Chapter 8: Ghoul

「I’m here too!」

With a lively shout her red hair streamed, and an obsidian‑set stone sword swung down.
Then, as if by magic, the pain in my throat vanished.
With that big stone sword that doesn’t even have a point—somehow—Yuuka had cleanly removed the head of the winged snake that had burrowed into my throat.

「Ugh, what is this?」

Even after being flicked off the blade, the winged snake clacked its fangs gachi‑gachi, and Yuuka grimaced at it.
Behind her, an armored bear tore through the vines Nina had conjured—buchi‑buchi—and swung its claws.

「Yuuka‑san, behind—! Be—」

Ara started to shout a warning, but it petered out. Without even looking back, Yuuka swung her stone sword and the armored bear’s body was torn to bits, scattered in every direction.

「Hmm, even after all that it still won’t die.」

Snapping off the armored bear’s flying fangs with a smack while it came at her as a face alone, Yuuka kept advancing. Perhaps because Nina had started treating Tia, the carcasses broke free of the vines one after another and lunged at Yuuka.

「Sensei.」

Ara came over to me and spoke up.

「I don’t really understand what’s happening.」
「Don’t worry.」

I answered with teacherly confidence.

「I have absolutely no idea either.」

Yuuka’s gait is so casual it looks full of openings to an amateur. She peers around at carcasses, tilting her head and pondering, as if she were window‑shopping.

Yet the claws and fangs of the many beasts lunging at her never seem to touch her, and every time they pass by, they fall apart into pieces.

If it were a speed too fast for the eye, I could still make sense of it. But I can more or less see all of Yuuka’s movements. They look so simple that I catch myself thinking I might manage that much too—she just slips past attacks and, as if merely setting the blade down, cuts the beasts down.

Rotting carcasses or not, these beasts should still have tendons and bones.

「Hey, Onii‑chan, what should I do about this?」

Even she knit her brows, looking troubled, and looked at me.
The beasts she’d chopped apart, however, stuck their limbs back together like clay figures and came at Yuuka again.

「Hmm. Yoisho.」

Yuuka’s eyes flashed sharp for an instant—and in the next, the armored bear had become countless little scraps, as if minced.

「Uwah, that just made it even grosser!」

But no. Even pulverized that far, it stuck itself back together and re‑formed. Not in the sense of healing: the bits clumped like hamburger mix, taking on a roughly beast‑shaped form. At this point it was a gigantic lump of meat whose original species you couldn’t even tell.

「…This is bad, Sensei.」

Inis nudged her sofa up to me and murmured.

「If even Yuuka‑san can’t take it down, doesn’t that mean it’s impossible to beat?」

For now there’s nothing worrisome in Yuuka’s movement. No matter how they swarm, she fends them off and cuts them down without danger. But against an enemy that won’t stop no matter how much you cut, she’ll tire eventually. We need a plan before that happens.

「…Something’s snagging at me.」

I narrowed my eyes and said.

「It feels like we’re overlooking something really simple.」

Fire probably won’t work. If it moves after being reduced to tiny bits like that, it’ll be the same even as ash. If it still moved as ash, we’d be helpless. While it still has a shape, at least Yuuka can hold it back and dodge it.

It’s an opponent that even Yuuka can’t finish and that left Tia badly hurt.
Cut, stab, crush—back together in an instant. Burning or freezing won’t help either…

「…Wait.」

I snapped to and turned to Nina.

「Nina. How’s Tia?」
「…She’ll be fine. The wounds aren’t as bad as they look. I’m only worried about disease from being bitten by such filthy beasts… but pixies are abnormally resistant to illness, so she’s probably okay.」

Wiping sweat, Nina swiftly wrapped bandages around Tia’s body. With human‑sized bandages on her, Tia looked like a mummy in no time.

「Tia, sorry to ask while you’re hurt, but can I ask you one thing?」
「Go ahead.」

Too spent for her usual snark, Tia answered meekly, lying limp in Ruful’s hand.

「Why did you end up getting hurt like that?」
「…I let my guard down.」

She screwed up her face at my question.

「I never thought my Concealment wouldn’t work at all.」

So that was it!

「Thanks! This might do it.」
「Huh? How does airing my shame make anything better?」

Tia puffed out her cheeks in a sulk, and I couldn’t help but smile—she seemed to be getting her pep back.

「Yuuka! I think I’ve figured out how to beat them!」
「Knew you would, Onii‑chan! So, what do I do?」

There are three things that can see through Tia’s Concealment.
First, light. Her Concealment makes no sound or scent, but under strong light a shadow appears.
Second, Yuuka. Ever since she was a child she’s somehow seen through Tia’s Concealment at a glance.

And third, spirits. Concealment doesn’t work on spirits, which are magic itself.

「Cut open their bellies!」

But the cadavers before us clearly had bodies. Spirits don’t bleed when cut, nor do they stink. That sour reek of rot is the smell of flesh decaying—something you only get when there’s a body.

「They’re cut!」

At Yuuka’s shout, the carcasses’ bellies—or what passed for bellies—split open all at once.

「Ye who dwell in ruined flesh, black things that move dead husks! Depart from those befouled vessels!」

I know of such beings.

「Your name is Ghoul!」

The instant I spoke that name, something like black mist gushed from the carcasses’ bellies.
It pooled, gradually took shape, and assumed a humanlike form.

They were perhaps a meter tall.
Like black shadows, with indistinct outlines—humanoid spirits in ogre‑like shapes.

「Yuuka! Take their heads!」
「Okaaay!」

A gust of red wind seemed to sweep through, and in the next instant every Ghoul was beheaded and dispersed like smoke.

Ghoul. In the era when I lived in my previous world, the name had settled as a kind of RPG monster that devoured carrion, but originally it was a kind of spirit in Arabic lore.

Among the jinn—genies best known from lamp tales—the lowest ranks were said to cling to corpses and cause mischief. Those are ghouls.

Ghouls possess high immortality and won’t die no matter how you cut them, but their bellies alone cannot regenerate. However, if you cut the belly and then cut the belly again, it will regenerate. That’s why I told Yuuka to take their heads.

Of course, they don’t necessarily share the exact weaknesses and abilities of the ghouls in my knowledge, but once I named them Ghouls, they should take on similar traits.

As the ghouls melted away, the carcasses collapsed and stopped moving.

「We managed… somehow.」

I returned to human form, sat down right there, and let out a long breath.
At once the throat wound I’d forgotten throbbed sharply.

「Come on, you—show me, too.」

Having already finished treating Ruful, Nina grabbed my chin and tilted it up, her gaze grave.

…Looking at her up close like this, she really is a beauty, isn’t she. With nothing to do while she treated my wound, I found myself staring at Nina’s face, idly thinking that.

I see her all the time so I’d grown completely numb to it, but looking again she’s stunning. The girlishness of old has mostly faded, replaced by a mature loveliness—she’s become very, very pretty.

Well, parts of her body still haven’t grown much, though.

「Done!」
「Guh—」

As if she’d read my thoughts, Nina finished and gave me a rough smack. It hit the wound directly and I let out a groan.

「Nina…」
「What?」

When I sent her a resentful look, Nina met me with displeased eyes. Ah, those are the eyes she gets when she’s truly angry. Her expression barely changes, but I can tell. Somehow, she must have read what I was thinking.

「Nothing. Thanks.」
「Don’t mention it.」

When I thanked her, she snorted through her nose and turned away, looking bored.

「More importantly… those monsters just now. Did they come from that forest?」
「Yeah. We came to scout trees to cut in this forest today—me and Tia. Then all of a sudden, a monster popped out of the woods…」

At Ruful’s words, Nina’s expression hardened—and I understood why.

「Ruful. Sorry, but could you go with Ara and the others and lay them to rest?」
「Okay. Got it.」

I pointed to the animal corpses scattered around, and Ruful nodded obediently, though looking a bit puzzled.

「All right, let’s go.」

When I turned, Nina and Yuuka nodded, faces set and grim.
Chances are both of them already suspected how things stood.

The three of us pushed into the forest and walked along the packed path.

「Ah…」

And at the scene that spread before us, I couldn’t help letting out a sound.

A few huts stood a few minutes in from the forest’s edge.

—And several men and women lay in pools of blood.

They had likely been attacked by the ghouls before Ruful’s group.
There was no need to take a pulse to know they’d breathed their last.

So I thought, but Nina knelt in the pool of blood and began touching each one to check for life.

「Nina…?」
「We look for survivors.」

She said it with a resolute expression.
In this carnage, it was hard to believe anyone could still be alive.

「All right.」

Even so, that’s what I said, and Yuuka and I nodded to each other.

Unlike Nina I have no medical training, but I can at least tell if someone is alive or dead. One by one, I checked whether even a faint breath remained.

I knew people lived in this forest. But I didn’t know their names.
Up until about a hundred years ago, that wasn’t the case. I remembered every face and name of those born and those who died in Hiiro, and I always watched over their lives and deaths.

But perhaps around when spirits started to spread. Life became incomparably more stable, newcomers from other races increased, and the village grew.

Nina’s apprentices, too, grew one after another into doctors, and it was no longer the case that Nina delivered every child herself.
That was a little lonely, but I also felt it couldn’t be helped.

—But.

I gently closed the red eyes of a corpse, wide with terror.
Red hair and red eyes are a Sword Clan trait. They might have been distant kin to Yuuka too.
Even that, I can no longer tell.

Not being able to know them was unbearably sad and heartrending.

「Found one…!」

It was then that Nina’s shout reached us.

「Alive! This child is alive!」

What she was cradling was a baby so small its neck wasn’t even steady yet.
Its body was far too small, weak, and fragile. It probably couldn’t even really see yet.

And yet… the baby, breathing softly in sleep, was unmistakably alive.