“Excuse me, Sir Knight!”
“What is it?”
“There was an additional missing person just now. But there’s a witness.”
The witness was a young raccoon beastkin who was barely about to turn 10. The child with a drooping tail explained clearly what they’d seen while sobbing with a tear-stained face.
“Sniff, it was about the size of a big dog. Hic, it came up to my chest. It was pitch black and so fast it just snatched my sister…”
“What did it look like? Was it a four-legged beast?”
“Yes. It ran on four legs. And, also… hic, I saw teeth. Two big teeth…”
“It didn’t climb walls?”
“It jumped right over buildings. I only saw it for a bit, but… that way…”
A black beast that climbed buildings well and had large front teeth. The scope was too broad. Oblyad was a land with a great forest, and such places inevitably had various flora and fauna living in them.
The two children said they’d been playing here. Because their parents told them not to play far away when they went to work, they were playing hide-and-seek near their house. That’s why the younger child was able to see their sister being kidnapped while hiding.
“My sister, hic, my sister told me, sob, to stay still…”
So the child had covered their own mouth and held their breath inside a wooden barrel after seeing that shocking sight. Because their sister had desperately put her index finger to her lips and shook her head.
“Waaaah…”
The child who had told everything they saw finally burst into tears. The parents who had just arrived after hearing the news embraced the child.
Taeyon left them with Oderic and began searching the place where the monster had appeared.
“Is there any clue?”
Kaniel, who had been waiting separately, approached Taeyon.
“No. It’s unpleasantly clean. This isn’t typical monster behavior.”
“If it’s not typical…?”
“It might be receiving orders from a demon beast, no, I’m certain of it.”
Monsters were violent creatures with only instinct remaining. Beings that couldn’t be considered capable of thought. Naturally, imagining them making long-term plans was impossible.
If what the little raccoon child saw had really been just a monster, it would have meant it was hunting, not kidnapping.
“A demon beast? Then isn’t the city in danger?”
“We need to resolve it before it becomes dangerous.”
At the heavy answer, Kaniel hesitated for a moment before speaking.
“Actually, I have an idea…”
“Tell me.”
“Do you know about miasma? I’m talking about the polluted energy that flows out from the demon realm.”
The demon realm was a polluted world. The problem was that that world and this world were adjacent to each other. Holes would occasionally form in the wall between worlds, and miasma would seep in through those gaps. And this miasma had adverse effects on human bodies.
Depending on the human, there were cases of experiencing many symptoms like chills, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and even eventually dying.
Fortunately, Taeyon seemed to know about miasma and nodded with a frown.
“I can feel it here. Following along the path where that child said the monster traveled…”
“You can feel miasma?”
Taeyon also tried checking carefully, but he couldn’t feel it at all.
“You don’t know?”
“No. Perhaps… humans might be more sensitive to miasma.”
“Or it might be because I’m a mage.”
“Anyway, you’re saying the monster left traces.”
“Ah. Actually, that part is unclear.”
Kaniel mumbled with an uncertain expression.
“I don’t know the correlation between monsters and miasma. In my hometown, monsters didn’t give off miasma. The monsters I’ve seen since coming down are the same. I can feel miasma, but is this really a monster’s trace?”
“It is a monster’s trace. When monsters gather, a rift to the demon realm opens with low probability. It means there are quite a lot of monsters in its hideout, and a rift to the demon realm has opened because of that.”
“A rift to the demon realm opens when monsters gather?”
At the story he was hearing for the first time, Kaniel’s eyes widened.
“At least that’s how it is here.”
Kaniel was a bit excited by the new information he couldn’t have known on the Floating Island. Even more so because it was information related to monsters.
“Then I’ll guide you to where the traces lead.”
Then they could reach where the kidnapped child was. Probably the people who had been kidnapped until now would be there too.
After telling Oderic they would try tracking the clue, the two began moving following those traces. The traces passed buildings and led to an alley, then headed toward a rock wall at the village edge. Precisely, to the front of a cave whose entrance was sealed with chains crossed in an X shape.
“It seems to be a path leading to an unexcavated area. Let’s go in.”
“May I light a fire with magic?”
“Yes.”
Kaniel held out one hand and chanted a spell.
“<Light to illuminate the darkness…!>”
A small orb of light that bloomed from his palm began to illuminate the surroundings. The inside of the cave looked as organized as an interior. The ceiling and walls were well polished, and the floor was paved with bricks, making it easy to walk.
However, there were ominously large broken marks everywhere, and metal arrows, large scythes, axes and such were embedded here and there.
“It doesn’t seem completely unexcavated.”
“So it seems.”
It appeared to be an area where excavation had been halted when it seemed like it wouldn’t yield very good results.
The miasma extended straight into the interior of the path. Walking quickly while following those traces, Kaniel asked carefully.
“Taeyon. While we’re walking this excavated path, could you tell me about this world?”
“That’s not difficult, but what story do you want?”
“Like what you said earlier, that rifts to the demon realm form when monsters gather. On the Floating Island, I thought they opened suddenly without any reason or warning. I didn’t know monsters were the cause.”
Because there were monsters everywhere on the Floating Island. Except for remote places like the eastern forest, most places were like that. They used monsters for farming and transportation, and there were even farms that raised bird monsters and obtained eggs. They even kept small, cute monsters as pets.
Just as it was impossible to deduce that ‘the door to the demon realm opens because there are spoons,’ it was the same with monsters.
“…Then, I should tell you about this land first.”
Taeyon said this while holding out his hand to Kaniel in front of a hole too wide to easily jump over. Kaniel obediently took his hand, and Taeyon grabbed his waist, pulled him close, and jumped over the hole.
“I told you last time that the Surface is divided into the Royal Capital Aztail and six territories. Then why is it divided like that?”
“Is there a special reason?”
“To block the door to the demon realm.”
A ledge reaching about waist-high suddenly appeared in the middle of the corridor. Taeyon lightly hopped up. Kaniel, newly amazed by beastkin athletic ability and feeling a competitive spirit, struggled to climb the ledge and didn’t see Taeyon’s outstretched hand.
When it became clear he couldn’t climb up at all, Taeyon just reached out, grabbed both of Kaniel’s armpits, and lifted him up.
The flushed Kaniel said thank you in a voice that crawled inside.
Moving their steps again, Kaniel continued the interrupted conversation.
“…The door to the demon realm?”
He’d thought he’d lightly hear something like the circumstances of how the Surface’s king established the kingdom, but a scary story popped out. Even rifts to the demon realm caused serious damage, but a door to the demon realm?
“At some point in the past, they made a passage from the demon realm to this side and opened a door. All the races living on the Surface at the time fought against it and eventually succeeded in closing the door, but they couldn’t erase the door. Instead, they sealed the door. The royal capital guards the door to the demon realm, and each of the six territories guards a seal.”
“What’s a seal?”
“I heard it’s an auxiliary seal designed to share and bear the burden received by the royal capital’s seal.”
It meant a seal utilizing the royal capital and all six territories. Just how powerful was the force the door to the demon realm possessed that they had to go that far?
Kaniel felt a bit chilled.
“Monsters and demon beasts near the seal instinctively rush to the castle to destroy the seal. That’s why the castle lord risks their life to protect the castle. If the seal on our land breaks, the door will become that much looser, and the burden on the seals of other lands will become severe.”
“I didn’t know. That the Surface was guarding the door to the demon realm…”
If that were true, the humans living on the Floating Island were essentially freeloading on the safety the beastkin protected.
Because if the door to the demon realm opened, even the Floating Island couldn’t be safe.
Thinking that far, Kaniel realized something was strange. The seal was magic. And only humans could use magic.
“Wait, the person who sealed the door to the demon realm was…?”
“Yes. A human. An archmage named Abloff.”
“Archmage Abloff…”
It was a name he’d never heard before.
If he’d achieved such an accomplishment, it should be recorded in the Floating Island’s history books, so why?
Kaniel felt a deep sense of disconnect between the history known to beastkin and the history known to humans. If the perspectives looking at one incident were different, that was natural. Even in small disputes, both sides had different positions and claimed to be wronged, so it went without saying for major incidents.
