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Chapter: 20
“Even monster cubs discriminate against people, or what?”
Mila muttered as she glared at the monster. Perhaps because of her sturdy build, or perhaps due to the aura she had carried from her days as a hunter, the monster grew wary and raised its scales.
“Oh? You little runt, you think you can raise your scales in front of me? If you’d met me back in Norska, you wouldn’t have lasted a single punch. You’d have been neatly dealt with and sold off as leather in no time. Do you understand?”
Unlike Judy and Polly, she didn’t shrink back in fear or run away. Instead, she rolled up her sleeves and issued threats in a rough voice. But even her interest in the monster didn’t last long.
Before she knew it, Mila’s eyes were drifting toward the guard post office. At the entrance stood a guard, idly scraping the grass with a wooden sword, clearly provoking her.
“Why don’t you go ahead and take a trip, Mila?”
He was a knight named Jeff. He was the same man who had previously sparred fiercely with Mila when she had picked up a wooden sword, saying she wanted to stretch her body after a long time.
“Hehe. Then I’ll be right back, my lady.”
Mila stood up as if she had been waiting for that very moment and began loosening her shoulders.
“If anything happens, just shout. Like if the monster gets cocky in front of my lady or something. Of course, we’ll probably notice first, but just in case.”
“Yes. I’ll puff up my belly and let out a loud scream.”
I quickly took a bite of the bread I had grabbed.
Mila and Jeff were said to be former comrades from their Norska days. Jeff looked a couple of years younger, but whenever they met, they behaved like sworn enemies, growling and circling around the outpost.
After watching their brief scuffle, I turned my gaze toward the storage shed.
The monster had crawled up to the iron bars and was now crouching there. Though Mila had dismissed it as a “little runt,” it was about the size of a fully grown pig.
A dull green body. Scales like a crustacean’s shell. On its back—whether you would call them soft horns or wings—something strange protruded from where its shoulder blades should be, like a frog’s splayed fingers. On the snout of its large lizard-like head, a scar from a blade cut two months ago remained clearly visible.
In the sunlight filtering through the iron bars, the monster looked oddly exhausted. Its golden eyes, emitting an uncanny glow, could instinctively trigger fear just by meeting them. But when its eyes were closed like this, it didn’t feel frightening at all.
So monsters, when asleep, are like angels… well, not quite, but at least somewhat less threatening?
In truth, I wasn’t even afraid of those eyes anymore.
I watched the sleeping monster and suddenly thought of Kagan.
Kagan also looked much gentler when he slept. His unruly bangs would fall naturally, half-covering his sharp eyes, making him seem younger.
But whether he looked less dangerous while sleeping, I wasn’t sure. Him sleeping beside me meant he had just exerted his overwhelming vitality—and that meant I had just fully experienced how terrifying he could be.
On top of that, Kagan had recently developed a habit of unconsciously clinging to me while sleeping, draping his heavy arm over me. His arm was not only thick enough to look intimidating, but also extremely, extremely heavy…
“What on earth am I thinking?”
As if scolding myself for comparing the monster to my husband, I lightly patted both cheeks.
At that moment, the monster lifted one closed eyelid. A golden eye, glowing ominously like a full moon hanging over a dark forest, stared straight at me.
But once again, I realized something.
That gaze no longer frightened me.
It wasn’t only because the monster couldn’t hurt me anymore. It was probably after I had seen it eat and sleep in front of me.
After seeing it eat only in my presence, and relax its entire body and lay its scales down comfortably only in front of me.
“Do you want to try some?”
I tore off a large piece of bread without jam and tossed it into the cage bars, stopping about three steps away from them.
The monster, which had been lying there indifferently, slowly approached the bread on all fours. I stepped back and returned to the table before it got too close.
Crunch, munch. The sound of it eating was no different from any ordinary beast.
“Lord Rodo of Lodo said he would personally come to retrieve his son with the bail money. Since he apologized first and asked about our territorial laws, Ben said it made things easier for him.”
After the spring festival at Arkno Square ended, Kagan had told me this when I asked about Arroz’s punishment.
I had been worried it might become an issue—accusations that we had treated a foreign baron’s son too harshly.
“Then what about the monster that Lord Arroz had with him?” I asked, relieved.
“The monster was confirmed to have been captured in a legally permitted hunting territory. However, since it was brought into our land in violation of our laws, Lord Rodo’s side requested that we handle it according to our regulations. So we’ll be sending it to the Mist Forest soon.”
“To the Mist Forest of Weiriver?”
“Yes. It’s not hunting season here, so we can’t simply execute it for sport. If we release it at the inner boundary of the Mist Forest, it will probably find its way inside on its own.”
Or it might wander around Regrota and be hunted and killed during the summer hunting season.
Kagan had said this with a dry gaze, describing a somewhat cruel outcome.
In modern times, monsters no longer descended into human villages to harm people at will, and humans were no longer allowed to freely enter monster forests to hunt them either.
There had likely never been a formal meeting between the representatives of both species, but the truce established after the Second Great Monster War had been maintained in this way. According to later accounts, it was said that peace came after the first emperor of Taigaen killed the king of monsters and issued an edict banning indiscriminate hunting.
“Won’t it hold a grudge and come down to attack villages because it was captured by humans?”
I had been uneasy about releasing it. Any imperial citizen, raised on constant warnings about how dangerous and savage monsters were, would have worried the same.
Even if it had simply been caught while living quietly in its territory, wouldn’t a monster that had been hurt by humans and left with bad memories become even more dangerous?
“If mice held grudges against cats for being caught, they’d come back for revenge,” Kagan replied, surprisingly relaxed.
“A monster at the level of the one captured by Arroz is nothing to worry about.”
I see. So it really was just a weak specimen. I trusted his expertise and soon forgot about it.
I thought I would never see the green, lizard-faced monster again.
But I met it again just one week later—for reasons entirely different from the accident I had feared.
“Hah. This is turning into a problem.”
“What do we do? At this rate, we’ll be stuck handling it until the summer hunting season.”
The knights guarding the Mist Forest were complaining as they brought the monster, locked in a steel cage, back to the northern guard post storage.
This was what had happened: the knights had followed Kagan’s orders and released the monster at the forest boundary, the entrance to its nest. But the monster had not crossed the boundary for a full week, instead lingering near the knights’ outpost.
“It won’t go home.”
“…What?”
Just as I happened to be passing the northern post with Mila, I was stunned to see the monster return in a cage.
“It’s been eating grass like a farm pig, picking up insects, and surviving just fine. It has no intention of going back. Apparently, monsters are supposed to return to their nests on their own once released into the Mist Forest, but this one just won’t.”
“Were there any issues with your knights?”
When I cautiously looked at the monster, it looked back at me. In just one week, it had grown a handspan larger, staring up at me with its shimmering golden eyes as if it remembered my face.
“No major trouble.”
As if to prove the knight’s words, the monster simply lay there quietly, staring at me.
“In fact, we haven’t seen monsters in the Mist Forest for quite a while. But this one hanging around the guard area is… unsettling. It’s actually tamer than stray dogs in the village.”
“It’s probably too stupid to find its way home. Or maybe it hit its head when that incompetent knight caught it.”
The knights examined it curiously.
“It’s kind of pitiful…”
One knight clicked his tongue in sympathy, but quickly fell silent under the others’ glances.
An awkward silence passed through them.
Did anyone here actually like monsters?
The knights of the Steinway family included many nobles selected under the previous duke, but also former hunters brought by Kagan from Norska.
They were different from noble knights. Most had grown up fighting monsters in Norska from childhood, and some had even lost family members to them.
Mila herself was said to have lost her grandfather to a monster.
“…Well, for now, we’ll keep it alive. It hasn’t attacked anyone.”
A knight with a beast-like claw scar on his left cheek spoke bluntly.
“If it were up to us, we might quietly deal with it without the imperial court knowing. But we can’t turn our lord into a heretic who ignores the Church’s guidance.”
And so the green monster ended up staying beside the guard post.
“Why won’t you go home?”
I muttered to myself as I watched the bread-eating monster. The giant lizard face that had once seemed so disgusting and frightening now felt almost familiar after seeing it so often.
The monster glanced at me briefly, as if it understood, then went back to quietly munching its bread.
