"The handles should be a little thinner. And it would be more reassuring if it had a design that let you face the baby."
"Also, we should make it so the baby can't easily escape. Since it's Tenma's child, they'll probably slip away the moment you look away for a second."
"Amur, surely they wouldn't escape... right?"
"No, they definitely would. I heard this story from Celia once — apparently, when she put Tenma to bed and went to do some housework, Tenma had vanished without her noticing. When she went looking, Martha came carrying Tenma, who had been crawling right in front of their own house."
Since we'd finished making a life-size model, I'd been consulting with Primera about the baby stroller, but before I knew it, Grandpa and the others had all gathered around. We decided to get everyone's opinions, so we moved the discussion from my room to the dining hall... and before I realized it, my dark past was being aired out for all to hear. For the record, the reason I managed to sneak out past Mom's watch was because once I learned to
move
around on my own, I got carried away and decided to go see the scenery outside. As it turned out, all you could see from outside was ground and grass — nothing interesting at all. So I tried to head back inside, but that was when Aunt Martha caught me.
"Hm? Did someone come?"
While Grandpa was busy exposing my dark history, I heard Shiromaru bark outside. Since Shiromaru doesn't bark at people he knows, I wondered what was going on and used "Search" to investigate, but I couldn't find anyone on the grounds who seemed to have business with us.
"I'll go take a quick look."
Aura said before heading out, but she quickly returned to the dining hall together with Shiromaru.
"Lord Tenma, it seems Slarin received a letter."
Looking more closely, Slarin was perched on Shiromaru's back. The delivery person must have come upon them together outside, and Slarin accepted the letter. Perhaps Shiromaru had barked to alert Slarin and the rest of us inside the mansion.
"Let's see here... Grandpa, I've apparently received a rare personal commission. I'm heading to the Guild now."
"Now that IS unusual... Who's it from?"
"Lyle."
I'd received personal commissions from the Royal Family several times before, but this was the first time one came from Lyle specifically. The letter didn't specify what the commission entailed — it only stated that a personal commission had come from Lyle, and that he was issuing it in his capacity as the Minister of Military Affairs. I figured I should probably head to the Guild as soon as possible.
"If it turns out to be something urgent, I might have to leave right away, so there's a chance I won't make it back today."
With that, I set off for the Guild — but...
"For someone who said he might not come back, you sure got home in a hurry."
It took about an hour for me to get back to the mansion.
"Well, I figured I'd hear the detailed explanation right there, so I told them I'd accept the commission and that I expected someone would come explain directly within two to three days... and that was the end of it, so I just came right back."
"Now that I think about it, that makes sense if it wasn't an urgent commission."
"That's right. Perhaps Lord Lyle doesn't need Tenma's abilities so much as the fact that 'Tenma accepted the commission.'"
"Maybe he wants to use it for some kind of publicity? Well, knowing Lord Lyle, I doubt he'd misuse it for anything shady."
It was possible he wanted to show other nobles how close I was with the Royal Family... but that wouldn't carry much impact anymore, since everyone already knew. That left the possibility of impressing people outside the nobility... but even that felt like it had been accomplished long ago, so I didn't think it would be very effective either.
"Anyway, we won't know anything until the explanation comes, so there's no point in overthinking it right now."
"Indeed. If it were a personal request from Lyle, I'd be worried, but as the Minister of Military Affairs, he's unlikely to propose anything strange. The stroller designs are more important than agonizing over unknowns."
Everyone agreed with the old man's argument, so we went back to discussing improvements and requests, just as we had before heading out. For reference, since there's no word for "baby car" in this world, we usually called it a stroller, but once the real thing was made, I was planning to name the product "Baby Car." It would just be easier for me to say.
"So, the ones I'll be working with are Jean and five new recruits? That's not a lot."
"It's a trial run this time."
The commission from Lord Lyle was for me to conduct a joint investigation of the Royal Capital and its surroundings together with the knights' order. However, the commission had also been issued to other adventurers besides me, with each group assigned to investigate a designated area alongside the knights.
The ones accompanying me would be Jean — an acquaintance of mine who would serve as the group leader — and five newly assigned knights from last year. Apparently, other groups had fewer new recruits and larger teams, but since Jean's area was the outskirts of the Royal Capital and required horseback travel, a smaller team would be more agile on horseback. So the team would be six strong, and since I'd be joining as well, it was decided that even if everyone besides Jean was a new recruit, things would work out fine.
Well, even though they were called new recruits, they were elites selected from the officer candidate pool, so they wouldn't be complete dead weight. On top of that, all of them were relatives of nobles in the Royalist Faction, which meant fewer potential complications.
"Also, Tenma. The purpose of this investigation is to survey the surrounding terrain in case the Empire attacks, as well as check whether any dangerous monsters or animals have settled in the area. But at the same time, it's also meant to teach the knights how to cooperate with adventurers. If we end up in a full-scale war with the Empire, adventurer cooperation will be absolutely indispensable. This is preparation for that contingency."
That purpose — one the new recruits hadn't been informed about — was also explained to me.
The reason the new knights hadn't been told was that giving them multiple pieces of information at once could be too much for them to process properly. And if they already had a poor opinion of adventurers, it could backfire and cause them to resist, potentially derailing the investigation entirely.
"So my role is to teach them how to deal with monsters and how to operate in the field,
adventurer
"Then I should just teach them the adventurer way of doing things, right?"
"Yeah, he said don't hold back, do as you like... Though personally, I'd appreciate it if you kept things somewhat reasonable."
This request included not just cooperating with the investigation, but also teaching the adventurers' techniques. In a sense, it meant taking on an instructor role, and apparently that made it quite difficult to gather enough adventurers.
If it had simply been about recruiting adventurers with top-tier abilities, it would have been easy enough to approach the higher-ranked adventurers in the Royal Capital in descending order. But when you added the requirement that they also be knowledgeable and skilled as adventurers, with a decent personality and trustworthy character, the pool shrank considerably. As for why Amur was rejected — it was because, while his combat strength and character were trustworthy, his knowledge and techniques as an adventurer were deemed insufficient. Incidentally, the reason Grandpa didn't receive a request was that Ernest had opposed it. Not because he disliked Grandpa or anything, but rather to maintain a deterrent force at the royal castle — even if only temporarily reducing the castle's combat strength could give the Reformist Faction an opening to attempt a coup.
"In that case, shall we camp out for two or three days? There's still snow on the ground, but if we take proper precautions, there's no risk of freezing to death."
The commission allowed for a maximum of three days, including contingency days, so I suggested using all of it for the investigation, but Jean rejected the idea. A day or so wouldn't be a problem, but three days raised the possibility of a search party being organized. Well, the judgment that we'd be fine with just me and Jean was more likely, but even then, writing the incident reports and summaries would fall on Jean's shoulders, and he said he'd rather not deal with that.
"Shall we move to our assigned area soon? You lot — your preparations are ready, right?"
We chatted while waiting for the scheduled time, had a brief briefing, and then departed the Royal Capital. Our destination was the area around the forest where we'd previously discovered the Earth Dragon. It was a place I frequented, so I could reach it in about an hour on my own, but since Jean and the others were with us this time, our pace was considerably slower, and we conducted investigation stops along the way that doubled as rest breaks, making the trip take over three hours.
"Alright then, Tenma. From here on, we're relying on the adventurer way of doing things."
"Understood. Though with my usual approach, I'd have Slarin providing support while also coordinating with Shiromaru and Solomon, so today will be a bit different."
Normally I'd also use 'Exploration' here, but since that was essentially a secret, there was no need to mention it in front of the knights who weren't in the know. Besides, Slarin and the others hadn't been brought along for this commission, so even if someone requested my usual approach, I wouldn't be able to deliver.
After briefly declining and receiving their understanding, I took the lead at the front of Jean's group and advanced into the forest. Even though I wasn't using 'Exploration,' I was carefully surveying the surroundings as we moved, but to the new knights, it must have looked like I was walking along casually, because they eyed me with suspicion. However, once I noticed a disturbance in the forest before any of the knights did, those looks quickly vanished.
"Jean, it seems like bears have taken up residence in this forest. I can't tell whether they're Monsters or ordinary animals, though, so we should be on alert."
There were marks on tree trunks that appeared to be from bears rubbing their backs against them, and since these marks were relatively fresh, I deduced that bears were in the area. To be thorough, I scanned with 'Exploration' and found a single bear wandering through the forest — quite far from our position, but there all the same. It was a large specimen, but it didn't appear to be a Monster.
"I think it's still a bit early in the season, but bears that have just come out of hibernation are starving and tend to be quite aggressive. Also, I've never seen bear tracks in this forest before, so I think it wandered here either before or just after hibernation. If that's the case, its range of movement could be quite wide, and if nothing is done, someone could end up attacked."
Based on the marks on the trees, I estimated the bear to be around three meters. If an ordinary person encountered it, the situation would be hopeless. Even if an adventurer ran into it, without sufficient skill, they could easily become the bear's prey.
"What should we do about the bear? Fortunately, there appear to be traces of the bear's movement, so tracking it is possible."
Well, the bear wasn't necessarily sticking to paths that people used, so there was a chance we'd lose the trail partway. In that case, I could just use 'Exploration' to follow it. Even if someone got suspicious about that, I could pass it off as knowledge gained from my experiences in the Great Old Forest. And it wasn't a lie — I had genuinely accumulated such experience.
"Of course we're chasing it. You lot — stay out of the way of the tracking, but keep your guard up at all times in case the bear shows up!"
At Jean's words, the knights' faces stiffened, but they quickly reformed their formation.
"Mr. Jean, I found it. It's beside a rock about two hundred meters ahead."
We had been tracking for roughly an hour when we finally caught up close enough to get a visual on the bear.
"Hm? Where? I can't see it."
I almost blurted out, "Are you nearsighted?" but since the young knights couldn't spot it either, I figured his eyesight hadn't actually deteriorated — they simply hadn't found the bear yet.
"Mr. Jean, can you see the tree that bends over partway, right around where my finger is pointing?"
"Yeah."
"There's a rock just a little to the left of that, and the bear we've been chasing is right beside it."
"Hmm? ...Could that brownish lump actually be the bear?"
"That's right."
Mr. Jean leaned in so close his face nearly pressed against my finger and finally managed to spot the bear. The junior knights seemed to have found it at roughly the same time or even sooner, so perhaps Mr. Jean's eyesight really was starting to decline after all.
"That thing looks pretty big. Tenma, if you're willing, I'd like to let these guys get some experience against it. But if you'd rather not waste the materials, we could just do observation training... What do you want to do?"
"I'm not particularly interested in the bear's materials, so feel free to take it down, Mr. Jean and the others. Bear meat isn't very tasty this time of year, and there isn't much use for the pelt either. Oh, but if possible, I'd like to secure the gallbladder. That's useful for medicine."
"Alright, since you're the one who found it, we'll let you have the materials. But in exchange, you're the one coming up with the plan for how to take it down."
And just like that, the deal was struck. Even so, with five knights on the team — rookies or not — I thought the odds were pretty favorable even without a sophisticated plan. Mr. Jean was simply being cautious and asking for a safer approach, which was fair enough. The plan I came up with was nothing spectacular. Yet with that unremarkable plan, the knights managed to bring down the bear without a single injury.
"That felt almost too easy compared to what I expected. Is this what fighting a non-Monster bear is like?"
"Not really. It fell for the trap ridiculously easily, sure, but there's always the chance of failure, and if things go wrong, people could die. In the end, this worked because the knights have good coordination and individual skill."
The plan I devised was dead simple. Find an area with decent open ground, and place orc meat in the center as bait. Hide four knights around the perimeter, then have the remaining knight lure the bear's attention and lead it toward the bait. Once the bear took the bait and got distracted by the meat, the hidden knights would throw their spears, and then everyone would move in together to finish it off.
The first spear struck a vital spot, delivering a killing blow, and the follow-up volley from the rest of the knights finished the bear off cleanly. It was a plan that carried real risk — if the bear hadn't gone for the bait and instead turned on the decoy knight, things could have gone badly — so the knights would have been within their rights to complain. However, I had explained beforehand that a bear just emerging from hibernation would be starving and highly likely to go for the food, and that Mr. Jean and I would be standing by close by in case anything went wrong. So even though the plan was risky, the knights agreed to carry it out. And when I told them that, while they wouldn't get the chance to use it this time, they could resort to magic in an emergency to take a target down more safely and with less effort — that probably gave them the confidence to move as well as they did.
"Normally, the next step would be to butcher the bear, but since that's not necessary this time, I'll just take it as-is. However, during an actual mission where you can't bring the kill back, you'll need to do a rough butchering and bury the remains or burn them. If there are wolves or other carnivores in the area, leaving it out might be fine, but be careful — if it rots, it could spread disease or even reanimate as an undead."
After retrieving the bear, I gave the knights these handling instructions, and they nodded with serious expressions.
We continued surveying the forest and its surroundings, but found no signs of anything unusual besides the bear, so the day's investigation was called off and we set up camp. Even I thought Mr. Jean was joking about camping — the knights were more surprised than I was — but since I was serving as the client's representative, I had no choice but to go along with it, and we ended up spending the night in the forest. For what it's worth, the campsite was chosen at the spot where we'd found the bear, since the rocks there served as a decent windbreak. Though it did smell a bit like animal.
That night's camp couldn't exactly be called smooth, but we managed to get through it safely. The new knights seemed to be camping in the wild for the first time — all five of them looked quite drowsy — but after being dragged through Mr. Jean's morning training, they were wide awake.
"Tenma, I'm thinking we'll keep surveying the forest and its surroundings today and head back to the Royal Capital after midday. It's a bit earlier than planned, but we didn't find any traces of dangerous creatures besides yesterday's bear, and these lot look pretty worn out from their first campout."
And so Mr. Jean proposed wrapping up the commission early. As the one who'd taken on the job, I had no complaints — if anything, finishing sooner was something to welcome.
And so, after breakfast, we resumed our survey from where we'd left off yesterday and had nearly finished covering the forest and its surroundings by the time midday — our planned return time — rolled around.
"That concludes our survey of this forest and its surroundings!"
With Mr. Jean's declaration, the investigation was officially over, and all that remained was the trip back to the Royal Capital. For the record, the horses that Mr. Jean and the others had been riding had been stored in the knights' Dimension Bags the entire time during the survey. Apparently, the difficulty of obtaining Dimension Bags like these was also an ongoing issue going forward.
"Mr. Jean, someone's... several knights on horseback are heading this way."
"Seriously? ...Nope, I still can't see them. Tenma, are they heading for us?"
"I think so, but it seems less like they've spotted us and more like they're heading toward the area we were assigned to cover."
Thinking about how exhausted the knights must be from their first campout, we'd been taking the return trip at a slower pace than the journey out... but just when the Royal Capital was about to come into view, a messenger from the capital's knight order arrived with news that completely undid all the consideration Mr. Jean and I had shown.
"If that's the case, something unexpected may have happened and they're here to notify me, Tenma, or both of us... Tenma, lead me closer to the knights."
Mr. Jean didn't say a word, but something troublesome had almost certainly come up. If they were only looking for Mr. Jean and the knights, it might not be a big deal... but since they seemed to have business with me too, it was safe to assume that something nasty had happened.
By the time we reached the knights who appeared to be looking for us, I'd been praying — quite unusually for me — that their business was only with Mr. Jean and the new knights. But my prayers went unanswered.
"Tenma, we're heading north from here. Apparently,
Th
at
mon
ste
r
"— apparently several of them had been found."
"Any casualties?"
"The ones that were discovered were either corpses or in critical condition, so there apparently haven't been any damages. But they can't say for certain that there aren't others hiding in the surrounding area."
While riding at a gallop, I asked Jean for the details, and it turned out that monsters had been found on the northern side—an area that hadn't been searched before.
There apparently hadn't been any casualties, but the area needed to be thoroughly investigated again on short notice, so an ad hoc team was being assembled. Jean, who happened to be nearby and was trusted to lead the team, had received orders to take command. As for me, I was completely tagging along as an afterthought. I could have refused, but since the targets were those monsters, they were hoping I would join the investigation if possible. That said, I only heard about this while already riding Raiden northward, so I was effectively past the point of refusal.
"Edgar! What's the situation!"
The person in charge of the squad originally investigating the area was apparently Edgar—until Jean arrived, he served as the interim squad leader, and after linking up with Jean, he would become the deputy.
"Yes, sir! The corpses have already been placed in the Magic Bag. As for the critically injured monster, it started thrashing when we approached to finish it off, so we put it down. A few people sustained injuries during the process, but they're all minor."
"Maybe we should have captured it alive, but if even a weakened one can injure a knight, putting it down is probably the safest option..."
"Jean, some of those monsters have regeneration abilities close to a hydra's, so I think it's best to put them down the moment you get the chance. Besides, there's a possibility that by the time Edgar's group went from discovering it to delivering the killing blow, it had already recovered enough energy to start thrashing."
"I see. Edgar, relay this to the knights: if they encounter a critically injured monster, they are to put it down immediately. And they shouldn't attempt it alone—they should work in a group while maintaining a defensive perimeter."
"Understood."
Edgar saluted Jean and immediately went off to relay the orders to the knights.
"Tenma, I'm planning to assign you as this team's advisor using my authority as squad leader. If you're going to drop out of this job, now's the only chance."
"Well, I've already come this far, so I'll stick around a little longer. Though if it ends up being something like 'we'll be confined for one to two weeks without going home,' that'd be too much of a hassle, and I'd leave."
Part of me wanted to see this through to the end now that I'd come this far, but being unable to go home was a different story. At the very least, I wanted them to make it a commute-from-home arrangement.
"It shouldn't come to that. This investigation team is only temporary. Once we've finished surveying this area, we're supposed to return to the Royal Capital. After that, a job might come to you through the Guild, in which case I'd appreciate your help then too... is roughly how it'll go."
Since it was only a temporary investigation team, we'd be able to return to the Royal Capital by tomorrow evening.
"Well then, I'd like you to join the meeting right away.
Dis
...cussion
Officer
Lord
"
"Captain, I'm exhausted from the camping, so could you just fill me in later?"
I tried saying that, but such idle pleas didn't fly with Jean. I was made to attend the meeting (which didn't even reach ten participants, including Jean and me), and right after it concluded, I was posted to my assigned position. Well, the arrangement was for Jean and me to basically remain at headquarters—the tent erected at the assembly point—and rush to the scene if anything was discovered.
"If nothing comes up, it's fine to just sleep... That's not what you mean, is it?"
"Yeah, until we find something, we'll be examining the monsters Edgar's group discovered," I was told, and this time I was dragged along to dissect a monster's corpse. I wouldn't have had any problem with a goblin dissection, even though it was humanoid, but just the fact that it used to be human made me feel a bit queasy... However, the organs were different from the human ones I knew of, so I quickly got over it.
"Tenma, what do you think?"
"It's just a guess, but just like with the Chaos, the heart and lungs may have enlarged proportionally to the body's growth. The stomach seems somewhat bigger too, but the rest doesn't appear to have changed much... Perhaps only the parts necessary for combat grew larger."
If the heart was bigger, blood would still circulate properly even with a larger body, and larger lungs would allow for longer periods of activity on a single breath.
As for the stomach, it might be that more food was needed to sustain its condition, but since no changes were observed in the intestines or other digestive organs, it was also possible that it simply happened to grow larger.
"I see... By the way, apparently the one the Duke Sanga family discovered in the past had organs that were overall larger, but their proportions were almost no different from a human's."
This was the first I'd heard of it. Back then, I wasn't his stepson, and it was classified information to begin with, so the Duke Sanga family naturally wouldn't have been able to tell me about it.
"Then, what about the monster my grandfather and I took down?"
"Ah... That one was apparently so badly damaged it was useless as a reference. The only one that retained a relatively intact form was the specimen from which Tenma extracted the Magic Stone while it was still alive, but apparently the internal organs had decayed severely, preventing a detailed investigation."
I knew that was my doing... but there were still villagers nearby during the battle, so I hoped they'd chalk it up to the emergency situation and let it go.
"From the start, when something suddenly grows massive and turns into an incomprehensible monster, it's only natural that the heart and lungs would enlarge along with the changes. More importantly, the real issue right now is where these things came from and how they got here."
"The most likely scenario is that they came here in human form, just like the Chaos, and then transformed into monsters for some reason before dying."
"That does seem likely... but the question of why they turned into monsters here specifically still remains. I don't want to think about it, but if they had infiltrated the Royal Capital before transforming, it would have caused far greater chaos."
"It's also possible that the goal wasn't to cause chaos, but rather some kind of experiment. For instance, testing how long these creatures can remain active in the snow, or how far they can travel."
Just like the experiments I conducted with Golems, perhaps these monsters had also been used as test subjects by their creator.
"If that's the case, wasn't the experiment already a success by the time of the Chaos?"
"That may have been one successful case, but the Chaos was extremely powerful right after transforming into a monster, and it grew weaker as time passed. Some of that was probably due to the injuries I inflicted, but even setting that aside, its stamina drain seemed severe. On the other hand, the swarm of monsters that Grandpa and I defeated were individually weaker than the Chaos, but they had been active for a considerable amount of time after turning into monsters. And they had been attacking and eating livestock — likely to restore their stamina."
"I see — hearing it laid out like that, it really does sound like an experiment. And they seem to be creating multiple patterns... or perhaps trying to evolve them."
As an uneasy premonition hung in the air, Edgar and the investigation team began to return, so we finished our examination of the monster.
According to Edgar's report, they had managed to discover several traces of monsters, but beyond determining they had likely come from the east, nothing else was known. They hadn't found any other monsters either.
The results remained the same the following day, and we were able to return to the Royal Capital on schedule by the evening of the second day.