I couldn't come up with any material, and work on the fifth volume of the book edition left a gap.
Since this chapter is about traveling, it's on the shorter side.
"Once you've experienced this carriage, going back to traveling in a normal one like before is going to be rough."
Cain's comment earns silent nods from Albert and Lion. Chris had said the same thing a little while ago, so it was clear that pairing Raiden with a Dimension Bag (Dimension Box?) carriage was an absurdly overpowered combination.
"Still, sis, saying 'I'm a girl, so I'm using the carriage — you lot sleep outside,' when the actual owner Tenma is right here? And at her age, calling herself 'a girl'..."
Lion confirmed Chris wasn't around before venting his everyday frustrations. He didn't exactly disagree about the carriage situation either, but if Albert and Cain, who both had fiancées,
[unmarried woman]
were discovered sleeping in the same space as an unmarried woman by hostile factions, there was no telling what they'd say (Jeanne and Aura were technically slaves, so in the worst case, it could be brushed off as a one-night thing). For that reason, Albert and Cain quietly obeyed Chris's orders and chose to sleep outside without complaint. Well, Lion, who didn't have a fiancée, wouldn't have had a problem, but he probably didn't want Chris to think he was making a fuss, so he and Albert both silently picked up on Chris's intentions. You could even say they were currying favor.
As for me, there shouldn't be any problem either, same as Lion. But even though Jeanne and Aura and I had slept in the same space under similar circumstances before, I was still hesitant about sleeping in the same place as Chris. After all, lately Chris sometimes gives off this dangerous vibe...
"A wise man keeps away from danger, as they say."
"I'm not sure you can call Lion a 'wise man,' though."
"Nah, probably not."
In response to my words, Albert and Cain showed off a coordinated response as if they'd rehearsed it. Lion didn't seem to know what "wise man" meant, but he apparently understood he was being mocked and was about to retort, when Cain's single question — "Do you know what 'wise man' means?" — made him stand up, turn his back to us, and start doing squats. He'd probably stood up intending to deflect the situation somehow, but couldn't think of a good way to do it and just started doing squats for the time being.
"Tenma, what route are you planning to take from here?"
"From here on, I'm planning to pass through as many villages and towns as possible. I want to gather information on the Wyverns while checking which villages and towns are on the front lines of Wyvern damage."
If we went straight to the location from the first piece of information we'd received and the Wyvern flock had moved from that spot, the damage would only be greater by the time we arrived. So even though it would slow us down a bit, I decided the best approach was to collect fresh information as we went. So far, I hadn't confirmed any Wyverns within my Search range, but if I used the gathered information to determine a rough direction and kept moving, we'd eventually pinpoint the Wyvern flock. And once the flock appeared within my Search range, I could head straight there — there'd be no way we'd miss it.
"Still, there's a possibility the Wyvern flock has moved way beyond expectations, in which case we might end up racing across the border territory from one end to the other."
In that case, our burden would increase dramatically. And on top of that, there was a real chance we'd have to start the subjugation right after exhausting ourselves searching for the flock — so by any normal measure, it could be considered a suicidal strategy.
But even in that scenario, there was an easy way to lower the difficulty...
"Then Lion, I'll leave the driving to you in that case."
"Right. When I ranked the members of this group by how useful they'd be, it was faster to count from the bottom — and among those, you're the one who stands out most in terms of physical endurance. Besides, this request comes from the Border Count's family, and this is territory you'll be managing in the future. In other words, there's no one more suited for the job than you!"
It was a method of reducing everyone else's exhaustion by increasing one person's burden. Simple, easy to execute, and with a high rate of success for the strategy.
Cain and Albert, who had arrived at pretty much the same conclusion, immediately sold out their fellow member of the Idiot Trio, Lion. For reference, the ranking Albert had come up with at the time placed Grandpa and me at the top, followed by Slarin and the others, then Chris and Amour, with the Idiot Trio below them, followed by Jeanne and Aura.
However, since I had already said from the start that I wasn't counting Jeanne and Aura as pure combat strength, and since pushing the girls too hard would be cruel and downright despicable, the Idiot Trio ended up at the bottom — and among them, Lion, who had the most stamina, was concluded to be the best pick.
Lion tried to protest that this was obviously an outrageous argument, but the two of them tag-teamed him, saying in unison, "This is the Border Count's family's problem to begin with, so it's only natural that the heir, Lion, should bear the brunt!" — and he was nearly worn down.
"No, in that case, I'm planning to rely on the Slarin-and-Raiden combo. Raiden would follow Slarin's instructions, and Slarin doesn't really have many effective methods against airborne opponents, so she'd inevitably end up as a reserve anyway. Plus, if Slarin moves to a rear position, we won't have to worry about evacuating Jeanne and Aura."
If it came to it, the two of them could just hide inside the Dimension Bag within Slarin's body, and it could also serve as an evacuation point if anyone got wounded.
"Rather than leaving it to Slarin alone, it'd be better for Tenma and me to join in so the three of us can swap out at any time. After all, a carriage tearing across the land with no visible driver is bound to give anyone who sees it the wrong idea."
"Good work, Gramps."
"Lord Merlin, welcome back from patrol!"
Grandpa had just returned from patrolling the surroundings and proceeded to point out the flaws in our strategy, suggesting improvements.
Grandpa was right — to an outside observer, a carriage racing along with no visible driver could easily be mistaken for a new species of Monster. Even if someone did spot it and approached to investigate, we could just step out of the carriage and explain, but such people would be rare. Most witnesses would be too frightened of the unidentifiable carriage to come near, and would instead rush to the nearest village or town to report it to the Adventurers' Guild or the Knight Order. Depending on how far the information spread, it could take a long time to clear up the misunderstanding.
We went ahead and adopted Grandpa's plan, then received his report from the patrol — apparently, there was nothing that looked like a threat as far as the eye could see, and there were no signs or traces of anything either.
"I've had Shiromaru place markers at several points, so it should be difficult for Monsters to approach without being noticed."
With that, Grandpa moved a short distance away from us and lay down to take a nap.
"Alright then, the next patrol rotation is up to the three of you. I'm going to sleep too, so wake me if anything comes up or when it's time."
I left things in the hands of the three of them and settled in to sleep near Gramps. Incidentally, Shiromaru, who had come back with Grandpa, had already slipped into the carriage and was getting snacks from Chris.
For night watch duty on this journey, the burden was deliberately placed mostly on the men, while the women were assigned either the first or second shift after making camp, or the final shift close to dawn.
This was partly because the Idiot Trio (especially Lion) had buckled under Chris's silent pressure, and partly because Grandpa and I had accepted Chris's earnest plea — which had nearly escalated to a full prostration, with her citing things like the condition of her skin as justification.
That was part of why the women claimed the carriage, but no one besides Lion complained. After all, Chris at that time had an intensity that was, in a sense, downright terrifying. In exchange — though it feels wrong to call it that — I imposed on Chris
a certain condition
and made her drink to it. That condition was…
"Staaaaare…"
The condition was keeping an eye on Amour, who was watching for any opening. At first, Amour had said she wanted to sleep outside, just like me, but I asked Chris to talk her around. Well, she was still clearly looking for an opening even now, so she probably wasn't truly convinced from the heart… but seeing how Chris was currently dragging her back into the carriage, I wanted to believe she wouldn't go so far as to risk earning both my and Chris's displeasure by resorting to force.
Branca wasn't here (sending Sana and Yoshitsune south had taken priority), so a faint sense of unease lingered, but after that no problems arose and the morning sun rose on schedule. We were able to set out from the campsite as planned.
"Still, the Wyvern damage seems to be concentrated in a narrower area than I expected."
Three days had passed since the day I discussed future plans with the three of them, and we passed through roughly five villages and towns on our way to the destination. But contrary to expectations, the Wyvern flock hadn't moved much from the first sighting location.
"Maybe there was enough prey that they didn't need to move for a while, or the area was just really comfortable for them, huh."
Cain, sitting in the driver's seat beside me, responded to my muttering in his usual relaxed manner. It was certainly a plausible theory, but more than two weeks had passed since the first report, and it seemed unlikely that the Wyvern flock could have stayed put that long without sufficient food in one spot.
"Well, I guess we'll find out tomorrow… Oh, we should be coming up on today's campsite soon."
"Looks like it. Tomorrow's the main event, so we need to rest up today and build up our energy."
The area where the Wyvern flock was located had fewer places to hide than I had anticipated, and it was going to be difficult to evacuate Jeanne and Aura as originally planned. So I had decided to bring them along to the site after all. I had worked out a strategy for this by yesterday. Simply put, I would assign Slarin and Raiden as their guards, and once they got close to the Wyvern flock, they would pull back to a safe distance.
There was no guarantee they wouldn't be attacked by Wyverns even at a distance, but in addition to Slarin and Raiden, I was equipping them with multiple Golems. More importantly, both of them possessed scorpion-type Golems. The scorpion-type Golems currently boasted the highest performance among all the Golems I had built — in terms of speed, power, and durability — so while anti-air capability was a concern, there shouldn't be any problem from a combat standpoint. If it really came down to it, Grandpa or I could simply step in.
Ideally, I wanted the three of them to stay behind with Jeanne's group, but they had signed a liability waiver in case anything happened, and each of them was bringing roughly a hundred Golems, so I didn't think they'd be in serious danger easily.
"I know it's a bit late to say this, but sorry for tagging along. If it were just 'Orasion,' you would've been fine even against a Wyvern flock, right?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
The real reason the three of them had come along this time wasn't so much to help subdue the Wyvern flock, but rather to establish the fact that 'a noble of the Royalist Faction participated in the Wyvern flock subjugation.' As a secondary benefit, it also served to bolster the credibility of the three of them, who would need to support Tida in the future. Well, just coming along on this commission could arguably be enough to claim they 'participated in the Wyvern flock subjugation,' but the three of them had been resistant to being told by the Reformists that they had merely tag along. They wanted to at least land a blow, which was why they prepared the liability waiver — a document designed to deflect any protests from the Reformists rather than from the three's own families, should anything go wrong… But because of that, I had to keep an eye on the three of them, and that was for certain.
"Well, the difficulty only went up a notch or so."
"Saying the difficulty only went up a notch when you've gained three extra passengers isn't something a normal person would even consider. Well,
"From our standpoint,
that's a welcome thing, but..."
As we listened to Cain's self-deprecating remark, we arrived at today's proposed campsite, confirmed that there were no problems in the surrounding area, and began setting up camp.