Part 5 — The Masked Man

55

With their leader gone, the inspector’s party had left the village and daily life had rapidly returned to normal.

A vast quantity of food had been used up entertaining a small number of guests, but their stockpiles recovered thanks to some painful frugality and the millet and beans that were ready to be harvested. The scarcity of food was gradually becoming less of an urgent problem.

The men were breaking a sweat harvesting crops, preparing straw, and other such seasonal farm work. The women were working hard on important preparations for the winter, such as dealing with a backlog of repair work and preparing preserved food such as dried meat and smoked fish. As everyone immersed themselves in the many tasks that needed their attention, the gloomy atmosphere hanging over the villagers had already been swept away.

“Ah!”

“It’s snowing!”

The children pointed at the sky in wonder when they first saw it.

The adults stopped their work to look at the sky and breathed sighs that hung in the air as white fog.

White particles were glittering and dancing through the sky of the borderlands.

It was proof that a harsh winter was almost upon them.

“The girl’s sister is here again.”

“Someone go fetch Kai.”

The men who lived on the castle grounds were almost all stationed in the barracks.

Around lunchtime when there would be many people going in and out, that girl would often appear there.

Kai stepped out of the barracks and breathed a short sigh when he saw the girl who was standing by the entrance.

At 12 years old, Elsa’s little sister Lilisa was even younger than Kai.

She saw Kai and went running over to him and then gripped his sleeves and started shaking him.

“Tell me where my sister’s resting.”

“...”

“Tell me where she is!”

Lilisa wanted to say a prayer over the true resting site of her sister’s remains. It was a natural request for a bereaved family member to make, and Lilisa was persistent.

After the difficult guests had left the village, several new graves had appeared in the village graveyard beyond the walls. The noble from the center who’d been there as a guest was no longer among the living himself, but there were also women unfortunate enough to have been killed by his violent behavior.

One of the graves had been engraved with the name Elsa.

“My sister is my sister!”

Although her grave had been made there, the only thing buried there was a single lock of her hair. Kai had taken her body to a different place to lay her to rest himself.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then tell me why not!”

The girl was determined, and she wouldn’t stop pestering Kai.

At one point, she thought that Kai might someday be an older brother to her, but now she was swinging her arms and beating him with her fists in rage. As much as it troubled Kai, all he could do was quietly take it as her tears formed large drops that ran down her face.

When he had taken his unconscious lover outside of the village, Kai had said it was to show her some beautiful scenery that he’d promised to show her before she died. A group led by Adelia of the women’s council had listened to the circumstances and then given him approval. When he then told them that the place had been so beautiful that he’d decided to bury her there, some of the women actually appeared jealous. The village graveyard was nothing much to speak of, and old bones were often accidentally unearthed whenever a new grave was dug. Anyone laid to rest in a special location of their own was someone to be envied.

“At least tell me the location,” she begged.

Lilisa had lost a close relative, so she made her demand strongly.

Kai insisted that he couldn’t take someone as weak as Lilisa to the location because it was in a dangerous part of the forest. He also said he couldn’t tell her where it was because he worried she might try to go there alone.

Kai’s argument was convincing, and some thought that his stubborn refusal to tell anyone the location was him being possessive of his lost lover. Opinions differed, but it made a favorable impression on most women.

The girl in front of him was an exception. As she held him and cried, Kai could only let her cry and apologize with a quiet, “Sorry...”

**

A sense of calmness was gradually returning to the villagers, but the members of Lag’s ruling household, House Moloch, were still troubled by problems beyond the understanding of their subjects.

A high-ranking official visiting the village from the capital had died under mysterious circumstances.

Then the officials serving as his entourage had hastily returned to the royal capital. Simply leaving matters to take their course would be a grave risk for the lord of a small domain.

As soon as the party left, Lord Vezin sent out a messenger to request an interview with Count Balta, the head of the allied lords of the borderlands.

When a reply came back to them, Vezin and his legitimate son Olha headed out to Baltavia in hope of reducing the punishment that would be inflicted on House Moloch by the center.

Count Balta understood all too well that the pact between the lower lords was just barely enough to maintain the stability of the borderlands. With that in mind, a letter asking for the severity of punishment on House Moloch to be lessened was sent to Count Balta’s contacts in the center, and the letter even made its way as far as the king.

Although the poor result of the inspection did not result in House Moloch being asked to make a large tribute of their crops, to prevent that outcome the house had needed to spend much of the coin that they had struggled to accumulate. Lord Vezin showed no signs of displeasure, but his son Olha expressed his irritation openly and said multiple times to his father that they should have been more generous towards the officials from the start.

And of course, it was a difficult task for Count Balta, who had needed to use a large amount of his wealth to ensure that the nobles in the center remained cooperative. All this was done so that the king’s displeasure did not result in dire crop yields for House Moloch.

Unknown to his subjects, Vezin had gone to great pains to ensure that they wouldn’t starve. When the expenses amounted to more than they could handle, they had to agree to give up half of the horses that had drawn their carriages to Baltavia. For Olha, this left a sour taste, and he argued with his father far more often after their return to their domain.

“With the money we’ve spent, we could have filled our stores with high-quality wheat from the south. Did I not say so myself!?”

“There’s no use arguing over this now. None of us could have predicted it. No one knew the inspector would drop dead in our territory.”

“You are too soft on your people, Father. Take the inspector’s request for ‘pure girls’ for instance. We could have given him one or two. The purity of a few village girls stinking of dirt is hardly a tall price.”

“Brother!”

Jose was no longer able to resist interjecting during the argument between father and son. Although the head of the women’s council was Olha’s mother Carolina, it was Jose who the women of the village had come to rely on, and she was clearly unhappy with her brother’s statements.

The uncomfortable atmosphere between the three guardian bearers of House Moloch caused the baron’s wives and other children to cluster together nervously. Their servants also kept to the very edges of the room.

“Women should remain quiet. I am speaking with my father as his successor.”

“No, I will not stay quiet. Take back what you just said, Brother!”

“If you cannot learn to be more ladylike, then I fear your proposed engagement will come to naught. Do not think you’ll find a better suitor than the one you have!”

“I don’t give a damn about any engagement! Do you really think the sixth son of a count is...”

“You forget your place, Jose!”

“Olha, Jose! That’s enough!”

When the argument between father and son became an argument between brother and sister, Vezin shouted them down.

His reprimand was enough to make both brother and sister bite their tongues. But both still had anger burning in their eyes, and their argument wasn’t settled.

“Jose, the winter solstice banquet’s happening soon, and I’ll be taking you there. Make preparations.”

“Father, I do not...”

“If it means we’ll have the count’s protection, then it’s a good match for you, Jose.”

“...”

House Moloch’s efforts at self-preservation had resulted in an unexpected marriage proposal.

When members of House Moloch had visited Baltavia, they’d learned that a strange rumor had spread across the borderlands about a beautiful lady whose hair was as white as snow.

When the true identity of this beautiful lady turned out to be none other than Jose, the first daughter of House Moloch, it caused an unexpected amount of attention to fall on House Moloch within the social circles of Baltavia.

Count Balta had offered his sixth son as a suitor for this beautiful lady who’d been the subject of much talk. With House Moloch asking for assistance from the count, there was no way they could have turned down the offer.

As his sister lowered her head and bit her lip in frustration, Olha looked at her and puffed out his chest as if to say, Do you see now? His face seemed to ask her why his poor sister would take their father’s side when he treated her so unkindly.

Their problems all stemmed from the fact that House Moloch had been negligent in its duty to ensure the safety of an honored guest. Beyond the eyes of their subjects, the members of House Moloch were enduring their own form of suffering.

“The winter solstice banquet happens in half a month. Don’t forget, Jose.”

Winter was coming to the village of Lag.

56

Kai regretted his complete lack of consideration for Elsa’s sister, Lilisa.

After Elsa became comatose and was transferred to a room in the monastery, the only people that Kai saw visiting her were people who worked in the castle, so he’d never seen any of her relatives. As a result, he’d jumped to the conclusion that Elsa was an orphan, just like himself.

It turned out she had a frail mother who spent most of her time in bed and an independent sister who took care of their mother, but the baron had instructed that Elsa’s condition should not be reported to her family because the incident involved his guests.

Kai was unable to sleep a wink, so he rose from his bed and stole out of the barracks.

He wasn’t headed for anywhere outside the village that night. A girl who’d known Elsa had told him where her family home was, and he was headed there now.

The people of Lag didn’t all live on the castle grounds. Several dwellings resembling longhouses were arranged outside of the castle grounds where most married men and women lived. Married soldiers such as Basco and Setta would commute to the castle rather than living in the barracks, and young children also lived in the longhouses prior to becoming soldiers.

Elsa’s family home was part of this collection of longhouses.

It was already late into the night, so in a village where long-burning torches were an unacceptable extravagance, it was rare for anyone to be up so late.

Kai walked among the longhouses and the characteristic smells of everyday life looking for the house he’d been told about. He’d been told that there was a fruitless maca tree nearby.

It must have grown from a seed from fruit collected in the mountains. Trees grown by people with no experience cultivating fruit trees would never bear fruit in many cases. An amateur must have left it there hoping that someday fruit would appear.

There were many gaps in the poorly constructed longhouses and anyone who cared to peer through the cracks in the wooden doors could see inside.

There came a coughing sound from one room that was pitch black just like the other houses.

The figure laid up in bed and suffering from coughing fits must have been Elsa’s mother. A familiar voice asked her, “Are you all right?” Despite how late it was, the girl had not gone to bed.

“We ran out of medicine. I’m sorry, Mom.”

He could see Lilisa from behind.

Her hair was the exact same color as her sister’s, and she was diligently taking care of their mother. Her shoulders shook as she began to sob.

“If my sister was here, she could have got more medicine from the healer in the castle. She was so healthy before it happened.”

A thin pale arm reached out from the bed and wrapped itself around Lilisa’s shoulders.

Lilisa couldn’t help but cry when her mother held her from the sickbed. Her mother then said some words to comfort her.

“Can she really be dead? It doesn’t feel as though she’s gone,” the voice said quietly. Kai couldn’t help but look away. He now knew that the family Elsa had left behind hadn’t accepted her death.

Kai turned away and tried to push the thoughts out of his mind. Then he ran from the village and headed towards the valley.

If it’s a cough remedy they need, vine roots should work.

He decided he’d bring it to them himself.

And if they lacked nutrition, he’d bring them maca.

Many ideas went through Kai’s mind as he rushed over the fields of the borderlands.

The valley had become unusually lively.

All were forbidden to enter the valley without permission from Kai, but species that had sworn devotion to him were permitted to live in the regions around the very edge.

The first residents were a little over 100 koror who started the first settlement on the eastern side of the valley’s edge. They’d named their village Hacar, after the village they had abandoned.

New residents were also starting to settle on the southern edge of the valley.

That settlement belonged to the uzelle who Kai had picked up while helping with the truthseeker’s survey. Nirun had inherited her people’s guardian, making her their leader despite her young age. She would run off from place to place in search of uzelles in hiding, so that she could guide them to the valley.

Thanks to her continued efforts, her people were continually increasing in number, but the settlement was still a mere 30 individuals. They had named their village Newnaji. The name apparently meant that it was a new Najikaji.

Many of the homes around the valley were tents at first, but as the residents settled into their new lives, the number of permanent dwellings made using traditional methods increased.

The koror would cut large balen cedars to the right height and then hollow out the inside to create a cylindrical interior. For the roof, they’d create a cone shape using layers of bark. Their dexterous hands and small bodies were what made these their preferred houses. Because balen cedars were so big, the inside could have multiple stories. The main part of Porek’s house had three stories.

They’d been warned in advance not to cut down too many balen cedars. Kai had also made sure to introduce them to the neighboring lagarto.

The uzelle homes were built from sun-dried bricks in the shape of upside-down bowls, and mud was used to coat the outside. Their homes looked similar to the gravesite Kai had seen in their ruined village. After the mud dried, they finally coated the outside with tree bark, similar to that used for roofs of koror homes. They said this was a traditional way to keep out the rain.

Between these two villages, a road had appeared, suggesting that there was trade between the two. They had both sworn devotion to the god of the valley and were trying to develop a good relationship with each other.

Somewhere between them there was an area resembling a plaza, where the two species could enjoy everyday conversations and trade items with each other in a simple sort of marketplace. The main things traded were the craftwork that was a koror specialty and the woven materials of the uzelle.

Both species had sworn their devotion to the god of the valley, so they both felt comfortable living very close to the valley. Kai wanted to entrust both species with securing the valley’s safety, so he hoped they would increase in number a little more.

After having seen the fearsome armored soldier of the orgs, he knew that he couldn’t be too wary when it came to the orgs who held the greatest power on the other side of the forest. There were still five more soldiers of the Rigdaros remaining, so it was natural for Kai to be cautious.

It was always night when Kai, the master of the valley, visited. The villages of both species would be sound asleep, and those keeping night watch were usually the first to notice Kai’s arrival. He always arrived in the same place more or less, so they never failed to notice him.

The koror had been thoughtful enough to create stone paving in the area where Kai always arrived and had even constructed gateposts where there were always night lights burning. It provided him with an impressive entranceway.

They would often be there to greet him by bowing deeply as Kai passed by and jumped into the valley.

Rather than heading straight for the cabin, he searched the forest of the valley. Aruwe was left waiting in the cabin until he had found what he was looking for.

Aruwe would know to expect his arrival thanks to a signal from those on night watch in the form of a quiet horn. She was always standing ready outside. That night also, Aruwe bowed deeply when she saw him and then let her face relax to form a smile.

Kai hadn’t appeared until sometime after she had heard the signal, so in that time she’d been able to light the stove and had placed a pot over it. Aruwe made it a habit to prepare food whenever her master arrived.

“My God, you didn’t come straight here this night.”

“Yeah, I was looking for something in the forest.”

Kai had arrived carrying several maca and the twisted roots of a type of ivy known as rakan, which were normally difficult to pull up.

“Do you want to boil those rakuhan roots? I can do it.”

“Thanks.”

“There have been several offerings. Would you like to eat first?”

Kai smiled wryly as he thought about the subtle differences in the names that humans and koror gave to things.

Kai knew he wasn’t exactly well-educated himself, so he didn’t try to correct Aruwe, and she was left to do things in the ordinary way of the koror.

Aruwe skillfully took over the work that Kai had brought her and began preparing his meal at the same time. Although she just looked like a child at a glance, she was actually very capable.

Both species settled at the valley’s edge would regularly give offerings to the god of the valley. Most of those offerings were food because they knew that the worldly incarnation of that god, Kai, had the appetite of a growing boy.

The food that Aruwe served alongside the hot tea that day was a strange cake made by crushing fruit from the forest into a paste and then cooking it to remove the sour taste. It was a difficult type of food to make, so it wasn’t something an ordinary villager like Kai would normally be able to eat.

As Kai sat on the steps to the cabin eating the food, he asked, “Is she here?”

Aruwe, who was busy putting chopped herbs into a pot, hesitated for a moment before replying, “In the cabin...”

Kai sighed a great sigh. He put down the things he was carrying and then parted the double-layered curtain at the entrance to the cabin. The thick woven cloth provided by the uzelles was a valuable item that could keep out the outside air.

The interior of the cabin had been heated by the warmth of someone’s body.

Sprawled on the bed that Kai had once called his own was the uzelle girl with her arms and legs outstretched. It was Nirun.

“She’s hopeless...”

Nirun had started sleeping in the cabin like this ever since she first brought her people to the valley. At first, Aruwe had been fiercely against the idea, and there’d been a lot of trouble. But when Aruwe learned that the uzelle girl had given herself to Kai as his concubine and was doing her best to serve her master so that he’d accept her people, Aruwe came to see her as a sort of roommate.

The problem with Nirun was that she didn’t know how to do any household tasks.

Whenever she tried to help, Nirun just got in the way, and Aruwe soon told her that her help wasn’t wanted. Before long, Nirun ceased to do anything besides eating and sleeping in the cabin.

“Get up.”

Kai had also started to treat her a little roughly. He pulled away her bedding without mercy and then prodded Nirun with his toe when she still didn’t get up.

When she finally opened her eyes, he asked her, “Did you do the job I gave you?”

When Nirun saw Kai, she leaped out of bed, looked at Aruwe who was glaring back at her, and then scratched her head awkwardly.

“I’m doing it like you said.”

Nirun didn’t sound entirely convincing as she looked down at the other bed that had been made. In that bed of straw lay Elsa, who had been close to death.

Kai’s expression softened somewhat when he saw her chest rising and falling just slightly.

“I’ve been giving your wife her feed like you said.”

Kai grabbed Nirun’s head and shook her. He didn’t like it when she talked as if she was feeding an animal. She tried telling him to be more gentle, but Kai was her master and he wasn’t in the mood to listen.

Kai kneeled down by Elsa’s bedside and stroked her face affectionately.

57

After seeming beyond hope for a time, Elsa’s life had been extended beyond her godstone poisoning.

Kai had asked the koror to provide him with their traditional antidote and had learned that there were established procedures for treating the condition.

When a human guardian bearer was retired, it was a necessity for another guardian bearer to be present. The same was true for the koror. To ensure that the medicine could reach the stomach, the hollowed-out vines of rakan were boiled to sterilize them and then fed down to the stomach.

Boiling was also necessary to soften the hard vines, but a guardian bearer’s powers were necessary to allow them to pass down the narrow esophagus.

In a way, the method was similar to Kai’s practiced healing magic, and the guardian bearer would place their hand on the patient’s neck then concentrate.

Accept it...

When he concentrated on that thought, his spiritual energy was transmitted to the patient’s body. It was almost like using magic. Porek explained that this was relatively painless for the patient, and would cause the muscles in the esophagus to relax, allowing them to accept the food.

Kai had been able to put this into practice himself.

From then on, the sleeping girl was regularly given small amounts of the antidote together with a traditional koror soup made using sweet honey. If she was given too much, it would act like another poison, so it was Nirun’s job to administer the antidote once a day while Kai was away.

Although she was still very thin, the antidote must have been working because Elsa’s sleeping face was looking less pained. Kai prayed for her quick recovery as he stroked her cheek.

Kai paid no attention to the two “girls” standing off to the side and looking at him with unhappy longing. Polygamy was common in this world, and they both wanted to be Kai’s wives, so Kai’s focus on Elsa alone was a problem for them.

“Please keep taking care of her.”

When Kai gave them an order, they couldn’t say no.

Nirun was going out of her way to be appealing to Kai, but her efforts were wasted because she was definitely not Kai’s type. If she was as beautiful in the eyes of other uzelle as she claimed, then the current situation must have been disappointing to her.

“I think you need an herbal remedy too, My Master.”

Aruwe must have realized what kind of “remedy” Nirun was talking about because she very quickly started nodding in agreement.

“I’m not sick. I don’t need a remedy for anything.”

“But it’s such a very sweet remedy. If you won’t try it, I don’t know what else to do.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I-I can prepare the remedy,” Aruwe added. “I’ll add lots of honey to make sure it’s not bitter!”

“Please, just try it.”

“...”

Kai tilted his head in genuine confusion over what they were saying.

Although he knew they wouldn’t do anything to harm him, he realized it was some sort of prank, so he made it clear that he wouldn’t take whatever remedy they were talking about.

The old woman who was Lag’s healer only ever made bitter tasting remedies, so Kai felt sure that their talk about sweet remedies was complete nonsense.

The coming and going of koror and uzelle had become commonplace around the valley, which meant that the trade they performed with other species to support their way of life became commonplace there too.

Intricate craftwork made by koror hands was always in demand, so buyers would send merchants to the valley. Naturally, these merchants weren’t humans, but demi-human merchants that would facilitate trades between other demi-human species.

There was one individual merchant who appeared to have a good relationship with the tribe led by Porek, and this merchant was a long-haired, male miao named Fluu.

His luggage was pulled along by a strange armadillo-like creature known as a glypto, which would curl up into a ball to protect itself when attacked. This merchant would walk through the forests of the borderlands, bringing produce and ores to the koror from other species, and carrying away the koror’s special craftwork in exchange.

Fluu was rather plump looking, but the way he carried himself made him appear agile, and he boasted that his black fur allowed him to disappear into the shadows of the forest within an instant. He would warm up to people fast and could be almost too friendly at times, but he obviously had ulterior motives, so beginners had to be careful when dealing with him.

When Kai came to the valley, Porek would wake up the miao gentleman in the middle of the night so he could greet Kai, who didn’t visit at any other time. Each time, Kai would follow Porek’s advice by wearing the mask to hide his face, so Fluu thought that Kai was a survivor of the old ones, who had also resembled humans.

Porek allowed the man to come and go while taking full responsibility for him. Porek made it clear that he’d bear full responsibility for any disrespect the man showed. Under pressure, Fluu’s tail had soon curled into a ball, and he swore his allegiance to the god of the valley. However, he wasn’t a guardian bearer, so he claimed that it was for his tribe’s leader to decide whether he could swear devotion and he asked to be given some time to discuss the matter at home. Under the mask, Kai blinked in surprise despite himself.

It was as though Fluu felt that his people were under pressure to swear their devotion.

Fluu wasn’t just a skilled negotiator, he was also able to bring them much useful information regarding many different aspects of the world of demi-humans.

The most powerful force in the region surrounding the valley was the orgs, and the powerful Rigdaros stood with their king at the center, with a collection of 108 gods below them. This meant that theirs was an unusually stable land in the world of demi-humans, and their crops were even more productive than those in the world of humans.

They had several metal ore deposits, and these included an abundance of iron. In the center of their royal capital was an array of large furnaces where the large bellows and flames never stopped, and smoke billowed from them continuously. Kai felt moved when he heard Fluu’s description of a world he’d never seen.

Orgs would unexpectedly bear many children, so they hungered for land from all directions and were constantly engaged in bloody conflicts with other species.

From the viewpoint of the orgish nation, the forests that were home to the macaques spread out to the east, and they created an obstacle to orgish kind. To the west, a species known as the braganto, with snouts similar to orgs, had formed another nation that formed another obstacle to orgish expansion.

Most of the weaker species had been made to swear devotion to the major species and were able to ensure their survival by becoming subservient. That more or less summed up the world of demi-humans to the north.

There were rumors that uzelles had recently been forced out of many of their long-held territories.

“I was shocked to learn that those uzelles had gathered together to seek protection from the god of arbitration. It’s a very convenient arrangement for me because it means I can obtain uzelle fabrics at the same time as koror goods. Though I’m not the only one who values the works of these rare species, so I expect rumors of this valley’s existence are going to spread fast.”

“Koror and uzelles are not the only ones who’ve found themselves threatened after having had their land taken away. If the tale of our master killing one of the feared Rigdaros of the orgs spreads, there may be more who seek protection in the old promises. There were once numerous weak species who once struggled against the greater species with the god of arbitration at their backs.”

“I have heard that a key member of the Rigdaros was defeated and that a part of the orgish land was laid waste. The pigs are naturally sinful and avaricious, so there will be those plotting to take back the power of their great soldier that was stolen from them. They are more persistent than most. They seldom forget a grudge.”

“Fluu... Please inform me if you become aware of any movement within their nation relating to this incident.”

“As of yet, these feeble ears of mine have heard nothing. Though the pigs have been troubled with a particular demon emerging from the north, and I hear that their forces from each region are being dispatched there. They’ll need uzelle fabrics to protect them against the cold, so I’ll make a real killing if... Sorry, I forget myself.”

Fluu narrowed his eyes while scratching at his head.

It was hard to tell whether the gesture was natural or part of an act.

If the orgs were focused on a battle to the north, it probably meant that they were unable to deal with non-urgent problems such as the valley.

The macaques that caused endless trouble had been scattered by an army of 1,000 or so orgs. Considering that the army had been led by a single member of the Rigdaros, it was easy to imagine that the entire species might have an army of more than 10,000.

When the count of the borderlands had rallied together the lords of the borderlands alliance, the armies of lords from the eastern region of the borderlands had amounted to about 700, and their fight with an orgish army of only 200 had been a horribly bloody battle.

The forces causing such trouble for humans were really just the offshoots of the offshoots, but they’d caused enough damage to bring a single village to ruin. Rather than fighting with other demi-humans, it seemed that it would be much more efficient for them to take land from humans, who controlled more land than they were capable of easily defending.

But preventing a large-scale org invasion was the wall formed by the forest that orgs didn’t control, and the powerful lagarto species that had taken root there. The valley too may have been another factor. It made Kai realize that the people of the borderlands were on thinner ice than they knew, and it gave a new significance to his presence there as the embodiment of the god of the valley.

Kai felt that if he was one of the factors preventing orgs from advancing south, he should work to become stronger so that the borderlands would be protected from the orgish threat. Allowing tribes that would fight alongside him to gather around the edge of the valley would also be effective.

That was the first time that Kai had a sense of the nation that was forming with his valley at its center.

It was fortunate that he’d made contact with the miao trader, because it gave him a great opportunity to gather information about the world of demi-humans.

“In that case, I will consider it,” Porek was saying.

“If we have our god’s blessing, then I shall act immediately,” Fluu replied.

For a few moments there was silence.

“My God...?” Porek said.

The conversation had moved on without Kai, leaving him confused. Porek guessed what kind of face Kai must be making under the mask, so he repeated the same explanation again as if nothing was amiss.

It turned out that the discussion had turned to trade some time ago.

Porek’s koror and Nirun’s uzelles were oppressed as weak species, and their kind had become rare even in the great forests. Fluu said outright that he wanted the same monopoly on trade with Porek and the koror as he’d had before. Porek also seemed to think they should avoid letting others see how disorganized the valley was in its current state, so he suggested that it would be better for security if they limited who came and went as much as possible.

Kai listened to them both carefully and then decided to follow Porek’s advice.

Porek would decide who could come and go from the valley, and those individuals would be allowed to stay in a gathering hall that would be constructed in Hacar, where they could negotiate trade agreements with the nation of the valley.

Goods to be traded would be collected in the gathering hall for a time and then they could leave with the goods in accordance with any agreements made. A goods storeroom for the gathering hall would be made somewhere separated from both the valley and Hacar village, and then other merchants without permission to come and go would only be able to collect goods there.

When Porek asked how far away it would need to be to avoid bothering his master, Kai replied with the first number that came to his head, which was half a yuld. Fluu said it should be built to the south of the valley in that case. When asked why he gave a very logical reason.

“Although our god’s power is strong in the north, it is clear that the pigs also come and go from there. No matter how vigilant the koror may be, all goods would soon be stolen in the event of an org invasion. But the pigs are wary of the humans to the south, and they will not go there carelessly for fear of provoking the lagarto.”

The miao were merchants first and foremost, and they often used roads that actually cut through human territory because they feared being attacked in the forest. In the west of the borderlands, there were several human lords who would trade with the miao directly.

That meant that koror craftwork could even make its way to Lag if it was carried by traveling human merchants.

It was at that point that Kai realized that the miao merchants were surprisingly skilled when it came to communication.

58

“Smoke’s rising again.”

“They must have to cook because of how cold it is.”

“Why’d it have to be now? We’re busy enough with winter coming.”

The soldiers exchanged words in low voices as they walked side by side. One of them was looking nervously over toward the forest far to the east and pointing to a thin column of rising smoke.

The stone-axe-wielding macaques also used fire when cooking. The soldiers who’d gone deep into the forest had learned that the macaques used slash-and-burn agriculture. Rumors that they boiled up salted human meat together with their potatoes naturally came next.

Whenever smoke rose from the forest, it was proof that a creature there was using fire, and the creatures capable of using fire in this region were limited to the humans of Lag and the macaques who lived deep within the forest.

The smoke had begun appearing regularly half a month ago, and since then, the villagers had ceased to go into the nearby forest. It meant that the owner of the smoke coming from the forest could only be a macaque.

“That smoke... It’s not far off the edge of the forest.”

“Those bastard apes...” someone spat hatefully.

The village was under pressure to gather a large amount of wood that would see them through the winter. Most years, they would go to the nearby forest from the village to get what they needed, but this year, things weren’t going as planned.

In fear of the macaques, the villagers had gone to gather their wood from somewhere further from the village.

Needless to say, the level of work involved made this more than a small job. It was starting to feel as though this was the main occupation of every man in the village.

“You know that priest that was here a while back? Well, someone who was there on his survey heard him talking to Lord Olha. He was saying that the apes are going to attack in large numbers soon.”

“Tajik told you that? He said the same to me.”

“But we were there in the forest depths. An army of the pigs showed up and massacred all the apes deep in the forest, right? I don’t get it.”

“It’s all happening right here in front of your eyes, so it’s true whether you get it or not. There weren’t so many back then, but they attacked our village just a while back, didn’t they?”

“The ones that came while Kai was getting lectured by the priest?”

“That was after the survey in the depths, wasn’t it? So the ones scattered by the pigs can’t have been the tribe targeting Lag. Manso, you agree with me, right?”

“The world of demi-humans is complicated. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right. Anyway, we’ve nearly reached the forest. Time to put us to work, Kai.”

“Hm? Oh... All of you, get to work.”

Kai gave the order to them absentmindedly, causing his squadmates to laugh awkwardly as they began making preparations.

The other squads were also starting work at the edge of the forest.

“All right. Let’s take this tree today.”

“What? That’s too broad.”

“That is broad.”

Near the edge of the forest, it was easy to gather small trees, but these made poor trophies, and wouldn’t please the village women. Not only did their thin twisted shapes make them hard to carry, the smoke they gave off when burned would sting the eyes.

“It’s a pain, I know, but we can cut down a big one and drag it back to the village. Or we could just carry a bulky small one. Those are the choices.”

“We’ve got good help when it comes to carrying.”

“All right then, what’ll it be, Kai?” Manso asked while pointing his thumb at the large axe carried on his back.

Even someone as strong as Manso had to put the large axe on his back to carry it several yulds from the village. That axe looked very familiar to Kai.

It was an orgish axe.

The other soldiers helped Manso to loosen the cords around it and lower it from his back. He picked it up once more and then tried carrying it over his shoulder while gripping it with both hands. It was a heavy object that a man could just about lift off the ground. The strength of human men was below average, and a weapon like this was too unwieldy for them to use as a regular weapon on the battlefield.

Manso swung it forcefully at the narrowest balen cedar in the area. His hands went numb, and he stumbled forward one step. The axe had stopped after just barely becoming embedded in the trunk of the tree.

Manso then stepped aside as if it was time for the star of the show to step up.

It was time for Kai to put his incredible strength to use. He gripped the handle of the axe and pulled it free with ease. He drew it back while twisting his body and then swung the iron blade straight back into the same notch in the trunk.

It was enough to make the whole balen cedar shake as if it was no more than a small branch, though it was actually as broad as the baron’s waist. It was clear from the shaking of the tree that the fibers within were being shredded. Just two or three swings was enough to bring down a balen cedar, albeit a narrow one. The other squads nearby sounded impressed, and they knew it could only be the work of Kai’s squad.

“All right. See you back at the village.”

They quickly stripped off any branches that would have made it hard to carry, and the squad members then picked out the good ones from among the bunch. With that, Kai’s squad had fulfilled their quota. It went without saying that Kai would be the one to carry the trunk itself. Ropes were hooked around the protuberances that had been left on the trunk when the branches were removed, and the rope was handed to Kai.

Kai scowled because he felt that all the difficult jobs were being left to him, but he began dragging the trunk back to the village all the same. It was a large tree with a diameter of one yule and height of twenty yules, but Kai’s strength made it look effortless to carry, astounding most of those watching.

Many of the branches that Kai’s squad left behind were fought over by the other squads. Branches from a large balen cedar were broad enough to make good war trophies.

“He’s not normal, that one.”

“Something special’s been born in our village.”

The men of the borderlands, whose lives were constantly in danger, found people like Kai easy to look up to. To them, strength was justice and it was what protected their species. Some felt something more like envy toward him, but Kai was so far beyond most soldiers they no longer felt the need to compete with him; he was in a league of his own.

The people of the village had begun to feel he was different.

They thought it must have been because he had eaten an unimaginable number of godstones on the battlefield.

Now that they had seen the priest who had obtained a sigil without being a guardian bearer, a human who had reached the level of doi sigil through the secret arts of the monastery rather than through the blessings of a land god, they found it easy to draw comparisons with Kai.

He’s already on his way to being another one of those...

A human who wasn’t a guardian bearer, but was already halfway to reaching their level. That was how the people of the village were beginning to view the boy named Kai.

**

“Akui...”

The woman who’d opened the window to let in some air turned around.

The woman knew that it was a lady of the baron’s house who had called her name, so she was about to quickly close the window thinking the feeling of cold air was bothering her.

“No, I’m not cold,” the voice said, “I can hear some sort of commotion outside.”

“They’re cutting firewood, Lady Jose.”

“Firewood...?”

The girl with skin as white as snow walked over, so the woman named Akui moved away from the window and stood waiting.

Lady White looked out of the window. She was always interested in things happening around her. The woman waited, thinking that Jose would lose interest once she knew that the commotion was a few men who weren’t worth her attention cutting firewood.

But Lady White remained there, leaning out of the window.

Akui hesitantly looked at the men at work for the first time. There she saw a group of men struggling with a large tree that was far too big to be firewood. She supposed that if that whole tree was to be used for firewood, it would keep the whole village going for an entire 7-day cycle.

“Lady Jose?”

“How’d they carry that thing here?! That came all the way from the forest?!”

“You are right. It is a big tree.”

Things made more sense when Akui glanced down and noticed a young boy.

Akui recognized this boy who was standing there looking quiet and confused while the others shouted to him loudly. He was a young boy with great potential who often came up in the conversations of young women. She felt quite sure that the boy’s name was Kai.

By now, everyone in the village knew about this boy’s unusual strength. If there was anyone who didn’t know, they would have to be a member of the baron’s household on the third floor who never saw his strength on display out in the fields.

Lady White seemed to be one of those who hadn’t been aware.

“I think that boy there... is named Kai.”

“Looks like we’ll soon be finished gathering this year’s firewood.”

Akui was about to reply but then another voice interrupted her.

It was a familiar voice, so Akui stood to attention once more without being overly surprised. In front of Lady Jose’s face, there was Lord Vezin who at some point had appeared at the window to look at the scene outside.

“That kid, Kai... Just look how strong he’s gotten.”

“Kai?”

“He just looks like some kid starting out as a soldier, but he’s more than that. Something changed him when he went west.”

The baron made a sound in his throat that made it clear he’d taken quite a liking to the young boy named Kai.

It was undeniable that his strength was way beyond that of any ordinary person. Just a few days ago they’d seen the priest who’d obtained a sigil without blessings, so they thought the boy might be similar.

“If his personality’s not so bad, I might just make him one of our own. I do have a daughter of about the same age.”

Akui was surprised to hear the baron say such a thing about Kai. It wasn’t uncommon for a lord to take in one of their subject’s daughters, but to take in a man as their son-in-law was unheard of.

Akui couldn’t help but glance at Lady White when she wondered which daughter the baron was talking about, but then she shook her head internally. Lord Olha and Lady Jose were the children of his first wife, Lady Carolina, but he did have other children by his second wife, Lady Falda. Lady Falda’s oldest daughter, Lana, would turn 16 this year, making her closer to the boy’s age than Jose, who was a little older.

Lana was a proud girl who looked down on the common people, so she wouldn’t be pleased by this idea. Regardless, she wouldn’t be able to reject a commoner like Kai once the baron had made his decision. For a promising boy like Kai who was the target of many women, he might be dissatisfied to be married to someone he wasn’t suited to, but simply by becoming part of the baron’s household, he would gain many benefits. He’d be released from the need to labor each day, and he’d receive more food. It was also possible that he could marry other women afterward.

Akui thought of several other women who’d be disappointed to see the boy taken, and she sighed softly to herself. Men weren’t the only ones in fierce competition for a partner.

“Let’s bring the kid with us as an escort to the winter solstice banquet. Putting him to the test is the quickest way.”

“Father... you intend to take Kai with us to the provincial capital?” Lady White asked the baron.

Akui could only see her back, but somehow, she knew that Lady White looked happy.

She found it strange, but she was soon given some new work to do, and the strange feeling disappeared from her mind.

Lady Jose’s white hair with its silver shine swayed distractingly like the tail of an excited horse, and then disappeared from Akui’s field of view.

59

As the days passed, macaque cooking fires sent more and more smoke rising from the forest.

At first, they were secretive, but as their numbers increased, they made their presence obvious. There were now so many columns of rising white smoke at noon and in the evening that the people of Lag were becoming nervous.

Working outside was difficult during the winters of the borderlands, and the harsh conditions would normally make demi-humans less active. During an ordinary year, winter was the season when white snow would cover everything and humans would live peacefully while focusing on their immediate surroundings.

No one was stupid enough to start a fight when winter’s unforgiving cold had chilled everyone down to the core. Most demi-humans were curled up in their burrows, or at least that’s what many of the villagers thought. Even Lord Vezin said so to admonish some of the restless villagers.

But the strange columns of white smoke spread out across the edge of the forest, and they never receded. A cycle later, the borderlands had its first snowfall. The world was covered in a layer of fine white snow, and the gathering of firewood came to an end in the village.

While some brushed off the concerns saying that the macaques would give up and disperse when the snow became deeper, the more hot-blooded villagers started saying that they should strike now to drive them away before winter reached its height.

The pro-war faction was led by the baron’s son, Olha.

The macaque army numbered 2,300 at the most, and if the start of the fighting caught them by surprise, the combat potential of Lag alone could be enough to drive them back. Olha was adamant that the fighting should start soon.

At that point in time, Lag had just over 100 soldiers, and that was counting newly recruited children. Vezin denied his son’s demands, saying that they couldn’t afford to lose any more soldiers in a careless battle.

Instead, he ordered that they prepare for a siege, and pieces of equipment stored away below the castle were carried out one after another. They began to repair old weapons and armor with great haste, and much of the firewood they’d gathered instead became wood used to make arrows.

They’d put themselves on course for a cold winter with little wood to burn in their fireplaces. Their one piece of good fortune was that they had finished harvesting the crops they needed for their food, but there was little optimism now that they’d lost the firewood they’d been counting on.

“They got one of our scouts?”

“He got his head smashed in by a flying boulder. But listen to this: They’ve built a fort in the forest.”

“A fort?!” The other soldiers cried in disbelief when they heard the rumors Manso was sharing with them.

The party had returned from a reconnaissance force operation under Basco’s command. They’d brought back precious information about the macaque army, but it wasn’t good news.

Within the forest, the macaques had made defensive walls by constructing sturdy wooden fences, and they’d also dug deep trenches around the outside, making the whole thing look like a fort. The macaques kept watch from watchtowers enclosed by broad logs high up in a cluster of balen cedars that grew in the center.

When they climbed the balen cedars that served as their watchtowers, they were high enough to keep watch over the village of Lag. They were no doubt watching everything the villagers did at all times.

“And then they counted the beasts.”

Even taking into consideration the fact that the scout had been dodging flying boulders and barely escaped alive, the number of macaques he counted was cause for concern.

“They say there are about a thousand of them.”

“...!”

“You’re kidding?!”

The more Manso told them, the more surprised soldiers became.

The entire population of Lag was 1,000 people. But that wasn’t the number of men; it included women, children, and old people too.

The same number of macaques had gathered in the forest ready to attack the village. What’s more, they were obviously planning for a long battle because they had even constructed a fort. The thought made Kai shiver, as if he was facing death in battle against the enemy at that very moment.

If Manso had this information, then it was probably already known to most of the soldiers.

The voices they could hear from the other rooms of the crowded barracks had started to take on a different tone from normal.

“We’ll need help from other villages...”

“They’ve sent out runners already.”

“We’ll need the count...”

“They’ve sent messenger birds out.”

“...”

“...”

Needless to say, everyone was imagining the village in ruin.

Even if every man, woman, and child in the village fought to defend it, the difference in combat potential was so great that they couldn’t imagine being able to defend the village.

They had sturdy stone walls to protect them, but walls had their limits.

There was already a clear difference in the physical abilities between humans and macaques. The macaques were slightly less intelligent, but they were far stronger than humans.

Not only were they stronger, they also had superior numbers.

They knew how many soldiers the neighboring villages could send if they offered their support to the maximum extent. The count of the borderlands had sent word before the battle in the west and had gathered 700 soldiers.

That was the largest number of soldiers that could be gathered out on the edge of the borderlands. That was exactly why the demi-humans kept on targeting the land in this region.

While his squadmates were quietly discussing something that they probably wouldn’t have wanted their superiors to hear, Kai sat by himself, arms folded and deep in thought.

His squadmates would never have guessed, but Kai’s thoughts weren’t the simple thoughts of a single villager, he was thinking with the deep contemplation of a powerful ruler. Out of everyone there, Kai was probably the most knowledgeable about the world of demi-humans.

Firstly, there was the question of where the macaques planning to attack the village had come from. In the battle with the orgs deep in the forest, they’d been defeated while fighting to defend the uzelle settlement under their protection and many macaques had died. Although Kai didn’t know how many might have escaped alive, he knew the number of casualties had to be high. He seriously doubted that they’d been left with enough resources to begin a new fight.

In the eastern part of the great forest, the macaques were known as the dominant species. It would make sense for them to have as many tribes as the orgs, and while one tribe may have lost the uzelles in battle, another unharmed tribe could be starting this battle in an attempt to claim new territory.

By this reasoning, it seemed likely that the macaques coming to the village were members of a separate tribe.

Then the next question was why they had chosen to attack during winter. The great forest to the north was filled with trees known as needle-leafs, so the forest wasn’t particularly rich in sources of food at the best of times.

It was hard to imagine that creatures whose agricultural knowledge didn’t extend beyond slash-and-burn agriculture would have ample stocks of food. So why would they dispatch an army in winter when food supplies were lacking?

They’d mobilized 1,000 soldiers for a battle that would decide the fate of their tribe. Regardless of how eager they were to obtain the land gods stolen by House Moloch, there was no reason for them to go to such extremes.

But still...

None of this changed the fact that their ultimate prize was the three gods of House Moloch.

Kai already knew about their intense desire to obtain the land gods, so he didn’t doubt that this was correct. In other words, any logical explanation of their behavior should use this motive as the starting point.

In the end, he didn’t have enough information to draw a conclusion.

Although the explanation felt within grasp, Kai still lacked enough knowledge of the demi-human world to find the answer himself.

Once Kai had accepted this, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a while.

He decided that he would have someone investigate next time he went to the valley, and then he simply stopped thinking about it.

“Let’s just do our best not to die.” Kai’s conclusion brought his squadmate’s discussion to an end.

Manso scratched his head and said, “Guess so.”

The other soldiers stopped holding their breaths and sighed.

For soldiers born and raised in the village who’d never known anywhere else, the idea of giving up their land and fleeing didn’t occur to them.

It wasn’t a question of fight or flight. The only option was fight.

They’d thrown away the two offshoot villages they’d once held. But if they also abandoned the main village, they’d be left with nowhere else to live. The moment Lag was lost, their own lives would be lost with it. Like many in the borderlands, the squad members felt no strong attachment to life, and they accepted their fate easily.

“We’ll count on our squad leader.”

The members of the squad still saw Kai, their inexperienced leader, as a final ray of hope.

The squad members put their fists together and then traced holy signs in the air as they prayed for their own survival.

**

“You liar.”

When Kai tried to leave the barracks, he was stopped by a familiar figure.

Elsa’s little sister Lilisa was looking at him defiantly as always.

“Sis is alive, isn’t she?”

“...” Kai’s breath caught in his throat when he heard that unexpected question.

Lilisa must have noticed his reaction to the question because she smiled triumphantly and then grabbed hold of Kai’s sleeve.

“There was a parcel left by our home. It had cough medicine in it. The same type that Sis used to bring us.”

“...”

“It happened twice! Sis must have visited.”

She tried to accept it but never could. Now she faced the person insisting on the death that she couldn’t accept and stared at him in an attempt to make him take back his words.

The parcels she’d found were left there by Kai himself of course. They were left as a clumsy form of atonement.

He didn’t know if he’d done the right thing. He’d given false hope to Elsa’s struggling sister, so he couldn’t help but think he’d made a mistake.

Kai had also left some maca along with the powdered cough medicine, so Elsa’s sister must have eaten those. Maybe later she’d realize that it was a little late in the year to find maca.

The trees at the bottom of the valley continued to produce maca even as the winter approached. The flowers were also still in bloom, and the area was still warm. That might have been a miracle caused by the god of the valley’s power.

“Is Sis really still alive?!”

Kai didn’t know how to answer her question.

He couldn’t tell her that Elsa was alive. Not yet.

60

As the villagers nervously watched for activity from the macaques gathered in the forest, the long-awaited responses from neighboring villages finally arrived. Everyone knew that several responses had reached the baron over the course of several days, and yet he made no announcements.

The villagers guessed that there was nothing in those responses that he wanted to announce. And they were right. In a dreadful outcome, every response for aid to the neighboring villages had been met with refusal.

This wasn’t such a surprise. Not only was the population of the borderlands falling, there were no lords in the borderlands naïve enough to send their subjects into a battle that they were obviously going to lose. In every village, people were already being killed by demi-humans faster than children were being born.

Instead, the messengers were told directly that survivors from Lag would be accepted, but they’d expect each survivor to come carrying two sacks of wheat or grain each. This response was so shocking that no one knew what to say.

They had no choice but to fight.

Although their request for aid had been refused, the people of Lag didn’t hate them for being so callous. The tough environment of the borderlands meant that everyone was expected to live their lives independently without relying on others. And since reincarnation was considered a part of life by the people of this world, they didn’t place high value on human lives.

Many truly thought that every villager could just return to the cycle of Samsara if things didn’t work out.

“The count said he’d need at least a month to get an army to us.”

“But he went charging into the battle in the west and got there after just a few days.”

“My husband says it’s because we’re up against too many of them. It doesn’t matter how big of an army they gather for us, we’ll all be sent back to Ispi Rio before they get here.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

That was the type of idle talk heard from the women.

While everyone was exhausted from their rushed battle preparations, the women would use what free time they had to start gossip.

But they weren’t at all lax in their duties, so no one had any complaints to make. In fact, the men couldn’t help but admire the women for being so mentally tough.

Kai caught sight of a familiar-looking girl carrying a basket behind a group of passing women. Their eyes met, but the girl very obviously averted her gaze.

In a situation like this, everyone had to pitch in and help, even the young children. Kai’s fellow soldiers were busy blocking up the front gate to the village using earth from the inside. The gates were the weakest points in their defense and blocking them up like this would prevent the enemy from breaking through.

“Look at this. There’s a pretty girl here.”

“...”

When the soldiers nearby paused their work, Lilisa was already out of sight.

The fact that the words “pretty girl” was enough to make everyone look up from their work was a clear indication of how badly many of them were shunned by women. Even in a crisis with their death approaching, there were many unlucky men who still couldn’t get near members of the opposite sex.

They silently went back to the task they’d been given until the news they’d been waiting for arrived.

“It’s them! They’re coming!”

When the soldiers carrying the news came running over, everyone who’d been busy at work scrambled to get atop the walls. No one said anything. They simply hurried to get somewhere where they could see what was happening.

Once they reached the top of the walls, what Kai and the others saw was a wave of gray silently charging toward them over the fine snow that covered the soil of the borderlands.

The sight of the army approaching them from afar like a torrent of mud unnerved the soldiers in a way that was visible in their eyes.

The enemy approached silently because they were so far away.

But as they got closer the soldiers began to feel the vibrations in the pits of their stomachs.

“Shit, I really didn’t wanna die today.”

“Me neither, but we’re dying anyway.”

With shaking hands, soldiers began to drag large shields up onto the walls ready for a defensive battle. These would protect the soldiers from the boulders that the macaques tended to throw when attacking. One soldier would hold up the large shield while several others would prepare a great bow brought out from the castle to use as part of their offense.

From the castle’s stores, they’d brought out 50 dust-covered great bows that were seldom ever used. They were powerful bows for use against demi-humans, so they had to be inserted into a groove in a pile of stones below the bow and used while fixed in place. The large size meant that the bowstring was tough, and two soldiers were needed at the very least to operate it.

If the bows had been smaller, they would have been virtually useless against demi-human opponents. Although they were fairly effective weapons when they hit, scoring a direct hit was difficult, unsurprisingly.

“Why’s it always our village they’re after?”

“I wish they’d attack another damned village for once.”

When Kai heard these soldiers cursing and half crying, he told them to shut up. He was a squad leader with authority over them, after all.

They laughed awkwardly when they saw how strangely calm Kai was. “Wouldn’t you be better at working the bow?” someone asked him frankly, but high-ranking soldiers were more useful in melee combat. Kai’s job would be to push back enemies as they tried to claim the walls, so he couldn’t take on any responsibility that would tie him to one location.

Kai wished he could speak his mind when he heard his fellow soldiers continue complaining.

They complained that it was always their village, but Kai knew there was an actual reason they kept coming back here.

Kai found it strange that the others hadn’t figured out the reason when it was so simple. Part of him suspected that they might actually be pretending not to know.

They’re coming to steal our land gods.

When House Moloch had lost the two villages of Elg and Eda, the land gods from those regions should have also become property of the macaques, but instead the humans had carried them away.

So now they were coming to take the land gods back as their rightful owners.

Once that reasoning was understood, it was easy to think of a method for avoiding this hopeless battle.

If we just handed over both land gods, they’d leave us alone.

If House Moloch no longer had the power to protect them, it might have been better for them to quietly hand over the two land gods that they’d snatched away from the macaques.

If the macaques achieved their original objective, it seemed unlikely that they’d continue to expose their own kind to danger in a battle to the death against the human opponents who were fighting to protect their homes in this cold and unforgiving winter. The lands belonging to those gods were under macaque control, so it was only natural that those gods too should also be under macaque control. The gods too might be happier if they were enshrined in their proper places.

But of course, no one in the village would ever speak such thoughts out loud. The people of Lag had done the same thing as Porek and the koror, and Nirun and the uzelles. Members of every species held a deep fixation on the land gods of their ancestors.

And then there was the fact that this resolution would involve the death of two people from the village.

“Shit... They’re really taking their fucking time.”

“That’s the signal. Draw the bows.”

“Aim a little higher.”

The battle for the very existence of the village was beginning.

There was a clashing sound as one of their boulders collided with a shield held by a soldier. The macaques had strong throwing arms, and their range stretched every bit as far as the great bows. Soon, boulders began to fly at them one after another.

“Not yet.”

If anyone was hit by one of those boulders, it would’ve been no laughing matter. Soldiers cowered as boulders flew right by close to them, and their trembling was transmitted to the bows that they held. The shield bearers kept their backs straight to better protect the soldiers operating the bows.

The macaques were in no hurry. They advanced steadily while being careful not to lose their footing on the treacherous layer of fine snow.

As they approached the village, some of them began to search the changed landscape near the village. It was clear that they were looking for the ridges and water channels in the fields that they’d used as defensive positions the previous time.

Unfortunately for them, lessons had been learned from their night raid, and all hands in the village had been busy filling in every trench and water channel close to the village. As a result, there was no longer anywhere for the enemy to hide once they got close.

“Now!” Basco roared.

Then the 50 tightly-drawn bows were released all at once. Arrows had been made from the wood that was supposed to see the village through the winter, but the number was still limited by the scarcity of iron arrowheads. Each arrow unleashed from the great bows was large enough to pierce through the tough hides of the macaques if it hit.

Several of the enemy fell. Their deaths then ignited the battle fury of the macaques. The gray giants all began to howl.

They were every bit as thirsty for blood as the humans.

The killing had begun.

61

The macaque offensive began like a crashing wave.

These were the residents of the great forest, and the high strong walls that surrounded Lag were no trouble to climb as long as they could get within reach.

The macaque soldiers that survived three volleys from the great bows formed a surge that crashed powerfully against the cobblestone walls of the village like water overflowing from the river during the rainy season. Then they began to climb vertically upward without trouble.

With the enemy close, the great bows’ work was over. The soldiers operating the bows took up their spears, and then they all thrust them at the macaque soldiers as one in an attempt to knock them down. Although the great bows were now useless, the shield bearers continued their struggle, unable to stand down while the barrage of flying rocks intensified.

The boulders flying toward them were aimed at the soldiers atop the walls, but those that missed went flying over the walls as if that had been their original intention. Hazardous fragments of rock that bounced and rolled along the hard ground caused the women and children within the walls to run screaming. A hit would cause serious injury, so the women hid in the safe zone created by the shadow of the wall as they transported necessary items to the men.

“Come on! Dump them on the ground!”

“You! Take that over there!”

Women exposed on the front lines atop the walls were scooping up steaming liquid from boiling pots here and there in the village. They ducked and rushed below flying boulders with just as much courage as any of the male soldiers. The foul smell that lingered in the air after they rushed by was enough to make the soldiers around them recoil.

“It’s your favorite smell! Get a good whiff!”

The herbs used for driving off beasts during the survey of the forest depths had been boiled down to create this pungent smelling liquid. It struck the nostrils of the macaque soldiers trying to climb the walls one after another. This was a highly effective measure against any species with a strong sense of smell.

If the liquid got into their nostrils, the stimulating odor would leave them writhing in agony for a full day and night. No matter how strong a demi-human species was, there was nothing they could do to withstand this attack. The macaques screamed as the liquid satisfyingly stripped them clean from the walls.

But the speed of the macaque assault on the walls was extraordinary. Here and there, battles on the top of the wall itself were already taking place. In places where there weren’t enough battle-hardened soldiers who could take them on, they looked about to break through.

The top-ranking soldiers, including Kai and several other exceptional fighters, were waiting in locations here and there ready to rush to any place where the village’s defenses looked ready to fail. They’d been given leather armor, a precious item that the village had in short supply. When the macaques saw how different these soldiers looked from the others, the tide of the battle changed in an amusing way. Most of the macaques lost their courage, and some even threw their weapons down and jumped from the walls of their own accord.

The reason was that kumadori were visible on the face of Kai and every one of the other top-ranking soldiers patrolling the walls. These weren’t real of course; they were sigils painted on using a black dye made from crimson makeup and an oily soot-based paste.

It was a trick sometimes used in the borderlands when trying to defend a position. Preventing the enemy from accurately determining how many guardian bearers there were in their formation was an underhanded way of confusing them.

The walls of Lag were awash with more than ten guardian bearers.

Just like humans, macaques were reluctant to fight guardian bearers head-on. They instinctively knew to avoid anyone with such unassailable power.

Of course, the effect could only last a short while before the enemy saw through the trick. When guardian bearers appeared in the defenses, the attackers would naturally send their own guardian bearers to fight them. Once the real thing appeared, it was only a matter of time before the pretenders were exposed.

But this time luck was on their side.

The first macaque guardian bearer to appear on the walls appeared at the northern side near the center. That macaque soldier howled as if it saw through the sly deception when it was faced with a small human guardian bearer who was so short that he wasn’t even up to its chest.

“D-Don’t flinch!”

“Hold it back from both sides!”

With aid from the shield bearers around them, they were able to pin the enemy guardian bearer from the left and right simultaneously using the shields. When the top-ranking soldiers, disguised as guardian bearers, worked together, it wasn’t impossible for them to drive the enemy over the edge of the wall because the footing was so poor.

Fortunately, the fake guardian bearer, a human warrior who looked like a young boy, was the youngster named Kai who’d just recently ascended the ranks.

When the macaque encountered such extraordinary strength from within the group of pretenders, this strange situation left it stunned. Even though their kumadori were drawn on with paint, it was as though they had the strength of true guardian bearers behind them. A thrust with the butt of the spear was enough to send the large macaque rolling backward, and a strike from the handle caused it to cry out in pain.

His extraordinary strength had already caused Kai to break several of the spears he’d held, but he acted like more of a guardian bearer than an actual guardian bearer. Even when he was left empty-handed, he continued to strike at the enemy with his bare hands, throwing punches with his clenched fists as if he was settling an everyday argument.

The macaque never imagined that the enemy guardian bearer was actually a powerful guardian bearer who had defeated a member of the elite Rigdaros of the orgs. It expected him to have power befitting the doi sigil drawn on his face, and so it had faced him with less caution than it should have.

The macaque then used its shoulders to push apart the shields that were pinning it down from either side and swung its stone axe.

Someone yelled, “Watch out!”

Kai carefully watched the crooked blade of the stone axe flying toward him and hastily stepped forward to close the gap between him and his opponent while dodging the attack. Then, without stopping, he slammed his clenched fist into the stomach of his opponent.

The body of the macaque, which was every bit as voluminous as the baron’s, took Kai’s fist head-on. Its tough fur appeared to fold inwards as Kai’s fist plunged into it, and as the entirety of the kinetic energy was transmitted to its body, it was sent flying back through the air a moment later with no ability to stop itself.

The macaque couldn’t believe its eyes as it looked at the human child that it had just lost to. Its huge body then fell on the heads of its brethren as it coughed up a great amount of blood.

Kai drew back his clenched fist and looked down on his opponent.

There was a roar from the human soldiers.

Since he had strength enough to take on guardian bearers, Kai soon became key to the defense in the center of the northern wall. Kai alone was enough, so the other top-ranking soldiers spread out to defend other places that were short of soldiers.

The macaques had approached the village from the north and so the northern wall was the main battlefield, and yet Kai alone held the central region of the northern wall spanning more than 100 yulds. Veteran soldiers like Basco and Setta should have known just how unreasonable a task this was. And yet they simply smiled wryly while leaving Kai to handle the situation himself.

The amazing power in Kai’s legs allowed him to leap over the heads of the other soldiers as he rushed from one area of the northern wall to the next, just as each was about to be breached. He bounded from one spot to another, quickly dealing with each situation. With so many people crowded into the space atop the walls, fighting bare-handed actually made it easier for him to move around.

Just as Basco and the others had expected, leaving Kai to defend the northern wall as he pleased proved efficient, even though it was under fierce attack. If nothing else, it was worth showing them how their fearsome fake guardian bearer could be seemingly everywhere at once.

“Wow! Wow!”

“Here next! Quick! We can’t hold out!”

“Out of the way! Kai’s jumping over!”

The false kumadori that had been prepared for Kai must have been taken for the real thing in the eyes of the macaques. They clearly feared Kai, and they became reluctant to climb the northern wall.

Their eyes scanned across the defensive walls of Lag and whenever they saw one of the many other guardian bearers, their reluctance to fight was obvious.

This village was home to more guardian bearers than they’d expected. The disguises worn by the other top-ranking soldiers now looked too threatening for the soldiers scaling the walls to ignore.

It was almost half a toki since the battle had begun. The people of Lag shared a gut feeling that this first wave of their attack was nearing its limit.

A sound like the ringing of a bell with a wooden clapper filled the air, and then the macaque soldiers gradually began to withdraw. A macaque soldier clutching the edge of the wall looked back in frustration before leaping back down to the ground. Once the swarm of gray fur had receded, the pile of corpses beneath them was exposed to view.

Lag had faced an army of a thousand macaques. Those who felt that the fate of the village had been decided before the battle had begun were now unable to hide their surprise when they saw the result of their fierce resistance.

The humans rested and watched their enemies retreating. Then, as they watched the enemy retreat in half disbelief, they saw the powerful macaque army beyond them, an army that remained unharmed and organized.

The macaque soldiers that had gathered at their walls to start the fight in the defensive battle Lag had just fought were no more than a third of the overall army.

Their battle was against a settlement that was considered large even for a human domain. Most of the human soldiers grimaced when they realized that the battle had been a mere test to determine their combat potential.

“All squads, roll call.”

“Report any soldier who’s missing.”

Now that the fighting had died down, the survivors carried out a roll call right there, and the extent of the damage was made clear.

Lag had fought a good fight. The number of known casualties alone amounted to several dozen. Most of those were hit by flying boulders or had been beaten to death by macaques who’d scaled the walls. Some appeared to have been grabbed by the legs and dragged off the walls. Their fallen bodies were quickly recovered from outside of the village walls. Fortunately, they were all recovered whole.

Naturally, many times more people were injured.

“Kai, you’re really something.”

Many wanted to pat his shoulders, and few bothered to hide their admiration as they looked at him. Most men in the borderlands were quite simple and would think well of those who were strong. There were many soldiers who wanted to touch Kai. There was even one who reached for his crotch, and Kai responded with a sharp head butt.

It was only natural that people would want to gather around him.

There were surprisingly few casualties in the area where Kai had been. In the other parts of the wall the damage had been far worse.

The winter wind carried with it a faint scent of blood, and it drew heat away from necks and foreheads where hair was matted down with sweat. Kai was simply stunned by the sight of the battlefield and how much they’d lost.

“Kai.”

“Hey, Kai.”

“Let’s go, Kai.”

Kai breathed out the heat collected in his lungs as several voices called to him. His breath turned to white smoke which was carried away by the wind.

Kai looked at the main force of the macaques, which was the group that the tribe leader was most likely part of. He tried to imagine what they must be seeing and what they must be thinking.

They were just testing us. Why are they so cautious?

Manso had come looking for Kai and now he put his arm around Kai’s shoulders.

Then everyone urged the stunned squad leader down to the bottom of the wall where they could warm themselves. Kai allowed himself to be led.

Given the size of the enemy’s army and the difference in Lag’s combat potential, it seemed as though they could have taken Lag very quickly if they’d attacked with all of their power.

The macaques were being so cautious, even going so far as to build a fort. Kai couldn’t help but feel uneasy. No one, not even Manso, seemed to have noticed Kai’s confusion.

62

The day of the macaque raid had finally come to an end, and the village had survived. But the villagers couldn’t let their guard down, and a long night awaited them.

An eerie sort of peacefulness came after the temporary retreat of the macaque army. If anything had changed compared to before the battle, it was that the hostile macaques formed a perimeter around the village rather than being gathered in one place. They had completely encircled the village. Although they had superior numbers, there were still only 1,000 macaques, and the density of soldiers was so low that it was as though the village was wrapped in thin paper.

Those who’d experienced battles centered on villages laughed at the macaques’ lack of wisdom and pointed out how easy it would be to break through the perimeter at any single point. In fact, some of the soldiers were actually making this reckless suggestion to their superiors, so while soldiers such as Basco were relieved to see an increase in morale, they had a hard time discouraging the idea.

I guess they don’t want any guardian bearers to escape the village.

While looking at the macaques from atop the walls, Kai tried using his growing intuition to analyze the situation in his own mind.

Their ultimate goal was to drive the guardian bearers out of Lag and ensure their deaths so that they could claim the land gods as their own. When this desire was considered, their strange behavior became easy to understand.

They’d missed their chance to capture the divine spirit thief more than once in the past, and they wouldn’t let it happen again.

In a sense, Lord Olha and Lady White had triggered this great battle, but most soldiers agreed there’d been no sight of either of them during the day when the raid was underway. From the point of view of a soldier forced to fight in that difficult battle, it seemed unreasonable that important guardian bearers weren’t used to help defend the walls. Even if some circumstance prevented the baron himself from joining the battle, Lord Olha was their next most important warrior, and some went so far as to say openly that the day’s death toll would have been much lower if only Lord Olha had been there. There was also talk of how initial plans to defend the village had included Lord Olha, so many cast suspicious glances toward the castle as they delivered their criticism.

“Kai...”

The sun would soon set completely, and bonfires were being lit. The figure who came running towards Kai in the dim light was a squad member who should have been resting at the bottom of the wall.

Kai looked at him but said nothing. Sensing that something had happened, he braced himself for bad news.

When he descended from the wall, he found a familiar-looking woman from the castle was waiting for him at the bottom of the stone stairway. It must have been this woman who’d called for Kai, and it was her who took over and led Kai to the castle.

The woman introduced herself as Akui. She said she served as an attendant for the baron’s family.

He was led to the third floor of the castle and to a room where members of the baron’s house would usually pass the day. It was the first time Kai had ever set foot in one of the baron’s personal rooms. Kai entered the room when the woman urged him to do so. There he found himself face-to-face with the baron, who was surrounded by several women helping him to get dressed.

“There you are, Kai.”

The baron treated Kai to many training sessions, so Kai’s name and face were familiar to him.

The baron was wearing a black tunic instead of his usual attire. He looked at Kai and smiled slightly before grabbing some clothing that one of the women was carrying and throwing it toward Kai.

Kai caught it instinctively and found it was another black tunic just like the one the baron was wearing. He guessed it was for him to wear, so he immediately put it on.

The baron gave the women a look that caused them to leave the room without another word. Now that there was suddenly less activity in the room, the baron spoke.

“There’s work to do. Come with me.”

It was an order from his lord that left Kai no room for argument.

The baron walked with Kai at his side as he quickly explained the unusual state of affairs within the castle.

Lord Olha and Lady White had collapsed without warning.

Although neither of them had been unwell up until the raid, they had both developed high fevers and collapsed when the raid began. Both were now receiving treatment from the old healer.

There were three guardian bearers who were essential to the village’s defenses, and two of them had been lost immediately. The baron had of course ordered that this was to be kept secret lest it cause panic among the soldiers trying to defend against the enemy raid.

When the baron told Kai that he’d already lost all hope for the village at that point, Kai didn’t know how to respond. The news of the large role that Kai had played in the battle made him frown like a mortified child, but again, he gave his praise.

“So where are we going exactly?”

Kai still had no idea where the baron was taking him.

“To fix the sickness at its source,” the baron said with a toothy grin.

Dressed in black tunics, the pair scaled the wall near the lonely herb garden that Kai visited frequently. This was how they left the village without needing to explain themselves to anyone.

As for the living wall outside formed by the macaque siege, the baron took the opportunity to vent his frustration as they broke through it.

The tribe’s leader might have ordered that no guardian bearers should be allowed to escape, but it should have been obvious that this thin wall of meat was never going to stop a guardian bearer.

“Good, good,” the baron was muttering to himself as he smiled cheerfully and spilled the blood of the macaques. The macaques soon realized that someone from the village had broken through their circle, and soldiers under orders to hunt them down and kill them began approaching from all directions.

Despite how naturally athletic they were, it was unlikely that any ordinary macaque could keep up with a running guardian bearer. Indeed, the pair shook off their pursuers with ease.

Kai then realized where they were both headed.

By the time they arrived, stars filled the sky above the borderlands. Across the dark ground there was one place where there was still light.

Eda Village...

It was the lost village where Kai had been born, and where they’d find the ruined village of Lady White’s land god.

It was clear that the gravesite near the center had been disturbed.

“The apes... They really have cursed the land god.” The baron’s breath poured out in great white clouds as he spoke.

Kai felt as though he could sense some stirring of emotion from the baron in the faint smell of his sweat.

Curse on the land god?

It raised several questions, but intuitively, it made some sense to him.

If the unusual power of a guardian bearer was given by the blessings of a land god, then the source of that power could only be the gravesite where the land god slept. Spirit thieves who’d given up ownership of the gravesite couldn’t expect to continue stealing the power from it without any consequences.

“Kai. Forget everything you see here.”

“...”

“You hear me?”

“Yes, I understand.”

The reasoning was simple.

If someone held on to a land god improperly in an attempt to steal its blessings, it was remarkably simple for their enemies to bring them down.

If they don’t want the land god, they can just destroy the gravesite.

Kai didn’t understand what a gravesite was exactly. It was just his own theory, but if the actual body of the land god was inside the stone, destroying that might also kill the land god.

If the land god was killed, it made sense that the guardian bearer receiving its blessings would then lose their power.

Land gods were a core element of the world. From the point of view of the creatures inhabiting that world, trying to destroy them was as self-contradictory as trying to strangle oneself. It was akin to suicide.

If the land god was killed, the land would forever be a desolate and barren place.

It wasn’t something that would be done often. There was no reason to do it. The land itself would lose its value, and the desecrated land god would become weak.

When the baron had ordered Kai to forget everything, he must have seen Kai as no more than a boy raised in the village with no education. His attention was now directed toward learning the state of the gravesite damaged by the enemy.

In reality, Kai’s mind had developed to an incredible extent as he obtained knowledge from a past-life self, and he was far from the ignoramus that the baron expected him to be. If the baron had been aware, he’d probably have taken more care to prevent Kai from learning things that were better left unknown.

Now I see. As long as they don’t overdo it, it’s a useful trick.

Through a sort of controlled destruction of the land god’s gravesite, they could cause just enough harm to make the land god feel threatened. This would cause the spirit thief to feel great pain, leaving them unable to act.

Oh man. The god of the valley’s grave has a crack right through it. Should I be worried?

He understood that his god hadn’t died at least. He couldn’t help but sigh when he thought about how much there was that he didn’t know.

The baron stormed the gravesite of Eda under the cover of night.

Kai too threw himself into the middle of the cluster of macaques. His first act was to kick over the brazier that held their burning fire to give an advantage to the guardian bearers, with their superior night vision.

The village of Eda was plunged into darkness.

The baron darted from one place to the next, and with each slash of his sword, he offered the blood of his enemies to the gravesite. Every macaque that tried to flee was killed by Kai. When they realized who their attackers were, they shouted at them in the human tongue.

“The land god is ours!”

“If you come to kill, then kill!”

“Forest people will always torment you!”

The baron cut off their heads one after another.

The macaques closest to the gravesite that they’d unceremoniously excavated were the last ones.

Kai couldn’t stop his gaze from being drawn to the dreadful state of the gravesite.

“You mustn’t look,” the baron said assertively, causing Kai to avert his eyes.

Then the two began to run towards the home of the other land god.

63

He moved with such resolve.

Kai watched the baron from behind as he acted in the darkness. Ahead of him, the village of Elg where another grave had been desecrated was clearly visible, like a small island floating in a sea of black.

The baron ran with incredible speed as he tore through the cold air. Kai needed to use most of his power just to keep up.

The baron couldn’t have known that Kai was receiving the blessings of the god of the valley. And yet the baron unleashed his own superior physical strength as he pleased, with no concern for Kai.

Kai was calm enough to gradually slow himself down. He reasoned that he should follow behind at a leisurely pace. The baron said that he’d go on ahead and then continued on toward the brightly shining village of Elg.

He moved with such energy.

Understanding the wild nature of guardian bearers that resulted from the power within them might only have been possible to those who had scaled those heights themselves.

Kai’s shoulders shook with the laughter that naturally built up inside of him as the baron moved further and further ahead. The baron burned with a longing to protect the small area known as Lag, and that longing had been completely unleashed.

When they reached the gravesite in the ruins of Elg, they again found that this one too had been cursed by the macaques. The baron laughed a great laugh as he sent them fleeing. Kai belatedly charged into the battle and focused on eliminating any macaques that appeared hostile. If he could have used his abilities as a guardian bearer without restraint, a small number of demi-humans would be no problem at all, no matter how much stronger their species might be.

Kai felt as though screams of the macaques reached him through his skin rather than through his ears.

Maybe defending the village should have been easy...

With the macaques spread out to form a circle around the village, Kai and the baron could have raided their main camp and may have crushed them surprisingly easily. If the highest ranking enemy soldier was killed, the common foot soldiers would probably go running back to the forest with their tails between their legs.

When every last macaque in Elg had been dealt with and the baron had vented all of his frustration, Kai expected him to rest to catch his breath. Instead, the baron turned to Kai and said, “Let’s head back.” Everything had been easy for him.

Kai half expected that they would have continued their rampage, so the remark caught him a little off guard.

The baron must have guessed what Kai was thinking because he sheathed his sword at his waist and then looked at Kai as though he was a small child who didn’t know when to show restraint. His hard hand gripped Kai’s head tightly.

Kai couldn’t tell whether the baron was trying to pat his head or punish him.

The baron shook Kai’s head so violently that it could have broken his neck, but Kai just stood there and endured it silently.

“Guardian bearers who ignore their surroundings die quickly.”

“...”

“Are you the same way, Kai?”

He felt like he would be declaring himself an idiot if he agreed. So he kept quiet.

For a few moments, the baron looked up at the stars as if thinking to himself, and then he slowly explained how guardian bearers should live, making it easy for Kai to understand. The baron clearly knew that Kai was a greenhorn who lacked a lot of the knowledge that every guardian bearer should have.

“No matter how strong you are, carelessly charging at the enemy without any thought is like flipping a coin and betting your life on tails. Maybe you win once or twice, but no one in this world has such good luck that they can go on winning forever. The same might be said of you some day, but guardian bearers are strong. Keep a level head, and you’ll realize just how many options are available to you.”

“...”

“Choose your methods carefully and find a way to make victory a certain thing. Most of the time you’ll find that your power offers a solution to even the toughest problems. There’s always more than one way to grasp the fruits of victory. There’s no help for anyone stupid enough to get carried away and leave their victory to chance without learning the exact strength of the enemy.”

The unusual and exceptional power that guardian bearers held always afforded them more choices than any ordinary human, whatever the situation. Throwing away the numerous possibilities without consideration was considered the height of folly for a guardian bearer.

Kai understood this reasoning, and he accepted it.

At the same time, he realized something.

If he’s not tied down by the village, the baron can do whatever he wants.

Just like the koror who moved to the valley from Hacar, he could always begin anew without worrying about the land base he called a village.

Someone like the baron was a match for any small army by himself, so he could single-handedly allow the subjects of House Moloch to successfully escape from the battlefield. Just as long as he could overcome the fear that comes with leaving the enemy in control of the gravesite of the land god that was the heart of his blessings.

As long as they could live on, they could establish a new Lag in a different place. Then they might seek assistance from other lords such as Count Balta and find an opportunity to fight to take back Lag. That was why the baron was so calm despite the crisis the village faced.

Just the thought of abandoning the village sent a shiver down Kai’s spine.

To Kai, the village represented the world that had given him half of his life. To the baron, however, it was a single possession; nothing more than a tradable commodity with some value.

Even so...

The mess made of the gravesite visible in the corner of Kai’s eye made him gulp. There was something terrifying about losing control of one’s land and surrendering the gravesite to the enemy.

Although the baron had told him not to look, it wasn’t so easy to suppress his curiosity.

The macaques had dug up the grave and had used their axes to carve away the strange letters on specific parts on the stone. If those letters had been some sort of information that defined the existence of the land god, scraping away the letters might have thrown the god into a state of madness.

Not only had they damaged the functioning of the gravesite in this way, the macaques had also smeared the stone with black blood from some unknown source. Land gods chose living creatures as their vessels, so the blood might have had some significance related to the curse.

Although it was a curse intended to make the spirit thief suffer, it would also weaken the land god, and Kai somehow knew that it was a highly blasphemous act. It was unlikely that the macaques would choose a strategy that involved damaging something they prized so highly unless they’d given up on all other options. This was further supported by the fact that the koror and uzelles who’d given up their villages hadn’t fallen victim to such evil practices. It made no sense to claim the land god if doing so meant weakening it in the process. The proper means of taking over a land god was to directly kill whoever had taken it before consuming their godstone, just as the orgs hunting Porek had tried to do.

But in this particular case, they had for some reason decided to use a last resort that would cause irreparable damage. Perhaps they were unable to contain their hatred after seeing countless members of their kind killed day after day. Considering the degree of hate that had built up between the two species over the years, if another human from House Moloch was to escape with the blessings of another land god, the macaques might not hesitate to place a new curse on Lagdara of the village. Once they’d gotten their hands dirty through such blasphemous acts the first time, the sense of taboo associated with the act probably wouldn’t feel so strong in the future.

Although this was all speculation, it suggested that surrendering the village would be highly dangerous.

“If it comes to it, will you give up on Lag?” Kai asked quietly.

The baron looked surprised by the question.

He nodded.

“That’s always an option.”

“But if we lose the village’s fields, we’ll have no food to eat.”

“If that’s all we lose, we’ll have food once more when spring comes and we sow new seeds.”

The baron was sharing new information with Kai while taking interest in his unexpectedly deep thought process.

“Even if they make Lag their own, they can’t hold onto it. The land of their ancestors is in the great forest, while we humans have ruled over the borderlands for hundreds of years, despite how barren it may be.”

“...”

“Kai, do you know how humans have been able to hold on to such vast territories when they’re so weak compared to other species?”

“I don’t know.”

“After humans used the powerful blessings of the first king to establish the foundation, they incorporated countless land gods into the fabric of the nation over the course of hundreds of years. Human territories were supported by many gods, making them stable and fertile. We harvested plentiful wheat. We ate the gruel we made from the wheat. Humans became great in number. The number of humans in our lands grew to a million.”

The baron looked at Kai and spread his arms out wide, as if trying to represent the nation of humans, the Unified Kingdom, as he pictured it in his mind.

“Suppose one thousand macaques try to steal land away from humans. The humans will get together an equivalent number of soldiers to take back the precious land of their forefathers. In the beginning, humans amassed several armies of more than ten thousand men to conquer each land. Obviously, our numbers aren’t what they were in the past. But the count can still scrape together more than a thousand men. Elg and Eda were both branch villages started by House Moloch, so their restoration is a problem for House Moloch alone. But Lag is different. Our village is an official territory bestowed upon my house directly by His Majesty the King. If it was stolen, the king would have no choice but to raise an army large enough to overcome the enemy under the condition of the founding pacts. Kai, why else would they feel the need to build a fort in the forest? And why else would they be so fearful of us? To absorb Lag and claim a territory from the main territory of humans, they need to be ready for the war that begins when the battle for the village is over. They’re scared because they’re losing soldiers when the fight for Lag has only just begun. They thought that damaging two of our gods would help them bring the fight to a swift conclusion, but we fought back and did more damage than they expected. Because you fought back harder than they ever expected.”

Kai blinked in surprise.

He’d already guessed that humans were more numerous than demi-human species, but he was surprised to hear that there were one million humans. Kai only had vague notions of the vastness of the human nation, the Unified Kingdom. The borderlands alone was unfathomably vast and was home to tens of thousands of humans. If there were so many humans when all the other territories were considered, then it made sense that an army of 10,000 could be easily assembled by the order of the king.

Kai gulped as he felt that he was just starting to see the true scale of the fight.

It was as though the scales had fallen from Kai’s eyes. The macaque forces that had seemed so powerful had assembled because they knew they were treading on thin ice by inviting a major counterattack from the humans. The way they held back soldiers during the first fight was now easy to understand given the broader context.

The baron was so resolute because he was confident that he would have the power to fix things in the end. As a guardian bearer, Kai had also shared that same confidence. With someone to lead the way and clear the mist from his thoughts, the sense of urgency he’d felt since the start of the battle began to fade as if it was now someone else’s problem.

Now that Kai’s calmness had come back to him completely, he glanced again at the horrific state of the gravesite of Elg and asked if it wouldn’t be better for them to try to purify it before they went back. The baron laughed slightly at Kai’s calm manner.

“It’s a pain, but I’d better,” he said.

They couldn’t do any proper restoration so quickly, but Kai helped as they filled in the areas that had been dug up around the gravestone. Then the baron bit his finger, causing it to bleed, and he let the blood drip on the gravestone.

He then stood close to the grave and said some sort of prayer.

The baron’s god, Lagdara, was the master to whom the gods of Elg and Eda swore devotion. There may have been some secret meaning behind the prayer that he said.

The gravesite was still a dreadful sight to behold as the pair headed back toward the village.

64

By the time they returned to the village, about three toki had passed since their departure.

They’d quickly reburied the gravestones of the gods of Elg and Eda, and the dead of night was well upon them by the time they headed back to the village.

They’d had to fight with a group of macaques that followed them. Although they could have just hidden, the baron needlessly started a fight with them, delaying their return. The group of macaques included two guardian bearers, meaning that there were two guardian bearers on each side, making that fight not quite so one-sided as those fought when first leaving the village.

The baron got carried away and engaged them with his fists, so Kai did likewise, resulting in a tough battle that left them both covered in sweat. When they saw macaque reinforcements approaching, Kai and the baron ran away at the first opportunity.

Their guardian bearer had looked like a tres sigil, but the base physical strength of humans was far below that of macaques, so they were evenly matched in terms of strength. And of course, Kai couldn’t use his full strength without taking care not to draw the baron’s attention.

And so the two were sweating in spite of the winter cold, and white steam was rising from their bodies as they returned to the village.

There were women awaiting their return to the castle, so Kai had the unpleasant experience of having someone else clean his body before the baron told Kai to follow him. He was led to the third floor of the castle.

See through it.

The god of the valley had been restless since around the time that they’d passed through the gates to the village.

The women in the castle gazed meaningfully at Kai when they saw him being led to the third floor. The baron meanwhile was acting as if this was nothing out of the ordinary. Although Kai had been there the previous evening, this was not a place he’d normally be allowed to enter.

The baron entered a room, furnished with a fireplace, where the people of his household would spend their leisure time. He drove out several people from the room who must have been his own wives and children. Kai felt awkward when the baron’s children glared at him, but he entered the room at the baron’s invitation nonetheless.

The comfort of that heated room was a far throw from the barracks where cold drafts were a fact of life. The baron’s spoiled children would no doubt hold grudges against Kai for taking away this comfortable space and leaving them to the penetrating cold of the winter night. As comfortable as the room was, Kai felt as though it was no place for him.

Do not slaughter them needlessly.

His god was always commanding him to kill, but this night it sounded uncharacteristically kind.

The god of the valley’s feelings and the cause of its concern were as difficult to understand as always. The only thing Kai could understand through his deep connection to his god as its vessel was that it was highly concerned about something.

Kai was trying to guess what the god of the valley was worried about. He still had a lingering sensation of unease in his chest as he followed the baron’s instruction and sat down in a chair so soft that his body sank into it. The baron clapped his hands, and in no time at all someone came into the room carrying hot water.

Although Kai didn’t understand what was going on, he knew that the baron was treating him as a guest for some reason.

“Supper is being prepared. Consider it a reward for good work. Eat with me.”

Such favorable treatment was beyond the imagination of most villagers. The servant girl who brought the hot water was so surprised that she almost tripped over a rug.

Kai was spacing out as if his mind was somewhere else as well-salted wheat gruel was brought to them and the baron began shoveling it into his mouth.

“Eat up,” the baron urged him, and so Kai also began to eat the wheat gruel left in front of him.

It wasn’t ordinary wheat gruel. It was highly flavorful because it had been cooked in milk rather than water, giving it a rich and full taste that he’d never experienced before. Once he realized how hungry he was, he ate it up in no time at all.

When he realized that it contained queijo, it made him think of Parmesan cheese.

“It seems it’s to your liking. Queijo is a valuable delicacy that we sell at a high price. I had it taken specially from my personal supply. Continue living up to my expectations, and I’ll feed it to you again.”

The baron laughed a throaty laugh and then he followed up their light meal with half a toki of rambling talk.

First, the baron wanted to know when Kai first became aware of his own power, and then he followed this up with probing questions about how many godstones he’d eaten, how he felt at the time, and other things. When the baron asked Kai in all seriousness how much he could lift when using all of his power, Kai had no choice but to massively understate his abilities. He could tell that the response he gave was more or less what the baron expected.

When he was asked whether there were any girls in the village who he liked, Kai’s eyes darted back and forth in surprise. Elsa came to mind and so he said yes. At this, the baron knitted his eyebrows together in displeasure just slightly and said, “I see...”

It was a strange night. The next raid from the demi-humans never came, perhaps because Kai and the baron had broken through part of the circle of macaques. Instead, the villagers remained wide awake and restless, and the village was full of the lively chatter of sleepless villagers.

There was roughly one toki left until morning when Kai and the baron finally parted. Kai had headed back to his squad where he belonged and decided he would rest with the others by taking a nap, wrapped in a cloak by the bonfire.

Everyone must have been exhausted because the conversation soon died down and they all fell asleep.

Likewise, Kai closed his eyes.

The valley came to his mind for just a moment, and then his consciousness began to fade as drowsiness overcame him.

See through it.

The god of the valley spoke to him.

He had no idea what he was supposed to be seeing through.

He knew from experience that something serious was likely to happen if he didn’t figure out why the god of the valley was so agitated, so he went over the facts in his head while still half asleep.

He’d heard the human side of things from the baron and thought he more or less understood it. The next thing to consider was the other side: the reasoning behind the macaques’ behavior.

There was some circumstance behind everything that he couldn’t guess at.

Do not slaughter them.

The unnecessary drowsiness Kai felt had faded away. Guardian bearers barely needed to sleep.

He found himself looking up at the castle, and there was something that drew his gaze toward one of the windows. It wasn’t the baron; he was being watched by a woman who he’d met somewhere before.

The feeling of being watched made his consciousness come back to him completely. He made sure he wasn’t being watched before he crept away, taking care not to wake his sleeping squadmates.

That was her... the woman who took me to the castle.

He recalled that she was a servant named Akui.

Kai was aware that he was attracting attention from women lately, but he felt she had some other reason for watching him.

“Going to take a leak,” Kai told the nearby soldiers who noticed him approaching, before making his way toward the herb garden.

Kai estimated that he had another two toki to spare before daybreak.

He felt that he had to make the most of the precious time remaining before the great battle that was likely to start the next morning.

Kai scaled the walls of the village effortlessly, and his shadowy figure went unnoticed as he ran. As he checked the angle of Ispi Rio overhead, he laughed at the thought of how dutiful he was becoming.

**

She put her hand to her racing heart as she hid behind the frame of the window.

She didn’t think she’d been seen, but his gaze felt so powerful that it was as if it might pierce right through her, and now she couldn’t be sure.

Akui closed her eyes tightly and tried to calm her racing thoughts.

The baron had given her orders to show the boy an unusually warm reception after the two of them returned from somewhere outside the village in the middle of the night. She’d seen with her own eyes how he’d even chased away his own family. She’d been shocked when the baron went so far as to give him highly nutritious gruel with precious queijo added to it.

The conversation that followed also made it difficult for the women who were listening to relax.

How could they relax?

The conversation had made it obvious to anyone listening that the baron intended to let the boy marry into his household.

The idea of an ordinary villager being taken into a lord’s household was virtually unheard of.

It was a situation so extraordinary that Akui felt she needed to get some sense of the strong feelings that existed within the baron.

“Akui, Akui...”

“Young Master.”

“Please, I want water.”

“You’re thirsty? In that case, I shall bring you water right away.”

“Tell someone else to do it. I... I want you here, Akui.”

“I can’t treat you as though you’re still a child. It will only take me a moment.”

Akui moved away from the edge of the window and approached her young master while gazing at the face buried among the several layers of bedsheets. His face was regaining its color, as if his suffering had become less intense.

Her young master, Lord Olha, trusted Akui more than anyone and had asked for her to be at his bedside.

She had been given the task of taking care of him ever since he was very small, and though there was no more between them, Akui found herself being asked to attend to everything that concerned him.

The boy had grown to be so beautiful, and his favor for Akui felt like love, even though she was already beyond a marriageable age.

“Akui, Akui.”

“What is it now? You really are like a child.”

“You’re the one... I’ll protect. I’m going to become stronger than Father so I can protect you.”

Akui sighed quietly to herself as she checked her appearance.

If she was to fetch cold water, then she had best draw it from the well behind the castle.

When he’d collapsed the previous evening, it had all happened so suddenly. At that time, she had been hopelessly worried. Fortunately, his condition had rapidly improved in the middle of the night, and he’d regained consciousness around the time the baron returned.

His fever wasn’t gone, but he was fully awake asking questions about the state of the village. It anguished him greatly to learn that he’d passed out just before the raid on the village started. When he heard that the village had somehow overcome the initial crisis and that this victory had buoyed the spirits of the villagers, he said nothing more than “I see,” and then hid his face under his bedsheets for some time. His prideful nature made it difficult for him to hide the shame he felt when he learned that his life had been saved by villagers who he normally treated as insignificant.

Akui was the only person who knew that Lord Olha had a childish side that he normally kept hidden. Olha would only ever show that side of himself to Akui, and this special treatment made her proud.

Poor, poor Lord Olha.

Lord Olha still didn’t know.

Big things had begun to happen within his house while he was sleeping. Those events had the potential to shake up the path of succession within House Moloch, causing large twists in a path that everyone had thought was already decided.

There was no way she could tell him yet.

She wanted him to rest peacefully until his body was fully recovered.

“I’ll be back in a moment.”

When Akui left the room, other women in waiting moved to enter the room in her place. But Akui stopped them. When he’d awoken in the middle of the night, hallucinations had sent him into a rage, and now the room was a terrible mess. She knew how sensitive her master was to the eyes of other people and could guess how he would feel. But when the woman in his favor behaved this way, it came across as condescending to the other women, and it was as though she was trying to keep Olha all for herself.

Akui pretended not to notice the cold stares that were focused on her as she walked off.

Other women had gathered outside of Lady Jose’s room. It was clear that she’d also had a difficult night. The lady’s screams had been heard multiple times the previous evening.

Akui had been unable to stop herself from pleading to the baron.

She’d begged him, please do something for the children that are your own flesh and blood.

Akui bit her lip softly and tried to behave like a calm servant girl as she walked through the long corridors of the castle.

65

See through it.

What was it the god of the valley had seen?

Kai knew he’d be seen by the enemy, and he was ready for the turmoil that would ensue. He felt that even now, something ill-fated was happening, and soon the village would be caught up in the beginning of some great turmoil. As he ran through it all, he was preparing himself for battle.

The perimeter formed by the macaques had been formed about 300 yulds away from the village, beyond the reach of human arrows. When Kai got closer, he found only their unique shields, large things covered in tree bark, arranged side by side.

Beyond those, gray balls of fur were crouching down in an attempt to endure the cold. There were less of them than he expected, and they barely had any lookouts. The only activity in the formation was around a bonfire, and that appeared to be the only fire they had. There was nothing to suggest that anything was happening here.

It was as if they lacked all enthusiasm, and Kai found that in itself suspicious. The day before they’d been eager to fight, and when the sun rose, they would probably mount another attack in an attempt to reduce the number of human lives. Yet the gray backs the macaques were showing had signs of agonizing fatigue.

Are they being forced to attack?

The piercing cold of the night was felt on both sides, so it was easy to imagine the mental fatigue they must have felt as they remained crouched and motionless. The chilling cold must have been eating its way into their bones, lowering their morale as an army.

When winter came to Lag, it brought with it a feeling of relief, as if all that remained was to hibernate in safety and spend the season living off the supplies they’d gathered. The harshness of the season would only increase. If the villagers had been torn from their settlement and forced to fight with another species, they would not have gone willingly. All the more so when expeditions made to the lands outside meant wasting food unnecessarily. It was easy to imagine that everything their settlements had gathered would be used up. Given the primitive nature of the agriculture of the forest’s inhabitants, which consisted of foraging for the natural fruits and berries of the forest and harvesting crops grown by outdated slash-and-burn agriculture, it was unlikely that they had ample provisions to waste on the battle. At any rate, it was far from likely that their morale was high.

Based on the amount of smoke rising from the forest before the start of the battle, they had used up large amounts of food. Perhaps the macaques had been counting on using Lag’s food supplies to see them through winter from the very start. Perhaps their leaders had even told them they would die unless they stole food.

Kai studied every inch of their formation on the western side and reckoned that there were about 100 macaques there.

So there are one thousand of them overall, but only one hundred on this side?

Their defenses were unexpectedly thin, suggesting that most of them were gathered on the northern side.

Kai realized that breaking through their perimeter was going to be child’s play. It turned out that when the baron and Kai had broken through by force a short while ago, the macaques had been distressed to find that their superiority in numbers was not enough to stop them. The tribe leader had mistaken it for a night raid and had gathered up more soldiers in the main camp, causing the perimeter to be thinner here. Naturally, Kai knew none of this as he charged through their crude perimeter without a second thought.

Now that he was hidden in the darkness on the outside of the perimeter where fewer eyes were watching, he hurried towards the main camp on the north side.

See through it.

The god of the valley wasn’t letting him shake off the sense of urgency.

Without having any idea what it was he was supposed to see through, Kai had some vague notion that he’d understand more after seeing the main camp. He saw a swarm of several hundred macaques that had gathered around his destination and determined that several of them were guardian bearers. That made him reluctant to move closer.

What now, My God?

He was completely outnumbered.

If a human guardian bearer was foolish enough to show himself, he could expect to be overcome by a surge of macaques and then tormented to death.

The god of the valley was telling him to see through it and not to slaughter them, but it was clearly the villagers who were at a disadvantage. Kai couldn’t see how he could be in a position to go easy on them as if they were beneath him.

He thought things over for a while and couldn’t come up with any particular plan, but he did decide that things might go better if he disguised himself, rather than approaching as a human.

Kai remembered the disguise he’d hidden in the forest sometime earlier and then ran into the forest. A quarter of a toki later, a masked koror had appeared outside the main camp of the macaques.

**

A koror silently approaching under the cover of darkness was spotted by one of the macaque guardian bearers, who let out a threatening howl.

“*****!”

Kai didn’t understand the macaque tongue.

So he didn’t stop.

The irritated macaque guardian bearer came charging toward Kai along with other soldiers that appeared to be its subordinates. They had no trouble surrounding Kai, but when Kai saw the kumadori that was visible on the guardian bearer’s face, he felt a lot more relaxed because it was nothing more than a doi sigil. Kai hadn’t planned anything beyond running away if things went bad, but from a third-person perspective, he looked like someone ready to meet his death with cold indifference on the battlefield.

But of course, Kai’s objective was to see through it, not to fight with the macaques.

The fur on the macaque guardian bearers head was standing up in a way that caused Kai to name it Mohican in his mind. Mohican wasn’t acting like a mature individual; it was continually screeching as if it couldn’t calm down. Going by feeling alone, Kai guessed it was saying, “Koror aren’t welcome here!”

“***.”

“****, **!”

The other soldiers were also howling to their heart’s content in a show of support for their superior.

Kai felt they were trying to pick a fight by saying “Don’t play dumb!” and “Got nothing to say?! Speak up!”

Mohican seemed to grow more confident when Kai said nothing back. It brought its face so close to Kai he could feel its foul breath against his skin, and then it let out a particularly loud howl.

The koror must have been one of the weakest species of the great forest. It was unlikely that such frail creatures won many fights against the larger species.

And yet they were a tenacious species that continued to survive. Even when they had disputes with other species, it was likely that their ability to produce high-quality craftwork was still valued. Although they were likely to be threatened into giving up their wealth, their lives were probably not taken in most cases. Rare species, such as the uzelles with their prized horns and woven goods, must have escaped being massacred by other species thanks entirely to the ways in which they were uniquely useful as a species.

The macaque in Kai’s face showed no true desire to kill him, giving Kai ample time to consider his situation.

Mohican began to become irritated by Kai’s silence, and when it became unable to hold back any longer, it grabbed Kai by his koror clothing.

Kai quickly grabbed its hand and took the initiative.

“We talk.” Kai finally spoke in a crude attempt at the koror tongue.

Kai had spent a lot of time interacting with other species in the valley lately and had learned a good number of words, including some that were in the uzelle tongue. Kai knew that he’d have no choice but to deal with them more in the future now that they’d sworn devotion to him, so he’d taken the initiative by asking Porek and Aruwe to teach him.

He was surprised to find that learning the languages of other species was actually rather simple.

At its heart, it was vocal mimicry.

“Where’s tribe leader? Take me.”

At first, it was a struggle to understand the unfamiliar words, and producing sounds that normally came from a differently shaped throat was difficult.

But doing so was at the very core of learning the language of another species.

Porek had explained that the difference in the language of each species simply came about from differences in the nature of their throats, and that all species otherwise spoke one universal language, humans included. When Kai put this reasoning to use to help him master the languages of the species, he finally came to accept the idea as part of the rule set of this world.

A unique characteristic of language learning in this world was that there was no need to spend great amounts of time learning grammar or memorizing vocabulary; it was only necessary to speak by mimicking the sounds made by a particular species and to grow accustomed to hearing it.

Kai was holding onto Mohican’s wrist.

Not only was he holding onto it, he was preventing it from moving in the slightest.

“Take me.”

Mohican’s face had frozen as it looked at the koror mask.

This display of power must have made it realize that the koror it faced was also a guardian bearer. It looked down at its own immobilized arm and understood that the koror in front of it was far superior in terms of physical strength.

From its perspective, a koror smaller than a macaque child was displaying far superior muscular strength. Mohican was stunned and confused, and the other soldiers were also losing their enthusiasm.

Kai became impatient while waiting for Mohican to come to its senses, so he grasped its wrist more tightly. When his fingernails dug into its flesh, Mohican was suddenly alert.

“U-Understood...”

Now that he had its agreement, he took his hand away.

Mohican had now pulled itself together. It quietly turned away and then looked back as if urging Kai to follow. The situation made no sense to the other soldiers around them. One of the soldiers suddenly reached out and grabbed Kai’s shoulder, causing Kai to respond with a light punch.

It produced a short yelp and then the large body of the soldier rolled backwards and appeared to bounce along the snow-covered ground. It all happened so fast that it left the watching macaques frozen in place.

“Take me. Quickly.”

When Mohican stopped, Kai urged it onward.

Mohican must have regretted getting involved with a creature so dangerous. The way its shoulders drooped was clear to see as it walked. The soldiers around them had also decided that it was better not to approach this mysterious koror.

From beneath the mask, Kai could see movement in the main camp of the macaques.

They must have been watching the disturbance. Several guardian bearers gathered and were ready to take on the unexpected visitor. The other soldiers posted around the main camp had parted left and right as if they were afraid to block Kai’s path.

66

There were many eyes following Kai.

The koror clothing that Kai wore was dyed with patterns that appeared to be ancestral symbols of the koror species, and it was carefully decorated with embroidery here and there, making it clear that it was a well-tailored item of clothing.

Kai stood out from the macaques whose standard clothing was a very basic outfit made from pelts and strips of cloth worn over the shoulders. Their rich body fur retained their body heat, so macaques had little need for clothing. Differences in culture stemming from the different characteristics of each species created a strange feeling when the differences were so stark. Those that could find this amusing were mostly those knowledgeable enough to view the world as if they were looking down from somewhere up high.

There were several who caught sight of Kai’s eyes, which were visible behind the mask. They viewed him suspiciously when they saw something in his eyes that suggested he found them amusing.

Naturally, he couldn’t be taken directly to the tribe leader.

The guardian bearers stopped at a makeshift barrier that had been built around the main camp, where their guide Mohican argued with someone for a short while. When he told them that the masked koror with him was a powerful guardian bearer, several macaques moved closer to Kai with noticeable killing intent.

Mohican tried to stop them, but they weren’t listening. Kai prepared for trouble by squaring his shoulders and clenching his fists. The two macaques that came to bar his path were both particularly large guardian bearers.

The macaques blocking his way knew that Kai was also a guardian bearer, so they were already showing their kumadori. Kai had grown used to judging his opponents from their sigils, so he made his decisions quickly.

All right... they’re both doi sigils.

So far, he’d never seen a guardian bearer with a level 1 sigil.

Although Kai did not know it, the theological theory developed by academics in the royal center stated that divinity could be measured based on the total number of vertical lines that the sigil formed across the brow. In most cases, the sigil would first appear in the form of circles around both eyes, so there would be at least two lines passing between the eyebrows, and the lowest level of sigil was described as a level 2, doi sigil, based on this theory.

In the borderlands where the gods belonged to barren land and populations were generally limited to a few dozen, the doi sigil that even Lady White could produce despite her weakened blessings was the most common form of sigil. But of course, the sigil level wasn’t the only thing that determined someone’s strength, and Kai didn’t let his guard down.

The two macaques approached as if trying to intimidate Kai, but they didn’t charge at him despite their visible irritation. Instead, they tried to emphasize the difference in body size between koror and macaque by standing close to Kai and looking down at him from above as if he was insignificant.

They must have mistaken Kai’s subdued reaction for fear because one of them brought its nose close to his face, looking proud and victorious, and then rudely sniffed at him. Meanwhile, the other poked Kai with its axe to provoke him.

“Koror never strong.”

“Ridor in bad mood now. Go away!”

Given the difference in physical strength between the two species, it was no surprise that they belittled him.

Mohican had also gone red in the face while being ridiculed for being scared of a koror.

Kai had stayed calm despite it all, but he had no choice but to return to the village before daybreak. He knew he couldn’t play games with them all night, so he ignored them and walked on.

“Take me,” he once again commanded Mohican, who was standing in the middle of the group.

But then the macaque who had been in his face tried to block his path mockingly. It kept on throwing dumb insults at him, such as, “Koror weakling.” It tried to make a fool of him by moving its face close once again and exhaling foul breath against his skin.

Kai casually delivered a headbutt to its nose. The mask left his forehead region exposed, so it didn’t get in the way of the headbutt.

The blow was enough to make that macaque fall backwards. Kai then threw down the macaque that had grabbed him, leaving it lying on its back where Kai could proceed by walking over it. Guardian bearers with doi sigils were like mere children.

The scene left the guardian bearers speechless, but a few moments later they were all about to charge at him at once. But then they were stopped by a cry of “Wait!”

“This koror soldier very strong.”

Another macaque had appeared from behind the rest.

Kai didn’t recognize the macaque instantly, but it did look familiar. When Kai studied the kumadori on its face, he realized that this was the macaque leader who’d led the group of 100 macaques back when Kai killed the inspector.

The macaque leader switched to the difficult-to-understand macaque tongue and appeared to be telling a story. The agitation on the face of the macaque with a doi sigil began to gradually fade.

Kai tried listening to the words as if he was another macaque, and he understood that it was the story of how Kai had infiltrated Lag during the battle a few days ago, and that he was being described as a friend whose enemy was their enemy. The way they looked at Kai changed when they heard that he’d single-handedly dragged a human guardian bearer from the village and executed him superbly.

Knowing that they shared the same enemy must have caused the macaques to feel a sense of kinship. They had newfound respect for him, knowing that he’d been able to deal a major blow to a bitter enemy of theirs. After hearing the army leader’s story, they let him pass without trouble while Mohican and the army leader led the way.

The army leader’s sigil appeared to be a tres sigil. This rank must have been befitting for a macaque who led a herd of 100 other macaques.

The center of the camp was awash with balls of gray fur. Several layers of great shields covered in familiar tree bark were set up within the fence, and behind them were shield bearers that looked like hairballs because they’d curled up to protect their arms and legs from the cold.

In the middle of the strong defenses there was a large tent made from hide, and it seemed likely that inside they’d find the highest-ranking macaque of this large unit, the chief of the tribe.

The army leader told Kai to wait for a moment and then disappeared into the tent. He heard some sort of discussion going on inside before he was invited in. Mohican watched Kai step into the tent without following after him.

Once Kai was inside the tent, he caught the scent of burned tallow and found the air was as warm as human skin.

They coated the tanned hide with fat? That must make this a sturdy tent.

The tent had a double layer construction, and he found himself in a surprisingly warm space when he passed through the second inner entrance. There was a soft feeling against his feet, and he realized that this was a carpet formed by animal fur.

“Dealka, what is this koror?” someone asked listlessly.

A macaque with unusually long hair sat down on what appeared to be a large cushion covered in animal fur and then looked at Kai. It looked as though it had lived many years, and its voice was hoarse and vanishingly quiet.

It was no doubt a guardian bearer. The kumadori of the tribe leader began to appear, presumably because it had been told that Kai was a powerful koror warrior.

Looks like a quart sigil... That makes it level with the baron.

Kai understood that this was common courtesy, so he displayed his own sigil. The glyph sigil representing the god of the valley appeared on the area of Kai’s forehead that wasn’t hidden by the mask. The thick, drooping eyelids of the macaque tribe leader drew back when it saw Kai’s sigil.

A glyph would only ever appear for the strongest of guardian bearers. The macaques must have known this too, because the air of disdain that some were still showing towards him for being a koror vanished in an instant.

“You are the herd leader?” Kai spoke the words carefully while thinking about what he might say next.

The god of the valley had told him to see through it. The basic question of what it was he needed to see through was something Kai still needed to think about.

But events moved on without Kai needing to puzzle over it any longer.

The macaque tribe leader slowly climbed to its feet, then it looked as though it was falling forward because its legs were too weak as it dropped to its knees and pressed its forehead to the floor.

“*****!”

It screeched something in its own tongue as if it had forgotten that this was a koror that it was kneeling before, and then it spoke to Kai in koror tongue once again, making it easier for him to understand.

“Great god of Kanae!”

This was a new word that Kai didn’t understand.

Porek had called the god of the valley, “God of Arbitration.” The armored org had less formally called him “Valley God.” The god of the valley’s previous host vessel must have been famous enough to earn himself a unique name among the macaques too.

The macaque guardian bearers inside the tent rushed over when they saw their tribe leader lose all self-control, but the tribe leader pushed them away and clearly didn’t want their help.

The tribe leader then began to crawl toward Kai, causing him to back off instinctively. But every time Kai backed away the tribe leader edged closer. Kai had no choice but to endure it when, just as he’d expected, the tribe leader clung to his legs.

“Praise the ancestor spirits who guided you! The great god of Kanae must be led to our domain...”

“...?!”

Although the tribe leader was several times Kai’s body weight, the power his blessings gave him meant that it wasn’t enough to move him. Standing still wasn’t difficult in itself.

The macaque’s needle-like fur was painfully pricking against him, but that was something he just had to ignore.

“A protector has been sent to bring salvation to our people!”

The real difficulty was trying to understand anything the macaque was talking about.

67

Naturally, Kai asked for an explanation.

Although he was being pressured to go to the macaque dwelling without understanding what was going on, Kai had his own circumstances to think about, and the first thing was to decide whether or not he actually wanted to go there.

Obviously, he wasn’t going to agree to solve their problems without understanding what the situation was. If it was some problem that affected their species, it made no sense for him to go out of his way to help them. They were convinced that Kai was a koror, so overall it was as though the macaques were asking for help from the koror.

But the koror, specifically the Hacar tribe that Kai pretended to belong to, were nomads driven out of their own territory. It didn’t make much sense for the macaques to ask for help from koror when the macaques were the dominant species of the eastern forest. For a start, the Hacar tribe had never received aid from the other tribes around them back when their village and precious gravesite were being taken away from them. The macaques couldn’t deny that they had been among those who’d stood back and watched as it happened.

If they turned a blind eye when another species was in crisis but then were rescued when a crisis fell on them, there was a good chance that this would encourage them to behave selfishly in the future.

So before hearing their explanation, Kai wanted to know more about the relationship between the macaques and Hacar, and how the species saw each other.

This resulted in the tribe leader shamelessly describing a relationship that matched Kai’s prediction exactly. The macaques did indeed know of the koror from Hacar and the crafts they produced. They’d also known that the orgs had taken away the koror’s land. Probing a little deeper, it turned out the macaques had stolen from the koror several times. The relationship of power between the two species was such that the macaques could steal from this weaker species without consequence and then boast of how they paid for what they took by letting the koror keep their lives.

These guys are no better than the pigs.

As shocked as Kai was, he couldn’t just abandon the discussion because the god of the valley wanted him to see through it. The macaques must have realized that their species’ past callousness towards the koror of Hacar might now be coming back to haunt them, because the macaques were looking awfully anxious. The tribe leader raised its hands in a gesture intended to make Kai calm down, and every other macaque present then copied the same gesture. It was rather irritating. As a species, they were either thickheaded or just incredibly brazen, and it was hard to tell which. Two female-looking macaques stood by the side of the tribe leader then began to groom its fur, which was surprising enough in itself, but then Kai felt the presence of one of them behind him reaching out to touch the hair on his head and his immediate reaction was to drive it away with a barehanded chop.

“Land rot has started.”

The tribe leader then began explaining the crisis facing their species, as if it still felt sure Kai would give his complete cooperation.

The land was rotting in the eastern part of the great forest ruled by the macaques, causing the trees there to wither and die very quickly. The tribe leader looked straight at Kai and explained that the problem had started to the north of the great forest, from turmoil affecting the various species living at the northern limit, and the disorder had now reached the territory that they ruled over.

Naturally, Kai was thoroughly confused by what he was hearing. He was suddenly being told of events on a grand scale, and he lacked the background knowledge needed to follow the explanation. Unlike its host, the god of the valley remained calm and accepting, and this was just enough to make it possible for Kai to sit still.

Kai tried to be patient as he listened and somehow managed to make some sort of sense of the macaque’s reasoning.

Beyond the forest, at the northern limit, in the unexplored plains where the orgs live, there are some territories that belong to demi-humans... There’s a really strong enemy invading there from outside and they’ve made the territory unstable because they stole so many land gods. And now the effects of all that are starting to spread to the great forest.

There was still much Kai struggled to understand about the world’s rule set as far as land gods were concerned. He understood that many land gods belonging to other species had been stolen, but not why this would have an impact on the land of the macaques when they weren’t directly related. That part was completely beyond his understanding.

The tribe leader went on talking in a boastful manner, as if it expected Kai to easily understand everything.

Kai let this long-winded speech go on just so he could learn more about the situation in the demi-human world, hoping that he might pick up some knowledge related to the secrets of land gods.

“In land of northern limit we had several exclaves. Those were all devoured. From there, curse spreads.”

They had been trying to steal land gods from humans while their demi-human opponents were doing the same thing to them at the northern limit.

Land gods they’d stolen while driven by greed were attacked by their external enemy and horribly defiled and cursed. Vows of devotion or some other sort of connection had caused a serious impact, like a negative status effect, to develop across their land.

What came to Kai’s mind were their secret activities in the villages of Elg and Eda, where the macaques had performed curse rituals themselves.

Defiling a gravesite would cause the land god to suffer terribly and might also cause some sort of impact to be felt by a higher god that the cursed god served.

In any case, the land was cursed, resulting in a serious condition where trees and crops would wither away, known as land rot.

As for the external enemy invading the northern limit, that was some fearsome creature who had threatened demi-humans since long ago, known as “the ones from the snow plains.”

This was all so unfamiliar to Kai that he wasn’t sure whether he could believe much of it, but then he remembered that the miao who visited the valley had also spoken about something similar happening in the land of demi-humans recently.

Come to think of it, the big battle that the orgs are focused on is against some external enemy to the north.

He’d received consistent information from two unexpected sources, and now he was curious. Orgs were a fairly powerful species in the demi-human world, but they’d needed to fight as a nation to resist the strong enemy coming from the north, and even had to buy up supplies from visiting merchants despite knowing they were being overcharged.

Kai didn’t know whether these two external enemies were the same enemy, but his intuition told him that they were related somehow.

The tribe leader then continued to speak and urged Kai to take action.

“Transformation happened. The diabo took Heju.”

At that very moment, the god of the valley cried out in rage.

It was a hate-filled cry like the dulled sound of a cracked bell.

Diabo!

The word seemed to hold some sort of deep significance for the god of the valley.

Diabo! Diabo!

The one thing Kai knew for sure was that this was no small problem.

**

Kai had moved away from the macaques’ main camp and returned to the forest where he could remove his disguise. He wondered whether he should make a quick visit to the valley, but the faint purple glow created by the rising sun made him think better of it. Instead, he went back to the village.

There were many things he wanted to discuss with Porek.

However, he knew the discussion would take a long time once it started. For that reason, he decided to leave the discussion until the following night.

He moved quickly in the dull purple light and found a blind spot between the guards on watch near the shadowy herb garden where he crossed over the wall. He lay low at the top of the wall and studied the village for a brief moment before climbing down using a large tree.

Kai was about to go back to his life in the village as if nothing had happened, but then he was taken by surprise by someone who was about to make that difficult for him.

“Where’d you go?”

Kai had been careless. He hadn’t checked whether there was anyone behind the tree he used to climb down.

He also realized that he’d left the village from that same spot. His intuition told him that he’d been watched since that time.

Elsa’s sister, Lilisa, was standing there scowling at him. She must have been waiting for him ever since he had left the village.

She was trying to discover the secret location.

“Did you go to see Sis? You did, didn’t you?”

“...”

“Why don’t you answer? You didn’t think I’d see you, did you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Kai had done nothing of the sort and was completely exhausted from working tirelessly the day before. He had no desire to talk to her, so he kept a blank face and walked away.

Lilisa quickly grabbed Kai’s clothing and pulled him back.

“Stop! Wait!”

“What do you want?”

“I just said! I want to know where Sis is!”

“Elsa’s dead.”

“That lie won’t work on me anymore! Just tell me! I want to see her!”

“...”

A number of responses came to Kai’s mind.

But none that he cared to speak. He kept his lips sealed tight.

Kai’s mind was filled with the many things he’d seen and heard. The argument with this little girl felt trivial at that moment, and he looked at her with a gaze that lacked any emotion.

When Lilisa saw his expression, she let go of his clothing.

Then tears began to spill from the corners of her eyes.

When Kai started to walk away once more, Lilisa could only stand there and watch.

68

The night grew brighter without mercy, and many soldiers held their breath as they looked into the sky. The sigh that escaped from these exhausted men formed clouds of white smoke that were carried away on the wind.

Everyone knew that the first attack that happened the day before was just the demi-humans testing them. Once morning came, it would bring killing much more horrific than what had come before. In the eyes of each soldier was the acceptance that this might be the fight that cost them their lives. The enemy were still standing there just as they had been the day before, and each of their soldiers held a weapon and looked ready for battle.

It was some time after daybreak when something happened.

It happened just as the women were bringing the soldiers hot water to wake them up.

A lone macaque whose fur was a different color from the others, making it look like a guardian bearer, approached from the macaque camp. It used a hand to knock away the arrows that flew at it from the village as if they were a small annoyance. This lone macaque then began to speak clearly in the human tongue.

Most of the villagers didn’t even know that demi-humans were capable of speaking human language, so they were completely stunned. They were shocked further when they understood the words the creature spoke.

“We people of the forest honor our promise. Protector of Kanae told us to stop fighting!”

The macaque guardian bearer was clearly displeased by its own announcement. It broke the handle of the stone axe it held in two and then respectfully placed it at its feet.

This was a ritual of cease-fire that had been used between demi-humans since ancient times, but none of the humans understood this and the occasional arrow continued to fly in the macaque’s direction.

“Protector said do not kill. I resist. Just this time!”

The lone macaque caught an arrow from midair, and the arrow was broken in two by the power of its grip. It then pounded the ground and headed back to its own camp.

As if this was some sort of signal, the air filled with the sound of the macaques’ howling one after the other.

“They’re retreating? They’re the ones running?”

When the news reached Lag’s ruler, Moloch Vezin, he mustn’t have believed what he was hearing. He immediately left the castle and headed for the top of the northern wall. The soldiers that were there looking to the north were pushed aside by the baron so that he could see the enemy camp from the wall for himself.

The hundreds of macaques that had surrounded the village were gathering together in the main camp, and it was clear that the cluster of gray fur balls were busy with some activity. As if trying to prove that their announcement to humans was true, they were taking down the basic fences they’d set up around the camp.

It could have been a deception. It would have been easy for them to have found a gap in Lag’s defenses while everyone had gathered to the northern side with their guard lowered. The human village was so entranced by the activity of the macaques that the other soldiers on watch had become distracted.

Before the sun was high in the sky, it became clear that the army was genuinely retreating and then cheers of joy erupted from the people of the village.

“We’ve won?”

“We did! They’re really leaving!”

“We’re alive!”

“We didn’t die!”

“We’re saved!”

They shook hands and they hugged one another.

One soldier even hugged Vezin by accident, and when the strongest guardian bearer in the village hugged back, he almost broke the soldier’s spine with just one arm. Vezin laughed a great belly laugh while Basco, Setta, and the other soldiers who’d risked their lives fighting on the top of the wall threw down their weapons and started to dance. The celebrations soon spread to the center of the village, and high-pitched cries of celebration from the women within the walls joined the cheers of the men.

Everything that could be called a window was thrown open in the castle, and women leaned out from inside to cheer and bash the window frames with their fists before hastily running back into the castle. They must have gone to deliver the news to the suffering members of the baron’s household.

The celebrations grew as if the village was holding a festival.

“My Lady!”

A woman with a bright red face went rushing through the castle on unsteady feet and couldn’t hold back her cries of joy. Some tried to admonish her for her improper behavior, but she paid them no mind and clung to her bed where a lone girl was resting with her upper body raised.

The sick girl’s red pupils were wide with surprise.

“The enemy has fled! The village is saved!”

Jose received the news while still in bed because she still hadn’t fully recovered from the illness that came over her the previous evening. Some color came back to her white cheeks and in a small voice she asked, “Is it really so?” The woman nodded enthusiastically and smiled back at her before leaving her bedside.

Female attendants rushed to stop her, but Jose pushed them aside and stumbled out of the room. There she found her brother Olha, who appeared healthier than Jose but still looked unwell. Their eyes met, and they shared the same feelings of misfortune over the way both brother and sister had collapsed at the same time.

“We have both shamed ourselves,” Olha said.

“Yes, it’s true.”

Their pride must have been something they shared as siblings related by blood.

She watched her brother walk off on unsteady feet so that he might reconcile with the people of the village, and then the younger sister also followed after with her attendants supporting her as she walked. Behavior befitting high-class individuals such as the family of a lord was something drilled into both siblings since they were very young.

Although they were guardian bearers expected to fight to defend their village, neither of them had been present. They couldn’t change the fact that they had left the burden on the shoulders of their people at the time when they were needed most. It went without saying that now that both siblings had woken and learned of it indirectly, they couldn’t simply sit still.

Even if they had been unlucky enough to be stricken by sudden illness, only a small number of people would believe that there was nothing they could have done, while most others would only believe what they had seen and heard for themselves.

The siblings had to at least make an attempt to reconcile with the people who’d survived the battle, and they unconsciously knew to look for their father. When they failed to find him in the castle, they realized that he’d left them behind.

The siblings left the castle with their attendants by their sides and found a large group of villagers who had sat down on the ground following their wild merriment. They spoke with them while searching for their father who was likely at the center of it all. As members of the ruling household, they considered it natural for them to stand by their father’s side.

Among a group of soldiers on top of the wall, the two soon found their smiling father who was beckoning for a young soldier to come to him. The young soldier approached their father as other soldiers encouragingly pushed him forward.

The eyes of every villager were following their father and the young soldier.

Their father tousled the young soldier’s hair and then picked him up a moment later just as he had once done to the siblings when they were younger. He placed the boy on his shoulders and showed him to the crowd as if it was his own son.

“My Lord!”

“Lord Vezin!”

As the soldiers cheered their father, they also called out the name of the young soldier at the same time.

“Kai.”

“Kai!”

“You’re the pride of our village!”

It was clear that the crowd thought the young soldier, Kai, had served a vital role in the battle.

Jose already knew a little about this greenhorn’s unrivaled strength, and so some part of her wasn’t particularly surprised. Olha, however, must have felt as though the place that was rightfully his had been stolen by a no-name child who shouldn’t have been worthy of such attention.

“Brother, dearest...”

Jose intended to gently urge her brother forward while he was rooted to the spot in surprise, but even with his sister ushering him on, Olha remained frozen in place.

Then Jose noticed it. As Olha stood there grinding his teeth, his passionate feelings had caused his sigil to take form on his face.

Brother and sister made eye contact. The brother saw the concern on his sister’s face and then turned to walk away so as to be rid of her. He headed away from his father and approached a group of villagers who were standing looking up at the wall.

The change in her brother’s attitude caused Jose to release a small sigh. Ever since he was very small, her prideful brother had been prone to foul moods whenever things didn’t go his way, and it was often cause for concern for those around him. In most cases he would manipulate the adults around him until his ego was satisfied, and his mood would improve before long.

Jose was not in good physical condition herself, so she stopped worrying about her brother. She knew her brother had grown into a responsible man, and she didn’t have enough energy to spare worrying about him.

The brother had turned his back on their father, but the sister walked toward him without hesitation.

The steps were challenging, even with her attendants there to support her, but she climbed to the top and made herself part of the circle that had formed around her father and the village hero. The weakness caused by her illness did nothing to lessen the natural beauty she was born with, and the delicate lady formed a part of the radiant picture of her radiant household.

From atop Vezin’s shoulders, Kai saw Jose approaching, and for a moment he scratched his head with embarrassment. Jose must have been remembering everything that had happened between them when she saw this, because her white features broke into a smile like a blossoming flower.

**

House Moloch had single-handedly repelled a large-scale macaque invasion.

Thanks to an announcement carried to the provincial capital by honks and the word of mouth among neighboring villages, rumors of Lag’s victory spread across the whole of the borderlands with the speed of Pegasus racing through the skies.

It was said that when the news reached Count Balta who was struggling to assemble any kind of army, he was initially enraged at House Moloch for sending him blatantly false news. When he received more evidence of their victory, he threw all of the orders he had been writing into his fireplace. He laughed loudly as he told his people of the brave exploits of Vezin of House Moloch, the Iron Taurus who must have gored the apes on his horns.

There had been some talk of canceling the winter solstice banquet, but now it was set to continue as it had every other year, and formal invitations were dispatched to the households of many lords. A letter congratulating Lag for their victory was sent along with their invitation. In what was a rather cheap price compared to the cost of raising an army and defeating the enemy, there was also a notification of a reward to be sent to them later. House Moloch was honored as a house of powerful rulers of the eastern part of the borderlands.

The nearby lords who had refused to send aid now wasted no time in dispatching messengers to send congratulations. They offered their help to rebuild the settlement along with small monetary gifts. This sudden change in attitude was obviously driven by the knowledge that their own villages might someday demand aid from the powerful village of Lag, which had repelled an attack by an army of 1,000 macaques. House Moloch graciously accepted every gift without a word of complaint regardless. Whenever money was offered, both sides were willing to accept the gift without hesitation.

Not long after, winter had truly arrived across the borderlands.

The ground was completely coated in pure white snow, as if there had never been a bloody battle raging a short while before.