Chapter 82

The day after the uproar over the stolen sprout, Nikolaus came to my house for some reason. He sat across from me at the table, resting his cheek on one hand, and remained completely silent.

Inside the room, the only sounds were the soft melody played by the lilies of the valley and the rhythmic chopping of Noel’s knife as he prepared lunch, creating what might have been the calm atmosphere of a café. But since a massive scream was echoing inside my head alone, I could not relax in the slightest. Even having the veil as a wall blocking my vision did not feel reassuring enough.

(W-why has he been silent this whole time…!! This is scary!!)

I already knew that being bombarded with questions by Nikolaus was terrifying, but having him simply sit there in silence was frightening in its own way. Wishing he would hurry up, drink some tea, and go home, I pushed the sweets on the table toward him.

Lately, Noel has been researching ways to preserve sugarcane, so he often makes sugarcane dishes and snacks. Today’s was a sugarcane muffin. According to Noel, it was a delicious snack perfect for the morning.

「…So you noticed I’m tired. Well, it’s nothing serious.」

(Nikolaus-san was tired…? Come to think of it, maybe his magical power feels weaker than usual too?)

I do not know the exact distance involved, but Nikolaus is someone whose presence I can sense even through walls as long as he is somewhere reasonably nearby. It always startles me, and frightens me.

Apparently the true nature of that presence is magical power. Since both of us possess enormous amounts of it, our magical power interferes with each other in some way, allowing us to sense one another’s presence.

Today, Nikolaus feels like the pressure of his presence is just slightly weaker than usual. …Although simply having him sitting right in front of me is frightening enough that I cannot really tell.

「There’s been some movement in another miasma-infected land too. But I can’t afford to neglect this one. So I have no intention of leaving here.」

(Another one, huh… Things are dangerous all over the place… I wish harmful monsters, unlike harmless ones like me, would just go extinct… but I suppose that wouldn’t work either. They’re part of the ecosystem too.)

Apparently there are several miasma-infected areas, but the one that formed in the mountain where I was born is considered more dangerous than the others, which is why Nikolaus remains stationed here. …I cannot say I would have minded if he had gone somewhere else instead.

「This place is unusual. …If a new calamity is going to be born anywhere, it’ll probably be here. There’s the magical power of the Calamity Dragon, and on top of that… this land is saturated with the magical power of our kin. If a calamity is going to grow somewhere, it’ll be here.」

(Umm… yes, well, as you can see, that would be me…)

I grew from dragon blood, and I should have been buried beside the dragon’s corpse. That was also the place where the demonfolk had fought, meaning I am a mandragora that grew on the magical power of the Calamity Dragon and five hundred demonfolk.

As for the next calamity… well, probably, no, judging from my status, there is really no other way to interpret it. It is obviously me.

(I’m a harmless monster even though I’m a calamity, so I don’t think humanity really needs to worry that much… But I absolutely cannot let Nikolaus-san find out…)

I am a harmless monster that wants to coexist with humanity, but from Nikolaus’s perspective I am not only an impostor pretending to be one of his own race, but also a calamity that grew by drinking the blood of his kin. It would not be strange if he regarded me as an enemy in a way. …Ah, now I’m getting really scared.

Without meaning to, I lowered my head and folded my arms as though clutching both of them. If my body were smaller, I would probably be leaking mandragora juice from every hole in my root body by now.

「I sent a huge number of magical tools over there. I even made some extra ones and gave them the blueprints, so they can handle the rest themselves. Besides, this place is so remote that we can’t transport large numbers of people here anyway. Using a small group of elites was the plan from the start. …You don’t need to worry about anywhere else.」

(I’m only worried about myself, though… But I see, he must be tired because he used so many magical tools and spent too much magical power… That’s why he didn’t go thinning out monsters today.)

The monsters are still being culled in the area at the dragon’s place of death. It is a vicious zone that has become a land of death because of undead monsters and monsters that use poison. Even without the calamity itself present, it remains a dangerous area.

The knights and adventurers are doing the culling, but Nikolaus should be one of them too. The fact that he is leisurely spending time here probably means he is resting because he is tired.

To recover magical power, one must either wait for it to recover naturally or replenish one’s nutrition. However, humans cannot absorb and recover instantly just by touching things the way a monster like me can. Humans need to eat food, digest it, and absorb the nutrients, which takes time.

(Medicine is what can shorten that process, right? …I’ll make him a magical power recovery potion… I need to be nice to him and pretend we’re allies…)

Medicine from my original world and medicine from this world are completely different things. Presumably, that has something to do with the energy unique to this world, 「magical power.」 Because medicine here is made with magical power, it has special powers like magic, and both its effects and how quickly it works are incomparable to medicine from my original world, or at least, that is what I think. …This is a world where curses that can kill living things just by having them hear a voice exist in the first place, so perhaps it is literally a world on an entirely different level.

(And yet Japanese is used here, and there are monsters like me with the memories of Japanese people… so I guess it can’t be completely disconnected from my old world. But I can only speculate about that. It’s not like I can explain that I’m a reincarnator from another world…)

Surely I am not the only one who has come to this world. Even listening to humans talk, I have never heard of beings like reincarnators or people transported from another world, so perhaps they are rare enough not to be recognized as a known phenomenon. But I do not think that means they do not exist. There is no way I alone am special. If you see one, assume there are fifty, that sort of thing.

Thinking about that, I created a magical power recovery potion, filled a ghost-fire plant with it, and placed it in front of Nikolaus.

「…You’re telling me to take this and go back there?」

(Eeeek…!! T-that’s not what I meant…! That accusation is completely unfounded! I was only trying to improve your impression of me…!!)

I had only been pretending to care for him as a fellow companion. I had not made the medicine in order to send the exhausted Nikolaus straight back to the battlefield. But apparently that was how it looked to him.

Since I was panicking, my face had locked itself into a smile. Wondering how I could bluff my way out of this, whether there was any self-protection I could still work in from here, or whether there was anything else I could use to distract him, I tried moving my head to look around, but perhaps because I was so tense, even my neck would not turn properly.

「I’m joking. There’s no way you’d think something like that. …You really are a meddlesome one.」

(Ugh… I really am bad with this person. He’s scary…)

It felt as though my roots and leaves had been squeezed tight. Please refrain from making jokes that are bad for my tremblegrass heart. I oppose mandragora bullying.