Leave it to Sara to summon up a problem just by mentioning how well things seemed to be going. Sara couldn’t hide her apprehension. For the time being, she headed to the Hunter’s Guild.
Normally, everyone was in the dungeon in the middle of the day, so the guild was empty, but that day, it was unusually crowded, with people looking at the bulletin board and chatting in small groups. Sara went over to check the bulletin board and saw a notice about the cotton sheep just like she expected, but nothing about an actual request yet.
“Hey, Sara. Noel’s not with you today?”
Konrad, the guildmaster, popped up out of nowhere, as he was wont to do when Sara visited. She could only admire the speed at which the receptionists notified him of things. With a guild so big, there was probably a lot of trouble that needed responding to, she figured.
“No, I came ’cause I heard a bunch of cotton sheep were coming.”
“It’d help if everyone was so quick to hear about things. I’m surprised that’s all it took for you to come over here, though. Ah.” Konrad seemed to have figured out what he wanted to ask her. “If you were in Rosa, you must have seen cotton sheep before.”
“Yes. Allen and I went to help a group of Hunters that got stuck in the middle of a herd once.” Sara smiled a bit as she recounted this experience of hers, but Konrad, who was usually so loud it was kind of annoying, didn’t say anything in response.
She looked up at him, wondering what was wrong, and found his mouth hanging open.
“Err?”
“R-Right. It would have been six or seven years ago that you were in Rosa, right? Hey, wait a second, that’s right after you got your Hunter’s license, isn’t it?! Right, I guess cotton sheep wouldn’t be any trouble with your barrier.”
“Allen tried to charge in with just his physical strengthening, if you can believe it.”
“No way! That’s crazy!”
Vince had been pretty frantic to stop him too, she recalled.
“Our forces are split right now with the migrating dragons to take care of, but there should be a meeting about the cotton sheep led by the knights. I’ll let you know if they want to make a request to the guild.”
“If there’s something I can do to help, I will.”
Nelly wasn’t here, and Allen wasn’t either. But, to even Sara’s surprise, she promised to help immediately, not saying she’d think about it or consult someone.
She hurried to the Apothecary’s Guild, her heart beating a little fast.
“Sara, let’s go to the guildmaster’s office.”
She and Noel headed there immediately.
“Sara, I heard from Josef that you have some experience fighting cotton sheep?” asked Chester.
“What?! That’s not true. Vince said cotton sheep were like a natural disaster and not something you fight. I’ve just helped some Hunters who were caught in the middle of a herd once.”
“Hmm. In other words, you waded into the herd and emerged unscathed, then?”
Chester groaned to himself in thought while Josef, who was also present, tossed Sara a little paper bag.
“Sheep candy. You like it, right?”
“Th-Thank you.”
He must have given her the candy because of the topic of conversation. Was he always walking around with some because he was a fan too? Sara always welcomed sweets, so she accepted the treats gratefully either way.
“I wanted to discuss the biology of cotton sheep and what the Apothecary’s Guild should do to prepare if they end up coming to the capital.”
“I think the only thing we can do is evacuate. If people are injured that probably means they’ve been trampled, so I’m not sure potions will help much... Protection cases should be effective, but we couldn’t get enough to cover the whole city, right?”
Sara sat down on the couch as she spoke.
“That would probably be safest. But if we evacuate and the cotton sheep enter the capital, who knows how much damage they could cause? The people up top probably wouldn’t be too happy if the capital got destroyed.”
“In which case, we’ll need to prepare more supreme potions in the event that we end up in an all-out confrontation with them. If we must.”
Josef didn’t like making use of supreme potions, but the decision had to be left to the people defending the capital.
“I think we should try to shift their trajectory like we did with the continental tortoise. Damage to the capital is one thing, but it would be a problem if they ate the winter wheat and stuff in the fields too, right?” Sara suggested her idea. All they needed to do was prevent them from getting near the capital or nearby towns.
“Hmm. It’ll be the knights and the Hunter’s Guild deciding how to deal with the situation, but if they don’t bring up that idea, the Apothecary’s Guild could suggest it.”
“I would appreciate it.”
“Could I ask you two to concentrate on gathering supreme healing herbs and mana herbs for now?” Chester asked Sara and Noel.
“Sure thing.”
While the higher-ups tracked the cotton sheep’s movement and came up with countermeasures, all there was for Sara to do was fulfill her duties as an apothecary. On days like today, when she only had half of the day to work with, she’d head to the middle floors to gather mana herbs.
“The guildhall was pretty crazy today.”
“It’s not often that warnings like that are posted.”
Haruto and Allen had been in the dungeon all day, so they’d only learned of the news when they came back.
“Wait, did the cotton sheep that crossed the mountains go north and join with another herd before heading south?”
Sara confirmed Haruto’s suspicion.
“We were relieved to see them heading north back then, but they ended up becoming trouble anyway.”
Unlike Sara, who merely sighed at the problem, Allen and Elm were already talking about how to hunt cotton sheep.
“Have you ever run into a herd of cotton sheep on your travels before, Elm?”
“Even when I do, I just avoid them.”
“So how do you think you’d hunt them?”
Cotton sheep’s meat could be eaten, and they provided ample wool, but they always moved as a herd, so they weren’t hunted often, since there wasn’t much merit to pulling only one of them away from the pack and picking it off.
“Same as any other monster. Aim for their weak point. Not much you can do with your fists, though, since their hearts are protected by that thick wool. You could probably reach it with a sword, but they’re a bad matchup for physical strengthening types. If I had to fight one, I’d aim for the head. I hear they’re tough, though.”
Allen looked down at his fist. He must have been thinking about whether or not he could manage it.
“I could hit a bunch of ’em with my lightning magic, but if I didn’t take ’em all out at once, I bet they’d go ballistic.”
Haruto could probably take them all out at once. For that matter, Sara could surround them all with her barrier and... The thought was too frightening, so she stopped thinking it.
“Lightning is pretty scary, yeah. It’d probably be pretty hard to whittle them down with swords or fists enough that the herd didn’t go crazy, though.”
If they could come up with this much, the people making the decisions surely could as well.
“Hopefully this doesn’t become a big problem right when most of the knights are stuck taking care of the migrating dragons.”
It was precisely at times like these, however, that trouble occurred. Sara was close to finishing her lessons with the knights one day when she had to return to the Apothecary’s Guild due to a state of emergency. She went down into the dungeon almost every day, gathering mana herbs and supreme healing herbs.
“They’re trying to divert their course using protection cases, but no matter how much they shift their trajectory, they keep heading back toward the capital. It’s likely that they’re making their way toward our fields.”
Whenever Sara returned to the Apothecary’s Guild to turn in the plants she’d gathered, she got the newest information on the current countermeasures from Chester or Josef. The warning at the Hunter’s Guild still hadn’t been taken down either.
That was when Sara and Haruto finally received a summons. Evidently, the knights had grown frustrated and launched an attack on the cotton sheep, which had provoked them into a stampede that was speeding toward the capital.
“Well, I’m impressed they held out this long.”
This was Haruto’s honest opinion.
“Yeah, until now, they’ve always called us in as soon as they knew we were in the capital.”
Sara was surprised as well. She’d thought they would be asked to do something sooner.
“I don’t think I’ll be any help to you this time, so I’ll participate in whatever plan the Hunter’s Guild goes with. I’m sure they’ll have requests for Hunters too.”
“Same here.”
Allen and Kuntz went right off to the Hunter’s Guild.
“I’ll stand by with the knights. I can’t be much help yet, but I’m sure there’s stuff behind the scenes I can do.”