Chapter 30: The Swamp’s Four-Armed Shadows

The overall supervisor was a man with light-brown hair mixed with strands of gold, the kind whose smiling face looked pleasant to anyone.

The flashy noble attire and thick leather boots suited to the site somehow matched him perfectly; it was a strange impression.

“You must have had a safe journey. We have been waiting so eagerly.”

He greeted me with a voice so warm it was as though I were his life’s savior.

…What is this?

My original plan had been to make him kneel the moment we met, read out the charges, and cut off his head, but I couldn’t bring myself to draw on a smiling face first.

I spoke to Trichitas, who was reaching for the dagger at his waist.

“We have to be guided anyway, so let’s wait a moment.”

He hesitated, then nodded.

The supervisor began walking and waved here and there.

“Now, now. Everyone rest until I call you again. You all worked hard last night too. And you—why are you out again? I told you to rest if you’re injured.”

A knight with a bandaged leg limped out of a small triangular tent and bowed toward Trichitas and me.

The supervisor sent the knight back inside, then hurried to our side again and smiled kindly.

“I was late with my introduction. I am Depamatos, entrusted with overall supervision of the Serenus Marsh reclamation site. If it is not rude, may I first verify your identities?”

Trichitas and I showed the documents bearing the Lord’s signature.

Depamatos’s mouth fell open.

“I never thought the day would come when I would see this signature with my own eyes. This way, please. I will guide you at once.”

We followed his lead and strolled through the camp.

If I had to sum up my impression: if anyone ever asks, “What does ‘utter chaos’ mean?” I will never be at a loss for an answer again.

The state of the camp was a spectacle itself.

Collapsed tents everywhere, guy-lines flapping loose in the wind.

The peddlers who should have been doing brisk business had hidden their stalls and were huddled in corners like plague victims.

Hay for the horses had been torn apart as though giant moles had romped through it and lay scattered on the ground; feed troughs were split in half.

The cauldron for the “never-ending soup” that should be endlessly replenished gave off a burnt smell.

In the supply tent, rats the size of cats and snakes thicker than a man’s thigh were feasting on eggs and dried meat.

“You’ve come?”

“Urrgh… ugh…”

Around the scattered campfires lay the wounded.

I could not even imagine what one would have to do at a reclamation site to produce that many injured.

There wasn’t a single warning sign around the marsh.

If someone stepped out at night to relieve themselves and misstepped, they could be swallowed by the swamp and no one would ever know.

“Why are those shields lined up over there?”

Trichitas asked, looking at a row of shields.

“At least you used half-honorifics in front of others. I’m almost tearing up. Shields? They’re caked in mud—looks like someone used them as sleds in the swamp.”

Trichitas frowned and looked at the large open-sided tent.

Inside, high-grade surveyors who looked like engineers were sprawled asleep.

“Seeing them sleeping at this hour, it really wouldn’t be strange if they had.”

He muttered with a sigh of resignation.

For the first time, he didn’t contradict me.

“Where are the other mages? The earth mages who are supposed to raise the ground and pull in soil.”

Depamatos headed toward the center.

“This is where we stay.”

Even the mages’ quarters were relatively splendid.

After the chaos I had just witnessed, I was ready to forgive one or two of them tangled with prostitutes in broad daylight.

But I had not expected to see uniformed mages wrapped head to toe in blankets, sleeping around a campfire in the middle of a bright afternoon.

“Don’t you lot work?”

I didn’t need to see any more.

They had swallowed sacks of the Lord’s gold and were lounging like this—death sentence already.

I placed a hand on my sword hilt.

Trichitas gathered blue light in his hand.

Depamatos’s face turned the color of ash.

I shouted loud enough to shake the camp.

“Is this all the land you pioneered through the entire winter? It hasn’t changed much from when I came last autumn. Did we give you too few sacks of gold? The only thing you’ll receive now is this sword!”

“Please, just hear me out—”

Trichitas pulled out a thick bundle of documents.

“Here are the salaries and construction funds you have received so far, and the reclamation plan you swore to execute. Even you can see with your own eyes that it has not been carried out. Do not speak of circumstances. Do not say you didn’t know. The weight of responsibility is the weight of life.”

At that moment, workers who had been peeking from between tents came rushing out.

Gaunt from hunger, they all knelt between us and Depamatos and prostrated themselves.

“My lord, please, just a moment—”

“It’s not the mages’ fault.”

“It’s because of the monsters.”

“Demons—demons come out of the swamp.”

I slid the half-drawn sword back into its sheath.

“Demons?”

***

It was still early spring, so the sun set quickly.

Being relatively southern, it wasn’t bitterly cold, but the damp wind was fierce, and the campfire felt welcome.

Trichitas and I sat around the fire with Depamatos and several earth mages.

In the heavy silence where no one could easily open their mouths, I fell into thought.

In a world with magic, it wouldn’t be strange for demons or magical beasts to exist.

In fact, thousands of years ago, the classic other-world monsters—orcs, ogres, goblins—had really existed.

Of course, they had all been exterminated for the crime of touching the blue-bloods’ serfs.

How many years ago was that?

“Doesn’t our nation’s history go back about eight thousand years?”

“The current borders were established around five or six thousand years ago… I mean, yes, sir.”

Trichitas answered awkwardly in honorifics.

“Why did it take two thousand years to stabilize the borders? We could have wiped out any red-blood nations with a flick of the wrist.”

“It wasn’t time needed to stabilize. There was simply no need to march across the world to conquer pathetic creatures who groveled and offered tribute on their own.”

So it was an empire in a different sense from now.

In terms of having many nations under it, it might have been even more imperial than today.

“Even now, some elector territories tolerate small kingdoms under the name of local autonomy. The land is vast, but there aren’t enough blue bloods to manage it.”

As someone who likes history, I found it fascinating, but unfortunately it wasn’t knowledge I needed right now.

I calmed the urge to ask more and focused on the task at hand.

“Got it. Thank you.”

I gave Trichitas a light nod of thanks and looked at Depamatos.

“Now you speak. Tell me how monsters that supposedly went extinct five thousand years ago are back and ravaging Intezeruto land.”

Depamatos opened his mouth with an expression that said How would I know?

“They first appeared last winter. As soon as Lady Ribelia finished the territorial negotiations, we signed a contract with the main house steward and came straight here.”

“You moved quickly.”

“The first ten days went well. From that hill to that protruding ridge—everything you see was new land made in those ten days.”

It was a considerable area.

The entire camp put together wouldn’t even be a fifth of it.

“But one night they crawled up from the swamp.”

“From inside the swamp?”

“Yes. Deep in the night, they targeted horses and people.”

“You’re a fairly strong mage yourself. Didn’t you try fighting them off?”

Depamatos looked as though he had been insulted, then quickly softened his expression.

“I fought several times. I buried a few in the ground. But the next day twice as many returned.”

Another earth mage added,

“They are quick. For earth mages like us who never properly learned combat magic, they were too much.”

Trichitas and I nodded.

Output and control were completely different matters.

“Attacked every other day, we were exhausted and couldn’t work. The waterside is already full of insects and disease. We blue bloods can endure, but the red-blood surveyors and laborers could not.”

“Couldn’t you ask for help from nearby cities or branch families?”

Trichitas asked.

The moment he did, the mages’ faces darkened.

“Many messengers never returned.”

“Messengers didn’t return?”

“Monsters that crawled out of the swamp followed them. You can outrun them for a while on horseback, but eventually they catch up.”

A chill ran down my spine as I looked at Trichitas.

Monsters with that level of intelligence and stamina were no ordinary beasts.

“Still, thanks to several families sending knights, we could breathe a little.”

Trichitas frowned.

“Of course no officer-mages were sent.”

This region had nearly gone to war just months ago.

Even sending knights would have required considerable courage.

“We kept requesting help from the main house, and so the two of you have come.”

Depamatos finished his long explanation with a tired face.

I clenched my fist and stared toward the swamp.

Now I understood why the Lord had promised the grand gift of a full blue-blood pension to send me here.

He must have agonized over it.

He could not dispatch an officer-mage to a region that had only just escaped the danger of war.

Yet the reports clearly showed something had gone terribly wrong, and he could not send weaklings either.

A mixture of feeling trusted and feeling toyed with made my head spin in a strange way.

How nice it would have been if he had just told me from the start that something suspicious was going on.

“Trichitas.”

“Why do you call me?”

“If you’re my auditor, you’ll grade me too, right?”

He hid his eyes behind his long blue hair.

“Write it in the report. Tell them it’s worth raising the pension—say I’m a talent worth at least a quarter of what I received in my heir days.”

“In the heir days—”

“Yes. Exactly.”

At last I felt my own worth.

“You know it now too, don’t you? I’m the only one who can solve this.”

This isn’t a situation young nobles who never took the officer-mage exam can handle.

Even if seasoned veterans like Havonan moved, it would draw the imperial family’s attention.

But no ruler in this world cares about a single knight.

And I—at the very least—can confidently say I am stronger than the average young nobles of this world.

Trichitas glared at me with a fierce expression.

I lifted my chin and stared at the swamp.

“I’m not asking you to write it right now. Of course you’ll watch with your own eyes and evaluate fairly first. I’m only saying I hope the reward matches the deed.”

Forgetting we were in front of the other mages, he snapped,

“Your mouth is still alive even though you can’t use magic.”

“I’d appreciate if you also recognized that my sword and body are alive and well.”

I glanced toward the swamp again.

“Don’t you hear something strange?”

Trichitas, Depamatos, and the earth mages all jerked their heads up at once.

Splash, slither, rustle, rustle.

Mixed with the night wind, the monsters’ sounds were drawing closer little by little.

I spoke to Depamatos, whose face had gone white.

“You lot build the wall. Fighting is my job.”

“That won’t do. The imperial family will claim we’re building a fortress.”

“By imperial law, anything under 2.4 meters is a fence, not a wall. Just make it under 2.4 meters. If anyone says 2.4 meters is measured from sea level, I’ll split their head myself, so rest easy.”

My deliberately rough joke worked; a faint smile and some calm returned to Depamatos’s face.

He shouted to the mages around him.

“Everyone, you’ve built plenty of walls, right? Just don’t go over 2.4 meters!”

I drew my sword and walked toward the swamp.

SHHHING—the pleasant ring of steel echoed.

“Then let’s see how strong these monster bastards are.”

In the darkness ahead, grotesque silhouettes began to appear.

They were slightly larger than humans—and they had four arms.