Paradigm Parasite

Heidi and I left town and hopped over to Savage, who was waiting for us nearby.

"Savage was really waiting for us outside."

I didn't answer Heidi's question, but pulled her hand and put her on the back, kicked Savage lightly in the stomach, and let him run.

"How long will it take us to reach Tirani?"

Heidi asks, and I unfold the map in my mind.

I think about it for a minute.

"......5, maybe four days if we hurry."

Savage looks at me as if to say, "What?"

I see... you don't need five days, do you?

"Four days."

"That fast?"

Savage has been sending me some bitter thoughts, but I don't care. Run.

But still, it's nice and easy to get around on Savage.

I don't have to drive, it runs on its own, so I can enjoy the scenery without worrying about my surroundings.

Heidi, who is holding onto me with her hands around my waist, agrees with me, looking at the scenery with sparkling eyes.

There is a large forest between Tirani and Delord, which seems to be the border between the two.

Once we pass through the forest, we will be in Tirani.

The forest is dangerous, with goblins, lupus, scrofa, and other beasts, but... well, it's not a problem.

I don't care what you call them, but goblins are really everywhere.

Maybe it's because they increase easily due to the nature of their race, but it's too much trouble to get tangled up with them every single time.

Well, now, thanks to Savage, it's not even a hassle anymore because I can just bounce off them at random.

In fact, the passage through the forest is over just sitting there.

Savage slips through the trees, leaps over the occasional goblin, and glides through the traps set by the goblins. Occasionally, he even showed the grace to pick up a dead body he had kicked to death and run while gnawing on it.

Heidi looked at him questioningly, but it was probably just a minor problem.

As planned, on the third day we passed through the forest and entered Tirani, and on the fourth day the city of Bayser, where slave sales are thriving, came into view.

Tirani territory.

A neighboring territory to the west of Delord.

It is a terrible place where the majority of the population is slaves, and almost all the people living there are slaves or their owners.

Originally, it was a coal mining town where high quality ore and coal could be extracted, but as the labor force was provided by slaves, a slave market was established and it came to be called a slave market.

The economy has developed by running on slaves.

It may be normal in this world, but it is an extraordinary place when you think about it in terms of Japanese common sense.

However, there seems to be a demand for slaves, and there is no end to the number of people who come to this town to buy slaves.

From my point of view, there is honestly not much to see at all, so I would never have turned my back on it if Fatima hadn't told me to. In fact, if nothing else, I would have headed to Nordia, the opposite direction.

Let's just do the shopping and go next.

It's about time I could see it from a distance.

--General.

Suddenly, a voice echoes in my head.

Peggy.

--What's going on?

I was told you were ahead of me, so I guess you've arrived by now.

Is that your report?

--I just arrived at Bayser, but something's wrong.

What do you mean?

--Be specific.

--There's fire in the streets, and it looks like there's fighting all over the place.

What?

Slaves revolting? No, I don't think so.

Deny the thought myself.

It's got that collar on it. If they kill their master, their heads will be blown off.

Well, there's a way to disarm it, but...

--Okay. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to gather some information. We're almost there, so we'll meet up with you there. I'll ask you to report back to me then.

--Aye.

I cut off communication and told Savage to be on the lookout.

Savage gave a single whimper and said he understood.

"What is that...?"

I heard Heidi behind me muttering.

Ah, I see it.

That's the Bayser.

Peggy was right, there was a lot of smoke coming from all over the city.

People are gathering near the town, and they are getting excited about something.

As I approached, some people came close to us.

"Hey! You're an adventurer? That's awesome!"

He looked at us with a kind of expectant look in his eyes...looked at my plate...and let out a sigh.

Hey. That's quite an attitude.

"General!"

I heard a voice from the crowd and looked over to see Peggy wading out.

"You guys. That man over there is with me."

Peggy showed them the red plate she was wearing around her neck, and those who had been nearby moved away.

When Peggy saw that the people who had come up to us and the people who were watching Savage from afar were gone, she turned to us again and...

"Shall we go somewhere else?"

She said.

The location changes and we get off the Savage a little ways out of town.

Heidi, not keeping up with the situation, looks at me and Peggy alternately with a curious look on her face, then pulls the hem of my clothes down. You want me to explain?

"Oh, I didn't introduce you. She's Peggy. She's the...well, sort of the go-between for this commission."

"Peggy. I'm an adventurer, but lately I've been playing gladiator in the arena. Nice to meet you, young lady."

"Peggy. This is Heidi. This is my partner."

"I'm Heidi. Nice to meet you."

After the two of them had said their greetings, it was time to get down to business.

"Now, let's cut to the chase. What happened here?"

According to Peggy's story, a monster is running rampant in the city.

Yesterday, during the annual slave auction in town, it broke in and killed the man in charge.

The man's death also blew off the heads of his slaves one after another, and the rest of the town was in uproar.

A security guard heard the commotion and engaged the monster.

The monster is terribly strong and the battle still seems to be ongoing.

Its true identity is unknown.

However, there is talk that it may be a new type of monster that appears in the forest, which was recently reported by the Adventurers' Guild.

Ah, come to think of it, there was a request like that from the Light Rap guild.

"...and?What are those people camped out near the town?"

"Oh, they're like sub-branches of the Adventurers' Guild."

A branch office?

When I look at the people gathered there, I see some of them wearing guild uniforms.

Many of the others are wearing collars...evacuated slaves?

"In short, they are issuing urgent quests over there. The rewards were great because it was to take down the monster that had done so much damage. The guild official said that the one who kills it will be promised a high evaluation. If you kill that guy, they might make you blue at once."

Peggy added, "This kind of request is rare, so if you can go for it, you should go for it."

...Hmm.

"What do you think Heidi?"

I'll have to talk to my partner about it, just in case.

I turn to Heidi.

"I'll leave it to you. I know it's dangerous to go, but we can't do the shopping until the city is back to normal..."

Ah, come to think of it, we're here as a commission.

In any case, it's hard to say what to say as long as we haven't seen the monster in question.

"Let's go to ....... I'll wait until I see the monster before I decide whether or not I'm going to beat it. Peggy, I'm going to ask you to come too. We're dealing with a monster, can you handle it?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Leave it to me."

Peggy is wearing a caged gauntlet on her arm, as if she had originally planned to come.

The rest...

"Savage. Come on, you too."

Savage, who had been eating grass around the area with a blank expression on his face, turns his head and says, "What?" then turned his head away.

What are you acting like you don't care about anything else? Since you're already seen, there's no point in hiding it, and I'm going to make you work for me.

Savage let out a sigh of disapproval.

After receiving the quest order from the guild, we set foot in the city....

"It's terrible..."

"Yeah, it is.

The buildings in town had some kind of white thread-like thing wrapped around them in places, and it seemed to be on fire here and there.

What is this thread-like thing?

The first thing that came to mind was spider silk...but...was there really a spider in this world that was large enough to spread such a large amount of silk?

At a glance, I noticed that monsters spit threads, and that threads are weak against fire.

"So... we were told there was only one monster, right?"

"That's what I heard at the guild."

Peggy quickly answered my question.

Then why is the sound of battle echoing through the city?

Let's just go see what's at hand for now.

We all headed for the place where the battle was taking place.

When we arrived at the scene...what are they doing?

For some reason, a group of people who appeared to be adventurers were fighting.

"Hey! Stop!"

"I can't! Do something!"

Some of them are wielding swords, while the rest are keeping their distance while holding their weapons.

It looks like they are struggling to attack.

That alone gave me an idea of the situation.

For some reason, it seems that some of them are being controlled only by their bodies, and they are being forced to fight each other with their friends.

Those who are not being controlled seem to be having a hard time.

"It looks like they are being manipulated."

And the fact that they're still in their right mind is a bad thing.

"What are we going to do? Do we go in and help them?"

"Leave them alone. We'll go for the monster."

I decided to ignore the people fighting and move on... but where's the monster?

"The last, or rather first, sighting was at an auction house, so why don't we go there?"

Oh, Peggy, you're so handy.

I've got some information about this place in my memory, so I think I'll be able to figure out where it is.

We headed straight for the auction house, the center of the city.

On the way there, I saw a lot of decapitated corpses lying around.

Ah, slaves whose owners had died.... What a sorry lot.

And then there's Savage. Don't pick up the head of a corpse and put it in your mouth. If Heidi sees you, you'll be in trouble.

Heidi, on the other hand, was on guard, her forehead sweating from the tension.

Peggy, by contrast, did not seem to be preparing herself, and was walking normally.

And then there's Savage. You can chew them up without making a sound, but you have to stop eating them.

"Help me... please..."

"My body's moving on its own."

"Do something."

As I was walking along, adventurers who were being manipulated came out of nowhere.

They were asking for help, asking for something to be done.

"General?"

"I don't feel the need to help them at all."

"Well, I guess so. Shall we?"

"Hey, hey, hey!?"

Ignoring Heidi's attempts to stop me, I pull out my sword and slash the man closest to me in two.

Next to me, Peggy is beating her enemies to death one by one.

The gauntlet was apparently quite powerful, and the man who was hit in the face had his eyeballs blown out with a single blow, while the man who was hit in the stomach had his organs crushed with his thin skin armor, causing him to vomit blood.

Savage is also eating up all over the place.

I check the body of the man I cut in two. Hmmm. He's completely dead and not moving at all.

It seems that it can't manipulate the corpse.

...Oops. Did it end while I was checking the corpse?

I looked around and saw that Peggy and Savage had cleaned up all the rest.

Too soon. Savage is gobbling up the corpses.

"You shouldn't have killed any of them..."

"No, it's impossible."

Heidi was about to say something, but I knew what she was going to say, so I cut her off.

"We can't do anything as long as we don't know how to help them. Or are you going to let them kill you because you care about them?"

"We'll try to neutralize them without killing them..."

"Even if one of us dies as a result?"

"......"

"You need to make up your mind. If you can't, you might as well get out of town."

What about me? With a look, she asked, and I then walked onward.

"I'm sorry. I'm going."

With that, she starts to walk along with me. Peggy follows behind me, shrugging her shoulders.

I wonder what will come out of this.