By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 33

Chapter 4 Episode 33: The Work of the Limour Birds

I pondered this new skill as I returned to the inn, and the man at the reception desk welcomed me back. It was dark at the entrance, so I thought nobody was there, but this was convenient for me.

“Excuse me, is there anywhere around here where I could let my familiars out without bothering anyone?” I asked. “I have some bird familiars.”

It seemed unquestionable that Pedro had taken this road, so I wanted to check the forest again. I explained the circumstances to the man.

“You can use the roof,” he said. “Nobody would be up there around this time. Oh, but if there’s any laundry there, then watch out for that.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.”

“The safety of the roads is important to all of us.”

With his permission, I headed straight for the roof. I climbed the wooden stairs he directed me to and opened the door at the top. Under the starry sky, ropes for hanging clothes on glowed in the moonlight. There was nothing else on the roof aside from a railing along the edge, so my birds could fly in any direction from here.

When I opened my Dimension Home, my limour birds loudly cawed and flew out. I told them to hush so they wouldn’t awaken others at the inn, and they listened.

“Now, I’d like to ask for your help again. Observe the whole mountain from up above this town,” I said.

The six limour birds flew into the cloudless sky in a V formation. They were led by the highest-ranking of them, Eins, the nightmare limour bird. When they would hunt for prey, he always took the lead unless I gave orders otherwise. Eins was brazen enough to perch on my head instead of trees sometimes. He was the leader of the six.

Next were Zwei and Drei. These two seemed to enjoy delivering letters, so I usually gave that job to one of them. But they had big appetites, so they always demanded a lot of food when they got back. I thanked and rewarded them by answering their demands, but I felt like they had grown somewhat since I first made contracts with them. From what I heard, they were rewarded with food by the people to whom they delivered letters as well. I didn’t know if they were just growing or if they were getting fat, but I needed to keep an eye on these two.

Behind them were Vier and Funf. These were the only females in the group, and they seemed to be close with Zwei and Drei respectively. They left a big flock to be with me, but maybe they would grow their family in the near future.

Then, there was Sechs, who was in the back of the group. He was the smallest of the limour birds, but when he flew on his own, he seemed to be the fastest. He must have stayed in the back to make sure he stayed at the same pace as the rest of the group. Sechs just seemed to like flying, and sometimes he would fly around the mine like a speeding bullet. Maybe he was a speed demon. As with my metal slimes, I wanted to make sure he didn’t get in any accidents.

At Eins’s quiet call, the six of them cleanly flew off in different directions. I shared my vision with Eins, and it appeared to work fine. I could see through his eyes as he looked down upon the mountain from high in the sky. The lights in the lodging town shined like stars in the darkness. Eins was pretty high up.

Curious about the other birds, I switched to their eyes, but what I saw was much the same with all of them. It was night, so I mostly just saw darkness. It was only possible to share vision with a familiar when they were within a certain distance, but outside that distance, not even the darkness should have been visible. Presumably that meant that they were close enough.

The furthest one from me was currently Sechs, and when I looked through his eyes, I could already see the foot of the mountain. He darted through the sky with nothing blocking his way. I didn’t mind that he was having fun, but hoped he wasn’t forgetting to actually search for clues.

I told him to remember the mission, then suddenly noticed something. Even if he traveled in a straight line, the foot of the mountain should have been more than a couple hundred meters away. Maybe he could just see far in the distance from his altitude, but it didn’t seem like we should have been able to share vision so easily. Maybe my taming magic was rapidly improving, but if it was, I had no idea when that happened or why. The only new thing I had done related to taming magic lately was taking the aptitude exam, but that didn’t seem like enough for such a change.

Funf found something, so I decided to put that thought on the back burner for now. I switched to her field of vision, but I couldn’t quite make out what she was looking at. I could make out the branches and needles of a conifer tree somewhat through the darkness, but little else. Something appeared to be moving, so maybe it was an animal or human. There was some sound as well. I couldn’t see whatever it was, though, so I had no way to know if it was a person.

But this was the first report I received here. On top of that, Funf had flown over the side of the road to Keleban. I wanted to have all my limour birds search that area, so I called them back. Funf turned right around. I switched to the eyes of the others to check if they got the orders. Eins did. So did Zwei. Drei did too, and Vier wasn’t far from him. Sechs had gotten pretty far away and would likely arrive last, but he was on his way back.

Having to keep switching between all their eyes was rather bothersome. I wondered if there was a way to see through all their eyes at once. The contracts let us share our senses, so they could always signal if something special happened, but I wanted to be able to readily see everything they saw at once if possible. I saw the sharing of vision as something akin to looking at CCTV footage on a screen. That being the case, I tried to imagine a split-screen on top of that. It reminded me of a part-time job I’d once had as a security guard.

It actually seemed to be working. On one side, I saw what Sechs saw, and on the other, I saw that Eins was already above town. The two images didn’t overlap, but I saw them both in my mind. There seemed to be a bit of static, but it was good enough. I tried harder to envision a security room receiving images from multiple cameras, and that made the images clearer. I’d need more practice to view three or more images at once, but I felt like I could at least handle two. My taming magic seemed to be improving after all. I didn’t remember doing anything to practice with it, so that was odd, but I figured I could ask Taylor or the Jamil family about it some other time.

While I was testing this out, the limour birds assembled around me. When I asked them to head off and search again, Funf led the way this time, racing back to where she’d found something. After they got there, they split into two groups of three and resumed their search. I asked them to be wary of monsters, and told them it was fine to leave if it seemed too dangerous. They responded affirmatively, then lowered their altitude.

The two fields of vision I saw gave me a close look at the trees. The starry sky was hardly visible, so the image was even darker than it was up above. I could just barely make out the outlines of the trees, but I questioned how possible it was to search like this. The birds couldn’t fly that fast here either, but it didn’t seem to be an issue. They were migratory birds, so they were accustomed to flying at night. I asked them to keep up the search.

They split up to search two different locations, and I observed them through their eyes. When the limour birds really got moving, though, my eyes couldn’t keep up. The darkness was bad enough on its own, but they just moved too fast. The limour birds could apparently see, though; maybe it was thanks to night vision or something. Bird eyes and human eyes were structured differently, so the fact that I could even get an image I could make sense of was pretty convenient, I guess. It seemed plausible to me that they were seeing with night vision and I wasn’t, but maybe I just needed more experience. Just watching them while they did all the work made me feel kind of down.

I got a report from Drei, Funf, and Sechs; They’d found something. I still didn’t see any changes in Sechs’s field of vision, though. I had them halt for the time being, then ordered Eins, Zwei, and Vier to converge with them. I watched the two fields of vision rise into the sky and prayed for any clues about Pedro as the six birds safely united, then got searching again. They swooped back down even faster than before and zipped between the trees. They seemed to hear a sound, and all of them were confident that something was there, so I had them come to a stop.

There was a light flickering between the trees, probably from a bonfire. Somebody was there. I had the birds watch carefully and got a gradually closer image of the light. Eventually, I saw a few humanoid shadows. Five people surrounded the bonfire. They were quite exhausted-looking men, all sitting on wooden boxes.