03. A Secret Bargain

Rose rode at full speed through the forest along Melos’s eastern border.

The loose rows of cypress gradually thinned, and the air turned cold. She turned onto a path cutting through a dense cluster of pines, and into the chill crept a faint warmth, threading through it like an impurity.

The hazy particles glowing like dust in sunlight were mist leaking from a monster nest.

The fog forest held a near-constant temperature year-round. The strange light and air gave it the feel of a place cut off from the rest of the world, yet the plants and animals that lived there were no different from those outside the fog.

The one difference from the outer forest was that monsters capable of petty, trivial tricks were mixed in among the ordinary woodland creatures.

The monsters commonly encountered here were about as dangerous as wolves or snakes. Ordinary people had every reason to be extremely cautious, but a knight of Rose’s caliber had no need to take a detour around them.

There was, however, one period when everyone, without exception, had to avoid the fog forest.

“The mist is unusually thick, Miss.”

Terra noticed the change in the forest and drew her horse alongside Rose’s.

“You shouldn’t go any further.”

“Why has the mist density spiked like this? The breeding season is still three months away……”

The monsters’ breeding season was exactly that kind of time.

During the period when they paired off and raised their young, monsters grew more agitated, much like any other animal. The mist, normally thin, thickened during the breeding season until you couldn’t see your own feet, and it was easy to lose your way and become stranded.

But wasn’t this too early? The monsters’ breeding season came at the height of summer……

“Watch out, Miss!”

Rose had just made up her mind to turn her horse around.

A white wall of mist came crashing toward them from ahead.

“Ah……!”

Rose instinctively pressed low and threw her arms around her horse’s neck.

“Whoa!”

“Stay calm, Terra!”

The brutal mist hit like the blizzard she had once endured in Physis long ago. Everything around her turned completely white, and a suffocating, closed-in feeling gripped her, like being sealed inside darkness.

She had the sensation of not being able to breathe.

That’s an illusion. It has to be.

Keeping her mind clear and steadying her breathing, Rose noticed something.

“Chaconne……?”

Her beloved mare Chaconne was unnervingly calm. Chaconne was a fine horse accustomed to entering even monster forests, but even so, she would normally react first and sharply whenever Rose herself was tense.

Chaconne blew a soft breath, scattering the mist the way a horse shakes off dust, and flicked her ears, nudging Rose to give the next signal.

“……It’s an illusion. Something thickened the mist using a vision that only works on humans.”

There were monsters that could conjure mirages and illusions. Stories of creatures capable of producing hallucinations vivid enough to be mistaken for reality existed only in legend.

“A big one, do you think?”

Terra seemed to have grasped the situation too, and some of the alarm drained from her voice.

In general, a monster’s power was proportional to its size.

But most monsters that had survived the great extinction were far smaller than humans, and even the largest among them were not considered as dangerous as a rampaging pack of monsters in breeding season. That was the accepted wisdom.

A big one simply meant something slightly larger and stronger than average.

“Most likely.”

Owoooo, a wolf’s howl rose from somewhere, and answering calls echoed from all directions.

A creature with the form of a wolf would count as a relatively large specimen among surviving monster species.

“Quite a few of them, wherever they came from.”

That was, if the howls were real.

“Ten or more, I’d say.”

“Maybe twenty?”

In any case, an illusion could only last a few minutes at most. As long as they didn’t panic and collapse on their own, they would be fine.

Rose sharpened her senses and braced for an attack.

Alone, this would have been a difficult situation, but with Terra beside her, they could either outmaneuver or fight their way through ten or twenty wolves. Rose’s claim to have set down her sword long ago was more symbolic than literal. She had kept up her sword training consistently.

“We’ll have to fight, won’t we, Miss?”

Terra asked with clear reluctance.

“Hmm……”

Rose didn’t want to fight either.

If she could help it, she never wanted to fight anyone or anything, or cause blood to be shed.

Even with her frequent trips through the monster forest, the times she had actually drawn her sword were few. She had learned to run from vipers and wolves rather than face them, and evasion had always been enough. No one had ever called that cowardice.

“Has your vision come back, Terra?”

Why couldn’t the same be true between people?

“Enough to ride, I think.”

Rose heard Terra’s answer and let go of her sword hilt without hesitation, pulling the reins instead.

“Let’s get out.”

The only thing she sensed in the pale mist was a taut, watchful wariness.

There was no k*lling intent anywhere. If Rose turned and ran first, a monster that took that as weakness might lunge from behind, but a horse at full gallop would be hard for a monster to catch.

And Chaconne and Gavotte were the pride of the family for their speed.

“Stay behind me, Terra.”

Rose turned her horse carefully, taking care not to provoke the monsters lurking in the mist. Her horses, just as she had suspected, seemed to have their vision intact and retraced the path on their own under their riders’ guidance.

Moving slowly and reading the surroundings with care, Rose dug her heels in to pick up speed.

Owoooo! The wolf howls grew deeper, and a presence like an arrow cut through the mist.

It was moving far too fast for a monster, and it carried an intent as sharp as a k*lling blade.

“D*mn, they’re going to—”

Terra didn’t finish the sentence before she tumbled off her horse.

“Ugh!”

A thud, then the sound of something rolling through the dense grass blanketing the ground.

“Terra!”

“I’m all right, nngh……”

Rose confirmed the sound of Terra groaning and getting to her feet, then pulled her own horse to a stop.

“Head back to the castle, Chaconne.”

Rose leaped from her horse and drew her sword almost in the same motion.

She listened to the sound of her two clever horses bolting west the moment their riders gave the command, then held her sword straight and scanned the mist.

The surroundings had gone eerily quiet.

The burst of k*lling intent had vanished just as completely.

The illusion mist hadn’t lifted, though, leaving her vision unreliable. She could only hope it wouldn’t come to using the sword. In a place where she couldn’t see a step ahead, one wrong move and she risked colliding with Terra.

“Ow, what was that just now? Something definitely brushed past me, like an animal…… can illusions create a sense of touch?”

“I doubt it. Not even the ancient monsters that went extinct were said to be capable of that.”

The very next moment, a dull thud rang out from somewhere.

Yipe! Something let out a sound like a dog yelping.

“Where are you! You insolent beasts!”

Terra’s voice rang out, keeping a reasonable distance from Rose.

The presence didn’t draw any closer to them.

Did the monsters start fighting each other? Rose strained all five senses and stared into the white darkness beyond.

Before long, she noticed a change.

“The mist is thinning……”

“Oh, it really is?”

A familiar scent reached her. Faint, but impossible to mistake for anything else.

“Karshi mint……?”

“Pardon?”

“Rose?”

Three voices, each lost in their own puzzlement, followed one after another through the mist like a round.

The owner of the third voice emerged through a gap in the slowly clearing fog.

“Y, you!”

“Jade!”

He was down on one knee in front of a large beast collapsed on the ground.

“What a coincidence, Miss Rosemaria.”

Jade wiped his brow with the back of his hand and tilted up one corner of his mouth.

The beast lying before him was a blue-tinged wolf monster. A creature the size of a grown man lay with its jaws slack, knocked unconscious. Its side rose and fell steadily, so it wasn’t dead.

Jade’s hands were empty. His sword was still fixed in its scabbard at his belt.

“……What are you doing? Did you get into a fistfight with a monster?”

Rose stared down at him, dumbfounded.

“What are you doing here! You filthy Camelot lackey!”

Terra jabbed a finger at him accusingly.

Jade gave a mild shrug and shifted his gaze to the wolf monster.