Liliana went quiet. None of her books had mentioned such a thing, but she could infer the answer from his tone.
“Monsters?”
“In a sense.” Ben’s mood sobered. “Hatred, sorrow, despair—when people’s negative emotions overflow, they can form a source of miasma.”
“Negative emotions...” In the east, there were countless stories of grudges and rage attracting malice in the air, turning people into demons. Liliana assumed he meant something similar.
“People are frail, though,” Ben continued. “A normal human would succumb to madness long before reaching a concentration high enough to produce miasma. Someone with a lot of mana might survive, but even then, considering the upper limit, it wouldn’t explain what’s happening now. In an extremely—no, unfathomably—unlikely case, maybe a slime could form. At most. So yeah, not exactly promising.”
Though they were technically monsters, slimes posed very little threat to humans.
“So we have to assume someone is creating miasma through magic or hexes,” Petra added, her expression as grave as the vice minister’s. If she and Ben were right, and negative emotions really could produce monsters, it would explain why the ministry had so unnaturally abandoned its investigation, forcing the two of them to look into the matter in secret.
Liliana tensed. “Do you have any leads on what sort of magic or hexes could be responsible?”
“None at all,” Petra said flatly.
Liliana turned to Ben for confirmation, and he shrugged. “We think the monsters are coming from forests, but we haven’t found a single trace of magic or hexes in any of the sites we’ve checked. Either the evidence was cleaned up, or it never existed in the first place.”
After a moment’s thought, Liliana picked up the nearest book—an eastern volume on hexes. Hexcraft was common in the eastern territories of the Empire of Yunatian and beyond, so it was no wonder that even the opening pages described concepts unfamiliar to her.
“Research into hexes is painfully stunted in this kingdom, so we have to look abroad for anything useful,” Petra said with an awkward smile. “The problem is, there’s so much material that just getting a grasp on the theoretical foundation took forever.”
Liliana checked the index, then the table of contents, searching for anything relevant. Then she nodded. Ben and Petra’s theory seemed to hold water.
“Could the cause be a combination of magic and hexes?” she suggested.
“Got an example?” Ben asked, folding his arms with an amused grin. He appeared to have memorized every relevant book. Petra clearly hadn’t reached that point, for she was currently leafing through one.
Liliana set her book down and tapped a finger lightly against her chin. “Perhaps something that induces fear in people and amplifies the bad air those emotions create.”
“With the hex inducing fear and the magic amplifying it?”
“Yes. Or the reverse.”
Ben nodded, as though he harbored the same suspicion. “Then we’ve got three questions to answer: How do they collect negative emotions? How do they amplify them? And how do they create monsters afterward?” Though it was all but certain that monsters were born of miasma, the process behind it remained a mystery.
The three exchanged glances. Their information came almost entirely from books; without concrete proof or fieldwork, uncovering the truth would be nearly impossible. Liliana arrived at the only natural conclusion.
“The next time a swarm occurs, we should go there immediately to investigate—before the ministry or the knights’ order.”
“Agreed,” Petra said. If either organization realized they were looking into the unnatural surge in monster attacks, they might interfere. The risk of evidence being destroyed was far too high.
The vice minister smiled, clearly satisfied. “I figured you’d say that.” He pulled two stones from his pocket and handed one each to Liliana and Petra. “Here. We should each carry one.”
“What are they?” Liliana asked, accepting her stone and inspecting it closely. It was a precious gem, but clearly not just an ornament.
“Witchstones,” Ben said. “Well, ordinary stones I enchanted with a spell. We can use them to communicate over long distances. They react only to our mana, so no one else can use them, but keep them safe anyway. They’re a pain to make.”
Liliana hesitated as she felt the spell woven into the stone. Even without searching her memories, she recognized it as the same kind used in the telepathic bracelet she wore. Ben must have created the bracelet first, then developed these witchstones after finally achieving two-way communication.
“Very well,” she said, choosing not to question him.
Liliana sneaked a glance at Petra, who wore her frustration openly. The mage clearly wasn’t thrilled about her boss now being able to reach her outside of work.
“With these, even if the ministry hinders your research, I can act on your behalf,” Liliana said. “I wonder how they’re involved with the swarms.”
“I’m not letting a duke’s daughter do anything reckless,” Ben countered. “The ministry won’t know anything until the matter’s already settled. And they have neither the manpower nor the mana to keep constant watch over the whole kingdom.”
“Does that mean the knights’ order might find out first?”
“You could say that.”
Even if they did, it would still only be after the fact. Both the ministry and the order were severely limited in how quickly they could respond to swarms. It was disastrous for the kingdom, but it guaranteed Liliana’s group a head start. And since she and Petra could teleport, transport wouldn’t be an issue.
The mage and the vice minister let out long, weary sighs, fully aware of how dire things had become.
“Without a mage who can use the strongest light magic and a mage knight to hold the monsters back, no town under attack stands a chance,” Petra said bitterly. “Swarms are at least being contained to the towns they appear in, but there’s no telling how long that’ll last.”
“We can analyze the miasma to predict where new swarms will appear and how large they’ll be, but that still gives us only half an hour at best,” Ben added. “It really limits how effectively we can respond.”
Listening quietly, Liliana suddenly had an idea.
If I analyze the miasma the way I’d analyze air, I might figure out its composition.
If she could determine which elements set it apart from normal air, she could pinpoint which component—or combination thereof—made it so poisonous. After that, she would only need to find the concentration at which monsters formed.
I should try it myself the next time a swarm appears.
From there, she could devise a neutralizing spell for Ben and Petra to spread to the masses. Perhaps she was thinking too far ahead, but she was already looking forward to presenting it to them once it was ready.