“They said the black green grass locusts eat the plants down to their roots, so it takes a while for things to get back to normal. But that’s not all. Look carefully at the dirt and the rocks.”
“The rocks?”
She walked over to one of the exposed rocks and saw that part of it was white where it had been scraped away. Once she spotted one mark like that, she realized there were scratches on all of the rocks nearby.
“Huh? I feel like I’ve seen this before...”
While she was trying to figure out where that was, Allen came up next to her, and she recalled a sight that they had shared before.
“Oh, cotton sheep!”
“Yep.”
Once she looked back at the scenery with cotton sheep in mind, she felt like she could see the line of where they’d moved through the area. From the width of that line, it seemed like a much smaller herd than the one she’d seen in the meadow east of Rosa.
“Cotton sheep are monsters, but they have them in the north of Gardenia, I guess. There’s not that many of them and they move in groups that are too small to really call them herds. People think they came from the west, over the mountains,” Ann explained. “But I guess ’cause the green grass locusts ate up all the plants, they’ve consolidated into one big herd. And I guess it’s a problem when they move in big groups like that.”
“I feel like when it happened in Rosa, people called it a natural disaster. I think they said you have to just wait for them to pass by?”
It had definitely left an impression, but it had happened quite a long time ago. The thing that came to mind more readily for Sara was the cotton sheep candy Josef had given her.
“I guess they went north, where there aren’t as many people, so there’s no need to worry about them for now. I’ve been following Ed around Gardenia and learning about all this stuff.”
Ann crossed her arms with a proud, adorable hmph.
“We’ll be going north to get to the capital, so I wonder if we’ll see the way they went.” Ann looked worriedly at the road before them. She really had gotten used to Gardenia in the two years since Sara had last seen her.
“I’m sure we’ll see something, so let’s get going already.”
At those words from Haruto, who had no particular attachment to this place, the group started moving once again.
“Okay, I’m going to run now!”
“All right! Me too!”
“Aah! Wait! There they go...”
Ann and Haruto sped off down the road.
“Well, we don’t want to put out the drivers too much, so let’s take our time in the carriage,” Kuntz suggested with a wry grin. He was ever the considerate one. The rest of them all got back into the carriage.
“She’s a lot better than how she was before, all gloomy and low-energy, right? I’m more used to Haruto’s type by now.”
This was Kuntz’s current impression of Ann. She was being lumped in with Haruto, apparently.
“She was pretty assertive back then too. She doesn’t look any different from before to me.”
Allen was a bit harsh as always.
“She’s the type to cut her own path forward, right? She’s definitely a good kid, but I think you should be less worried about protecting her and more worried about stopping her from getting too out of control, Sara.”
Sara hung her head at this advice from Allen. “She’s already beyond my control.”
“Pfft.” Elm burst out laughing. He wasn’t usually so assertive. “Heh. I didn’t necessarily want you along as a chaperone, Sara. I just wasn’t confident I could serve as a friendly face when she got lonely. Sorry.”
“Hee hee. You, not confident, eh?” Now it was Sara’s turn to laugh.
“I don’t think you need to worry about stopping her, so long as she’s not causing trouble for anyone.”
Sara figured being out of control in the first place was causing trouble, but she decided to keep that to herself.
The pair that had run off ran back.
“We made it to the place we’re supposed to stay tonight, but there’s nothing to do there, so we came back.”
Ann and Haruto laughed. They were like little kids, running around for no reason. Sara was just happy they got along.
“The knights are all about stamina, so it makes sense to do some training on our way there.”
With Elm’s seal of approval, Ann seemed to intend to train as much as she could on their way there. And it wasn’t just running. She was still full of energy even when they reached the location where they’d be spending the night.
“Please teach me swordplay.”
“Oh, me too.”
“Same here.”
“Me as well, please.”
Elm, who had been a knight himself, wasn’t just good at physical strengthening but also excelled with a sword. The other three seemed like they were piggybacking off of Ann’s request, but they always did this when they camped out at night.
“I’ll go look for some medicinal plants, then.”
Sara did her usual nightly routine as well. In early spring, all the plants were still small, but that just made the medicinal ones stand out all the more.
This was her first time in this area, but the area north of the green grass locust outbreak was rocky, so Sara was anticipating finding mana herbs as she searched around their campsite.
“Hmmm, these are cotton sheep hoof marks. The grass is all chewed up too.”
Even she couldn’t tell what was medicinal when all that was left was a tiny bit sticking up from the ground.
“No, maybe I could tell from the smell?”
As far as Sara was concerned, she was the very picture of an apothecary, crouched down on all fours and smelling the grass.
“Even if I can’t gather them, if I could find some, I could at least tell Keiligh about them, but I really can’t tell...”
She decided to pay attention to the base of the plants and how they smelled the next time she was gathering.
It was Ann’s first time camping out, as well as that of her servants, so they were pretty nervous, but everything was fine. Sara gratefully accepted the food and cooking tools Ann had been supplied with and made dinner for them.
“I’ll ask you to do it yourself later, but you can just watch for today, okay?”
The group had also been given prepared food in their storage bags, but part of the fun of camping out was cooking for yourself in the great outdoors.
They divided up the cleaning between everyone and set up their tents, Sara calling Ann over after laying out her bedding.
“C’mere. Lie down next to me.”
It was through her bedding, but the ground was still cold underneath her. Night was still chilly in spring; Ann shivered, and Sara expanded her barrier around her.
“Oh, it’s warm!”
“I can control the temperature inside my barrier. It’ll be warm all night.”
“Wow, that’s nice.”
Around Sara and Ann were Haruto, Allen, Kuntz, and even Elm, all lying on the ground. Of course, none of them had any bedding.
“Sara, cover us with your barrier too.”
“You can all warm yourselves up with physical strengthening, can’t you?”
There were hardly any monsters around here, so there was no need for her to put up her barrier. Sara shoved Haruto away when he tried to get into her barrier with them.
“Huh? You can do stuff like that with physical strengthening too?”
“I mean, I think so. Nelly did it, at least.”
Ann leaped up, but Sara coaxed her back down to the ground.
“We didn’t usually use tents when we camped out on the Dark Mountain. You can see the stars twinkling in the sky like this and it’s so pretty.”
“Wow...! I’ve never seen a sky like this!”
When you had so many people around and were having fun hanging out with them, it could be hard to notice your surroundings.
Haruto, who’d been noisier than anyone, suddenly shut his mouth like there was no one around him at all. All they could hear was the wind rustling the dry grass.
Time passed like that for a while before Sara suggested getting into their tents to go to bed.
“Once we’re over the mountain, there’ll be flame bats in the meadow. Huh?”
“Zzz, zzz...”
She looked beside her, and Ann was fast asleep already.
“Well, she ran a bunch and practiced swords with everyone. Today had a lot of firsts for her too, so I’m sure she’s tired.”
She was sleeping so hard that she didn’t wake up even when Elm gently lifted her. Someone must have told her about that the next day, since it took her a while to overcome her embarrassment and come out of her tent.
But having such a fulfilling day that you pass out at the end of it was a good thing, as far as Sara was concerned. It showed how hard Ann was working every day.
Maybe because she was swinging a sword around with him every day, Allen started warming up to Ann, and Sara kept looking for medicinal plants even in arid spots, starting a new experiment when she couldn’t find any.