Chapter 93

The estate staff settled and reassured the residents who'd taken shelter, then gave them rooms.

Thankfully, no one had died, and no one had been hurt.

Once the bustle inside the castle had quieted down, Lyssel came back drenched in blood.

"Lyssel!"

It was so much blood that for a second Iberin thought he was wounded, and her breath caught.

"It's not mine."

"It's all monster blood?"

"Yes. Something's off."

"What is?"

"There are a lot of monsters in the forest, that's true — but I haven't been slacking on managing them. They've never come as far as the entrance. Not in all this time."

"Then today…?"

"Something's changed in the forest."

Iberin's brow drew together, and then she thought back to the original story.

Nothing in particular came to mind.

This was a problem the original hadn't had.

"My guess is, it's because of the residents."

After a pause, Lyssel got the words out slowly.

"It's only a guess, of course."

He sounded careful, as if worried it might come across as blaming Iberin.

"Why do you think that?"

"Life force."

"Life force?"

"Monsters react to life force. And our population has grown a fair bit since we started taking residents in."

"Oh."

"It might not be that."

"No. I don't know much about it, but you can't argue that the territory's population has climbed. And the timing of the monsters spiking is right there with it."

What now?

The residents were already here, and they were settling in.

When Iberin's face darkened, Ether — sitting beside her — squeezed her hand tighter.

"It's okay. It might not be that, and even if it is, it's not your fault, mommy."

"That's right."

"That I didn't think that far ahead — that's the bigger fault, and it's mine."

"I'm not actually beating myself up over it, so you don't need to comfort me. I'm thinking about what to do with the people in our territory now, if your guess is right."

Was sending them out the right call?

"For now, let's wait and see, then let them choose. The ones who are afraid of monsters will go back to their original territories. The nobles who used to torment them are gone now."

"Yes — most of the ones still here feel they owe you a debt, Lady Iberin, and they're grateful. We're sending them back because it's dangerous, so they won't turn down going home to where they came from."

Rotte and Pons added their pieces.

"The ones who want to stay can live inside the castle. For the time being. And we'll put up a solid perimeter wall."

Hearing it laid out like that, it sounded simple enough.

It was clear they couldn't keep taking people in.

No matter how hard Lecashe worked to protect them, there was a limit to what they could hold.

"Close the territory's gates."

Lyssel gave the order.

Uuuuu—

Just then, an ugly howl drifted long and low out of the forest.

---

Setting aside the title — the matter of the emperor — there wasn't even time to think about it.

Lyssel was practically living in the forest.

He'd gone every day before, but lately the time he spent there had been stretching out longer and longer.

Thanks to that, Lecashe settled back into peace as if the whole assassin business had never happened, with laughter spilling through it again.

Except that Lyssel was making three or four runs into the forest a day.

"Lyssel. You're exhausted."

"No. I'm fine."

Maybe the monsters had multiplied — every time he came back, he was soaked in blood.

Iberin's face was full of worry and concern.

"I really am fine. There are definitely more monsters, but they're on the weaker side."

Lyssel brushed it off, and his manner made Iberin tuck the worry away for the moment.

With Lyssel so busy, Iberin had been picking up the smaller bits of work in his place lately.

Crop sales, oversight of the Gelta region — quite a list of things to handle.

"It feels like another lifetime."

"What does?"

"I used to think I was plenty busy before, but looking back, it was all internal Lecashe work. Now there's so much external work mixed in too."

"That's true. If it's getting to be too much, I can take it on."

"Aw, I'm not saying it's too much."

Iberin waved him off quickly, worried about adding to his load.

"By the way — I've been thinking about something."

"Yes? What is it?"

Lyssel tilted his head and looked down at her.

Iberin had been turning it over between bits of work. She'd started to wonder if they actually needed to kill the emperor.

He was the kind of man who'd cause trouble sooner or later if left alone, sure.

"The whole giving-up-the-title thing — couldn't we think about it from a different angle?"

The forest — unless the emperor sent down a knight order, Lyssel couldn't leave it.

He'd made up his mind to step down from the title, but he wouldn't want ordinary people to end up as monster fodder.

What would happen after they left Lecashe — Iberin hadn't seriously thought about it before, but with the monsters suddenly running riot, leaving now would be the same as telling everyone to die.

So Iberin had changed her thinking.

"What do you mean?"

"Separate Aleta from Lecashe."

"Separate? You're talking about independence?"

"In some form, yes. I think that's the most ideal answer, actually."

"That wouldn't be an easy road."

"Better than becoming the villain by killing the emperor, maybe."

Even when it had come out that Civelli — the emperor's right-hand man — was a hypnotist, imperial authority hadn't budged.

A normal-scale incident wasn't going to bring the emperor down.

And among the nobles, anyone who'd actually want Lecashe — that troublesome a house — was rare to nonexistent.

Unless they were out of their mind.

"There may be some who get greedy about the ijet that was discovered."

"Ah. I didn't think of that."

The truth was, Lyssel could have walked away monsters or no monsters.

But seeing that thought never even crossed Iberin's mind, he quietly closed his mouth.

"At any rate, let's hold independence in mind as one option. It's not at a dangerous stage yet. Just a worrying one."

"All right."

The conversation seemed to wrap up at that.

But what they were overlooking was that monsters didn't only live in the Forest of the World Tree.

They'd thought of it as the forest's problem.

---

"They say monsters have started turning up in our region lately."

"Monsters?"

"Yes."

"What? Monsters? Here?"

"Yes. Not just our region — it sounds like the same thing is happening all over the west. Everyone's calling for reinforcements."

"Goodness."

The west was a hard country to live in, but historically it had seen few monster attacks.

It was nothing like the fertile south.

"How bad is it?"

"The damage is severe — nobody was set up for monsters to begin with. An entire village has just been wiped out."

"What? It's that bad?"

The noble taking the report dropped his jaw.

"The numbers were that high. And they're still coming down, hitting one village after another. We have to call for help ourselves. Viscount Ripp's territory has basically been turned to wasteland by now."

Viscount Ripp's land wasn't far from where he sat.

Which meant it was nothing for them to reach his territory next.

"Call for reinforcements, and join hands with the surrounding nobles to fight them off."

"Yes. I'll send word to the nearby lords."

This odd, sudden phenomenon was happening everywhere.

It wasn't as severe as in the west, but the damage to ordinary people who'd never even seen a monster was climbing by the day.

Before long, petitions calling for reinforcements were pouring in without a break. The flood of requests left the emperor stunned.

And Lecashe heard about it too.

The whole country was in chaos — of course they did.

"Monsters showing up in other regions."

Iberin muttered no way under her breath.

The Seed of Evil hadn't even bloomed, and yet the thought is the world's end coming? surfaced.

But — why now, out of nowhere?

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Lyssel and Ether were both perfectly alive.

Could it be Rozelia?

A lot had changed from the original, but at this point in the timeline Rozelia wasn't supposed to be at her awakening yet.

If Rozelia was the cause, then the sleepwalking that had started after she'd received holy power probably tied into it.

---

It was a national crisis nobody had seen coming.

A great many people lost their lives, unprepared for the monster attacks, and the country fell into chaos.

Peace had held for so long that the weakening of the knight orders was part of why things had gone this badly.

"So it wasn't a Lecashe problem after all."

"No, it wasn't. The word's gotten around, and it sounds like the residents have made up their minds to stay rather than go back. Some have even asked if they can bring family or friends in."

But there was no chance of the closed castle gates opening again.

Pons had put his foot down on that.

Once people had one wish granted, they wanted more — when things got bearable, the greed crept in.

Iberin agreed with how Pons had handled it.

A life was precious, but it was still worse to lose your own people while trying to protect strangers.

Iberin looked down at the children sitting quietly nearby.

"The emperor's pulling knights from elsewhere to send reinforcements to the worst-hit western region."

The numbers of monsters coming out of the forest were higher, but Gelta had Lecashe, so it wasn't much of a worry.

The problem was that Gelta wasn't the whole of the south.

The south was vast — Lyssel couldn't take responsibility for all of it on his own.

"And now that this mess has blown up, the Gelta nobles haven't been coming in. Which means there's no one to take command if something happens."

"What do we do, then?"

"The emperor's not going to have the mental space to send any nobles down. For now, it might be better if Lecashe runs the management itself."

"Let's do that. We could use this as a stepping stone for independence too."

"My thinking exactly."

When all of this eventually settled, the emperor was certain to come after Lecashe over it, but by then, public sentiment would be on Lecashe's side.

---

A defensive line in the west was holding for now.

The monsters were strong, but so were the knights. They weren't beyond stopping.

The problem was the numbers. The monsters kept coming from somewhere, no matter how many they killed.

The defense was just barely holding, but the count of dead or wounded knights began to rise. Bit by bit, they were being ground down.

"The south's starting to see it too."

The monster outbreak wasn't just a western thing — that was the real problem.

The east and the north — everywhere was in chaos.

Is the world really ending?

It couldn't be the seed blooming.

What on earth was the cause?