Published: September 10, 2025
June 13, 2017: Typo corrections made.
“Captain! There’s someone near that forest.”
“Hm? Are there still people who haven’t evacuated?”
I raised the distant viewing tube in response to my subordinate’s report.
Sure enough, I saw by the bushes near the forest a lizardman tribe girl and a catperson tribe girl.
They were probably holed up in the mountains and hadn’t heard the evacuation orders.
I nodded once and looked around.
It seemed there was no one else.
“Well then, we have no choice but to go protect them.”
“Yes! Two riders, come with me!”
At my command, the vice-captain relayed the orders.
We descended the hill in a formation of four riders and headed toward the border with the forest.
“Hah, the glorious Seventh Knight Order is protecting lost children, huh...”
“Watch your mouth. This is a royal decree.”
Having received the divine punishment decree from the gods, our National Army’s Seventh Knight Order had taken up positions in the southern mountains.
We were evacuating the border residents and halting the monsters’ chain rampage here.
“Liza, are the knights coming?”
“It seems so.”
From afar, the lizardman girl and catperson girl stopped picking leaves and looked this way.
They said something, but at this distance I couldn’t hear.
I suppose they were frightened suddenly by the fully armed knights appearing.
“They must be from a nearby village. By royal decree, the residents have been evacuated to the nearby town. You also must evacuate, but I can’t spare an escort just to take you to the foothills. Wait inside the camp until the supply wagons head to the town.”
I quickly informed the girls, who were too surprised to say anything.
I wasn’t sure how much the uneducated would understand, but I couldn’t just take them away like criminals without explanation.
“Inside the camp?”
“That pass over there,” I pointed to the mountain pass where the fortress stood.
“If we set off now, the meal will be ready by the time we arrive.”
“Meat~?”
“Yes, today’s stew has meat in it.”
“Great~?”
“Haha, there’s enough for you all, so eat plenty and grow big.”
“Yes!”
I heard my subordinates chatting with the catperson child.
I saw the child jump for joy at the mention of meat.
Meat must be a rare treat.
Living in a remote mountain village, meat would only be distributed by the village chief from what the hunters caught. I understood the child’s joy well.
“So, what were you doing holed up in the forest?”
“My Master asked us to gather medicinal herbs.”
Master?
Were these girls slaves?
But they wore fine clothes.
There’s no one eccentric enough to keep lizardmen as pet slaves, so these girls must be freed slaves.
I heard that in the northern kingdom, freed slaves sometimes call their masters “Master.”
“It looks like you didn’t gather many herbs, but you can’t go back to the forest now.”
“Understood,” the lizardman girl nodded reluctantly.
Judging by the small bag, they barely collected anything.
◇
“What’s this? Kidnapping demi-human women and children?”
Just as we passed through the fortress gate, a nasty voice rang out.
Four men dressed in white, pristine armor stood there.
If they were from our knight order, I might have knocked some sense into them, but I certainly couldn’t handle these guys.
You see—
“The Shiga Eight Swords candidates (…) have quite the imagination.”
I emphasized “candidates,” and his face twisted in bitter annoyance.
To fill vacancies, four new humans had been selected as candidates for the Shiga Eight Swords.
Rumor had it that once the viscount Pendragon and his group, who stirred up the Royal Capital recently, returned, the Shiga Eight Swords’ vacancies would be filled immediately.
That’s why these candidates were desperate to prove their worth on the dangerous frontlines.
So far, they’d only fought packs of wolves and wyverns, so their impatience was understandable.
“Did you go scouting? Did you encounter any monsters?”
“No, it seems someone came ahead and cleared out the area… there were no monsters around the forest.”