“It seems like being around the filolials as they transform isn’t enough,” I said. I recalled that Keel could already transform by the time I had arrived at Father’s village, so I had absolutely no idea how she had developed the skill.
“Experts know best,” I remarked. “Perhaps we should go ask some demi-humans in Siltvelt how they do it?”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s try that.”
Keel oinked in agreement. So we took Portal Spear back to Siltvelt. This time, Yuki and Lazy Pig kept an eye on the carriage.
“On second thought . . .” Father trailed off. He then raised a good point. If the Shield Hero just went up to a random demi-human on the street and asked them, they might raise a ruckus and alert the Siltvelt leaders. Of course, Father always had a way to escape. But we didn’t want anyone to know we were here if we could help it. The word might always leak back out to Melromarc. So it would be better to figure this out after we fixed things in Melromarc.
In which case it would make the most sense to pretend to be ordinary travelers and ask around that way. But how many random demi-humans could transform in the first place?
“I guess we have no choice but to ask around and find out,” Father said. “Motoyasu, just keep quiet.”
“Anything for you, Father!”
Keel oinked and followed after Father.
A few minutes later, we called out to a passerby.
“Excuse me. We think he has the potential to transform into a therianthrope, but would you happen to know how to do that?”
But the demi-human just cast us a suspicious glance and walked away. These bigoted passersby didn’t realize who Father was and ignored us as a result, even gripping their weapons and assuming a fighting stance. But since Father had excellent defensive powers, I wasn’t particularly concerned.
We went on calling out to different people that we passed. One appeared to be a wolfman.
“Huh? How to transform?” He glanced at Keel. “So you can’t transform? That’s too bad.”
At the least he had done us the favor of responding, I say.
“Do you think you’d be able to teach him?” Father asked.
“All right, sure.”
“Oink!”
So that solved things pretty easily. But a bigger problem quickly emerged.
“Hey, so what language is that guy even speaking?” the wolfman asked Father.
“What?” Father looked confused for a moment. “Oh . . .”
“Oink?”
We had forgotten. Keel spoke Melromarc’s language.
“I can translate,” Father offered.
“Can you translate magical terms too?”
“Well . . .”
“Sorry, in that case, it’s a no go,” the friendly therianthrope said and disappeared like all the rest.
We were in quite a pickle, I say. It appeared that transformation required some complicated magic that could be difficult to translate. At the moment, Father couldn’t use magic at all. We had to somehow find a demi-human that could transform and also spoke Melromarc’s tongue.
“Motoyasu, do you have any other ideas about how we can get Keel to transform?”
“I’m sure Big Sis’s Big Sis would be able to solve things, but . . .” I paused. In Father’s village, how many demi-humans had there been that could transform? Keel, of course. I could remember her transforming a number of times, I say. After that, it was Big Sis’s Big Sis, the orca demi-human. And then the tiger guy.
Between the two, I’d have to lean toward Big Sis’s Big Sis. Filo-tan trusted her, for one, and she took care to look after everyone in the village. I remembered that she was kind to the filolials and a very reliable person.
Huh? All of a sudden, I remembered someone else, a person who was pretty similar to Big Sis’s Big Sis. It was a tanuki therianthrope, someone who had been pretty close to Father, if I was remembering correctly.
Who the heck was that?
“Oink?”
“Come up with anything?” Father prodded.
“Someone from the same village as Keel,” I said. “An orca-like therianthrope, a fisherwoman named Sadeena, I say.”
“Oink oink oink oink!”
“Her name is Sadeena? Do you know where she is?”
“I couldn’t even begin to guess,” I declared. I hadn’t the slightest clue where Big Sis’s Big Sis could possibly be. She had already been there when I had arrived at Father’s village, so I had no idea when she had met and joined up with Father.
“I suppose we have no choice but to put off Keel’s transformation a little longer.” Father sighed. Just as he said it, we could hear Keel’s stomach grumble.
And then I heard a loud rumble coming from Kou’s and Sakura’s bellies as well.
“Well, let’s go eat somewhere,” Father said.
“I’ll go slay some monsters, I say!”
“No, we can go to a tavern or something, and we’ll go ask around if anyone’s seen Sadeena while we’re at it,” Father said.
“Of course, Father!”
So we went straight to the nearest tavern. Siltvelt had plenty of nocturnal demi-humans, so places tended to get crowded at night, but even though the sun was still up, there was a decent number of people in the tavern. While everyone else started eating, Father surveyed the interior.
Keel oinked a few times.
“Don’t worry about it, Keel,” Father said. “My job is to figure out stuff like this for us.”
“Oink . . .”
Just as they were chatting, Father’s face lit up as he saw something. He tapped me on the shoulder and pointed.
“Motoyasu! Look—look!”
“Whatever could it be, I say?”
When I looked in the direction he was pointing, I saw a panda therianthrope heartily guzzling liquor.
“It’s a panda!” Father said excitedly. “So there are even panda therianthropes in this world!”
The panda grunted and turned to us with an unpleasant expression. “Huh? Whaddaya want?” It stood up and thudded toward us.
What in the world was happening?
If that panda intended to do harm to Father, I, Motoyasu Kitamura, would lay waste to its vile existence.
But that panda . . . I had the strange feeling that I had seen it somewhere before, I say.
I seemed to remember the panda speaking to Big Sis’s Big Sis at some point.
“Calm down, Motoyasu,” Father said. “He doesn’t look like he wants to hurt us.”
Father calmed me down before standing up and bowing politely to the panda.