Winged dragons were fast. Too fast for a person to chase and catch. That probably meant they were safe, but just to be sure, Yori and Riyo had Karambit and Ushaska fly south instead of heading straight for the Ark. That was the direction the Tenryu Mountains were in. The dragons and the sisters had come a long way, crossing that mountain range to enter Grimgar. Manato felt like it was a bit late to be realizing this now, but that seemed like it was probably a pretty amazing feat. After all, the Tenryus rose higher than the sky. Well, no, the sky was still the sky no matter how high up you went, so maybe they weren’t higher than the sky. But the winged dragons were flying pretty high up, and yet the Tenryu Mountains were still standing in their way. How could it be possible to cross a mountain range that was that tall? It couldn’t be, right? But the sisters and their dragons had done it. It was unbelievable. Though, that wasn’t to say Manato didn’t believe them. But it was crazy. Completely and utterly insane.
The winged dragons landed in the forest at the foot of the Tenryus, and the group dismounted. It was pretty dark already by then. Yori and Riyo petted their dragons for a while and then sent them on their way. It was adorable the way that the dragons turned back to check on Yori and Riyo repeatedly until they were out of sight. Manato wanted a dragon too. But they’d told him that it wouldn’t grow attached to him unless he raised it from an egg, and that was clearly not a simple task. The Tenryu Mountains were home to many different dragon species with large populations, but apparently, the number of them that could be raised by humans was extremely limited.
“If you wanted to take a shortcut, you would probably have to cross the Tenryus to the United Kingdom and apprentice under a dragon tamer there, I suppose,” Yori suggested as they were walking back to the Ark.
“A shortcut, huh? Hrmm. But how much of a shortcut is that, really?” Manato said.
“Have you ever heard the saying ‘Haste makes waste’?” Riyo asked. “If you’re in a hurry, rather than take a hazardous shortcut, it’s better to take a circuitous but steady route. If you do that, you’ll ultimately reach your destination faster.”
“Oh, I see. So if I want to become a dragon tamer like you two, my only option is to have you take me back to the United Kingdom with you someday. But can Karambit and Ushaska cross the Tenryus with an extra rider?”
“Not a chance,” Yori immediately replied.
“Whaaa? So that means I’ll never be able to, doesn’t it? Hrmm. Well, I guess that’s that, then. Oh! I lost sight in my left eye after that slave soldier hit me, but I think I can kinda see now. I guess it’s starting to get better.”
“Your ability to recover is astonishing,” Haru said, sounding more exasperated than impressed.
Manato laughed. “Nah, I’m pretty sure you’ve got me beat there, Haru.”
By the time they made it back to the ruins of Alterna, the curtain of night had fully descended. Manato had good night vision, but he’d still have struggled without Haru there to guide them.
As they were climbing up the hill, Manato suddenly felt like he sensed something. He wasn’t alone. Haru, Yori, and Riyo were with him. But he had a weird feeling that there was something else out there too. Nothing had moved, though. He hadn’t heard or seen anything either. There were insects making noises all around them, so he wasn’t going to be able to pick out other sounds easily. And since it was so dark, all he could see was the Ark at the top of the hill, the white stones scattered around on the slope, Haru walking ahead of him, and Yori and Riyo by his sides.
Haru and the sisters weren’t acting any different than usual. That probably meant they didn’t sense anything. Maybe it was all just in Manato’s head.
But even once they reached the top of the hill, the inscrutable feeling didn’t go away.
“Uh, hey,” he called out.
“Yeah,” Haru replied, turning. “I know. There’s something out there, right?”
“Whaaa? You’d noticed it?”
“Well, of course,” Yori said, with Riyo nodding in agreement.
Manato smiled.
“So you did notice. You should’ve said something. No one else brought it up, so I thought I was just imagining it.”
“What do you think it is?” Yori asked Haru. He was apparently looking at the hillside.
“It doesn’t seem to be a convert or a thrall. They’re a bit more...direct, you might say.”
“Direct...” Manato cocked his head to the side, wondering what Haru meant by that.
He finally spotted the cause of the feeling by pure chance. His eyes just happened to fall on it as he was looking around at the white stones. Something was poking its head out from behind one of them. But all Manato could say for sure was that it was “something.” It was too dark for him to be able to see it clearly. He couldn’t even make out its outline. But he got the sense that it was sticking its head out. So it was an animal, and not a small one.
“A goblin?” He couldn’t see it, so Manato wasn’t sure why he had said that. You could say it was just a hunch. “It’s a goblin, isn’t it? Hey—”
The moment Manato took a step, the thing moved. It turned and scampered off, moving pretty quickly. Manato was ready to run after it but reconsidered. He noticed that Haru, Yori, and Riyo weren’t moving to chase it either.
“That was a goblin, yeah,” Haru said, sounding certain of it. Apparently, he was able to see more clearly from behind his mask.
“From the farm?” Yori asked, looking in the direction the goblin had run.
Haru nodded. “That’s the only place I can think of that he could’ve come from. I haven’t seen goblins in these parts since the thralls started building farms.”
“In that case, while this may not be the nicest way to say it, there’s no harm in us ignoring the little guy, right?”
“I can’t see any way that he’d be able to cause trouble for us.”
“I hope he survives.”
“For better or for worse, a saint’s leading the converts in an attack on Damuro. The thralls aren’t going to have time to chase after any goblins that get away. Besides, if we chased him, we would probably just frighten him.”
“Hrmm.”
There was something about this that didn’t sit right with Manato. But he couldn’t figure out what it was, or why it was bothering him so much.
“Well, if he did just escape from that place, I guess having people chase him would be pretty scary. I mean, of course it would.”
†
“Beep, beep... Beep, beep...”
I recognize that sound, Manato thought after waking up. Or maybe he’d thought it before waking up, and then only once he had woken up did he consciously realize he’d heard the sound. He wasn’t sure which.
His eyes snapped open and the ceiling came into view. He wasn’t in the house in Kariza. Of course he wasn’t. This place wasn’t anywhere in Japan. Manato was in Grimgar. What had happened to him? How had he come to Grimgar? Those were questions he didn’t know the answers to. But Haru had told him that nobody knew, so there really wasn’t anything he could do about it. The point was, this was Grimgar. A room inside the Ark. The one that Haru had prepared for him. Manato’s room.
“Beep, beep... Beep, beep...”
“Hold on, this sound...” It’s so weird, he thought as he sat up. He got out of bed and headed for the door, which he unlocked and opened to find Yori and Riyo standing in the hall.
“Whoa, he’s naked again!” Yori shouted, looking away.
Riyo’s eyes widened and she stared at Manato. She seemed pretty shocked. Manato covered his crotch with both hands.
“Sorry. I was sleeping,” Manato apologized.
“Why were you sleeping naked?” Yori asked. “Is that some kind of custom you follow?”
“Nah. Not really. I’m not sure why I did it. Oh, right. I took a shower, and it felt really good, so when I went and lay down on the bed after that, I fell asleep before I could get dressed.”
“It would be bad if you got sick, so you should wear something when you go to bed,” Riyo suggested quietly.
She was looking at Manato again, but her eyes weren’t on his face. They were focused on his navel. Manato looked down to see for himself. A part of his anatomy wasn’t fully hidden behind his hands. It was poking its head out.
“Oh.”
Just being naked was one thing, but being seen like this was kind of embarrassing. Manato turned around.
“It, uh, it does that in the mornings sometimes. Though, it doesn’t only do it in the morning. Sorry.”
†
They had breakfast in Haru’s room. As they were eating, they discussed their future plans. Yori wanted to start out by crushing all the farms in Damuro and setting the goblins loose. Riyo simply wanted to stick with Yori. Manato, for his part, didn’t think it was right to leave those farms as they were, so he didn’t object to the idea. Haru was of the opinion that, whatever else they wanted to do, their first priority should be to get a handle on what the situation was around Damuro. Yori didn’t disagree with him on that.
“If the converts led by the saint are fighting the thralls of Damuro, then there might be less security around the farms,” Yori suggested, adding, “And if that gives us an opening, there’s no reason not to take advantage of it.”
Manato had lost his sword and dagger during the surprise attack on the cage cart yesterday. They might have still been lying around on the ground somewhere, but even if they were, he couldn’t go back there empty-handed. Ultimately, he asked Haru to take him to the warehouse again and borrowed a long katana called a tachi and a knife.
They stopped by the control room before leaving the Ark and completed the entry registration process. Haru walked them through the steps. It was simply a matter of having them put their hands on a machine, say the things Control told them to, and stay put for a while, but now that they had done it, Manato, Yori, and Riyo were apparently able to come and go from the Ark without Haru being around. “Entry registration” wasn’t really the proper term for it—it was apparently called a something-or-other ID registration, but that was too hard to understand, so Haru referred to it by a simpler name.
He also told them the specifics of how to get in and out. Leaving was easy enough. They just had to open the door at the end of the hall and step out, and that would place them in front of the Ark.