Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 18 - Chapter 11

11. Inscrutable Causality

They say fortune and misfortune are intertwined. Disaster and blessings are two sides of a coin. Failure can lead to success, and unexpected good luck can lead to bad luck. Things go well sometimes, and sometimes they don’t. It’s just how things are.

Maybe the delegation had caught the mangoraf’s attention because they were being stalked by jackyles. Perhaps if they hadn’t been attacked, Bikki Sans and the horses would have been all right. But whether they could have gotten through the Gray Marsh with horses in tow was far from certain. Besides, thanks to the jackyle pack, they’d been able to divert the mangoraf’s attention, allowing the survivors to escape. If not for the sacrifice of Bikki Sans and his four horses, someone else might have ended up as mangoraf or jackyle food.

The seeping chill of the Gray Marsh was punishing, and its multitude of leeches couldn’t have been more troublesome. Nonetheless, after all the difficulties they’d faced on the Quickwind Plains, this was perfectly tolerable in comparison. The delegation crossed the Gray Marsh in three days, and finally made it to a sea of trees in the foothills of the Kurogane Mountain Range.

According to Itsukushima, the lizardmen had previously lived here in the forests along the Iroto. It was probably pressure from the Southern Expedition that’d forced them to migrate south. And if they assumed that these woodlands were now Southern Expedition territory, the delegation needed to be even more careful now.

That being the case, the party redoubled their efforts to scout for enemies, practicing an almost excessive degree of caution as they moved through the forest. Though, even if they hadn’t, they couldn’t have rushed ahead. The forest was made up of trees that were unbelievably tall, with twisted, intertwined roots that seemed to be trying to invade the surface, creating an intense battle for survival between plants. The way that the trunks of the trees and the roots crawling across the ground created ridges and troughs everywhere, leaving almost no flat land to be seen, made it difficult to walk.

“This isn’t a place humans belong...” Neal the scout kept muttering to himself.

Incidentally, with the death of Bikki Sans, Neal had taken over the man’s responsibilities as chief delegate in an acting capacity. That made him their leader, at least on paper, but nobody treated him any differently from before. Ranta started calling him the “deputy” out of spite, and everyone else followed suit. Neal didn’t like it, but they didn’t care. Generally, no one responded to Deputy Neal’s grumbling.

Still, in the time between when they entered the forest in the morning and when it got dark, they estimated that they had only progressed ten kilometers. The way things were going, they’d move even slower here than they had in the Gray Marsh.

They set up camp for the night, but couldn’t start a campfire, so they were all basically just hanging around in the same spot. Hardly any moonlight or starlight breached the forest canopy here. It was impossible to see anything, so they had to stay clumped close enough together that they could sense one another in the darkness.

“Whoops, sorry,” Deputy Neal apologized with a laugh.

“Mew?” That was Yume’s voice. Ranta flew into a rage.

“Hey, you bastard. You just touched Yume, didn’t you?!”

“Huh? Not intentionally. I apologized, didn’t I? I can’t see any better than you can.”

“I don’t trust a word out of your mouth.”

“You sure do hate me, huh? What’d I ever do to you?”

“Do you need me to go through the entire list?” Setora asked.

“No, please don’t.”

It was easy to imagine Neal ducking his head. If Setora were to lecture Haruhiro about all the things the thief had done wrong, he’d never recover from it either.

“But y’know...” Kuzaku said, stretching as he did. “The nights here aren’t as cold as in the Gray Marsh, and the air has just the right amount of moisture. It feels pretty good. Makes me kinda sleepy.”

“How are you so easygoing?!” Ranta retorted.

Haruhiro forced himself to smile. “If you think you can sleep, go for it. We’ll wake you if we need to, but you’re pretty good at getting up by yourself.”

“’Kay. G’night, then...” Kuzaku said with a yawn. He was already lying down. He might have even been asleep already.

“That’s certainly a talent, of a sort...” Setora mumbled to herself.

Haruhiro felt the same. He was thinking about how he couldn’t sleep the way Kuzaku did, while also feeling very conscious of the way Merry’s right arm was touching his left as she sat beside him.

I want to hold her hand, he thought. In this darkness, no one would be able to see. It might have been a weird thought to have, but no matter what he and Merry got up to, as long as they didn’t make any noise, no one would notice. That didn’t mean they could just do whatever they wanted. Or much of anything at all. He didn’t have the guts, you could say. But holding hands? That was fine. Maybe thinking so much about all this made him a creep, but though Merry’s arm moved a little sometimes, she wasn’t pulling away from him. Maybe this was that kind of thing. What kind of thing? You know, that kind of thing.

Maybe Merry was thinking she’d like to hold Haruhiro’s hand too?

Who knew, really? He had no way to find out. He couldn’t very well ask her. Like, “Can I hold your hand?” No way. Not an option.

“Hey, Yume,” Ranta said, clearing his throat. “You, uh...wanna sleep with me?”

“Way too soon,” Itsukushima said, and there was a sound like he’d hit Ranta.

“Ow! The hell, old man?! You just whacked the back of my head like you could see it!”

“I can’t see where it is, exactly, but I have a rough idea. Don’t take us hunters lightly, dread knight.”

“Oh-hoh... So Yume’d be able to tell too, then?”

“Kinda sorta,” Yume confirmed.

“Whoa!”

“Your side’s here, right?”

“D-Don’t touch me there! That’s a delicate spot...”

“Your sides’re ticklish, huh? Cootchie-cootchie-coo!”

“S-S-Stop! Stop it! And wait, what’s with the cutesy—!”

“Cootchie-cootchie-wootchie-coo, cootchie-wootchie-coo...”

“Eek! Stop it already! Are you trying to kill me?!”

“I’m not sure they’ll ever be ready...” Itsukushima mumbled to himself.

Tell me about it, Haruhiro thought, secretly feeling triumphant.

While Ranta and Yume were fooling around, he’d been able to take hold of Merry’s hand. Their arms and fingers were firmly intertwined too.

Oh, man. Holding hands like this makes it feel like we’re one. Like it’s not just our hands, not just our bodies that are connected, but our souls. I’m not just imagining it, right?

No? Maybe I am?

Merry rested her cheek on Haruhiro’s left shoulder right when he was starting to hope she would. The top of her head brushed up against the side of his face. He could feel her hair, smell her scent.

This might have been obvious, but the members of the delegation had been unable to bathe all this time. While it wasn’t uncommon for them to get wet in the rain or the swamps and marshes, it was surprisingly hard to actually wash themselves. They’d maybe get a chance to wipe their faces once in a while, at best. Honestly, there were times he thought, Man, I reek. Pretty often, in fact. He was inured to it, but to be honest, they were all kinda filthy.

However, for some strange reason, beyond their combined body odor, there was a sweet, mellow scent he didn’t find all that offensive.

That scent varied from person to person. Considerably. And this might have been Haruhiro’s imagination, but he felt there was a difference between the guys’ and the girls’ too.

Basically, Merry smelled really good to him.

That was incredibly dangerous.

Haruhiro’s urges weren’t very strong, to the point where he questioned whether it was okay for a young male like him to be this way. But they weren’t nonexistent. Zero times anything is always zero, but multiplying even a small number can give you a big one.

You might say Merry’s scent was too big a multiplying factor.

Now he was feeling her hand too, on top of that, which added another multiplier.

Haruhiro had never anticipated feeling this sort of powerful urge. He wasn’t used to it, and he struggled to put it into words, but basically he was lusting after Merry.

Furthermore—though this might have been a misunderstanding on Haruhiro’s part—he suspected Merry might be feeling the same.

It went without saying that, even if she was, they couldn’t, uh, do the deed here.

Obviously.

That was painful, but, in some sense, also made things easier for Haruhiro. Even if his desire caused certain bodily changes, and gave him all sorts of inappropriate thoughts, he could keep himself under control. He had no choice, after all. But if this were a situation where he didn’t need to hold back? What then? If they were in a situation where they could do it if they wanted to, would he have any choice but to go ahead with it?

Haruhiro had serious doubts whether he could. Like, he wasn’t the right type. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of type, though. Still, he didn’t think he was suited to it.

Anyway, no matter how much he wanted to do it, he couldn’t, and that was reassuring. He held Merry’s hand tight, felt her warmth, her softness, inhaled her scent, and got all hot and bothered. That was the goal. Nothing more. He could never go any further.

Even if Merry pressed her head against him. Even if as a result his lips brushed her forehead. Even if he could clearly hear her every breath. Even if an emotion that could only be described as Aughhhhh, I love her so muuuuuch welled up inside him, threatening to escape through every pore in his body, he had to restrain himself.

“I’m going to leave for a bit,” Itsukushima said and Haruhiro sensed him getting up. It sounded like Poochie the wolf-dog, who had either been sitting or lying beside him, got up too.

“I don’t think there’s much danger, but stay alert. And don’t get too crazy.”

What did that mean? Don’t get too crazy?

Haruhiro wanted to ask, but it would probably only stir up trouble.

“Okay...” Haruhiro responded simply.

Itsukushima had said he couldn’t see. He’d also said he could get a rough idea of things, so maybe he could see just a little after all.

Haruhiro and Merry moved apart, though it wasn’t clear who moved first. Not that they weren’t still in close contact. They were still holding hands. They hadn’t signaled to each other what they wanted to do, specifically, and yet it still felt so right.

This is nice, Haruhiro thought from the bottom of his heart. It wasn’t really the time for him to be thinking that, though. He wasn’t alert enough. Yeah. This isn’t good. It’s no good at all.

“We can’t do this, can we?” Haruhiro mumbled to himself.

“Can’t do what?” Merry asked.

“Oh, no... Um...it’s not that we can’t, just that we shouldn’t...” Haruhiro knew he wasn’t making any sense.

“Yeah,” Merry said, laughing a little. “We need to stay focused.”

With that, she squeezed Haruhiro’s hand tight. Obviously, Haruhiro returned the favor.

“Yeah...”

Kuzaku was snoring. What were Ranta and Yume doing? Neither of them were saying anything. That much he could tell, but nothing more. Setora was silent too. Was it Deputy Neal who’d just sighed?

The night went on. They slept in shifts, and until the moment a faint light began to shine through the canopy it felt like the darkness was never going to abate.

Itsukushima and Poochie returned at dawn.

“It looks like the situation’s changed considerably since I left the Kurogane Mountain Range.”

“Ooh. Somethin’ happened?” Yume asked while doing what looked like exercises. She sure was full of energy.

“Well, yeah,” Itsukushima said with a shrug before looking around at the other members of the delegation. “Okay. Haruhiro, Ranta. You two come with me.”

“Huh?” Kuzaku cocked his head to the side. “We’re not setting off yet, then?”

“I’ll go too,” Neal said.

Itsukushima didn’t refuse. “Maybe that’s better. I’ll leave Poochie here. Yume, you’re in charge until we get back.”

“Mew got it!” Yume winked and Itsukushima winked back. His was an awkward wink, making half his face twitch, but it made Yume grin nonetheless.

Haruhiro, Ranta, and Deputy Neal followed Itsukushima through the deep woods. He was fast.

“Hey, not so fast...” Neal muttered, but Itsukushima didn’t slow down in the slightest.

“You’re the one who wanted to come.”

“What the hell’s out here?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Explain it to me first, would you?”

“I’m not much of a talker, I’m afraid.”

“Except with your cute little apprentice, right?”

“If you bring Yume up again, I’m leaving you behind.”

“You can’t even take a joke?” Neal shut up after that.

Haruhiro and Ranta never wasted their breath to begin with, instead focusing on keeping up with Itsukushima. The hunter was moving at twice his pace from yesterday. It wasn’t pushing them to their limits, but they couldn’t slack off either.

Was it two hours they ended up walking?

Itsukushima had been right; they did know it when they saw it.

The forest opened up ahead of them. For a moment, it looked like the end of the sea of trees, but the area hadn’t been clear-cut. There was one massive tree there, and its thick, dense roots spread out far and wide across the ground. It was probably the fact that it covered such a large area that had allowed it to grow to that size. However, its height wasn’t as impressive as the thickness of its trunk or the reach of its branches, so it was more just broad rather than big. But it wasn’t just a stupidly huge tree standing there all alone like a king with no clothes.

“Seriously...?” Ranta murmured.

Itsukushima didn’t step into the area covered by the great tree’s roots. The group laid low in the shadows of the forest surrounding it. It seemed wise to hide.

The trunk and branches had been used to provide a frame and support pillars for roofs and floors. There were rope and wooden ladders here and there, as well as stairs, and they could see shadowy figures climbing up and down. Those figures weren’t human, though, but orcs and undead.

There were also watch towers and fences scattered around in the area covered by the great tree’s roots. Near those towers the orcs and undead were sitting in circles, lazing about, swinging weapons around for training or fun, and just generally doing whatever.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa...” Neal ducked down and clutched his head. “Those are all enemies? They’ve gotta be, right? Our enemies are building something in a place like this? It’s practically a fortress! How long have they been here...?”

“I didn’t know about it either. I only found them last night,” Itsukushima explained dispassionately. “They’re building it around the tree, so it might not have taken as much effort as you’d expect. There’s no shortage of material to work with here.”

Ranta shifted his mask up to his forehead, eagerly observing the great tree fortress. The look in his eyes was awfully serious. Perhaps “grave” would be the right word for it.

“Ranta?”

Ranta replied with a low, “Yeah,” never taking his eyes off the great tree fortress.

“What’s up?” Haruhiro asked again.

Ranta held up his left hand as if to say, Hold on.

Itsukushima looked up to the sky. Haruhiro did too.

It’s a bird.

There was a black bird, descending with its wings spread. It was a big one. Its wingspan was easily over two meters. Was it an eagle? A large, black eagle.

“Forgo...” Ranta said.

The great black eagle suddenly lifted off, shooting into the branches of the massive tree.

“Jumbo’s here.” Ranta sighed, then adjusted his mask. “Forgo is Jumbo’s buddy. Which means this fortress is a Forgan base.”

While he might, at least in part, have felt he had no other choice, Ranta had once betrayed Haruhiro and the rest of the party to join Forgan. There seemed to be no reason why he couldn’t have stayed with them permanently. But Ranta hadn’t done that. He’d escaped Forgan, and been chased after for it.

Haruhiro didn’t really know all the details. He didn’t plan to dig for them either. But he just sensed that Ranta had been through some stuff. He seemed to have powerful feelings about Forgan—ones he couldn’t fully express.

“Let’s circle around it once,” Itsukushima said and began walking.

The others followed the hunter, observing the great tree fortress.

“There’s a thousand of them,” Neal said. The man specialized in reconnaissance. “No... More than that. Two, maybe three thousand?”

“That’s a lot,” the masked man said, groaning. “Forgan only had two or three hundred people. They were a bunch of guys who thought alike, gathered around Jumbo. Like a sort of mock family...”

“You know an awful lot about them, huh?” Neal said, turning a dubious gaze on the masked man, but didn’t really try to interrogate him further.

“Jumbo, huh?” Itsukushima got a far-off look in his eyes.

After a moment, Ranta asked, “You know him?”

“It was a long time ago, but I was camping in the mountains while traveling when he suddenly appeared by my fire. All the orc had with him was booze. Something I just so happened to be out of at the time. We shared drinks that night, then went our separate ways. I haven’t seen him since, so I don’t know if he’d remember it.”

“Oh, I’m sure he does. This is Jumbo we’re talking about.”

“He didn’t strike me as the type to be interested in war.”

“Sounds like they’ve got hostages, so he has no choice. But when they’ve gotta do something, those guys go all out. They can be tolerant and generous too. Maybe the group got this big because they kept taking in misfits...”

Suddenly Ranta stopped and pointed somewhere. Haruhiro squinted in that direction.

“That’s huge,” Itsukushima said, sounding awed.

The tower was, indeed, bigger than the rest. Were they storing supplies inside it? It was crudely made, but looked like a tall warehouse. However, it clearly wasn’t the building that Itsukushima was talking about.

There was an orc sitting in front of the building. Orcs, as a general rule, were larger than humans. Even so, this one was absolutely unbelievable. He was so big that it could mess with your sense of distance. His clothes weren’t like the other orcs’ either. He wore an outfit that resembled a kimono made of deep blue fabric with silver patterns.

“It’s Godo Agaja,” Ranta said. Haruhiro recognized the name. He remembered Forgan had an orc who was like an up-sized version of Jumbo. Godo Agaja. In the flesh.

At that moment, a dog or wolf howled in the distance. Not just one. There were several of them howling. Itsukushima’s brow furrowed and he murmured, “There’s black wolves.”

Hunters prayed to the White God Elhit, a massive wolf god. Elhit’s older brother was the Black God Rigel, who ate their mother Carmia soon after he was born. That caused a rift between Elhit and Rigel, and their kin, the white and black wolves, hated each other and fought violently.

White wolves made packs consisting of a mated pair and their children, and they mainly hunted bears, panthers, and deer. The black wolves, on the other hand, could form packs of more than a hundred animals, and would surround and chase their quarry in large groups. They actively hunted humans, orcs, and livestock. Unlike white wolves and normal wolves of the forest like gray wolves, black wolves were cruel and ferocious by nature. Haruhiro knew all this trivia because Yume had gone on about it at length before.

“Onsa’s wolves, huh?” Ranta said. “Forgan’s got this goblin beastmaster. He’s good. You can’t tame black wolves normally, right?”

Itsukushima shook his head a little. “Wolves aren’t dogs. They look alike, and they’re close enough that they can have children, but they’re different animals. Wolves never get used to people. That’s why we hunters crossbreed them with hunting dogs to create wolf-dogs. I couldn’t tell you if that goblin actually had black wolves obeying him, or something else, but if they were wolves, he hasn’t tamed them. He must have made them recognize him as the head of their pack.”

“Hey, something came out,” Neal said, gesturing toward the warehouse-like building with his chin. “What’s with them?”

Godo Agaja turned to look at the door of the warehouse-like building. Figures in green coats filed out of it. There were maybe around ten of them. No, not around, there were exactly ten.

Haruhiro sensed something amiss. What was it? He thought about it, but couldn’t immediately come to an answer.

“Those things they’re carrying are...” Itsukushima said, a tone of suspicion in his voice. The green coats were all shouldering long pole-like objects. They didn’t seem to be swords, spears, or anything of the like.

Nine of the ten green coats were hooded. Only one wasn’t. The one at the rear of the group had taken theirs down. They were far away, so it was hard to make out the person’s face. But one thing that could be seen was their cream-colored skin.

“Gumows?” Haruhiro said, then immediately it hit him.

Gumows. They were the offspring of orcs with other races. The inhabitants of Jessie Land had been gumows. Jessie had given a number of them green coats, calling them rangers, and assigned them to hunt and to guard the settlement.

Were these the same rangers? For the moment, all Haruhiro could say was maybe.

One of the rangers, a female gumow called Yanni, had been especially well trusted by Jessie. He had a feeling that the unhooded gumow vaguely resembled her. It was too far to tell for sure, so it just remained a hunch for now.

“You don’t know them, do you?” Ranta asked in a hushed voice.

“Not sure...” Haruhiro replied, giving the only answer he could.

Ranta clicked his tongue. Had the vague response made him cranky? It didn’t seem like that was it.

More people came out of the building.

Two of them this time. One was human, and he had no right arm. A one-armed man. And, while it was impossible to tell from this distance, he probably only had one eye too.

Ranta touched his mask. He probably meant to shift it up or down, but he soon took his hand off of it.

“Old man Takasagi...”

Takasagi. The man had a long pole-like object in his left hand too, and was carrying it over his shoulder. As was the other person who was with him.

That person wasn’t human, but also wasn’t an orc. He probably wasn’t undead either. His skin was a yellowy, earthen color, and his face was rugged like a rock. He was short, with an incredibly hunched back, but an impressively well-built upper body. In fact, everything from his shoulders, to his chest, to his arms was bizarrely well-developed. He seemed to be dressed in clothes of the same make as Godo Agaja.

Takasagi twirled the long object around in front of Godo Agaja. It was clear they were talking about something, but of course none of it was audible at this distance.

“Ah...”

Haruhiro finally realized it. Those objects were what had felt so wrong to him. Those long, pole-like things. They weren’t swords, and they weren’t spears. They were ranged weapons. Why hadn’t it come to him immediately? Haruhiro had seen them for himself before too. “They’re guns.”

“Guns...?” The masked man looked at Haruhiro, then back to Takasagi. Then he looked at Haruhiro again. “Huh?!”

“How do they have guns?” Itsukushima wondered, stroking the face hidden beneath his thick beard. The hunter had been the one to bring word of the dwarves’ new weapon to the Frontier Army. Being a hunter, he had good eyes too. He must have realized those were guns a while ago.

“By guns, you mean that new weapon you were talking about, right?” Neal gulped. “What are they doing in enemy hands? The dwarves wouldn’t give them away. Does this mean they were stolen? Whatever’s going on, it’s bad news...”

“Hk!” Suddenly, Ranta moved his head, which had been sticking out, behind cover and pressed his back to a tree.

Haruhiro checked and saw Takasagi looking in their general direction. They hadn’t been spotted, had they?

The group hid in the trees, holding their breath.

“Have we been found?” Haruhiro asked, but Ranta shook his head.

“Dunno. The old man’s senses are ridiculously good. I think we’re safe, but...”

“Let’s head back,” Itsukushima said without hesitation. No one objected.

It took about two hours for the group to rejoin their comrades. Nobody chased them, so it looked like they hadn’t been spotted. Once back, they told the others what they’d seen and heard. Yume and Merry remembered Jessie Land, and agreed that the green coat gumows were probably the rangers.

Still, they hadn’t expected Forgan to have guns. It wasn’t clear how many the enemy had, but Haruhiro had seen more than ten of them with his own eyes. How much of a threat was that?

“Is it not possible that some of the dwarves switched sides, bringing those guns with them as a gift?” Setora suggested, never hesitating to say things that would be hard to hear. Itsukushima didn’t dismiss it out of hand.

“The dwarves aren’t a monolith. The Ironblood Kingdom was already divided between a faction led by the minister of the left and another led by the captain of the royal guard.”

According to Itsukushima, the minister of the left came from a good family and was a progressive in favor of reconciliation who had pushed for the spread of guns throughout their society.

In contrast, the captain of the guard, who had a very un-dwarf-like build, was a militarist and a conservative who had initially rejected firearms. Guns were powerful, but as they were ranged weapons, using them was cowardly. They were at odds with the dwarven values of guts, courage, and grit.

The dwarves had this concept of masculinity. To them, being masculine, regardless of the dwarf’s sex, was more important than life itself. Men did not fear death. They drank like men, fought like men, and died like men. A dwarf had to be manly. Living and dying as a man, that was the dwarvish way of manhood.

Guns were unmanly. Even now, many dwarves believed that.

However, if you simply pointed a gun and fired it, the bullet would even tear through steel armor, making them just too overwhelming. A fight between a hundred men with guns and a hundred without would frankly be no contest. The dwarves understood this, and so, despite bemoaning the unmanliness of firearms, they had come to use them.

However, while there was a new generation of dwarves who accepted that guns were the future, there were also conservative dwarves who hated guns from the bottom of their hearts for being unmanly.

“The problem is that it’s not just the minister of the left’s faction using guns now. All of a sudden, the captain of the royal guard’s side started deploying with them too,” Itsukushima explained, drawing out a simple diagram on the ground.

The Ironblood Kingdom was in the Kurogane Mountain Range. In reality, it was made up of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of vertical and horizontal mine tunnels. These tunnels could largely be divided into the workshop and residential areas, the food and alcohol production and storage areas, the iron king’s palace, and finally the mining and refining areas.

There were entrances to the Ironblood Kingdom in two locations. Well, there was a third, actually, but Itsukushima wasn’t familiar with it.

One of the two locations he did know was basically a back entrance. It was said that the dwarven hero Walter once fought a great battle there, defending against the forces of the other kings. This gate, named the Walter Gate in his honor, was in the west of the Kurogane Mountain Range. It was disguised with rocks, natural objects, and dwarven engineering, making it difficult to find without knowing it was there.

The other location was the main entrance, called the Great Ironfist Gate, and anyone could find it by traveling up the Iroto.

“Obviously, the Southern Expedition tried to assault the Great Ironfist Gate, but the Ironblood Kingdom was prepared for them.”

Itsukushima used a small branch to draw a rough map of the Kurogane Mountain Range and the Iroto, then indicated the location of the main gate. Next, he made five markings around it.

“Fort Ax, Fort Greatsword, Fort Halberd, Fort Warhammer, and Fort Gun. I hear Fort Gun was built from scratch, but the foundations of the other four have been there since long, long ago. The dwarves hardened their defenses at these frontline bases, and didn’t let the Southern Expedition anywhere near them.”

Of the five forts, two were held by the minister of the left’s units, while the other three were held by units that had been newly organized by the captain of the royal guard. All of these units were composed primarily of dwarven gunners.

“I don’t know the details, but I’ve heard that the units in the captain of the guard’s faction aren’t as well trained as the minister of the left’s. By which I mean they use guns because they have no choice. Deep down, they want to fight like men. The captain of the guard insists that’s true of the majority of dwarves.”

“So, what do we do now?” Neal asked.

“Aren’t you supposed to decide that? You’re the deputy,” Ranta said mockingly, earning him a smirk and a shrug from Neal.

“Cool. In that case, you go charge into the middle of the enemy forces, and slash away with reckless abandon. While you’re distracting them, we’ll walk right up to the Great Ironfist Gate and enter the Ironblood Kingdom.”

“Oh, nice idea,” Kuzaku said with a laugh. Ranta punched him in the head.

“No, it’s not!”

“Ow! You’re awfully quick to hit people. Is it really okay for you to act like that? You’re gonna make Yume-san hate you.”

“Wha?! How does Yume come into this?!”

“Huh? Well, I mean...it’s obvious, right?” Kuzaku shot a glance at Yume. She puffed up one cheek and cocked her head to the side.

“Huh? Well, Yume’s not fond of people who’re quick to hit others.”

“I won’t hit them anymore, okay?” Ranta said, suddenly changing into a different person. Okay, maybe not so much. “But, listen, it was Kuzaku’s fault too, okay? Don’t go agreeing with a plan that sacrifices me, even as a joke. You dumbass piece of shit.”

“Funny thing is, I wasn’t joking.”

“If you weren’t, that makes it even worse!”

“Nah, I figured you’d be fine, Ranta-kun. Like, you could probably pull it off. I mean, this is you we’re talking about, right?”

“Yeah, I guess... It’s not like I couldn’t do it, okay? I could, if I tried. Obviously, right? Who the hell do you think I am? I’m the great Ranta-sama!”

If I leave them be, they’ll keep sparring like this forever. They get along surprisingly well, huh? Despite all their bickering, Haruhiro thought before interjecting.

“I’m curious what’s happening with the forts.”

“Should we get a little closer to the Great Ironfist Gate?” Itsukushima asked. That more or less decided what they’d do next. The delegation moved in that direction with utmost caution. They would investigate enemy movements and the situation with the five forts for themselves.

The Southern Expedition was highly active. There were camps, large and small, spread all around, even if they weren’t on the scale of Forgan’s great tree fortress. Soldiers came and went, and there was a lot of movement. That said, the enemy wasn’t just spread all over the place. They moved together in noticeable clumps, making it easy to stay aware of them.

While it wasn’t possible to get a full picture of things, the enemy likely numbered in the tens of thousands. They had set up numerous bases in the forest behind them, and were constantly sending soldiers to the front line near the Great Ironfist Gate, then pulling them back to be replaced over and over again.

The delegation took two days to get close to the Great Ironfist Gate. In that time, there was one enemy base that particularly caught their attention. A large number of individuals belonging to that race with the incredibly hunched backs and overdeveloped upper bodies were stationed there. They could see gumow rangers carrying guns on their shoulders too. Was that Forgan’s frontline base? It had fences and a large number of sentries on patrol. Security there was pretty intensive compared to the other enemy positions. It wouldn’t be easy to approach.

It was getting dark out, so Haruhiro decided to infiltrate the base on his own. It might have been impossible if the black wolves with their sensitive noses were around, but he was able to make it deep inside without alerting the sentries.

The one-armed, one-eyed Takasagi was there. As were the gumow rangers, led by the one who looked like Yanni. There was also the man from the hunchbacked race with the overdeveloped upper bodies who was wearing clothes like Jumbo’s and Godo Agaja’s. Takasagi called him Wabo.

Wabo was with the others of his race, naked from the waist up and digging holes. There were orcs and undead helping with the work too.

It didn’t look like they were digging graves or pits to throw refuse in. Were they digging wells? No, the holes were too wide for that to be it. They were reinforcing the sides with wood, however. Tunnels, huh? Were they making underground passages? Whatever it was, they were building something. It was a major construction project.

Haruhiro spotted some guns too. It wasn’t just Wabo or the gumow rangers who had them. While Takasagi wasn’t carrying one—they were probably hard to use with just one arm—there were more than ten orcs and undead with guns carried on straps over their shoulders. There might have been dozens of them. Maybe fewer than a hundred, but still, Forgan seemed to be in possession of dozens of guns.

Haruhiro headed back to his comrades. When he talked about the construction going on, Itsukushima seemed to figure something out.

“Oh, I get it. Gnoll tunnels, huh?”

There was a diminutive race in the Tenryu Mountains south of Alterna known as the gnomes.

Gnomes were natural miners, no less talented than the dwarves. Some said they were more talented with their hands, able to invent and manufacture all kinds of mechanical contraptions. The problem was that they were extremely xenophobic. They didn’t negotiate or trade with other races unless there was a major benefit to them in doing so. Long ago, when the Kingdom of Arabakia had escaped to the south of the Tenryu Mountains, they’d had the gnomes dig a massive tunnel called the Earth Dragon’s Aorta. It was said that the price they’d paid for it amounted to more than half the royal treasury.

Gnolls were apparently close relatives of those gnomes.

However, unlike the creative and inventive gnomes, always dedicated to their craft, gnolls were primarily thieves. They made nothing for themselves, instead stealing it all from others. These parasitic gnolls were eventually expelled thanks to the ingenuity of their gnomish host society. After that, the gnolls chose new hosts to parasitize in the Kurogane Mountain Range—the dwarves.

The gnolls dug tunnels throughout the whole mountain range, infiltrating the Ironblood Kingdom through them to steal everything from clothing to weapons, to food, to alcohol, and even dwarven babies sometimes. After the war with the No-Life King and the Alliance of Kings came to a close, the dwarves’ greatest foes were these determined parasites, eating away at the Ironblood Kingdom. For better or for worse, the dwarves had no shortage of enemies to keep fighting.

According to one estimate, the total area of the tunnels the gnolls had dug far exceeded that of all the mine tunnels that made up the Ironblood Kingdom. What’s more, the gnoll tunnels weren’t limited to the Kurogane Mountain Range, but extended out into the Iroto River Basin.

“When gnolls dig holes into the Ironblood Kingdom, the dwarves try to close them up, of course. But where there’s one gnoll hole, you have to assume there’s a dozen. It’s difficult to block all of them.”

“So the enemy is attacking the Ironblood Kingdom through these gnollish tunnels, then,” Setora stated plainly.

Kuzaku seemed mystified by all the new information being thrown at him. “Isn’t this...kinda crazy? I mean, I know you’re always this way, but I’m amazed you can stay so calm, Setora-san.”

“What point would there be in us losing our heads?”

“Okay, that’s fair. But I don’t think it’s a matter of whether there’s a point or not. It’s more, I dunno, a matter of how you feel.”

“And is there a point to those feelings?”

“When I’m already cornered, you just keep pushing, huh? It’s not going to get you anything, going after me like that. Maybe you’ll make me cry, but that’s it...”

“I see. There’s no point in doing that. Enough of this, then.”

“Hearing you say that makes me feel a little lonely, though.”

“But hold on!” Ranta said, sniffling a lot, something Haruhiro had noticed he tended to do when he was about to say something decent. “That doesn’t sound like the kind of strategy you could come up with unless you had someone familiar with what the situation on the inside is like, right?”

“True...” Itsukushima said, pausing to think on that point. Deputy Neal let out a short laugh.

“So there is a traitor, after all.”

They had no answer to that.

The next day when dawn broke, the delegation went to work, finally moving into a position where they could check the situation at the five forts. Haruhiro, Itsukushima, and Neal split up to go scouting, and it appeared that two of the five forts had been occupied by the Southern Expedition. The Southern Expedition troops guarding those two forts didn’t all have guns, but about one in ten did.

“It’s looking like we should go in through the Walter Gate,” Itsukushima decided. “If we try to go to the Great Ironfist Gate, we’ll have to pass by Fort Warhammer and Fort Gun, which have fallen to the enemy. We don’t want them spotting us.”

“Sounds fine to me.” Neal agreed. Since he was the chief delegate, at least in an acting capacity, he made the decision to head for the Walter Gate.