Under a gloomy, dark night, where the moon was hidden by snow clouds.
Three riding beasts galloped along a path that seemed to be erased by the snow, carrying magical lanterns.
The beasts, resembling a cross between a polar bear and a deer, had large antlers and thick, white fur. They were a domesticated breed of Wendigo, a type of magical creature known for its gentle temperament. They were well-suited for traveling in the snow and had much more stamina than horses.
Riding the Wendigos were three adventurers, clad in cold-weather gear over their equipment. They were the members of “Dragon’s Throat,” excluding Iris.
“But it’s strange. I thought for sure that the signal disappearing once was due to a jamming charm. Why did it deactivate? If they’re traveling on an inconspicuous old road, they should be able to use detection jamming without any problem.”
“Who knows. Maybe they dropped it and it broke? Those things are pretty fragile.”
Diana and Hugh exchanged words while keeping their Wendigos running alongside each other.
Following Diana’s tracking, the three had detected that Iris was being moved along the old road and had come to pursue her.
When they reached Vine, the tracking magic had temporarily stopped working. They assumed that Iris’s captors had used detection jamming, making it nearly impossible to find and catch up to them. However, after a short time, when Diana tried tracking again, a signal appeared near the old road leading to the neighboring territory.
The three had thrown almost all of their party’s assets into procuring riding beasts for the pursuit. They were high-class mounts, but in the merchant city of Vone, they were able to gather three of them.
And so, they were rushing along the old road, just the three of them, in the falling snow.
“Wait!”
Benedict, who was in the lead, suddenly shouted and stopped his Wendigo.
“What is it?”
“The smell of blood…”
At Benedict’s words, Diana’s expression changed drastically.
“Whose blood is it!?”
“Calm down. It’s a human male. Probably an adult… maybe more than one.”
Diana breathed a sigh of relief at his next words.
At least it wasn’t Iris’s blood. But that was only a small comfort. It was certain that bloodshed had occurred ahead.
“Iris… please be safe.”
“We must hurry. Visibility is poor, so be on the lookout for anything that might suddenly appear.”
“Understood.”
“You don’t need to tell me.”
Slightly slowing their speed, the three began to run again. But before they could go far, Diana groaned atop her Wendigo.
“…Ngh…!”
Diana clutched her chest. The Wendigo, sensing its rider’s distress, slowed down, and the other two noticed Diana’s condition.
“Diana?”
“What’s wrong?”
Diana opened the hand that was pressing against her chest. Underneath her cold-weather gear, on the cleavage of her priest’s robe that covered her ample bosom, blood was slowly seeping out.
“Hey, there’s blood…”
“Don’t mind me, it’s kind of like a condition I have… Ah, forget it!”
Clicking her tongue, Diana pulled out a knife as if she had made up her mind about something. And then she sliced open the front of her priest’s robe.
Benedict and Hugh were slightly surprised by this. Until now, she had stubbornly refused to expose any skin other than her hands, left foot, and face. She wouldn’t even show her skin to Iris, let alone the men, so they had assumed it was due to some kind of religious precept.
Her beautifully curved chest was revealed. There, a pattern resembling a part of a magic circle was engraved. Blood was seeping from it.
Jumping down from the Wendigo, Diana walked around, tracing the pattern. Then, she pointed to a spot beside the road where the snow had piled up.
“Under here, some people who died a pretty nasty death recently are buried.”
“Huh…? Y-You can tell?”
“Yeah. I’m just that kind of person.”
Saying this with a grimace, Diana unwound what looked like a silver accessory from her arm.
Diana’s fingertips emitted a magical glow. Then, a stream of silver danced and assembled into a series of blades. It had been divided into several accessories, but now it was a silver whip with a handle modeled after a holy symbol and a long chain like barbed wire. When Diana swung the silver whip above her head with a whirring sound, a light like fireflies flying was drawn in the air.
“[Stigma Boost] Activate… <<Holy Arrow>>!”
From the light trails of the silver whip, dozens of bands of light were released. The arrows of light, drawing complex and geometric trajectories in the air, rained down on the mounds of snow. The torrent of radiance was now like a waterfall of light.
The area became completely white, as if a smoke screen had been set off, due to the snow that had been blasted away.
“What was that power!? Do you have this much magical power!?”
“I’ll explain later! Anyway, look inside this!”
Benedict roared in the white smoke, and Diana yelled back.
Underneath the snow that Diana had removed with her magic, something strange was unearthed.
Some were torn apart, some were burnt. A horse-drawn sleigh was scorched. The cargo was also in a miserable state. There were several things that had once been human. There were dismembered corpses that had been ripped apart, charred corpses, and some who looked unharmed at first glance but had died in agony. …All of them were piled on top of each other and encased in a huge, transparent block of ice.
Like insects trapped in amber, or a ship in a bottle, the scene of the tragedy was enclosed within the ice block.
“What is this…?”
Benedict and Hugh stared, breathless.
The ice block was partially cracked and broken due to Diana’s magic, but it was so large that most of it remained intact.
“It’s impossible. Someone who can create something like this would have to be at least a level 6 magic user. There shouldn’t be that many of them.”
Magic is categorized into levels for convenience, based on the difficulty of acquisition. Level 6 is the realm of a first-class magician who is blessed with talent and has trained for many years. They could even serve as a court magician. It’s not a level you see every day.
“These corpses are…”
“Probably the Night Python guys. They were fleeing after abandoning their base in Vone.”
Earlier, the Vone guards had detected an anomaly at the Night Python’s base and raided it, only to find it empty. It seemed they had fled before the Earl’s forces arrived the next day.
“Dragon’s Throat” had accompanied the raid. Since Iris’s signal had been lost, they had a faint hope that she might be hidden there in some way. Because Iris’s signal had been found on the old road, they had thought that Night Python was fleeing with Iris, and had come chasing after them… but this was the result.
“But who would kill Night Python?”
No one could answer Hugh’s question.
Benedict climbed onto the ice block and sniffed the corpses exposed from the sections scraped away by magic, examining them from various angles.
“What’s going on? This isn’t death by ice magic. They were frozen after they died.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like preserved food. …To mask the smell, perhaps? If they were just buried, dogs and I would be able to find them, but not if they’re frozen. The smell of blood was cut off abruptly around here. <<Deodorant>> might have been used as well.”
“Even so, what for?”
Diana stroked around her eyes and looked around, but eventually shook her head.
“The souls of the dead have also been exorcised. That said, there’s no sign that they were ‘mourned’ or ‘purified’. They were probably blown away by force. This is it. Whoever killed the Night Python guys is trying to hide the fact that there was a slaughter here, isn’t he? Not only visually, but also by deceiving the sense of smell and, carefully, even spirit vision.”
“What for? It’s almost like… they knew we were coming and tried to hide it from us…”
It was just as Hugh said. If they were trying to hide the traces of the battle, there was usually no need to go this far. Burying them in the snow would have been sufficient.
But against “Dragon’s Throat,” that wouldn’t be enough to fool them. Benedict, being a Kobold, has a nose that can keenly detect the scent of blood and burnt corpses, and Diana, being a priestess, can see the souls of the dead. The concealment was done to counter that.
“Diana. Iris’s signal isn’t in here, is it?”
“No. Probably, when the signal was first detected, it was already ahead of here.”
“Then… who is she being taken by? Was she protected by the ones who killed Night Python?”
“If that’s the case, it’s more troublesome than dealing with Night Python. Or perhaps…”
Diana glared at the ice block with a grim expression. Then, she tapped the ice block with her knuckle.
She was pointing to a corpse that appeared unharmed but was dead.
“Benedict. I need just one drop of this guy’s blood. Can you manage it?”
“Is that necessary to save Iris?”
“…Yeah.”
After saying that hesitantly, Diana added as if talking to herself.
“If we can still make it in time, that is. …There’s someone here who shouldn’t be.”