Swamp Girl! Chapter 46

I stabbed my fork into the steak in front of me and cut myself a piece with my knife.
Surprisingly, the knife went through the thick slice of meat with ease. That could have been because of the knife’s quality, but it was clearly one of those ma.s.s-produced knives you could find pretty much anywhere.
When I picked up a piece of meat, its juices flowed from the cut.

It looked incredibly delicious. Plus, it smelled fantastic. Add in my hunger, and I gulped audibly.
Even so, I hesitated to eat it.
It looked every inch a first-rate cut of meat. Steak came from cattle, but this didn’t lose out in any way — if anything, it looked even better.

Sharing the table with me in the dining hall were Leon, Aira, and Palmira. I looked at each of them in turn.
Not one of them said anything. They watched me intently. The mood was like that of the night I was encouraged to try the sparkling wine. Well, that’s how it looked to me, anyway. Those faces.
Frankly, the more they watched me with those faces, the more I hesitated.
But in appearance and smell, this was superior to first-cla.s.s steak. Just looking at it filled my mouth with drool. Feelings aside, my instincts were demanding that I eat it.

Oh, who cares?
Succ.u.mbing to temptation, I sunk my teeth into the meat.

“Uh–fwah–”

The juices gushed out.
As they flooded the inside of my mouth, I savored the umami of the rich fat.
As I chewed the tender meat, its flavors overflowed again and again, putting me in a dreamy reverie. Though I wanted more of that taste, I ended up swallowing the portion in my mouth.

“Haahh–”

Tasty. No, not just tasty, really G.o.dd.a.m.n tasty.
I don’t even know how to describe it, but anyway, it tastes amazing. It’s impossibly delicious.

This — is dragon meat.

“How is it?”

Leon asked for my opinion, grinning.
To the side, Aira was smiling too, and even Palmira, while expressionless, looked like she was waiting for me to say something.

“…Well, it’s tasty. Gave me a surprise. It’s my first time eating this.”

And I didn’t mean dragon meat, but monster meat in general.
Hacked into ma.s.sive pieces, and now it was food.
Right now, dragon had become the main dish on the fortress’s menu.

–

–

When Aira and Palmira came calling, I was a bit unsteady from oversleeping, but more than that, I was starving. So it wasn’t long before I went to get myself a meal.
The sickroom wasn’t in the half-destroyed control tower, but in a corner of the North Tower, one of the defensive constructions inside the fortress. And right now, it was Elite Guard as far as the eye could see.
The North Tower didn’t sustain much damage during the dragon attack, its facilities remaining mostly in order, and so we relocated here.

I left the sickroom for the dining hall.
Although Leon would’ve been better off catching up on sleep — frankly, he looked worse than me — he courteously accompanied me to the dining hall.
Hanging out is great and all, but these things have limits, you know.

Then, what was placed before me was this platter of dragon steak.
The dead dragon’s enormous bulk had crashed into the control tower, where it was still exposed to the elements. Removing it was proving to be a problem.
Apparently, in the middle of it all, someone said, ‘Hey, can’t we just eat it?’
And they gave it a shot and it turned out to be delicious, so afterward they decided to disa.s.semble the body and put it to use as food. It was a very crude but heroic suggestion. I bet Gary came up with it.

Dragon meat.
If I think about it, isn’t this an incredibly rare ingredient?
The extremely appetizing dragon meat was being used up before it went bad with substantial enthusiasm. Primarily to fill the stomachs of the fortress soldiers.
Other than that, discovering its value, lucky traders with a discerning eye were carting it off by the load.
At any rate, even though Basragate Fortress took some serious damage from the dragon, it triumphed over the beast, and there was quite a bit of festivity in the air.

I didn’t realize until it was pointed out to me, but while I was taking my sweet time, my early lunchtime had turned into normal lunchtime, and the dining hall got a little crowded.
With the North Tower crammed with the Elite Guard, the soldiers streaming in one after another all looked familiar to me.

“h.e.l.lo, Lord Leon! Hey, everyone. Chris, you’re up too! I’m so glad!”

It was Irene, cheekily seating herself at our table.
Forget familiar, she was one of the people there that night. Nothing about her appearance suggested that she’d been injured.
I didn’t say it, but it was a relief.

“What is that, Irene?”

I noticed the strange food sitting on the wooden tray she brought with her.
It was bread, but it’d been split into top and bottom, and stuck between them was a slice of meat, probably dragon. It was surprisingly bulky.

“You’re asking me? It’s a chrissando, right?”

Her face puzzled, Irene said something that grabbed my attention.

“What? What sort of name… Eh.”

I was about to question her when I detected a odd atmosphere, and I looked at Leon.
Leon turned away, refusing to show me his face.

I looked at Aira.
Aira, still grinning, averted her eyes. Palmira absently left me with the cryptic words [No more drinking]. I don’t know what that means.

“…Someone explain this to me, guys.”

No one replied, and always moving at her own pace, Irene stuffed her face with the chrissando.

I didn’t really get it, but the meat-stuffed bread called the chrissando seemed to be popular in the North Tower dining hall. Even at other tables, I could see a relatively large number of soldiers eating the same thing.
And, when I made eye contact, every last one of them looked away. Seriously, what the h.e.l.l is going on here?

“Well, it’s fine, isn’t it?”

His face a bit red, Leon tried to steer the conversation away from the topic.
I found it difficult to let go without getting an explanation, but for some reason, I felt like I shouldn’t poke my nose in any further, and I reluctantly shut up on the subject.

“By the way, how long are we going to be here?”

Noon had come and gone, and the dining hall had become spa.r.s.ely populated.
The truth is, we’re already running three days behind schedule.
Well, even if I say that, I have no idea if we’re in a hurry or not. Being delayed doesn’t bother me much.

Though I didn’t know how extensive the dragon’s destruction was, Basragate still had quite a few city amenities despite being a fortress.
Even if we stayed here awhile, I wouldn’t particularly mind. So I was pretty casual about asking.

“Rupert can’t move, and with Maddox currently at large, it would be dangerous to leave the fortress now. I’ve called Vyde back, so we’ll await his arrival. Besides, we have an obligation to the fortress to a.s.sist in its reconstruction in whatever way we can. And, well, there wasn’t much of a rush to return to the capital in the first place.”

Vyde, huh…? I recalled the First Platoon Commander. To be honest, ‘plain’ was the only way to describe him.

Vyde’s being called back here to stand in for Rupert, but if so, then I suppose he’s just as strong.
He hasn’t displayed the slightest hint of that strength in front of me so far, so I can’t imagine it no matter how hard I try.

“Then, how long will we stay here?”

“Roughly five days. That will likely be enough time for Vyde to arrive,”

Leon said, in response to Aira’s question.

Five days? Well, it seemed long, but it wasn’t really.
Especially for me — I wasn’t looking forward to arriving in the capital, and since we’d be inviting another attack from Maddox if we moved out recklessly, I was all for Leon’s plan.
For the time being, I had no reason to oppose them.

“Oh, thank G.o.d. To be honest, I don’t really want to go to the capital,” said Irene.

“Why’s that?”

“Mmm, because when I go back, I have to drop by the Schola Magorum, and whenever I go there, I get saddled with more weird work.”

Irene was too frank for a typical civilian contractor in the military; she was sharing her thoughts right in front of her boss.
The mention of the Schola’s ‘weird work’ sparked my interest, but I had the feeling that Irene was just waiting for someone to give her an opening, and that it would be a pain to deal with. So I make a conscious decision not to take the bait.

“That aside, what about your work right now?”

Lunch was just about over, and as the soldiers in the area dispersed, the dining hall returned to its deserted state.
Based on what Leon said, the Elite Guard should be offering its support in the fortress’s reconstruction, so Irene was probably here for the same thing.
Of course, she came to eat lunch too, but she was staying behind, b.u.t.t firmly planted on her seat, like she had every reason to be here.

“Ah, I was the one who called her,” said Leon.

“You did?”

“That’s right. I’m not rude enough to sit down with Lord Leon if I hadn’t been called here.”

Irene threw in a c.o.c.ky follow-up.
Rude or not, I couldn’t help but feel that she’d still plopped herself down at the same table, and even started to eat lunch.

“Did you have some work for her?”

“Yes, I think it will be necessary to clarify something.”

“Clarify what?”

Leon’s statement seemed to be hinting at something. I suddenly had a bad feeling.
Calling Irene here. What for?
Points in common… they both know that I used to be a man…
But they waited until now to get that cleared up?

“The mysterious magic you use.”

Leon looked at me, his expression serious.

…Come to think of it, he’s not wrong.
I’d been too preoccupied with other things, so I thought less and less about why I could use magic.
I mean, this was never my own body to begin with, obviously, so even if my invocation process was strange, I thought, ‘Mystery solved’, and I stopped worrying about it.1

If I think about it, I used that “magic” only twice before.
During one of them, Guibenague, the unlucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d, was the only witness. Plus, if I remember right, then I was the only one who knew that it had been activated unconventionally.
Apparently, I was the only one who had thought of it was perfectly normal. Virtually everyone who saw what happened that night was shocked.

“I’ll be honest with you, Chris. It’s strange. Even if we set aside the question of why you can use magic at all, activation without a invocation stone or incantation is completely unprecedented. On top of that, I’ve never seen or heard of such magic before. I don’t even know which of the Six Attunements it belongs to. If I had to come up with something, it seems to be a fusion of light and wind… and fire, but I can’t even understand how it might be put together. Just what in the world is it?”

“Even if you ask me…”

I was a bit intimidated by Irene, who’d done a total one-eighty and was now questioning me with intensity.
Look, you can ask me all you want, but I don’t have any more to give you.
I’m the one who wants a clear explanation of all this.

“If you don’t mind, could you tell us the details of the times you were able to use magic?”

Leon smiled pleasantly.
‘What’s with that grin? What’s there to grin about here?’ I thought, but I was completely helpless against it.

I don’t really have anything to hide, do I?
Considering the thought in a corner of my mind, I began to speak in as much detail as possible.

When was the first time?
Ah, it was that night on the estate. I was playing with the invocation stone I picked up, right?
It was absorbed into my hand, a blue pattern appeared on my body… and that was the end of it.

Come to think of it, Leon had burst into my room that time, looking completely unlike himself. He played dumb when I asked him later, but he saw it, didn’t he? The pattern.

After that, the second time was with Guibenague.
I thought I’d use his invocation stone to freak him out.
At the time, it seemed to me that I could, somehow. And then for some reason, I actually could, I mean.

The third was against Maddox.
I thought since I was able to before, couldn’t I do it again somehow? And I was desperate. I couldn’t think of anything else.

But when the invocation stone broke, I wondered, ‘What do I do?’
But I had to take him down… I mean… I thought… I thought he’d kill Leon.
Then, because the design appeared, I thought I could do it.

” — that about sums it up.”

Done talking, I took a breather.

For some reason, I recalled the time I confessed that I was a man.
This talk about “magic” felt different. It didn’t feel like that a big deal to me.

As a matter of fact, Aira and Palmira were listening to me with astonished looks on their faces. It actually was that big a deal.

But, Leon aside, my story seemed to be a considerable shock to Irene. Her face was frozen in a look of blatant disbelief.

“I see. Thank you, Chris… Irene, what do you think?”

“Ah–, uh, yes — ”

Leon’s manner finally got Irene back online.
It just occurred to me now, but when these two speak directly to each other, they have a surprisingly proper superior-subordinate relations.h.i.+p.
Even Irene, audacious as she is. Come to think of it, she was pretty quiet at the strategy meeting too. It’s sort of nostalgic.

“To tell you the truth, I thought it was an impossible story. Almost everything in it goes against the system of magic we’ve upheld to this day. I thought that, perhaps… it may not even be magic. But it’s at least more closely related to the fundamental system than the invocation stones. However — ”

Irene glanced at me with an unusually serious expression before continuing.

“This matter of the invocation stone being absorbed into the body. After that, the emergence of the pattern. And finally, the ability to use magic, even without a invocation stone. I believe these three are somehow related. However, in what way… it’s impossible for me to draw any conclusions…”

“…I see.”

I didn’t know what there was to see in that speech just now, but Leon nodded and turned thoughtful.
Even while she kept sneaking glances at me, Irene mostly hung her head and said nothing.

“It seems much of it will have to remain a mystery for now… Let’s adjourn here. I thought we might return to the capital and resume the investigation there, should Chris have a need to.”

‘How does that sound?’ Leon said, was.h.i.+ng his hands of me.2

…I realized after being dumped, but if I sat down and thought about it, this was my problem.
Though I was following Leon’s pace without thinking too much about it, you could say that it was one hundred percent my problem. The weird part was having other people poke around in my own business.

Whether or not I can use magic has never been all that important to me in the first place.
Do or die, my objective is to return to my original body, which is different from unraveling the mystery of this one.
If only I could return to my body, then magic, the riddle of this body — I’ll no longer have the need to know anything about them.
Yeah, if only I could return to my body.

When the thought crossed my mind, a kind of stinging thorn lodged itself in my heart.

“Chris?”

” — ! Ah, yeah, sounds good to me.”

Ducking around the true nature of that p.r.i.c.kling, I responded in a hurry.

“? …Well then, let’s proceed like so.”

“Th–Then I’m returning to work.”

An inscrutable expression flickered across Leon’s face for a moment before he wrapped things up. Seemingly fl.u.s.tered, Irene seized the chance, rising from her seat and leaving as if she were fleeing.
Though I found that unnatural behavior curious, I decided not to worry about it.

That aside.
What was that stinging just now?
Not clearly understanding, or perhaps, not trying to understand, I looked at Leon.
I also have things I need to make clear.

I have to go back to how I used to be.

But somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to say that in front of Leon.

Author’s Notes
In these scenes, no matter what, Aira and Palmira end up having no presence at all.

Footnotes
1. Guessed: 俺の魔法の発動形式が変だということにすら解決を見たような気がして、気にならなくなっていたのも確かだった ↵
2. Chris uses words meaning “abandoned” or “rejected”, but I’m not really sure what about Leon’s manner would give off that kind of impression. He only said to put a hold on it for the time being. ↵