.

But what if that person was a murderer? What if they were...

“Dammit.” Yukinari finished his circuit of the town, having come up with nothing of any real importance, and turned back toward the Schillings mansion. “I can’t believe this...”

He knew. Deep inside, he knew. But it was a conclusion he desperately didn’t want to draw, so he carefully kept his distance from it. He had left Dasa behind because he had been afraid that the perceptive young woman might come up with the answer herself.

“Hatsune...”

She had died in the same fire that led to Yukinari ending up here. What if a ritual much like the one Jirina had performed had caught Hatsune’s soul, or whatever it was, and brought it here, just like Yukinari’s? What if it had been given flesh?

When he had first awoken in this new world, Yukinari had asked Jirina and Dasa whether his older sister was with him. They had died together; it wasn’t so surprising to think they might have been reincarnated together as well. She would know Japanese, and could certainly write Yukinari’s name.

“I’m back,” he said to the butler as he entered the mansion. The man responded by informing Yukinari that the guest room on the far end of the second floor had been set aside for him. “Thanks,” Yukinari said and went up the stairs, heading for the room at the far end of the hall.

When he got inside, he tossed himself on the bed without even lighting a lamp. He lay there in silence.

Set aside the question of whether or not his older sister was here. Why had those characters been carved at the crime scene? He was the only one who could read them; they practically begged him to come looking for someone else who had been reincarnated from Japan. But if that was the intent, why not put them somewhere more conspicuous?

Either way, there was no reason the person had to write “Amano Yukinari.” The words had been left there by someone who knew he was in this town. Why? Was it a challenge? Or—

Suddenly, a knock came at the door. “Lord Yukinari? Are you awake?”

The reluctant tone suggested it was Berta. “I’m awake,” he said, almost sighing. “The door’s open.”

“Okay. I’m... I’m coming in.”

Berta wasn’t the only one who came through the open door. Dasa and Ulrike were with her.

“What’s wrong? Did anything happen?” For a moment, he was anxious: surely they hadn’t discovered yet another new victim?

But Berta shook her head. “No. Lady Dasa...”

“Dasa? What about her?” Yukinari looked at the girl, who uncharacteristically seemed to be trying to hide behind Berta. Dasa focused on the ground, refusing to look at Yukinari. She was as expressionless as ever, but seemed unusually depressed.

“She... She thinks you’re acting rather strangely, Lord Yukinari.”

“I am? She does?”

“Ever since this morning...”

He didn’t respond immediately. In other words, ever since he had seen his name at that crime scene.

Well, he figured, she was right. At the same time, her unusually retiring attitude suggested she suspected something. Most likely it had begun when he told her not to follow him. He had been too preoccupied to think much about it, but it wouldn’t have been lost on her. He didn’t yell or make a big deal about it, but it had probably left more of an impression on her than he had realized.

Ever since Jirina’s death, Yukinari and Dasa had always been together. It was not an exaggeration to say that they had hardly been apart for a moment. He never left her behind, and she was always at his side. It was because of a promise he had made to Jirina: that he would take care of Dasa. That was why he always tried to put her first.

But ever since he had seen those words on the wall, they had been all he could think about.

“Dasa,” he said gently. Her shoulders slumped and she trembled a little. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been deliberately ignoring you. I’ve just... had a lot to think about.”

“Yuki,” Dasa said, looking up.

“Ahem.” Ulrike, who had been quiet until that moment, spoke up. She crossed her arms. “On that note, if you have concerns, you should speak to us about them. Berta thought perhaps you were depressed, and that the three of us should visit you.”

“Is that right?” Yukinari said, smiling dryly.

Had it been so obvious that he was upset? If anyone would have noticed, it would be the girls that he spent all his time with.

“Drawing on the knowledge of other familiars, I see that when a human male is unhappy, it is often of comfort to him to have a female offer him her body. Concretely speaking, to perform a reproductive act with him.”

“...Guh?” Where on earth did the plant-girl come up with these things?

“It was Berta’s considered opinion that if she were to offer you her body now, it would both make you feel better as well as gratify her own hopes. ‘Two birds with one stone,’ I believe you humans say.”

“Wha? No, I—” Berta was flustered to have the conversation suddenly turn to her. “I just—”

“Berta, you’re... very calculating.”

“Y-You too, Lady Dasa?! I wasn’t trying to—”

The fact that she couldn’t bring herself to utter the lie—I wasn’t trying to do that or the like—spoke to the girl’s personality. For better or for worse, she simply couldn’t say something untrue.

In many cases, people lie in order to protect themselves. But Berta, who had been raised her whole life to be a living sacrifice, had scant impulse to self-preservation.

“Hey, sorry,” Yukinari said with a smile. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m okay. This is plenty.” The knowledge that these girls were so concerned about him was comfort enough.

“Yuki,” Dasa said, blinking behind her glasses.

“Hrm? What, are you better already?” This came from Ulrike, sounding a bit annoyed. “Is your recovery not rather sudden?”

“Gee, sorry.”

“I thought I might have a chance to observe human reproduction up close.” Ulrike had always seemed inordinately interested in how humans continued their species.

“Go watch some cows do it or something,” Yukinari said.

“That will not do. I am given to understand that human sexual relations are rather different from those of other animals.” She looked doubtful. “I was curious to test whether this body, Ulrike, could engage in the activity. I have found that the stamens of my male familiars refuse to—”

“I get it! Don’t finish that sentence! Just... stop talking,” Yukinari said insistently. It made him feel a bit dirty just listening to Ulrike—who was little more than a child—say such things. She was asking not because of her own sex drive, but out of sheer curiosity. It made sense that her male familiars couldn’t reproduce. There was no sex drive powering them.

After all, Yggdra, the creature behind Ulrike, was an erdgod. As something that was effectively immortal so long as she was not actually killed, it was only natural that her attitude toward reproduction would be relaxed. But still...

“Pardon me, Yukinari,” the girl went on, “but could I bother you to become depressed again?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You shall become depressed, and voila! I shall comfort you!”

“Seriously. What. The. Hell.”

He wasn’t sure Ulrike herself understood what she was saying, or asking for. And why did she look so pleased about it?

“I must be prepared to take advantage of any opportunity,” she said, and then she began assiduously removing her clothing.

“Hey, leave that on.”

“Hm? Ah, yes. Only your stamen and my pistil need be exposed.”

“That’s not what I meant! Berta? Berta, stop that!” Yukinari said desperately. The other girl had begun to copy Ulrike.

“He is right,” Ulrike said. “I shall be first.”

But then she fell silent. Her face was the first thing to change. It stopped moving, frozen. It looked less as though she had decided to hold still and more as though time had stopped for her and her alone.

“What’s going on?” Yukinari wondered if this was some fresh prank, but then it occurred to him that Ulrike rarely joked. She always spoke seriously. That was what made it so difficult to handle the way she talked about sex—but leaving that aside.

“Hey...” Something was wrong. Yukinari frowned and started to reach out to her, but as he did so, Ulrike fell to the ground, as stiff as a board. “Ulrike?!”

Berta stood shocked, hardly able to process what had happened, but Dasa rushed over and kneeled by Ulrike. She touched her wrist, her neck, her chest, and then her face.

“Yuki,” she said.

“What is it? What’s wrong with Ulrike?”

“She’s dead.”

“...Huh?!” For an instant, he didn’t understand what she meant. “How... How can she be dead...?”

Yukinari looked at the face of the girl who had been Yggdra’s familiar. It was pale and pretty, and now its eyes were open wide. They reflected nothing, but only stared blankly.

●

Beyond the outskirts of Friedland, past the newly cultivated fields, there was a wasteland that had yet to be developed. And in it stood a girl.

“......Hm.”

Her pale skin and white hair shone in the moonlight, making her seem to shimmer despite the darkness. Hers was an unearthly beauty, seemingly untouched by the vulgarities of the fleshly world.

She was dressed lightly, as if she were going for a walk in town. Yet this was neither a time nor a place that a young woman should be out on her own. It made the moment seem all the more unreal.

“Perhaps... this will do.”

The girl clutched a rapier in her hand. There was no telling where it had come from, for she wore no scabbard. The thin sword had a hilt and guard emblazoned with roses. Their red color stood out; they almost seemed to move like living things. Thin red lines, like veins, spread out from them, running up onto the blade.

What kind of sword was this?

What was more, when she stabbed it into the ground at her feet, the earth began to twist, and then the rapier sank down as if it were burying itself, until it had disappeared under the surface.

There was a tremble in the air, as though this very land was flinching, afraid of something.

“This ought to keep those meddlesome familiars from interfering,” the girl said, and turned around. There, on the ground, lay an old woman with horns like a deer and green hair. One of Yggdra’s familiars. Her body showed no wounds, but she was still, like a puppet with its strings cut.

●

An unusual tension filled the living area of the Schillings mansion. A cloth had been laid out on the floor, and atop it were ten people, old and young, men and women alike. None of them moved at all; they looked as if they were dead. In fact, although none had any external injuries, they could be said to be corpses.

“Another one is being brought here,” said the butler. Yukinari and the others nodded. The butler backed out of the room; in his place, some young men from the community watch carried in a new body. This one was a middle-aged man. The same one who had reported one of the murders to Yukinari, right here at the mansion.

In fact, all of those laid out in front of them were familiars. On the far end lay Ulrike. At first they had propped her up on the sofa, but as one fallen familiar after another arrived, they spread out a cloth so that everyone could be set on the floor.

“This man’s dead, too!” one of the men from the community watch announced as they carried in the new familiar.

“I know... Please, calm down,” Fiona said, a strained expression on her face. “He was already dead. Er, what I mean is, he may not be permanently gone, so try to calm down. Leave everything to us.”

“Y— Yeah, sure...” The young men didn’t fully understand what she was talking about, but with the words coming directly from the deputy mayor, and with Yukinari nodding along beside her, they decided to defer to her judgment. They left the mansion, still looking rather disturbed.

When they had gone, Fiona turned to the erdgod, now looking anxious herself. “Yukinari...”

“I know. I already had Dasa look into it. She says they’re not necessarily completely dead. You could say they’re... only mostly dead. Their heartbeats and breathing are extremely slow, though.”

He could already tell what was going on: all of Yggdra’s familiars in Friedland were being put out of commission.

Strange though these people may have looked, they were the familiars of the erdgod of Rostruch, a town Friedland was engaged in trade with. The townspeople weren’t quite sure how to handle the bodies, so Fiona announced that she would collect them all at her mansion.

According to those who brought the bodies in, the familiars all collapsed at about the same time Ulrike had; in other words, the previous night. Yukinari and the others hadn’t slept a wink since then, wanting to keep an eye on what was happening.

It turned out Dasa’s pronouncement of “She’s dead” on her initial examination of Ulrike had been mistaken. Yes, her breathing and pulse had been impossible to detect at the time Dasa had examined her, but as Yukinari had just said, they had simply gotten very, very slow. The only thing remotely similar in Yukinari’s experience was hibernation, or perhaps “playing dead.”

The familiars’ body temperatures had fallen until they were close to the ambient. Although these familiars had been joined with a plant, their basic human anatomy hadn’t changed. They still relied on their hearts to pump blood, still needed a skeleton to support their bodies, and muscles to move. And of course, they still produced body heat, if somewhat less than the average human.

The only difference seemed to be that Yggdra was somehow involved in their brains and nervous systems; the familiars in general had no sense of individuality. Everything their bodies did was controlled by, or at least connected to, Yggdra.

The familiars had begun as living sacrifices offered to Yggdra—or rather, they were the elderly and the ill too weak to ever recover. Rostruch’s medicine could not save them, so they were given to the erdgod instead. All this meant that the familiars had already died once.

Yggdra would plant a seed in the dead person, plant cells to support the body and eliminate whatever had killed it. The nervous and circulatory systems began working again, and a familiar was born. So when Fiona said that these familiars were already dead, she was right. They could only move because Yggdra was controlling them.

Silently, Berta put a blanket over the newly arrived familiar. It didn’t mean much. They no longer felt things like cold. As strange as it sounded, they were in a “vegetative state” in the most literal sense.

“Um, Lord Yukinari...”

“Aren’t you tired, Berta? And you too, Dasa. You should go rest for a while.”

Despite Yukinari’s suggestion, both girls shook their heads.

“If you can’t rest, Lord Yukinari, then neither will I.”

“I’ll go to sleep when you do, Yuki.”

This was actually the third time they’d had this conversation.

“All right. But this could turn into a real endurance test. If you reach your limits, you should rest. No, wait—rest. That’s a command.”

“Okay,” Dasa said, nodding. “But you mustn’t overwork yourself, either, Yuki. That’s a... command, too.”

“Right,” Yukinari said after a long moment, and smiled.

He had actually been planning to take a break before much longer. According to what Ulrike had told him, at present there were twelve familiars in Friedland besides her. By his count, all of them were now lying in this room. There was no way around it: all of Yggdra’s familiars were down for the count.

“What in the world is going on...?” Fiona said, looking down at the bodies.

“Every familiar in town seems to have stopped moving at the exact same time, so it’s hard to believe something happened to each of them individually. Especially not Ulrike. I was watching her when she collapsed.”

“Yes, that’s what you said.” Fiona nodded.

“I guess the most straightforward possibility is that something happened to Yggdra.”

“To Rostruch’s erdgod?”

“Yeah. It would be almost impossible to do something to a whole bunch of familiars simultaneously. Unless you were to think about how they aren’t really a bunch of individuals, but are all linked to one single entity...”

“Familiars,” Fiona muttered, seeming to reconsider the meaning of the word.

“It’s easy to forget when you’re focusing on just one of them, like Ulrike, but they’re basically the hands and feet of the plant erdgod Yggdra. To put it even more simply, they’re a part of Yggdra.”

“A part of her...”

“They’re connected by threads of spiritual power, even though you can’t see it.”

“Yes, I remember you mentioning that before, but...”

But really, she found it hard to understand. People in this world had no concept of radio waves or infrared communication, so it was difficult to explain the concept of a wireless network. It might have been possible to demonstrate by showing how tuning forks resonate with each other, but Yukinari didn’t have the time at the moment.

“The point is, even if you can’t see how they’re connected, the familiars are Yggdra’s terminals. Her leaves, to use a plant term. It would be hard to cut off a whole bunch of leaves at once, but if you struck at the root of the tree, you could get rid of all the leaves.”

“That makes sense...” Fiona still looked a little bit uncertain, but it seemed like she was beginning to grasp the point.

But now Dasa voiced a new doubt. “Someone defeated... that?”

Of all those in the room, only Dasa and Yukinari had actually gone to Rostruch and met Yggdra’s “main body.” They had even fought her. They knew from experience how powerful the erdgod was. Hence they found it difficult to believe that someone had killed her.

The tree was something altogether more fearsome than even her familiars. Xenobeasts and demigods would come to attack her, only to find themselves deliberately pulled toward her roots, where they were strangled to death and then consumed for their nutrients and spiritual power.

“Even you couldn’t defeat her, Yuki.”

“That’s true,” he said. When Yukinari had done battle with Ulrike, he hadn’t been able to win. He had only been able to bring her to the negotiating table when he had threatened to blow up Yggdra’s entire mountainside.

“Is she really that powerful?” Fiona asked.

“Yeah,” Yukinari said. “But she’s still a living thing.” And anything that lived could be killed. With enough people—a large assembly of missionary knights, for example—it might be possible to surround Yggdra and simply set fire to the area. Yggdra was huge, but immobile; she was a tree, after all. Attack relentlessly enough, and it might be possible to prevail against her.

“And if so,” Fiona said, “is it really possible that Yggdra being destroyed and the things that are happening in Friedland are unconnected...?”

If he could trust what Angela had said, the missionaries were apparently not involved in what was going on in Yukinari’s town. The frequency of the incidents and the way they were carried out didn’t point to a group action, either. If anything, it seemed like the doing of a rogue individual...

In contrast, if Yggdra had been defeated, and if that was in any way related to the events in Friedland—well, the only group with the power to do it would have to be the True Church of Harris. Yukinari sincerely doubted that any xenobeasts or demigods had joined forces.

So: were the two things related or not? It was impossible to decide with the information they had.

“Yuki,” Dasa said, apparently having thought of something. “Could something have been... severed?”

“What do you mean?”

“I remem...ber a tool my sister used for alchemy,” Dasa said, nodding gently. She didn’t sound very certain, but she went on, “It was used to fill several... vials at once. There was a lid over each... vial, but you could also... block the flow before the device split off... toward the different vials.”

“I see... Yeah. That makes sense.” Yukinari smiled grimly to realize that he hadn’t considered the possibility himself. If a router breaks, a wireless network will cease to function. Yggdra’s main body was connected to Ulrike and her other familiars in Friedland via a chain of familiars at set intervals between here and Rostruch. If those familiars were to be killed, or blocked from communicating with each other in some way, it would cut the lines of communication between Yggdra and Ulrike.

“So what does that mean, then...?” Fiona asked. Only Yukinari and Dasa had understood. Berta and even the deputy mayor continued to look mystified.

“To put it simply,” Yukinari said, turning toward Ulrike and the other sleeping familiars, “Yggdra may still be all right. But the connection between her and her familiars has been cut off. If we could get Ulrike and the others back to Rostruch, the connection could probably be reestablished.”

“I see,” Fiona said. “That doesn’t sound easy, though.”

She was right. They already needed more people than they had to help guard against a faceless killer. Arlen and his friends, who normally escorted the trade caravans to Rostruch, were taking shifts to patrol Friedland. They simply couldn’t spare anyone to take the familiars back to their hometown.

If they aren’t really dead, Yukinari thought, then maybe we could just leave them like this for the time being...?

Nothing suggested that it was urgent that Ulrike and the others be returned to Rostruch. Would it do them any harm to remain like this? And if it was Friedland’s killer who had cut Yggdra off from her familiars, what was the motivation? For that matter, why did the person go on killing?

Yukinari was silent. The smiling face of his sister flashed through his mind.

He couldn’t worry Dasa and the others again. He pushed the pain aside, hiding it in his heart, and breathed a soft sigh.