"Yo! Hah! Ha! Sei!"
"Mmph! Mmmph! Mmmmmph! Got me!"
"That's enough! Tenma wins. Right then, let's call the sparring done. We'll finish up with some stretching, and that'll wrap up morning exercise."
The next morning, I woke up early and was heading out to the duke's garden for a light workout when I ran into Grandpa and the others, who'd been thinking the exact same thing.
So we exercised together, but partway through, the three of us started rotating pairings and sparring. After five rounds with each person, we called it quits.
For the record, my record was two wins and three losses against Grandpa, and four wins and one loss against Amour. And since Grandpa beat Amour in every single match, the overall champion was Grandpa.
"First time in a while I've come out ahead against you, Tenma. So there's still plenty of room for this old man to win in a straight hand-to-hand fight with no magic, huh?"
"Hmm... I couldn't beat you without landing a surprise attack, and that surprise attack didn't work on you either, Grandpa."
This time's rules banned all magic—including enhancement spells—and weapons. We had to wear open-fingered gloves and leg guards like greaves. Anything beyond that was fair game as long as it wasn't dangerous... After losing three straight matches to me, Amour kicked sand into my face, exploited the tiny opening to tackle me to the ground, and snatched victory with a joint lock. She tried the same trick in her final sparring round against Grandpa, but he saw through it easily and sent her flying. As for my three losses to Grandpa, in each case he sidestepped my read and then steamrolled me with raw power. If enhancement magic were allowed, I wouldn't lose a strength contest—but in baseline physical strength, Grandpa still outclasses me, so once he reads my move, he seizes the momentum in one clean sweep.
"You're full of energy this morning."
Duke Sanga came over to me while I was stretching.
"Good morning, Your Grace... By the way, why do you look so exhausted?"
I turned to greet him, and there was Duke Sanga, haggard-faced, slapping at his lower back. When Amour saw the duke like that,
"Primera's got a little brother or sister!"
he blurted, and
"The Duke's looking spry~"
Grandpa chimed in with a quip right after. Normally that'd be enough for a charge of lèse-majesté, but since Grandpa always sizes up his audience before pulling something like that, the best anyone can say is that he knows what he's doing—and Duke Sanga just laughed it off, so there was no real issue. Well, in Grandpa's case, being the Royalist Faction's
to-
p.
P
l
u
s
the two of them are often teased, but since it hasn't become a problem, Duke Sanga — who ranks below those two — can't very well complain... but if that's the case, you can't explain why Amour gets away with it too, so let's not overthink this and just assume Duke Sanga is generous.
"No, no, nothing of the sort... well, not entirely, but the truth is I couldn't turn over in bed for a certain reason, so my back and waist are sore."
Duke Sanga was glossing over the crucial parts while explaining his fatigue, but Grandpa and Amour were laughing — they wanted exactly those evasive details.
It was surely going too far, so I tried to stop them, but Duke Sanga, laughing,
"It was simply because I slept sandwiched between Carmilla and Grace, and I couldn't move, so my body stiffened up. It had been a while since the three of us slept together, and the two of them wouldn't let go of my arms."
He was bragging while answering the part he'd been evading... or rather, what were the two of them planning to do if Duke Sanga had actually been
b
e
d
d
e
d
i
n
that case? Well, if he really had been, Duke Sanga would absolutely never talk about it, but Grandpa seems to have caught on.
"So, I'd like to loosen up my body — would you mind helping me out?"
I complied with Duke Sanga's request and began stretching together with him. I suppose he asked me because, as his prospective son-in-law, I was an easy person to approach. If it had all been a misunderstanding and he'd actually asked Grandpa or Amour to help... that would have been one more victim. Those two have a habit of trying to push your range of motion to its absolute limit in one go, so what should be a stretching session can turn into outright destruction.
"By the way, Tenma. Has Primera not woken up yet?"
As we stretched and talked, Duke Sanga asked about Primera, so I answered, "She doesn't seem to be up yet."
This was a honeymoon of sorts, but sleeping in the same room at the duke's estate would have been awkward, so this time three rooms had been arranged for us. The rooms were for me, Grandpa, and Jeanne, Aura, and Amour respectively. Primera still had her old room, so we'd slept separately.
"Primera was talking with her mother pretty late last night, I think, so she probably won't be waking up for a while yet..."
"Come to think of it, last night before I went to sleep, I stopped by Primera's room and Olivia was there."
The night before, I'd gone to Primera's room hoping to chat with her briefly, only for Olivia to come to the door. Seeing the duchess in her nightclothes, I couldn't bring myself to enter the room, so I just said "Good night" from the doorway and went back to my own room.
"Given Primera's line of work, she rarely had the chance to come back to the Lindau ducal estate, and once married, opportunities to share a room would be even fewer. So Olivia said she wanted to sleep in the same room as Primera. And then Camilla and Grace felt left out and, not knowing what else to do, said they wanted to sleep next to me — ow! Tenma, please, go easier on me!"
Duke Sanga was explaining to me why Olivia had been in Primera's room, but the second half of his story turned into him gushing about his family, so I let that part slide and gave his back a firm push.
"Ahhh... that's much better. By the way, you never said anything about the materials from the unicorn foal — is there some use for them?"
Even as a foal, it was still a unicorn, which meant its materials held considerable value and could serve a wide variety of purposes. But since I hadn't hunted it myself, and the circumstances of its death and what came after left a bad taste in my mouth, rather than agonizing over what to use them for and letting them sit in storage forever, I'd been thinking of giving them a proper burial somewhere. The problem was finding the right location. Even if I burned everything to complete ash and buried it, if the burial site were ever discovered, someone would undoubtedly dig it up.
When I explained this, Duke Sanga thought for a moment and then said,
"How about burying them in the garden of this estate? I could have a grave built somewhere in Lindau under the ducal family's name, but that would likely turn into a tourist attraction. The grounds of this estate, on the other hand, limit who can approach the grave, and it would be easier to maintain. Besides, there are plans to erect a memorial for the victims of this incident. If we tie it in with that and spread the word that you held a burial for the unicorn foal, it will leave the impression that the real villain was not the rampaging unicorn, but rather the fool who attacked the unicorn's child and deliberately escalated the damage. If we go too far in painting the unicorn as the villain, the people of the territory might start demanding a 'unicorn extermination,' which would only create more needless victims. So I'd like to frame it as: the unicorn caused harm, yes, but it was also in the position of a victim."
That was his reasoning, and he arranged for a burial site to be prepared near the entrance of the estate grounds.
The reason for placing it near the entrance was that it would be visible to other nobles and to subjects who happened to visit for various reasons. Turning it into a tourist spot wouldn't be good, but hiding it completely from view wouldn't work either.
And so, construction of the unicorn's grave began on short notice. Since I only wanted it to be recognizable at a glance as a grave or something close to one, I used garden stones from the estate grounds to build a pentagonal pyramidal tombstone roughly two meters tall.
At first I'd planned to use stones I already had on hand or compacted earth, but Duke Sanga offered to provide garden stones, saying that if I was going to do this, I might as well use good ones.
I understood that a tombstone warranted decent material, but I asked whether it was really okay to disrupt the garden's layout. Apparently, they rearranged the garden roughly once every two to three years anyway, so it wasn't a significant concern.
After the tombstone was finished, I broke for breakfast, then resumed work afterward.
First, I dug a roughly two-meter-deep hole at the spot where the stone would be placed and burned all of the unicorn foal's materials along with portions of the parents' remains using fire magic until they turned to ash. However, unlike bones, the magic cores retained their shape, so I removed them first, crushed them, and returned them to the hole. Otherwise, there was a slim chance the unicorn foal could reanimate as an undead. Granted, being a foal, it probably wouldn't pose that much damage, but it would still be a threat to anyone who lacked the means to fight. More than that, the thought of the poor creature having to be killed a second time simply felt too pitiful.
"Tenma, move a little more to the right. And rotate just a tiny bit to the right… Stop! Right there, right there… Perfect!"
Following Amour's instructions, I used the Gigant to lower the pentagonal pyramid tombstone into place. Simply setting the tombstone on top of the refilled hole risked it toppling over, so I lowered it about a third of the way into the hole, then refilled and firmly compacted the soil around it. With this, the tombstone's center of gravity should rest right at or just below the surface of the ground, so it shouldn't be in any danger of falling under normal conditions.
Once the grave was completed, Duke Sanga was the first to lay down flowers and offer a prayer for the unicorn's passing, followed by me and Primera, then the mothers-in-law, and finally Grandpa and the others in that order. Though modest, we brought the unicorn's funeral to a close.
When I first started building the grave, I hadn't intended for it to become so elaborate, and there was a part of me that felt it was contradictory for the adventurer who had taken a life to pray for the soul of the monster whose life had been taken. But Grandpa and Duke Sanga said something along the lines of it being "a ceremony to pray for the departed and to swear that their life would not go to waste," so I tucked away the contradiction into a corner of my mind and focused only on the unicorn as I offered my prayers.
The grave installation and funeral were finished shortly past midday, so Primera and I decided to head into town together while Grandpa and the others went outside the city, combining a stroll with letting Shiromaru and Solomon get some exercise.
The first thing we looked for after heading out was a place to eat, but since it was still technically lunchtime and we had left late, we ended up walking quite a ways before finding one.
The place we finally settled on was near the Adventurer's Guild. It wasn't exactly what you'd call elegant, but the food was decent enough. I had always frequented places like this, and Primera didn't mind either, so I basically just thought of it as having found a good-enough spot.
"Primera, sorry, but would it be okay if I popped by the guild to check things out?"
"Sure, I've been curious about it myself, so that's fine."
After finishing our meal, I understood full well that a guild was hardly date material, but I just couldn't shake what the adventurers at the lunch spot had been talking about.
I did a quick disguise—tying on a bandana and pulling my hair back—and headed inside. The guild was quite lively… or rather, noisy. Still, being on Duke Sanga's home turf, no adventurer tried to mess with me despite me coming in with a woman, which was a relief.
As I was scanning the room trying to figure out who to talk to, a male staff member called out to me. At first I thought he had noticed me looking bewildered, but when he guided me straight to a back room, I realized my identity had been busted the moment I walked in.
In the back room, there was a massively muscular man who turned out to be the guildmaster. According to Primera, he was already over sixty, and he struck me as the kind of person who would get along well with Grandpa.
When I relayed to the guildmaster the information I had overheard at the restaurant about goblin and orc packs being discovered one after another, he promptly gave me the details.
Apparently, there had been reports of seven goblin packs and four orc packs spotted between the east and southeast.
The goblin packs ranged from five to twenty, and the orc packs from five to ten. By the time the reports reached this guild, all of those packs had already been subdued, but because they had all come from the same direction, some adventurers were raising a fuss that there might be more packs yet to be found. With goblins, even wiping out a pack of twenty wouldn't earn you much, but orcs fetched a decent bounty per head—if you could take down a pack of ten, it would make for a nice bit of extra income. That was why adventurers who normally worked solo or in pairs and trios were clamoring to form temporary parties.
Hearing all this, it was clear that the situation around Lindau wasn't particularly dire. Primera and I thanked the guildmaster and slipped out through the guild's back exit. If we had walked out the front, there was a good chance the adventurers who had seen us escorted to the back would have swarmed us with questions.
"If things are this noisy at the guild, I'm sure Father has already received a report."
"He probably missed us on the way. Either way, it's a relief it wasn't something on the level of the unicorn. If it were a monster of that class, they'd probably come to us with a request."
I had heard that among the adventurers using Lindau as their base, there were over a dozen A-rankers, but they didn't all belong to the same party, and more than half were currently away in other cities on assignments, so they couldn't be gathered quickly. For those reasons, the duke would most likely issue a direct commission to Orasion under his own name, designating adventurers who could be relied upon to handle the situation.
"Yes, unless it's something the adventurers of Lindau or the duke's knights can't handle, it wouldn't be right to take another adventurer's job."
After all, Orasion's base of operations was the Royal Capital and Seigen, so even though I was an S-rank adventurer, in Lindau I was still an outsider. If we received a commissioned request, that would be one thing, but simply going about our business here required some tact. Well, he was already an
temporary
member of Orasion, and Namitarou had already gone and caused a huge commotion at the lake... But luckily, we'd managed to win over the fishermen who used the lake as their home base, so that could be called an exception among exceptions.
"However, if there's still a chance of more packs being in the east or southeast, we'll need to stay on our guard even after leaving Lindau. If we're not careful, we could run into adventurers who claim they had their eye on a pack and come complaining about it."
After Lindau, we planned to head south through Duke Sanga's territory toward Gunjou City, so we might very well encounter other packs along the way. And the adventurers hunting them, too.
"Well, when it comes to that, we can talk it out where talking is possible, and if that doesn't work, I suppose all we can say is that it goes to whoever's fastest, right?"
Crashing a fight mid-battle to steal a kill was strictly forbidden, but even if another adventurer had fought the Monsters first, once they'd let them escape or passed on the chance, the right to them generally went to whoever encountered and defeated them next. That was the argument we'd have to use to get them to accept it. Of course, it would be nice if every adventurer actually agreed to that, but that was a pipe dream.
We continued our date while discussing all of this, and before the sun went down, we returned to the duke's estate—
"Oh! Tenma, we got our hands on some meat today!"
"Today it's barbecue!"
It turned out our grandfathers had gone out for a stroll beyond Lindau and run into a pack of Orcs, and they came back reporting that they'd secured eight Orcs' worth of meat.
"...Running into them was unavoidable, but how did a pack of Orcs manage to get this close to Lindau without anyone noticing?"
"This is just a guess, but I think most people—adventurers, or rather, everyone including the Guild staff—were so focused on the east and southeast that they overlooked a pack that had already reached Lindau's western side ahead of the others. Or possibly, completely unrelated to any migrating packs, there was already a group of Orcs living in the west to begin with?"
Just as Primera said, everyone had been trapped in their assumptions, and the possibility that packs might also be on the western side had simply never crossed their minds.
What's more, our grandfathers had apparently gone straight back to the duke's estate after defeating the Orcs outside, without even reporting it to the Guild.
"Your Grace, may I borrow a carriage? I'll head to the Guild with Grandpa to file a report."
So I decided to head to the Guild and personally warn the Guild Master about the danger on the western side. If this was a pack that had been living there all along, there wasn't an urgent need to rush. But if this was the result of failing to notice a pack coming from the east, then the villages and towns to the west, as well as any travelers passing through, would be put at risk.
When I explained this to the duke, he hurriedly arranged a carriage for us. While preparations were underway, he asked why I didn't use my own carriage and Raiden. The simple answer was that in Lindau, arriving in the duke's carriage carried far more weight and influence.
An Ootori family carriage would have had some effect, but in Lindau, the duke's family had overwhelmingly greater recognition and influence. Even if my report was ignored by the adventurers, going there as an emissary of the duke's house meant that, in the worst case, the Guild could force the adventurers into action through a mandatory commission.
My hunch turned out to be correct. The adventurers who had been eavesdropping on my and Grandpa's report were trying to head east or southeast, ignoring the danger, but they were caught by the Guild Master before they could leave and were sent to scout the western side instead.
And as a result, those adventurers who had been forced west discovered several goblin and orc packs, earning subjection bounties and material rewards. Their profits ended up surpassing those of the later groups who had gone east and southeast, so it wasn't just those directions—adventurers began searching for goblin and orc packs in every direction radiating outward from Lindau.