What the hell was I doing? We were in a hazardous zone trying to return a carbuncle to its nest, we’d asked dryads for help, and I’d just pissed off a silent treant... It seemed like Tiesel couldn’t believe it any more than I could, as he looked at Leen and then me with utter shock on his face.
“Wow, that was a surprise... When that treant emerged, I thought we were done for,” he said.
“Funnily enough, me too,” I said.
“Ha ha ha! Goodness, this is the funniest thing! Right?”
“Myuu!” the carbuncle squeaked.
“Gimme that stupid carbuncle! I’m gonna throw him to the wolves!” I snapped.
“Myuu myu myu myu!” it continued to laugh.
“I know you’re laughing at me! Stupid ball of fluff...”
The slime wouldn’t talk in front of Tiesel, so I couldn’t rely on it to stop Leen’s cruel laughter. I’d been eyeing up the carbuncle to grab it by its stupid tail, but Leen kept a close hold on it so I couldn’t get a chance to. Dammit all...
“By the way... You gave a Carbuncle Stone to those dryads, but is that something useful for them?” Tiesel asked as he sat on the ground and started to unpack something.
“What’s that stuff?” I asked.
“It’s a portable tea set. A necessity for any adventure!” Tiesel explained as he swiftly unpacked and assembled it. I didn’t realize this domestic pursuit was such a big hobby.
Tiesel used a firestone to prepare some hot water in a large metal mug, put some teabags in some cups, then brewed some black tea for us all in no time at all. It felt weird smelling the fragrance of tea here deep in a hazardous zone.
“Wow, thank you!” Leen said, taking a cup without any reservations.
Ah, well, I thought. I was pretty thirsty too, now that he mentioned it.
Leen took a sip of tea, sighed, then answered Tiesel’s question.
“Dryads and all monsters really love Carbuncle Stones. They’re a crystallized form of mana, after all,” she said, pointer finger raised as usual. “Carbuncles use pockets of mana deep in hazardous zones as their feeding grounds. They’re able to hop around to places where other monsters won’t notice or can’t fit into, such as small holes.”
The carbuncle was lying spread out on the ground. It had collapsed as soon as we began our break. This was despite the fact that it had been carried the whole way here and hadn’t done any exercise at all.
“As carbuncles consume mana, it accumulates in crystal form on their heads; as Carbuncle Stones,” Leen went on. “A similar phenomenon to what happens with an adventurer’s Sphere takes place with Carbuncle Stones too, which is why each carbuncle produces a stone of a different color. When the next Carbuncle Stone is ready to come through, the old one simply falls off the carbuncle’s head.”
“Yeah, that happened yesterday when Tiesel was stroking it,” I said.
“It did. I was so surprised the first time it happened,” Tiesel said.
“It’s similar to keratin in humans, like how people’s nails grow longer. Carbuncle Stones are a valuable source of mana for many monsters. How do I put this... It’s like a little snack!”
“A snack?” Tiesel and I chorused.
I didn’t know how many times we had spoken in sync since coming into the hazardous zone.
“I mentioned this earlier, but carbuncles live in packs. Carbuncle Stones often fall on the trails that they travel, so monsters often pass by to try and find them. The carbuncles don’t even realize what they’re doing, but it plays a role in giving mana to monsters like dryads who don’t fight over territory.”
“So those dryads...”
“Were probably overjoyed to receive a stone. They seemed like they were over the moon to me.”
Carbuncle Stones could fetch millions of ennies (even if there weren’t any buyers left in Esma...), but out here in the wild, they were regarded as a tasty treat. What a weird world we lived in.
“That’s why you shouldn’t hunt down packs of carbuncles. They supply mana to places you wouldn’t think about. Although, well, a single missing carbuncle won’t make too huge a difference.”
I’d thought that Leen had been overly understanding of Tiesel, but this was what lay behind it. Sometimes adventurers were lucky enough to hunt down a carbuncle, but individual losses like these weren’t enough to completely disrupt the natural cycle.
“I’ve really learned a lot,” Tiesel said. “Ignorance is definitely not something to be proud of.”
The man in question seemed genuinely remorseful. The fact that he’d wanted to return his carbuncle to its pack indicated that he was a good person at heart. Unlike a certain someone.
“Hakura?” Leen said.
“Why are you so damn sharp when it comes to a little bit of criticism?!”
“Let me just remind you that my anger toward you has merely been put on hold.”
It was very typical of Leen to state this outright. I’d thought that she’d been rather docile today, but I wasn’t sure exactly how she would react when her anger returned and the present didn’t meet her expectations. It would probably be more terrifying than even a gryphon.
“I’m asking this because I’m genuinely curious,” Tiesel said. “Leen, I acknowledge how incredible you are, but how on earth did you manage to negotiate with a gryphon to get it to give up an egg?”
“I was wondering that too...”
Leen was a monstermancer, and although that meant she could tame monsters and get them to listen to her, she had always offered something in return—whether that was the orthruses from when we’d first met, the giant mole during the hunt for a kobold’s nest, or even the dryads from earlier. We’d been lucky that Tiesel had a surplus of Carbuncle Stones now, but if we hadn’t, then it would’ve been difficult to answer the dryads’ request. If listening to the other party was key in maintaining balance, then what had Leen put on the scales to get a monster to give up one of its young—something that any creature would value more than anything?
“That wasn’t all too difficult. The master of this area is quite the powerful monster, but that led to her creating too many children. You saw how many chicks there were in the nest, right?” Leen said.
“Yeah, they were all pecking at me, thinking I was their dinner...”
“A female gryphon takes care of her brood, but she usually only has two or at most three chicks per season. That gryphon had four chicks and three additional eggs to boot. I merely explained to her that it would be difficult to raise so many young.”
“And that was all it took to receive an egg?”
“Gryphons are known to knock eggs out of their nest or feed them to their other young when they realize they cannot raise the entire brood. I merely said that being able to live with humans would be a better fate for the child.”
That made sense—Leen relied on the gryphon’s maternal instincts. Gryphons were like birds and imprinted on the first creature they saw after being born. This meant that it was possible to create a gryphon that would be taken care of by humans and live in harmony alongside them. Gryphons were used by people as steeds to carry them through the skies, whether as a courier or a warrior in battle. They were a rare sight, and this meant that gryphon eggs carried high demand too. As Leen had said, that went doubly so for a child of the “master” of this area.
“It’s not an easy job to raise a brood of hungry chicks. Gryphons eat a lot. They are another type of monster that would benefit from as many Carbuncle Stones as possible in their parenting.”
“I’ve got an idea, then,” I said. “Let’s chuck this fluffy idiot into the gryphon’s nest.”
“Myuu!” the carbuncle squeaked.
It rolled over to my feet and started smacking me with its forelegs in protest. Those soft paws didn’t hurt, but I could sense it was mad, so I lifted it up by its tail.
“Myu myu myu myu mii!”
“No! He doesn’t like that, Hakura!” Leen shouted.
“It needs exercise, right? Let it flap its legs like this for a while,” I said.
“Isn’t there a more peaceful method?” Tiesel asked.
Of course, the carbuncle’s owner would be more sympathetic. I tossed the creature down. After it landed, it could only flail about helplessly in protest with its four legs in the air.
“Please, stop it with that! Any more and you’ll end up being burned for it!” Leen said.
“By Tiesel?” I asked.
“No! By the carbuncle!” Leen exclaimed, standing up. “You see, these monsters can—”
Just as she approached me, I noticed something. I supposed it was my honed instincts that caused me to. That or I’d been a bit more on edge despite the conversation because of that little incident with the treant. A thin something was flying toward Leen.
“Hmph!”
“Eek!”
I knocked it out of the way with my fist. Before I could even check what I’d sent hurling to the ground, Tiesel moved into action.
“Fetur!” he called.
This wasn’t the same little spell he’d used when giving food to his carbuncle—no, he’d summoned a huge fireball around five meters across in the blink of an eye and sent it hurtling away before I could even register it. The fireball ripped through the trees in its way, singing the undergrowth as it went, when suddenly some figures leaped out from its pathway: three men wielding a crossbow, sword, and spear, respectively.