by Dojyomaru
I discussed that question with everyone.
“The reason that the lizardmen don’t eat monsters?” Julius pondered. “I’ve never considered it.”
“It certainly is strange, yes,” Kaede agreed. “Those lizardmen have decided we’re edible. However, it feels strange that they’ve excluded the monsters that they aren’t cooperating with from the list of potential food sources.”
Julius and Kaede both seemed to think deeply about it.
“Maybe they can’t eat ’em? Like they’re poisonous or something?” Hal suggested, but I said shook my head.
“Nah. I’ve heard this from Madam Jeanne, but some monsters are apparently edible. If I recall, she ate a winged snake...or something like that?”
“For her pretty face, she does some awfully wild things...” Julius said in exasperation. He was also acquainted with Jeanne.
Yeah, I kind of agreed.
“Still...in that case, it makes even less sense,” Julius said. “Why, when the lizardmen are starving so badly, do they not attack and eat the monsters that are weaker than them?”
While everyone was wracking their brains over this, hesitantly, one person raised their hand.
“Um, a word if I may?”
It was Aisha.
Aisha was the greatest warrior in our country, but she wasn’t especially good at using her head. Though she was participating in this war council, it was mainly as my bodyguard, so she had been keeping quiet and refraining from commenting as we deliberated. Now, it looked like there was something she wanted to say.
“What is it, Aisha?” I asked.
Aisha hesitantly said, “Um... I thought this while listening to you talk, but could the reason the lizardmen don’t eat monsters be...um...that they just don’t taste very good? I mean, a lot of meats smell too strongly to eat them raw.”
W-Was she joining this topic because it was about food? This was more about the monsters than the food aspect, though...
“No, but Madam Jeanne has actually eaten them... Wait, huh?” I got that far, then I caught on to something Aisha had said.
“I mean, a lot of meats smell too strongly to eat them raw.”
...Raw meat? That was it. Even if Jeanne had eaten monster meat, she couldn’t have been eating it raw. The more unknown the meat, the more thoroughly she’d want to cook it.
Mankind cooked, while lizardmen likely ate their food raw.
The key was...the presence of a way to prepare food using heat.
I came to a conclusion.
“The lizardmen don’t know how to eat monsters,” I said so that everyone could hear.
Julius furrowed his brow. “How to eat monsters?”
“There are parasites and bacteria in meat...but if I say it that way, you won’t get what I’m talking about, I guess. Those are like little bugs inside your body, and if you eat meat with them on it, you’ll get sick, and might even die. But thoroughly cooking meat will kill them, and it really brings down the likelihood of food poisoning. It’s a way of preparing food by sterilizing it with heat.”
“I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Julius said, looking dubious.
Everyone else nodded too.
Though I had been pushing a medical revolution with doctors like Hilde and Brad at the forefront, knowledge of medicine and biology wasn’t widespread, so this was to be expected. Even if it wasn’t possible yet, if the academic learning became more widespread, and I could plant the knowledge with broadcast programs... Wait, now wasn’t the time to think about the future! I needed to get the people with me now to understand first.
“Even if you don’t understand the words I’m using, you should all know this from experience,” I said. “If meat is getting old, you cook it thoroughly, right? Why is that?”
“Ookyakya!” Kuu interjected. “That’s ’cause if you eat meat raw, you’ll get sick sometimes.”
I nodded. “Right. Even without explaining the details of how it happens, mankind knows through experience that eating meat raw can get us sick, and if we cook it thoroughly, we can greatly reduce the risk of that. Even if we haven’t experienced it ourselves, the experience is passed from parent to child, and it’s just like we’d experienced it ourselves.”
“That experience is passed down, and it becomes knowledge, or common sense... Is that it?” Julius nodded, seeming satisfied.
He really was fast on the uptake. Every bit as clever as he appeared, Julius really was a sharp one.
I nodded and continued to talk. “I doubt the lizardmen have that knowledge. I mean, from everything I’ve heard, the lizardmen are eating raw meat, aren’t they? If they ate those weird monsters raw, it wouldn’t be weird for them to get sick, now would it?”
“I certainly wouldn’t want to eat them raw,” Aisha said, making a disgusted face.
It looked like even Aisha, the dark god of gluttony, felt that way.
“When Madam Jeanne and her people ate monster meat, I’m sure they must have cooked it carefully,” I said. “In other words, perhaps a lizardman ate the meat of a monster and got sick, and that’s why the lizardmen no longer eat monster meat?”
“I see. So that’s the difference between Madam Jeanne and a lizardman,” said Kaede, listening with a pensive look on her face. “In that case, if we teach the lizardmen to prepare food using heat, the hungry lizardmen may hunt the monsters, you know.”
“I get what you want to say, sure, but how, precisely, do you want to teach them?” Hal asked. “It’s not just that we can’t talk to them; we can’t communicate at all, can we?”
He rested his face on the palms of his hands.
That was the problem, yeah...
“It’s going depend on how much intelligence they have...” I muttered.
From what Tomoe had told me, they thought only of devouring others, and communication was impossible. But then again, when Tomoe used her ability with low intelligence animals like rhinosauruses...
Tomoe: “Cargo, carry, okay?”
Rhinosaurus: “Tasty grass, cute female, okay.”
That was the sort of simple communication it ended up as.
If these creatures refused even that level of communication, it was going to be impossible to teach them anything. For them to be taught, they needed the capacity to learn.
I was starting to think this plan to have the lizardmen hunt the monsters for us had run aground.
“No, I don’t think they’re unthinking,” Julius said at last. “That’s the feeling I’ve gotten from fighting them. It’s true that they ignore gates and can’t use proper siege tactics, but they have enough intelligence that they do choose places our defenses are weak, and if they sense they’re at a disadvantage, they retreat.”
“That’s right...” Jirukoma pondered. “They avoid contact with strong enemies and prioritize attacking the weak.”
“There’s a certain cunning to the way they act,” Lauren agreed. “That’s the feeling I’ve gotten.”
Jirukoma and Lauren had both fought alongside Julius, so they knew what they were talking about.
“How intelligent are they?” I asked. “Do you think they could manage to steal things in the night?”
“I wouldn’t compare them to the races of mankind, but at the same time, they’re better able to assess risk then a common beast,” Julius said. “The closest would be the shoujou, perhaps, but they could be smarter.”
“The shoujou... Monkeys, huh.”
They were smarter than monkeys. In that case, we might be able to teach them something simple.
But considering I had a report from Tomoe saying dialogue was impossible, we wouldn’t be able to teach them directly.
Hold on! What if we taught them indirectly?
Even if we didn’t teach them properly, if we relied on some “monkey see, monkey do,” maybe we could get them to act in the same way, as if we’d taught them.
Come to think of it, I’d heard of a precedent in the world I came from.
If I was recalling correctly...
“Monkeys washing potatoes...”
“What’s that?” Julius asked.
“It’s a story about monkeys from my old world. When one monkey started washing sweet-potatoes in sea water, the rest of the young males in its troop started to do the same.”
Witnessing this phenomenon had led to a discussion of whether culture existed in the animal kingdom.
Well, there had also been talk of how, “When the hundredth monkey on the island learned to wash sweet-potatoes, monkeys on a distant mountain began to show the same behavior (indicating the possibility of telepathy),” but that was occult mumbo-jumbo. The thing I wanted to focus on here wasn’t the occult, it was the learning ability of monkeys. If lizardmen also had the ability to learn...
“If we have one lizardman learn the taste of cooked monster, show it the cooking process, return it to the pack, and then it starts cooking and eating monsters...” I said slowly.
“You mean to say that the lizardmen in the pack that see it may begin imitating that behavior?” Julius said slowly. “I seem to recall you’ve caught just what you would need for that, haven’t you?”
“Yeah. We took one alive and locked it in the tower.”
Julius looked me in the eye and asked, “Do you think it can be done?”
“I don’t know, but it’s probably worth a try. Even in the worst-case scenario, we’ll only increase the number of enemy lizardmen by one. If we work at it, it shouldn’t take more than half a day.”
“Hm... Even if it fails, we’ll still only be facing the lizardmen and monsters with our current forces. If they force an attack, that will cause more casualties, and I would prefer to avoid that, so...in order to prevent that, I’d very much like for you to make this idea a success.”
“I know,” I said. “Let’s decide how we’ll do it. First we have to procure the monster we’ll be feeding to the lizardman...”
From there, Julius, Kaede and I put together a plan.
While going back and forth on what to do, gradually the plan that had started as a random thought began to be fleshed out and sound more realistic.
I didn’t think I had felt this way since working out plans against the Principality of Amidonia with Hakuya. Funny that the guy I was working with now was one of the enemies I’d been plotting against back then.
That’s part of what makes him so reliable.
Looking at Julius’s serious face, that was what I thought.
◇ ◇ ◇
“It’s kind of a strange feelin’,” Roroa said quietly to herself, watching Souma and Julius work on the plan.
“What is?” Princess Tia asked, tilting her head to the side. She was also sitting there watching the war council unfold.
Perhaps because she was embarrassed to be asked about something she’d been saying to herself, Roroa awkwardly scratched her cheek and smiled wryly. “Mmm, the sight of Darlin’ and my big brother together, workin’ on a plan, I suppose. It just feels so unreal that I’m kinda confused. They’re bitter enemies, and’ve fought to kill each other before, but now they’re workin’ together toward a common goal, ya know?”
Tia was silent.
“It’s like I’m dreamin’... Hey, that hurts!”
Tia was lightly pinching Roroa’s cheek.
“Wh-What’re you doin’?!” Roroa exclaimed, rubbing her cheek and protesting.
Tia smiled at her softly. “It’s no dream,” she said, taking Roroa’s hand and wrapping her own around it. “This scene is, without a doubt, reality, Lady Roroa.”
“Reality...” Roroa murmured.
Turning that thought over in her mind, she finally started to accept the scene in front of her was real. The man she loved and her brother by blood were working toward the same goal. She didn’t need to see her brother as an enemy anymore. Even in front of her brother, she could love Souma.
“You’re right. No doubt about it, this, here and now, is reality.” Now able to accept that, Roroa smiled too. “Thanks, Big Sis.”
“Oh, it’s too early to be calling me Big Sis,” Tia said, fidgeting in embarrassment. “Besides, I’m younger than you anyway.”
“Aw, geez. You’re just the cutest, Big Sis!”
“Eek?!”
Tia was acting so cute that Roroa hugged her.
Looking at the two of them out of the corner of their eyes, Souma and Julius both cocked their heads to the side questioningly.
What have those two been doing over there?
Chapter 7: Cooked and Ready to Serve
Late at night, as the date was about to change...
The moon was hidden by the clouds, making it feel very dark.
Amid that darkness, there were eight people, Aisha, Roroa, Naden, Halbert, Kaede, Ruby, Julius, and I, standing near a watch fire lit on one of the city walls.
Illuminated by the swaying red flames, I handed a letter I had written to Aisha. “Send this to Hakuya in Parnam Castle.”
“Understood.”
Aisha accepted the letter, tied it to the messenger kui she had brought with her, and sent it off. The messenger kui flew south through the dark sky,
“A letter?” Julius asked, to which I nodded.
“A letter to the prime minister we left back at the castle, informing him of our situation and the lay of the land here. If there are tens of thousands of lizardmen beyond the Dabicon, we’re still going to want to take some measures against them even once the reinforcements arrive. I’m sure Hakuya will come up with a plan that’s appropriate to our situation and pass it to Ludwin, the commander-in-chief of the reinforcements.”
“I see...” Julius nodded his head. “We’ll be leaving all the planning to the Black-robed Prime Minister then.”
“Do I detect spite? Because I’m leaving everything up to someone else?”
“You’re overthinking it. I’m still impressed.” Julius smiled wryly, and then let out a little sigh. “In the former principality, the opinion of the ruling prince was absolute. The prince led without hesitation, and his retainers followed without comment, whether his decisions were right or not. That may...be what created the gap between us and you. I feel, as late as this may be, that I understand why my father lost now.”
“Big Brother...” Roroa gave him a look of concern.
Julius broke out laughing. “Roroa, you and your fiancée were troublesome opponents for me. However, I now have those troublesome opponents on my side. Nothing could be more reassuring. Am I wrong?”
“For me...I never found myself thinkin’ the old you was all that troublesome an opponent.”
“Bold words...”
“But I wouldn’t wanna end up fightin’ the new you. Ya seem way tougher than before.” And Roroa grinned. It felt like the ice was melting between them.
Considering their past strife, it was hard to tell whether they could fully accept one another, but it seemed they wouldn’t hate each other without cause from now on.
Looking at the two of them, I could feel my guilt for taking Roroa’s family away from her lighten just a little.
That’s why...no matter what happens, I must defend this country.
I put a hand on Naden’s shoulder. “Well, shall we get going, Naden?”
“Okay.” Naden nodded and then, with a single breath, turned into her massive ryuu form.
As I mounted Naden, Aisha rushed over with a worried look on her face. “I’m worried about letting you two go out alone after all, sire! I should go with you...”
“Like I explained before, mobility and enemy detection are the important factors for what we’re about to do. It’s more efficient to have just me and Naden. If we take a bodyguard, we’ll stand out too much. We’ll get in and out quickly, so don’t worry.”
“You say that, but...I can’t help it.”
Aisha still had a worried look on her face, so I gave her a grin. “We all have to do what we can to get through this situation. I’m pushing my retainers hard, so I must do
what I can myself too. It’s okay. If something goes wrong, I’m sure Hal and the rest will come for us.”
Hal thumped his chest proudly. “Yeah. If you get in a jam, we’ll go pull you out of it. Right, Ruby?”
“Right. Naden, you make sure you protect your husband properly too.”
“I’ll do it without you telling me to.” Naden nodded in her ryuu form.
I patted her on the back and said, “Okay, let’s go, Naden!”
“Roger that!”
Naden and I lifted off from the castle wall and danced into the night sky.
Naden rose to a height no winged monster could reach and hovered there. The way the wingless Naden swam through the sky was very quiet, and her black color worked together with that fact to let her blend into the darkness of night.
I didn’t feel cold because I was protected by Naden’s magical power, but the sound of the wind rushing by my ears was loud, making it readily apparent to me I was in a very high place.
Naden turned her long neck to look at me. “Souma.”
“I know. I’m searching now.”
I covered my ears so as not to be distracted by the sound of the wind, and then focused.
I was using my ability, Living Poltergeists, to control six wooden mice, and had them searching the ground. Down at ground level, the chimera-like monsters were eating the corpses of the lizardmen that had been fried to a crisp after being bombed by the wyvern cavalry.
In a scene that made them look like hungry ghosts, I could hear the groaning of monsters and the biting sounds of them feasting greedily on corpses. The sickening images flowed into my head, triggering an instinctive gag reflex, but I somehow managed to force it down and continue the search.
I searched the ground carefully from a height where we couldn’t be caught by surprise monster attacks.
Of everyone who had come on this expedition, Naden and I were the only pair that could pull this off. I was always delegating the tasks I couldn’t handle to the people who could. So, whenever there was something I could do, I had to be proactive about doing it, or I wouldn’t be setting a proper example for my retainers.
This isn’t the time to be creeped out. I must hurry and find it.
