Ch.748Useful Little Bear

“That bear, why was it wandering around in a place like this?”

Asha asked, tilting her head while wearing a bear skin over her existing fur clothes, making her look round like a snowman. She was munching on roasted bear meat as she spoke.

“What do you mean ‘a place like this’? Isn’t it normal for bears to be in the mountains?”

“That’s true, but… it was trembling from the cold, wasn’t it? That’s a bit strange. An animal that can’t even withstand the environment of its own habitat should have either gone extinct or migrated elsewhere, don’t you think?”

“…Oh, now that you mention it, that’s right…”

Millia opened her eyes wide and nodded.

As the daughter of a hunter, encountering bears in the mountains was such a natural and ordinary occurrence for her that she hadn’t realized how strange it was to see a trembling bear wandering around.

“Then why…”

“Its original habitat must not be here. Even in the Heaven Mountains, there must be places that are somewhat less cold.”

Ophelia van Sigmillus, who had been directing our path beside me, turned to Millia and Asha to provide an answer.

“The fact that such a creature was trembling and wandering around this area… perhaps it fled or was driven away from where it originally lived?”

Fled or driven away, huh…

Well, it certainly looked that way. Although it roared loudly when it saw us, its eyes were gleaming not with hunger but with something resembling fear.

It must have witnessed something terrifying and horrible. Something so frightening that even a beast without intelligence couldn’t forget.

Yes, something like—a dragon with nothing left but malice and hostility.

“The vermin’s hiding place might be closer than we thought.”

“I think so too. Nidhogg is definitely somewhere nearby. At most, we should be able to find it within three days. If it were any further away, we would have encountered a frozen bear rather than a trembling one.”

Ophelia nodded in agreement.

“Three days. That’s fortunate indeed. We’ll be able to descend before our food supplies run out.”

Nigel smiled with relief. The others looked pleased as well.

Of course they would be happy. It meant this ordeal might end sooner than expected.

…Considering my reasons and purpose for coming here, the hardship wouldn’t really end with slaying the dragon.

No, the real hardship would begin after the subjugation.

We would need to hold back the fairies and Dragonborn who would come charging with bloodshot eyes, transport the dragon’s remains to imperial territory, and recover the holy sword embedded somewhere in the mountains.

I hadn’t shared that last task with anyone in the group.

Knowing the location where the holy sword sleeps is my secret alone. It wasn’t time to reveal it yet.

I needed to prepare my explanation for how I knew about it.

======[ ??? ]======

Ophelia’s guess was wrong.

Haschal Median Aishan-Gioro’s guess was also wrong.

The snow bear they encountered was indeed wandering in the middle of a snowy mountain where it couldn’t survive, away from its natural habitat, but the reason for its fate wasn’t because of Nidhogg.

“—Found them.”

Tersillius Zephinia Karnelluode, the fairy guardian who had been waiting in a cave hideout, raised his head with a cold smile.

He had sensed that the snow bear he had released had died.

‘Southwest, a day’s journey away.’

The death of his familiar, implanted with a simple contract, informed him. The target he—they—had been waiting for had finally arrived within their reach.

“That was faster than expected. I thought it would take at least four more days to arrive… Did they fly here on that ship we saw yesterday?”

Eirnesia, who was eating frozen meat roasted by spirits while leaning against the cave wall, glanced up at the sky where a blizzard was raging as she recalled the memory.

A steel sailing ship gliding through the air with a roaring sound. It was such an impressive sight that she had almost forgotten about staying hidden.

“Yes. It was too crude to be a dwarf vessel… that ship must have been made by humans.”

“I still can’t believe it. Creatures that were no different from livestock until eight hundred years ago are now imitating dwarven airships after just eight hundred years. Isn’t their rate of development too fast?”

Eirnesia expressed her worried complaints with a deep sigh.

The airship itself wasn’t a major threat. Even if they flew through the sky on a ship, it could be easily pursued and shot down with high-level wind spirits.

However, the fact that these inferior creatures, who were once mere slaves, had acquired flight technology on their own in just eight hundred years was not something she could easily dismiss.

If they could master flight technology in just eight hundred years, what would they become in a thousand years, or two thousand years?

Perhaps they might achieve transcendent development surpassing the mechanical civilization of the ancient dwarves.

‘If it weren’t for Carlos the Great, that monster…’

The nightmare from eight hundred years ago flashed through Eirnesia’s mind.

The leader of the slave race created by the celestial Elpinel and the stellar Ausrine, a monster who could control spatial coordinates with mere thought, transforming simple sword movements into slashes that tore the sky and split mountains.

Carlos the Great, the Dragon Slayer.

For all races except humans, that being was literally a disaster incarnate. The same went for Elpinel’s twelve butchers who followed that monster with their blue-silver spears and swords.

The dragons that ruled the skies fell, the werebeasts that ran across the plains were dismembered, and the dwarves in underground cities were buried with screams.

The last orcs were fried alive in boiling oil, the merfolk who couldn’t escape to the deep sea were caught in nets and sliced up, and the giants who walked the earth making it tremble became headless corpses forming mountains and hills.

Although some giants survived… their descendants, failing to inherit their ancestors’ power and knowledge, degenerated into small, stupid, and weak beings—creatures humans called ogres or trolls.

Within fifty years of Carlos the Great’s birth, all races had fallen miserably.

The fairy nation of Alvheim was no exception.

The great forest of Alvheim, which had covered half the continent, was reduced to ashes and scattered. Only the capital where the World Tree stood remained.

More than half of Eirnesia’s peers were also killed by Carlos the Great and his twelve butchers. It wasn’t even a dignified death.

Fairies who burned to death were considered fortunate. Those who were captured alive instead of dying in battle had their ears and limbs cut off and were thrown as trophies to the slaves who had rebelled following Carlos the Great.

What followed was violation so severe that even the fairy consciousness, which had endured hundreds of years, couldn’t withstand it and shattered.

Carlos the Great, who was infinitely merciful to humans, was an unimaginably cruel demon to other races. At least, that’s what he was to Eirnesia.

It was payback for having enslaved and violated humans for over a thousand years, so perhaps it wasn’t so unfair…

But it is the nature of fairies to remember only the wrongs done to them without reflecting on their own actions, accumulating grievances and grudges, so it was only natural for Eirnesia to view Carlos the Great as a demon.

—-

“So, what are we going to do now? Since we know their location, should we ambush them right away?”

“Hmm… no, let’s leave them be for now. It would be better to wait until the target clashes with Nidhogg.”

After pondering briefly, Tersillius shook his head and stopped Eirnesia.

In his opinion, launching an ambush now wasn’t the worst option, but it certainly wasn’t the best either.

“It’s freezing cold. Do we really have to do that?”

“The reaction of the bait that discovered him was unusual. It felt such fear upon seeing him that the simple contract wavered.”

Haschal Median Aishan-Gioro thought the terrified snow bear had fled from a frightening being, but in fact, the bear was terrified because of her.

Although it was forced to approach due to the familiar contract, if not for that, it would have fled immediately upon smelling Haschal Median Aishan-Gioro and run until its lungs burst.

“When a familiar reacts like that… it means that, in its view, the opponent is a dangerous and terrible being beyond comparison to its master. Without being able to rely on its master’s power, the loyalty implanted by the contract wavers.”

Eirnesia clicked her tongue and frowned at Tersillius’s explanation.

“So… that short-lived girl is at a level that even you couldn’t handle alone?”

“That could be said, yes.”

Tersillius nodded.

“…Isn’t that short-lived one only nineteen years old?”

“According to reports.”

Eirnesia’s frown deepened.

“…So in just nineteen years, she’s caught up to our hundreds of years. What a monster among monsters. Even Carlos the Great, that demon bastard, wasn’t quite like that, I think.”

“That’s why the order to kill her came down. Before that short-lived one becomes not just the second coming of Carlos the Great, but surpasses him.”

Tersillius muttered solemnly and quietly, staring in the direction where the snow bear had died.

Their target was never Nidhogg. From the beginning.