Leon sighed and stopped speaking. Any more and he would open old wounds he didn’t want to revisit.
“Anyway, you’re starting to let your guard down. Keep it together.”
“Y-yes! I’m sorry. B-but…you’re far stronger than any of the fiends in this place…”
“Nothing’s safe when you’re out adventuring. And something stinks about this job.”
“Ah. Now that you mention it, the stench is quite unbearable this far in.”
“…True. They’re creating something. Hence the smell.”
“Creating something? You mean like a trap? A weapon?”
“You’ll see. For now, we need to find out about their leader.”
If it was just a particularly strong goblin leading them, that would be no problem.
“Intel is an adventurer’s best friend. What kind of fiends are there? How many? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Knowing the answers to these questions can be the difference between life and death.”
“That’s true. Weren’t you the Adviser back when you worked with Claire and Rheinhardt?”
“…That’s right, I was.”
“How does it work? How do you find things out about the enemy?”
“Mostly deduction based on clues they leave behind… For example, if you use chemicals on their feces, you can find out its composition, and thus work out what species you’re dealing with. Plus—”
Some people have special abilities that let them find out more about a fiend, he was about to say, when…
“Wha?! Wh-what’s that?!”
“A mural. Painted in human blood, by the look of it.”
It wasn’t particularly artistic. It looked like a child had just slapped red paint on a canvas. But it was clear what the mural depicted.
A brother and sister, hands joined in peaceful harmony.
“Usually, when goblins make wall art like this, they use their own excreta. It serves the same purpose as cats or dogs marking their territory. Whenever they use blood…that means it’s just for fun. And the species that most enjoys that sort of behavior is…”
A vampire. But just as the thought occurred, a faint memory stirred and filled him with anger.
“L-Leon?”
Alice’s voice snapped Leon back to reality. He took a deep breath to calm himself.
“…We need to find out who made this painting. And the quickest way to do that is to use my power.”
Leon stepped toward the painting for a closer look.
“If I don’t come back,” he said, “give me a shake, will you?”
“Huh?”
Alice didn’t have time to wonder what Leon meant before he reached out and touched the painting. And as he did…
The corpse’s mind was filled with someone else’s memories.
“Wh-what are you doing, Father?!”
“Out of the way, Eren. There’s no cure, you know that. The only answer now…is death. Otherwise, she’ll turn out just like your mother.”
“Help me, Eren!”
I stood in front of the trembling girl.
“I told you, Father. A brother always stands up for his little sister!”
“She’s not your sister anymore!”
There was a struggle. I took the knife. Excitement. The gleaming blade.
…And red.
Red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red.
Everything my eyes fell upon was dyed a deep crimson.
“…Father…”
After that, the memory receded, and Leon returned to the real world.
“L-Leon?”
“…The reason I was my team’s Adviser was because I possess a special ability.”
“A special ability?”
“That’s right. I can read the minds of fiends. I can see their pasts, their thoughts, everything.”
The reason Leon had this ability was because he was a Red-Eye.
Most fiends were Blue-Eyes, who, as the name suggested, possessed azure eyes. Those with crimson eyes were rare examples who managed to keep their humanity. That was what made Leon such an effective Adviser.
“The person who painted this mural used to be a young boy who wished to protect his sister. In my experience, people like that tend to end up becoming quite large.”
The younger the child, the bigger they wished to be. It was an obvious expression of strength to someone like that.
“A child who wants to protect. A beast that paints with blood. Based on all this information…it’s highly likely we’re dealing with an ogre.”
“An ogre? Not a hobgoblin?”
“That’s what most people would think. Most fiend hordes are led by a larger specimen of the same species. But there are exceptions to every rule, and this is one of them. Just keep in mind that an ogre is a Class Two fiend; much more dangerous than a regular hobgoblin.”
“M-my, how scary. B-but you can beat it, right, Leon?”
“…Yeah. Of course I can.”
Leon couldn’t answer any other way.
“…Let’s keep moving.”
With heightened caution, the pair advanced through the tunnels. The voyage was not difficult; Leon managed to surprise attack many of the goblins they came across, reducing them to rotten puddles and pilfering their Testament Stones. There was no sign of this supposed ogre leader at all, and soon Leon began to worry.
“Something stinks about this place.”
“Indeed. My nose is about to fall off…”
That wasn’t what Leon had meant, but Alice wasn’t exactly wrong either. The stench seemed to be getting worse with each passing second. For Alice, who still possessed a normal sense of smell, it must have been torture.
But it meant that Leon’s destination was drawing closer. He walked a few steps farther, then stopped.
“You stay here,” he said to Alice. “Don’t move a muscle until I call for you.”
Leon left Alice behind and ventured forward into a wide-open space. As he did so, he muttered to himself, “Not exactly what I had in mind, but I suppose it’s what I asked for.”
He couldn’t show this to Alice as it was. It would shatter her mind. Leon shot out the torch, as before, and shrouded the area in a veil of darkness. After slaughtering the goblins there, he took one more look around.
“Should be a little better now the place isn’t so lit up,” he pondered. He called over to Alice, who entered into the wide stone chamber. It was mostly natural, with some minor goblin modifications.
“…Gasp!”
As soon as Alice set foot inside, her eyes went wide.
The room was filled with an eye-watering stench. It was made up of the goblins’ odor as well as that of their excrement and one other thing that Alice didn’t realize until it was too late.
She could hardly be blamed. After all, it was a smell that a wholesome young lady like her would have never had reason to encounter.
The last and most overwhelming component of the uncontainable stench…was goblin semen.
“…Ghk.”
The ground was littered with bodies. All of them belonged to human women. Their clothes had been stripped off, and their arms and legs clumsily amputated. To the goblins, the limbs were an unnecessary hindrance. These were not prisoners but tools.
Alice felt something heave inside her.
“Urgh…!”
She threw up onto the floor. She shuddered violently, and her eyes were wet with tears. Watching her pitiable state, Leon spoke in a quiet, solemn tone.