Chapter 4: It’s Always Best to Crush a Plot the Night It Happens
Shouzou sat back in the sofa in his living room. It was so late at night that all his children had already gone to bed.
He used the remote control to turn on the TV. Loud music blasted out, which prompted him to turn down the volume in a fluster. Eventually, words were boldly plastered over the screen.
[The Records of The Infiltration of the Bardimian Empire ~What The Home Tutor Saw!~]
Shouzou tilted back a glass filled with whiskey, half amused and half taken aback at how much more unnecessarily elaborate the videos were getting. This video was the video report that Emalia had secretly filmed deep within the Bardimian Empire. It was not the first one that Shouzou had asked her to film.
The title screen faded, and finally the real content began.
“Ya~hoo, Papa, you watching this?”
“Looking at this~?”
There stood Kana and Hina deep within a dense forest, energetically waving their hands.
“Pfft, cough, cough......” Shouzou choked at seeing his own children on the screen.
Then the video continued. Emalia’s face jumped into frame from the side while holding a mike (actually just a random object to fit the atmosphere) in one hand. “So then, this time we have special guests joining us...... though to be honest, they kinda just invited themselves.”
As Emalia managed a twitching smile, a new voice from off screen could be heard, saying, “Emalia-san, move on, move on.”
The urging voice was that of Silvia’s. Apparently she was taking on the role of cameraman.
Realizing that she was also present allayed Shouzou’s worries. In the first place, the video was a recording, and the two younger sisters were currently safe and fast asleep upstairs.
After that followed more of Kana’s and Hina’s comical back and forth, as well as Emalia’s valiant struggle to move things forward. In that way, the video gradually moved locations. That continued until—
“Okay everyone, from here on out we have to be quiet, all right?”
“All right!”
“All right~!”
“I said to be quiet, didn’t I!”
“Ufufu, you’re the most energetic person here, Emalia-san.”
“Ugh.”
Within the absolute absence of any sense of tension, with Emalia alone looking very nervous while taking the lead, the party cautiously proceeded down an animal trail.
Then the forest opened up. The ground abruptly fell away, turning into a sheer cliff high up.
Slo~wly, the three faces of Emalia and the two sisters peeked out from within the foliage to look down the cliff. The camera also followed suit.
Down at the bottom was a plot of bare dirt roughly the size of a baseball field. On the field were monsters lined up in ranks.
Shouzou recognized them. So did his family members.
“Isn’t that the one that came to our house before?” asked Kana.
“It’s Doggy-sama~” confirmed Hina.
“Those are called hellhounds,” Emalia told the two.
It was a magic beast that looked like a dog covered in black fur. The one that they had seen before was as big as an elephant, but the ones lined up down below were about twice the size of a normal large dog. But with that said, even that size was already more than a normal buff man could handle.
And yet, there were more than a hundred of them down there.
Five made up a group, and they displayed movements that made it clear that they each understood their specific roles and positionings in their respective groups. The teamwork between groups was also carried out flawlessly. They were being controlled very masterfully.
“It seems that the rumors were true after all. The empire is indeed training magic beasts for military use.” Emalia leaned into the camera with her “mike” still in one hand. “It is an incredible feat just to train a single magic beast. However, to pull it off in those numbers, and to do it so naturally as if moving one’s hands and feet, is nothing short of a miracle. They have yet to be employed in a real battle, but this is a dire situation indeed. Really, this is really ba—wahyah?!”
Having leaned too far forward, Emalia almost fell off down the cliff. Kana and Hina hurriedly grabbed her clothing and pulled her back to safety.
“S-Sorry about that...... Where was I...... Oh right, so, the empire has under its employ not only hellhounds. I have also heard that they are also experimenting with controlling giant-type magic beasts like ogres and cyclopes. Just thinking of them all gathering together gives one the shivers. If these forces were to accompany the empire’s normal army in assault, then would the kingdom be able to fend them off?” With leaves still scattered throughout her hair, Emalia looked at the camera with a serious face. “Reporting live, this is Emalia.”
She held the face for a while, before eventually letting go of the tension with a sigh.
With this, the video...... still had yet to end.
“All right everyone, we’re going to head back now.”
“Ehh, we have to go back already?”
“Hina-sama wants to play more~”
The children expressed their displeasure.
“No, no, no, in the first place we didn’t come here to play. It’d be a big problem if we were to be discovered.”
“How big a problem?”
“It would be a problem~?”
“Of course it would! Although they probably don’t know what a video camera is, if we are spotted here, it’s only natural that we would be suspected of being spies. Though well, it is true that we are spies from an enemy country,” explained Emalia in a somewhat proud tone.
At that moment, Kana poked Emalia’s shoulder a few times. “But they’ve already spotted us.”
“Wha—?” The camera panned to follow where Kana pointed.
Underneath the cliff, many soldiers were looking toward Emalia and the others’ location while shouting something. Apparently they had alerted the soldiers to their presence earlier when Emalia almost fell off.
One soldier blew a whistle, then 10 hellhounds began running toward the girls’ direction. There was a sheer cliff that blocked off the magic beasts’ path—
“They’re climbing up?!”
There were no footholds firm enough to support their giant forms. However, by plunging their sharp claws into the cliffside, the hellhounds were making their way up the cliff as if running on flat ground.
(From the looks of things, they would be able to easily climb up Treia’s walls then.) Shouzou calmly analyzed what he was seeing.
The Magic Repellent Powder that magic beasts hate was applied all over the wall. That was why wild magic beasts never approached the city. However, there was no telling whether it would still be effective against well-trained ones.
As Emalia continued to be flustered, Kana and Hina jumped onto the back of the blue dragon Puru that suddenly flew over and quickly took off. Emalia was hoisted up by Silvia the cameraman, and they also took to the skies.
It was here that the loud music played again, and the screen faded to black with “Fin” prominently displayed in white. Apparently this was the end of this report.
Shouzou turned off the TV, then leaned back into the sofa. (The Bardimian Empire is turning into quite the troublesome opponent indeed.)
In this world, the threat of magic beasts was much more prominent than that of other countries. Although all countries had standing armies, the main duties of those forces were usually magic beast subjugation and the maintaining of public order.
By perfecting the technique to control magic beasts, the empire had apparently alleviated this problem within their own borders. That was how they had the spare resources to proactively invade other countries.
And this time, the empire had finally reached the stage where they could use their magic beasts to bolster their own forces in war. Most likely, this was an idea that no one else had thought of, that no one else had attempted before.
In the Onigawara house was one magic beast that had gotten attached to the family: Puru the blue dragon. Aside from that, there was also an old man in the kingdom who bred a certain species of magic beast. However, such cases were extremely rare.
(In which case, it probably means that they are using strange methods to control the minds of the magic beasts, like they did with the water dragon.) Even so, they should require a large number of controllers, which couldn’t be so easy to find. However, it was clear to see that the empire was indeed making steady progress. If they succeeded, then that would be akin to them getting spurs on their boots in their quest to expand their borders. The possibility of them attacking the kingdom, even without a pretext, would leap up dramatically.
But when thinking about it the opposite way, if a wrench could be thrown into their military plans of using magic beasts for war, then the empire would surely be pressed to review their objectives going forward.
(While I have Emalia-san continue with her reconnaissance, I should also start thinking up several countermeasures as well.) Shouzou drained the remainder of his glass of whiskey in one gulp. While enjoying the fiery sensation at the back of his throat, he continued spinning the gears inside his mind deep into the night—