“And I don’t believe it will be possible to fully protect the imperial retreat with just ten male and four female knights. I suggest we tighten the perimeter and withdraw promptly.” He squinted at us. “Without knowing how numerous our enemies are, we cannot fight them.”
“‘Enemies’...” Petralka’s eyes widened at the word. “So you think those knights were felled by something or someone?”
“Every one of them was a skilled warrior, elite fighters who understood vigilance. I cannot imagine that even one of them would deliberately abandon their post, let alone all of them together. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that they were overcome by something.”
We all looked at each other, silent. Our nightmares were coming true in the worst way possible. An enemy was close. Someone or something powerful enough to take out twenty trained knights without making a sound.
Most likely soldiers, armed with modern tactics and weaponry. Otherwise, I couldn’t fathom what could have done this to Garius’s men.
Wait... The sniper rifle. Why haven’t they picked us off yet?
The idea bugged me. Why would they need to whittle down our patrol? We were totally vulnerable, absorbed in playing in the lake. They should have been able to snipe us any time they felt like it.
So why didn’t they?
The idea that they were draining our fighting strength was supremely unsettling, not least because we had no idea why. Could it be that killing wasn’t their objective? That they meant to capture someone here as a hostage?
When it came to candidates for hostages around here, the obvious choices were Petralka or Garius.
Or maybe... me.
Loek and Romilda were both from noble families, so they would have some value as captives. But they hadn’t arrived until after the number of knights started to drop, and more importantly, nobody but them had even known that they were going to show up. I doubted the “enemy” knew something like that if we didn’t.
Still, if they take a hostage, what do they do then? Negotiate with the Holy Eldant Empire? Things have been so quiet, though—why now? Did a change in leadership produce a new policy? Or...
I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts straight.
And I certainly had no idea what this enemy of ours was after.
Even though it was the middle of the day, everything around us was covered by a clinging darkness.
The dense foliage blocked out the sunlight. A few shafts of sun poked through the trees, so it was at least possible to see what was around us—but the view felt awfully confined.
On top of that, the soft leaf mold underfoot gave us the impression that we were sinking into the ground with every step we took. Tree roots poked up here and there, a hazard that could easily trip an unwary traveler.
In short, this wasn’t a place that was made for walking. I felt a pang of sympathy when I thought of the knights who’d had to patrol here.
“All right,” I said, brushing sand off my body and looking around. “Show time.”
The vegetation was especially thick here. If an enemy were wearing camouflage, he might be standing right next to you and you wouldn’t notice.
I thought back to what had happened about fifteen minutes earlier.
I’d had just one idea about how to deal with an enemy we couldn’t see.
Assuming they were part of the JSDF, or were otherwise armed with modern weaponry, we couldn’t hope to beat them in a straight fight. We might not even be able to run away. When it came to the hunt, pros might as well be a different form of life from amateurs like us. Confronting them head-on would be the most foolish possible choice.
And so we decided to do something unorthodox.
Specifically...
“Elvia,” I called to the beast girl who was swimming in the lake. She was somehow managing to kick up geysers of water to either side even though she was just doing the doggy paddle. “I need your help. Can you dig another hole like you did earlier?”
“A hole? Well, not to brag, but holes are kind of my specialty!” She gave a little snort. “But, uh... why?”
Minori-san grabbed one of Elvia’s floppy ears and whispered, “Well...” Slowly but unmistakably, Elvia’s expression tightened into one of anxiety.
When all was said, she replied, “I get it. I’m happy to help however I can!”
And what was our battle plan?
First, in order to throw the enemy off, we would deliberately appear to continue to just keep playing. Another game of “watermelon busting.”
So, just like that morning, Elvia dug another hole.
Earlier, she had popped out of the pit and I had climbed in—but this time, Elvia didn’t emerge. I climbed in after her, then Minori-san and Myusel, along with the female knights, filled the hole in.
As they did so, I proceeded through the tunnel Elvia had dug.
Once the hole was covered, the girls set up a beach ball impersonating my head and covered it with the watermelon hat, then Myusel and the others proceeded to start busting. It would look to the enemy like I was trapped, just as I had been that morning.
While whoever was after us was distracted, Elvia and I would surface somewhere well distanced from everyone else and go to the bird-drawn carriage we had used to get here. Our lizardman couple, Brooke and Cerise, were waiting there as drivers. We would link up with them and catch the enemy from behind...
To be perfectly honest, it was a ridiculous idea, one that I would never normally have even considered trying. But this wasn’t Japan; it was another world, it was the Holy Eldant Empire. A world where it wasn’t actually surprising to see lizardmen and werewolves walking around—and most likely, modern Japanese thinking didn’t account for their special talents.
Elvia’s tunnel-digging, for example, I could only describe as incredible. I had expected this to take about half an hour and had worried (among other things) that I might be buried alive in the process, but neither of those things came true; we soon found ourselves above ground, just near the woods.
“Phew, glad that went so well!” Elvia said, grinning from ear to ear, her face covered in dirt and sand. “I’m so glad my digging skills could help us out!”
“And us,” said Brooke, “we need simply find this ‘enemy,’ yes?”
We had another unexpected ability on our side—the lizardmen’s senses. Reptiles have what you might call a type of infrared sensor built right into their bodies. With their so-called pit organs, they can search out even animals that are trying to hide. Standard camo wouldn’t fool these two.
“That’s right. Please?” I said. “You’re the only ones who can do this.”
“I must say, Master, those are words to get one’s blood stirring,” Brooke said. “Don’t y’ agree?”
“Indeed,” Cerise said with a nod.
Unlike elves or werewolves, lizardman expressions can be hard to read, but I had the faint sense that Brooke was grinning.
“We’ll do all we can to help you,” he said.
“Okay then, here’s the plan,” I said. “We split up. I’ll go with Brooke, Elvia with Cerise. If anything happens, just shout as loud as you can. Don’t assume you have to handle whatever comes up on your own.”
“Got it! I’m sure Cerise-san will protect me!”
“I appreciate your confidence,” Cerise said, “but I think you’re quite capable of protecting yourself.”
Lizardmen were demi-humans, too; they had physical capabilities exceeding those of a normal human. Their main weakness was cold temperatures, but in the middle of summer like this, that wasn’t likely to matter.
“All right,” I said. Then we split up in the woods, one pair of us going left and the other right.
These woods ran from north to south along the shore of the lake. Brooke and I were checking the northern half, while Elvia and Cerise handled the southern side.
Wordlessly, Brooke and I worked our way northward. The forest got thicker and thicker. It was fearfully dark, even though I knew it was the middle of
the day. Maybe not “can’t see your hand in front of your face” dark, but dark enough that you couldn’t be certain what was hiding in the denser vegetation. If there was anyone camouflaged around here, then I, with only the visible spectrum at my disposal, had no hope of finding them.
“Man, am I glad you and Cerise are here,” I said.
“I must admit I’m a bit embarrassed to be so well thought of,” Brooke replied, although I didn’t see anything resembling a blush.
“I’m just saying it because it’s true.”
“Master,” Brooke said after a moment’s pause, “you truly are a strange one.”
The conversation progressed a little bit at a time, line by line, as we worked our way through the woods, relying on Brooke’s pit organs to search. At length...
“Master,” Brooke said suddenly, coming to a halt. “There’s something over there with the same temperature as a human.”
“How many?”
“I’m not sure, but... more than just one or two.”
Were they enemies—or our missing knights? At that moment, I had no way to know. I figured it would be best to avoid immediately making direct contact.
“Let’s go around, see if we can come up from behind. If they’re enemies, we could get ourselves in trouble.”
“As you say, sir.”
Brooke started walking in a new direction, glancing to me and nodding. He seemed to be saying, Follow me—and implying that silence was called for from here on.
Given that he had reputedly been a great warrior once, I decided to listen to him.
We took a sharp left from the direction we had been going and began approaching whatever it was that had a similar temperature to humans. We moved as quietly as we could, trying to avoid even letting our clothes rustle.
The silence weighed heavily on me. You’d think this place would be cool from the lack of sunlight, yet I felt an unpleasant bead of sweat trickling down my forehead.
I hoped they weren’t enemies. If they happened to be our allies, the knights, that would be great.
But what if we were walking into an ambush?
I wasn’t alone—I had Brooke, a very heartening companion. But he’d said we were dealing with more than just a small number here. Maybe enough that we would have scant hope of victory if it came to a fight. That’s why I was hoping it wouldn’t. In fact, I was mostly hoping to stay out of Brooke’s way.
Hence, my plan involved doing the absolute minimum to confirm who we were dealing with.
Suddenly, Brooke stopped, pointing at a bush. He seemed to mean, Over there.
His tongue slid in and out of his mouth quickly. He was nervous, too.
The bush started to bother me. It seemed unnatural—sort of like it was only partly there. Like it was floating or something.
Could it be a trap? Or...
Brooke turned toward me and made a pushing gesture. I assumed he wanted me to wait here.
I nodded and crouched down. When Brooke saw that I was safely hidden, he cautiously began to approach the bush.
He reached out ever so slowly, parting the leaves—and just as I expected, they slid aside readily. I was right: it was just a fake made of dried branches.
Brooke looked back at me, and I nodded again to encourage him. He began to clear away the pretend bush—
And then stopped in shock. Underneath it were the bodies of the male knights. A female knight in a swimsuit was visible, too. For some reason, they had been lain politely on a sheet stretched over the moss and leaf detritus.
“I knew it...” I came up to Brooke and took the female knight’s hand, checking her pulse. She still had one. That meant she was alive. Her heart was beating. Her body was still warm. But...
“Hm...?” Brooke made to rouse one of the male knights, but then looked puzzled.
He had discovered a hard, dark-green ball about the size of a fist.
I had seen something like it in a magazine or someplace.
It was a hand grenade.
“Brooke, get back! It’s a trap!”
It was a familiar trick from war movies and such—hide a hand grenade under a dead body to get any friends who come to help the guy...!
I backpedaled as fast as I could, trying to get some distance from the bomb. Brooke started to do the same, but an instant later he yelped and flew into the air.
He hadn’t jumped of his own accord. He had been pulled up, backwards. He had been caught in one of the oldest traps in the book, a rope tied to a tree.
“Brooke!”
Just for a second, I was distracted by my friend hanging there in the air. But that second was all the enemy needed. I felt something at my neck from behind me, probably a knife.
“Don’t move,” a man’s voice growled.
He was speaking Japanese.
I knew it...!
He had to be with the JSDF.
“Hrk...”
Even if I were to call out, my voice would never reach Myusel and the others. And then we would be killed. That would be it: a quick, useless death.
I could see they had a knife to Brooke, too. Something bigger, large enough to cut through underbrush—a so-called jungle knife. I didn’t think I could expect help from him.
And that was it. I was out of ideas.
Vacation? I was going to get the ultimate in time off.
I felt the despair start to press down on me.
And then...
The lakeside was home to the strangest of sights.
“What... the... hell?”
Specifically, almost a dozen camouflaged JSDF soldiers, each of them ripped.
Plus, they were sitting in a line on the ground.
Standing in front of them and staring them down, though, in a wide stance with her hands clasped behind her back, was a girl in glasses, a black bikini covering her generous endowment. And woman or not, she, too, was JSDF.
I’m referring, as you may have guessed, to Minori-san.
Towering behind her was a giant dragon—er, or actually, the giant Faldra, a transforming, dragon-shaped mecha created by Loek and Romilda on behalf of the Eldant Empire.
It had, I gathered, been their ride over here.
All this made for a perfectly surreal picture, but what made it even stranger was the silver badge that glittered on the left arm of each and every person sitting on the ground. A diamond sitting atop a laurel wreath: the Ranger badge.
As I said before, this was proof that they were the elite of the elite of the Ground Self-Defense Force. Famous for having the most grueling training in every discipline. Earning your Ranger badge meant three long months of brutal exercises, and demanded the mental fortitude to match. I had heard all sorts of things: like how no matter what your superiors asked you to do, no matter how much abuse they heaped on you, you could only answer “Ranger!!”; no talking back was permitted; and the last four days or so of the training were an extended combat simulation in which you went with no sleep and hardly any rest of any kind.
I didn’t know how much of it was actually true, of course, but it was a world a home security guard like me could hardly even imagine.
Now, these men among men sat with their equipment splayed out before them. Instead of the standard Type-89 normally issued to members of the JSDF, they had... these.
“Cameras?”
I couldn’t hold back a surprised mutter. They had stocks and grips like sniper rifles—but they were cameras, with extreme telephoto lenses. This had to be what I had seen flashing in the sunlight.
There was a panoply of similar equipment as well: waterproof, high-res digital cameras; similarly water-tested high-fidelity movie cameras.
Huh.
So...
“Are they... paparazzi?”
“Shinichi-sama! Welcome back,” Myusel exclaimed. She came over toward me from where she had been watching the soldiers from a distance. Petralka, Garius, and the four female knights were all there as well.
“Thank goodness you’re s
afe!” Myusel said.
“Well, I mean, safe...”
Brooke and I had really been something of a diversion all along. No matter how strong Brooke might be, and even if Elvia and Cerise represented considerable physical capacity themselves, it wouldn’t have been smart to try to confront the JSDF head-on. If they’d had guns, we would have been killed for sure.
That’s why we had decided to scout things out first. But even then, there was a risk of being detected. So we decided that if we were spotted, our rule would immediately change from scouting to diversion. While the enemy was focused on us, Loek and Romilda would make for the Faldra, bring it over, and exfiltrate the lot of us. That was the plan, anyway.
Based on the fact that Loek and Romilda had walked straight through the enemy’s perimeter even after the knights had been taken out, I assumed a little movement wasn’t going to be a problem.
“Then the two of them kindly brought the Faldra here,” Myusel said. “The wind magic they were using stirred up the surface of the lake.”
And just so happened to reveal the JSDF soldiers creeping towards us under the water. Strangely enough, no sooner had they been discovered than the soldiers put up their hands in a game-over gesture and surrendered.
What was it they were after? It didn’t look like a single one of them was carrying a gun; instead, they each had a camera. Even if they were on an intelligence-gathering mission, you’d think some kind of weaponry would be called for...
“Captain Satou,” Minori-san said. Her mouth turned up into a small smile, but behind her spectacles, her eyes weren’t laughing at all. “What is the meaning of this?”
The way her arms were crossed in front of her chest pushed her boobs up, which made for a fantastic visual as far as I was concerned—but I got the feeling that a careless word to Minori-san at this moment could result in my untimely demise. She didn’t have a weapon, or even really proper clothing, but she was vastly more intimidating than any of the soldiers thanks to her palpable rage.
“If you have any excuses, any pleas to make, now’s the time to try them out.”
“Er...” one of the soldiers said uncomfortably. I thought I recognized him. His face was covered in camouflage paint, but I could tell it was Captain Satou, the man I had seen with Matoba-san. He ran an embarrassed finger along his cheek and said, “Well, uh, calm down, Koganuma.”
Outbreak Company: Volume 7 Page 5
