MCFPM 12

Sherilotte’s eyes widened.

“…What? You—are you going to do this now?”
“Yeah. I think I can do it.”
“How are you going to do it?”

When asked, Eonian’s gaze shifted toward the fissure. He fussed with the back of his neck, flicked his tail lightly, and spoke in a frivolous tone.

“That’s a secret.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“I can’t reveal all my tricks. You’re a mage — and a craftsman who makes a living off patents, so you’ll understand, right?”
“……”

Sherilotte clicked her tongue at Eonian’s shamelessness.

“Don’t talk nonsense. No. You’re coming with me, no matter what.”
“What? You were thinking that highly of me?”
“Are you just going to leave me if this could get us killed? Even if he’s irritating just to look at—”
“Oooh… that’s kind of touching.”

Eonian exaggeratedly lifted his eyebrows, which lit a fire in her. She set the breakwater debris back on the ground and put a hand on her hip.

“All right, suppose you’re overflowing with divine power and you can survive even if you destroy that magic circle. Then why do you want to close the fissure?”
“Because the carcass of the lava turtle would be great for research.”
“You’re a priest — why would you research?”
“Theology research.”
“But the scriptures never mention lava turtles.”

Eonian’s lips shut at her rebuttal. The smile fell from his face and his ears drooped. Sherilotte gave an expression of disdain and jerked her chin toward the fissure.

“If you’re going to keep being stubborn, tell me how you’ll close it. I’ll listen and tell you if it’s possible.”
“……”
“…You can’t answer? Then let’s go.”

Sherilotte nodded toward the tunnel she had come through. At that moment, a low after-sound escaped Eonian.

“Sheri.”
“Why?”
“If you go out like this, you won’t marry me, right?”
“What?”
“I haven’t given you anything as a dowry yet.”

There was a strangely petulant tone to it. Was it acting spoiled? Sherilotte herself wasn’t sure she’d heard him right — it was something she’d never heard from Eonian before.

She collected the breakwater debris and put it into her inventory, then turned around.

“……”

What stood in front of her was a wolf beastman, somewhere between boy and man, his face dark and still. He spoke in a gentle, earnest voice that had a metallic edge.

“I really want to marry you. So I prepared this over these fifteen nights.”
“…But—”
“Will you give me a chance, Sherilotte?”

His clear blue eyes were on her. Sherilotte narrowed her eyes and spun her head away.

This one — if she didn’t let him try to stop the fissure, he’d refuse to leave. He was being that stubborn.

Sherilotte put a hand to her forehead as if it were a headache. Why was he so eager to stop a disaster on somebody else’s land in the first place? Would everything be fine if she just married him?

Even though her pride was bruised, if the marriage were honestly carried out under the original terms, the advantage would be Sherilotte’s. By choosing the North, the immediate gain for Eonian would be only that, under the Northern beastfolk’s monogamous statutes, he would be forbidden from marrying another woman.

She had a suspicion why that mattered to him, but she couldn’t be sure yet.

Sherilotte groaned and shook her head.

“…Prove it some other way.”
“No. This is the most certain. You want it too. I’m trying to score points with you.”
“Your stubbornness has already turned my score of zero into negative, you idiot.”
“Sheri, aren’t you curious what will happen to the North if that fissure is closed…?”

The bastard — he tried to take advantage of her hesitation again.

Just now his ears had been perked up as he spoke seriously, and now they drooped. Sherilotte felt like punching him. Aargh, aargh…

She glanced Eonian up and down. Since he was an army chaplain she hadn’t paid him much mind, but now that she looked, apart from the long cloak, his gear seemed fitted for hiking and fighting, much like her own.

Could she trust him with this?

…have my domain’s salvation fall into someone else’s hands?

While pondering, Sherilotte opened her mouth.

“All right.”
“…What? Really? Seriously?”
“But on one condition.”
“…”

Eonian pouted lightly as if she’d started and then stopped. Sherilotte scoffed and shook her head.

“Let’s make a bet.”
“What kind of bet?”
“Whoever can neutralize that fissure first.”
“…”

Surprise flashed in Eonian’s eyes.

“…You had a way to do it today too?”
“Don’t interrogate me. Just say yes or no.”

Cutting Eonian off with a single word, she raised a finger. Her finger pointed first at herself and then at Eonian in turn.

“If I lose, I’ll marry you. If I win, you get kicked out.”

It so happened tonight was the fifteenth night. If Eonian couldn’t prove his usefulness by dawn tomorrow, he’d have to leave the North. That was essentially the same as the original condition, so he should accept it.

“Aha… a bet, huh.”

As expected, Eonian’s expression gradually became confident.

“Fine, not bad. I’ll show everyone my competence so you can’t help but marry me.”
“Do you want to be kicked out right now?”
“You’re violent.”

Eonian put his hand to his mouth like a lady. Watching him sprint toward the fissure, his tail wagged side to side. She should’ve driven him off when he first arrived…

Having a short regret, Sherilotte turned from the fissure Eonian was observing and began tearing at the ceiling.

It was a dome-shaped ceiling. Not simple rock — it looked like it could be opened like a lid if some mechanism were manipulated.

She took the remaining magic stones from her inventory, floated, and examined the wall where the magic circle and crude machinery sat.

‘If I do it roughly like this, it should open.’

Finding a rough escape method, Sherilotte walked out without hesitation, heading in the opposite direction from the fissure Eonian watched.

Sherilotte pushed through the muggy air and headed to the chamber where the lava turtle’s carcass had been.

When she arrived, huge shells and spine bones, stripped of flesh, were piled high. Sherilotte shook her head thinking of the monsters that had been left with only cores and sinews taken.

‘Still, those beasts are docile and don’t often attack humans — was it necessary to kill so many?’

They must have slaughtered them to anchor the magic circle that created the fissure. Anyway, those Eastern nobles are hopeless. Climbing up the piled shells, Sherilotte sighed and bent over.

“Where’s the lava…?”

She was looking for the location of the lava where the turtle would normally have lived.

A turtle’s shell is evolved for digging the ground. Lava turtles are monsters, but like ordinary animals, the markings on their carapace indicate what lava they grew in and how deep the lava resides in their habitat.

How long had she been skimming shells? As she examined the fifteenth shell, Sherilotte’s eyes widened.

“…Wait. Why are these…?”

She paused, set the shell down, and scanned the surroundings.

How many elishes—kilometers—had she climbed to get here? Hadn’t she done quite a bit of climbing to find this location?

‘Why do the baby turtles hardly have hexagonal patterns at all?’

If the patterns are barely there, it means they died young. So the Easterners had pulled out of the Lavre volcano fissure less than a year ago.

And instead of deep rocky zones in the mountain, this was evidence they had lived quite shallowly near the crater’s surface.

A cold sweat prickled the back of Sherilotte’s neck as she scanned the area. This jagged chamber should originally have been full of lava. The warm air on her skin now felt different.

‘…The method I thought of is really dangerous.’

A tense breath escaped her lips.

How did she plan to neutralize the fissure once she found lava?

First, she had to force the lava to erupt.

Even saying that sounded crazy, and that wasn’t the end. She had to make the lava collect as much as possible inside this large, ant-hill-like interior. Only then would it reach the fissure in the middle of the glacier where cold flowed out.

And if the lava safely—no, safely is not the right word—if it gushed out and met the fissure’s ice…

‘The lava will cool quickly and form rock. A plug of rock that will seal the fissure.’

This was the fastest, most efficient way Sherilotte could think of to “neutralize” the fissure.

You can’t close a fissure that has already opened. So at least she could try to plug it like this. If that happened, the magic circles protecting the fissures would break at once and reduce the number and size of other fissures in the North…

‘Besides, my bet was whose method would neutralize the fissure faster, not to eliminate it. Right.’

Anyway, if she could just find the lava and blast it through, she would win.

At that moment — rustle, click.

“…!”

A clattering sound came from under her feet. Sherilotte, who had been tense, quickly stepped down.

Something silvery poked its head out between broken shells. Sherilotte blinked.

“A hatchling?”

Indeed. A baby lava turtle was still alive.

Color returned to Sherilotte’s face. She extended her gloved hand like calling a cat and the hatchling crawled over.

Since it had just been born, its shell was still soft and hot. Its eyes were a typical pair like any turtle.

“…Well, seeing it like this it’s kind of cute.”
“……”
“You know where the lava is, don’t you?”

She asked with a soft chuckle. The turtle turned and shuffled on her palm. Sherilotte’s mouth was about to curve into a bigger smile.

Kururu…

“……”

Sherilotte’s gaze rose to the chamber.

Rumble…

“…What are you doing now?”

The sound came from the fissure where Eonian was. The whole area trembled as if he were doing something violent.

“Is that bastard trying to kill me?”

Sherilotte, who was about to leave the hatchling and head back toward the fissure, suddenly felt the ground give beneath her.

Startled, she tried to climb onto the shells again but tumbled. She twisted her wrist and shivered like a newborn giraffe.

It wasn’t from pain. It wasn’t that Eonian was doing something odd.

The entire shell pile was shaking. Something was coming up from beneath.

The grave was being torn up from its center. Clack, clack, clack. The shells scattered faster and the center split wide.

First to appear was a barnacle-like, ridged head. Its mouth was big enough to split Sherilotte’s waist in two.

Sherilotte stepped back and curled her body to avoid the detritus falling from the beast’s body. Then, with a hiss like a train’s steam, hot vapor burst from vents attached to the shell.

Sherilotte stared at the head of the beast that had revealed itself.

The mother of the lava turtles. Their leader. She had not been killed — she was alive. When Sherilotte saw the front legs, cracked and red like cooled lava, she smiled broadly. That meant lava lay under this pile of shells.

“Hello!”

Sherilotte shouted cheerfully and waved. The six pairs of eyes focused on her.

But there was something strange — the pupils were blood-red. She felt hostility. Had the mother assumed she’d killed so many of her kin?

No — if that were the case, she’d have been eaten already. So why the hostility? As Sherilotte thought this, she glanced at the wriggling sensation in her hand.

The hatchling looked between her and the mother, as if asking, “Did I do something wrong?”

…Wait a minute.

‘Am I touching the baby in front of its mother right now?’