Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 2 - Chapter Pr

Prologue: The Emotions of the Dead 
Kingdom of Altar, Cruella Mountain Belt 
To the east of Gideon — the second largest city in the Kingdom of Altar — there was a mountainous area known as the Cruella Mountain Belt. It was the kingdom’s border with Caldina — a country of expansive, desertlike wastelands. 
For years, this border area had been a popular place for bandit gangs and their hideouts. Even if some group on a quest from the Adventurers’ Guild eliminated one of them, they would soon be replaced by others. 
There were two reasons for that. 
The first was that the kingdom couldn’t do any widescale and thorough bandit hunts due to the possibility of the neighboring country of Caldina seeing it as an act of war and thus provoking them. 
The second was that the belt was on the primary trade route between Gideon, one of the kingdom’s largest cities, and Caldina — a nation known for its mercantilism. A bandit couldn’t ask for an area more plentiful with prey. Thus, the bandit problem in the belt was neverending. 
However, it actually wasn’t a bad thing for the Adventurers’ Guild. 
The new bandit gangs were always made up of people who went broke and got reduced to brigandry. Their jobs were low-rank and their levels weren’t even maxed. Most active adventurers could eliminate them without much effort, and since it was a net positive for the adventurer economy, the guild wasn’t averse to the idea of the problem’s continued existence. The only real victims were the peddlers unfortunate enough to be marked by the brigands. 
However, at one point, this bandit problem — already reeking of bloody money — took a turn for the worse. 
One of the bandit gangs started kidnapping children from Gideon and the nearby villages. 
They demanded ransom money for every child, and those with unpaid ransoms were simply never returned. Some relatives didn’t get their children back even after paying, while others only received shredded pieces of their corpses. It all seemed like a sick joke. 
Naturally, the parents of the children requested to have the Adventurers’ Guild eliminate those bandits, and, of course, the guild accepted it. 
The officials of the Adventurers’ Guild believed that the kidnappers had someone particularly powerful among them. Thus, they gathered and dispatched a party made up of several excellent tian adventurers. It was a group that could even fell a Pure Dragon. 
Everyone believed that — regardless of whether the kidnappers had capable people among them — the party would eliminate the bandit gang and bring back any children that were still alive. The party members themselves were certain of that, as well. 
The party’s leader — famous for his dashing looks — set out on the quest while waving goodbye to the people seeing him off. The intrepid smile on his face made everyone — the guild’s officials, other adventurers, and, of course, the inhabitants of Gideon — all the more certain that they would return successful. 
The following day, the leader’s half-eaten face was placed outside the steps of the guild hall. It was accompanied by a paper saying “Seconds, please,” along with a number of small fingers, one finger for every kidnapped child. 
Though perplexed by this unexpected turn of events, the Adventurers’ Guild quickly made their next move. Their plan was to gather several adventurer parties and annihilate the bandit gang through human-wave tactics. Among the adventurers — numbering nearly a hundred — there were even some Masters. The guild’s Masters were absolutely certain that they would emerge victorious. 
Three days later, a resurrected Master came back to report what happened. “They killed us all. It just can’t be done,” he said. 
According to him, most of the enemies were absolute weaklings, but two of them were ridiculously strong. 
One was a horse-man undead, while the other was a large, ox-headed man. Their power was far beyond that of normal tians, and it was fair to say that they were what had killed most of the adventurers. 
With that report, the guild’s master realized that this wasn’t a job for adventurers. He contacted the knights responsible for the area around Gideon, but the army couldn’t act due to the area being close to the border with Caldina. 
Even Gideon’s local champion — Super Gladiator Figaro — rejected the request, despite being able to take care of the matter all by himself. 
The Adventurers’ Guild had exhausted all their options, leaving them unable to do anything. Every now and then, some stronger sorts would accept the request and head out to eliminate the bandits, but they would always end up as corpses and were sent back to the guild along with fingers of the children. 
This tragedy continued for a year, and the Adventurers’ Guild eventually stopped making the request appear in their catalogs. 
Thus, the bandits in question — the Gouz-Maise Gang — were still active in the Cruella Mountain Belt. 
 
It was happening in the gloomy cellar of an abandoned fortress. 
“Third this month. Payment received. No relevant materials. To be returned.” The man mumbled something while looking at an old desk in a piercingly-cold room thick with suffocating moisture. 
“Fourth this month. Payment not received. Relevant materials found. Turned to materials.” 
He looked through the documents, spoke those words, and wrote something down on the ledger in his hand. It was much like a ledger one would use in a business, and the one under his hand wasn’t the only one on the table. 
Gloomy as the idea might’ve been, it seemed as though he had only placed them there just for the sake of having them around, and the man wouldn’t deny that idea. 
“Fifth this month. Payment received. Relevant materials found. Head to be returned after turning to materials.” With those words, the man stood up and walked to a neighboring room. 
The way he walked was curious. His upper half was that of a human, but the bottom half was that of a horse. The man was a humanoid creature known only as “horse-man.” 
Just as there were human-horse mix monsters known as centaurs, so there were human-horse mix humans known as horse-men. An average monster would have its name pop up above its head, but that didn’t apply to the man. 
Therefore, this horse-man was, in fact, humanoid... 
...regardless of just how inhuman his appearance and mental workings were. 
“This is the one,” he said. 
The room had cages in it, and inside there were a number of small animals. They were the man’s commodities. The small animals were all asleep and thus completely oblivious to the man’s presence. 
The horse-man removed the small animal from the fifth cage and placed it on the stony floor of his own room. On the floor, there was a magic circle the man had drawn. The man fixed the shackles, which were chained to the floor, on the small animal’s limbs. He took out a black crystal. 
“______” 

As he whispered something, the magic circle began to shine, and it released small amounts of purple lightning. 
At the very same moment, the small animal woke up. 
“GYAAAAHHHHH!” 
The shriek that escaped its mouth was thick with anguish. 
It tried to raise its body up, but the manacles binding it were not so accommodating. As the metal on its limbs tore through its skin, the small animal’s body spasmed and hit its back to the stony floor in a futile attempt to break out. 
This continued for a long five minutes... 
“Mo...mmy...” 
...and at the end, the small animal — the miserable little human child — breathed its last. 
“This is less than I expected,” the horse-man said, looking at the crystal in his hand. 
Then he cut off the corpse’s head with a large blade he had prepared, stuffed it into a bag, and threw it into a basket that said “To be returned.” The rest of the body was carefully put into a container saying “Materials.” 
Then — as if what had just happened was nothing special — the man returned to the table and continued filling in the ledger. 
No one who knew the ledger’s contents would ever compare it to those used in business. At this point, it was nothing but a cursed book containing the fates of countless children. 
“Sixth this month. Payment not received. No relevant materials. Dispose. Gouz!” 
In response to the man’s call, something within the darkness began to move. “Ahh...” 
The creature referred to as “Gouz” — a large man with an ox’s head and demonic fangs — reached into one of the cages and grabbed a little girl by her arm. She was sleeping and continued to do so even as he dragged her across the floor. 
Many would say that she would’ve been better off if she continued sleeping. However, Gouz didn’t allow that. Gently — like a parent or a close friend — he tapped on her cheek. 
The little girl stirred and woke up... 
“They taste better when they’re scared, y’know,” he grinned. 
...and her flesh was rendered from bone. Eaten alive. 
By the time Gouz was done with his snack, the horse-man was done filling in the ledger. 
“Gouz, don’t make such a mess,” he said. 
“Gahahah!” the ox-head laughed. “Maise, this place is basically painted with the brats’ blood and other fluids! I couldn’t make it worse if I wanted to!” 
“I’m talking about your saliva. It reeks.” 
“That so? Well, I’ll try to be careful, then.” 
The horse-man — Maise — sighed at Gouz’s half-hearted and unreliable response and changed the subject. 
“That’s today’s set done,” he said. “Gouz, after we go through tomorrow’s set, we’re leaving this place.” 
“Huh? We are?” asked the ox-head. 
“Yes,” answered the horse-man. “That event is starting in Gideon in just two days. Some of those who will gather for it might try to eliminate us. It would be far too troublesome.” 
“Masters, huh?” sighed Gouz. “Why not just kick their non-serious asses?” 
“Because we can’t,” curtly replied Maise. “We could handle those with high-rank jobs, but Superiors and their Superior jobs would be far too challenging. Also...” 
He momentarily stopped talking, merely to emphasize the words that followed. 
“...they stand where we are aiming for.” 
Maise’s words — which had some sort of certainty to them — made Gouz laugh out loud. “Gehahahaha! You’re not wrong there.” 
“Ah, it just hit me,” added the ox-head. “You said we’re leaving, but what about our underlings? There are, like, a hundred of ‘em, and they’re still working hard getting the brats and whatnot.” 
Gouz’s question made Maise’s eyes — empty sockets where a wisp-like fire popped up and disappeared — light. 
“We’re taking them with us, of course,” said the horse-man. 
“Gahahah! Hope they all fit!” 
Gouz was a man-eating ox-head demon with a high-rank job from the gladiator grouping: Strong Gladiator. 
Maise: a grudge-wielding undead horse-man with a high-rank job from the necromancer grouping — Lich. 
They were the Gouz-Maise Gang. 
They were Gideon’s most feared band of kidnappers and murderers.