'The Black Ogre?'
Nade's eyebrows twitched.
Until now he had stood one step back and listened to Ethan talk.
He was strictly an observer of Ethan, and he had no intention of presuming to interfere in Ethan's course.
Because his own chief role was strictly to give Ethan counsel.
But this business he could not possibly pass over.
The Black Ogre.
A monster Nade had actually faced.
A monster so rare in itself that an ordinary person would struggle to meet one in a lifetime.
An Ogre is a calamity by its mere existence, and this was a beast more ferocious and stronger than that.
And Ethan had just said he would subjugate a monster like that.
'Far too dangerous.'
A Black Ogre was a thing even mana-wielding knights struggled to handle.
It was no match for Nade, a Master, and for apprentice knights and Ethan there were no odds at all.
"Young master, I cannot permit it."
"Since when have I acted on your permission?"
Ethan looked at Nade without a flicker of expression.
But this time Nade did not back off either.
"This is a different story from everything until now. A Black Ogre is not an ordinary monster."
"Yeah. I know. If it were an ordinary monster I'd never have thought of killing it."
Nade's eyes narrowed.
"Do not tell me you are committing this folly in reliance on me? If so, you are judging wrongly."
He did have the intention of stepping in if Ethan's life came into danger.
But he had not the faintest intention of stepping out and fighting for him as Ethan assumed.
Nade's position was only to assist Ethan.
Regrettable as it was, he had no intention of looking after apprentice knights as well.
"Don't need it."
"......Will you not regret those words?"
"Nope."
Ethan answered without a flicker of expression.
Nade glared at him in silence and then let out a breath.
"......Do as you please. My warning ends here."
The course Ethan had walked until now had been unorthodox.
But the premise of this was different from any of it.
Since nothing short of an attack carrying mana could pierce a Black Ogre's hide, it was a monster hard to handle short of Master grade.
'They will all die.'
He could see it without looking.
Ethan's misjudgment might wipe the subjugation party out entirely.
'He will take something from it.'
But with Ethan speaking that way, and himself only a counselor, he put aside the thought of stopping him.
If anything it occurred to him that Ethan might grow through this business.
Nade looked at Hugo and Gato with regret.
'They are talents too good to throw away here.'
The gift in those two was real. Grow safely from here and they would become weapons for the clan.
Nade intended, if he had the margin for it, to rescue at least those two.
"Then we move."
Ethan stepped forward.
The subjugation party cut through the dark and went on toward the Black Ogre.
***
'My whole body hurts......'
Following behind Ethan, Hugo screwed up his face at the pain he felt in one place after another.
His whole body hurt, and the worst of it was the jaw.
It was hard even to open his mouth.
'What on earth happened?'
The bare fact that he had lost his memory was no small shock.
Try to pull the memory up and it was as though a thin fog were blocking his head.
'The young master will know something.'
Unease rose in him. Had he not made some mistake while his memory was gone?
But Ethan's manner had not changed in the slightest from before.
The unchanged manner was what put Hugo at ease.
'Is he being considerate?'
For the first time since he was born, he had been acknowledged.
Hugo wanted to repay that. He did not want to bring disappointment to Ethan.
'The Black Ogre.'
He did not know monsters in any detail, but from the reactions around him he could tell it was a tremendous one.
'But the young master looked confident.'
The Ethan Hugo had watched always chose the road other people could not understand.
And not once had he failed.
Even where the decision looked reckless, there had been a sound reason and a confidence to match it behind the choice.
'That is how he has proved it.'
Hugo looked at his own hand.
The past came back to him, the days of being disregarded and mocked without end.
'I do not want to make him regret it.'
Why he had chosen someone as worthless as himself, Hugo did not know.
But he did not want to make him regret it.
Resolved again, Hugo closed his fist.
***
"How do things stand?"
Morun asked his adjutant.
There were several meanings folded into the question.
The adjutant knew it too, and answered naturally.
"The subjugation is proceeding smoothly and our losses are extremely slight. At this rate it is predicted to finish safely within a few days."
"Is that so? Good...... And what is that one up to?"
"Young Master Ethan has broken off from our force. He went a different road from ours so we do not know the exact situation, but...... it is expected he will have no result to speak of. The local hunters say that in that direction a few goblins are all that make their ground."
"Hmph. The idiot. Come under me and he would at least have carried something away."
Morun snorted and laughed at Ethan's choice.
When he first heard that Ethan's party had vanished he had been considerably uneasy.
This was the Ethan who had done unforeseen things before now.
What he might be plotting this time had been on his mind, and hearing the report again, even that thread of unease vanished.
Up to now he might have slipped by on good luck, and this choice was plain folly.
Morun liked that fact very much.
It felt like a decade-old lump in his chest going down.
"You have done well. Once we are back I shall give you ample reward."
"It is an honor."
The adjutant bowed his head in thanks.
'I chose the right line after all.'
Through this subjugation Morun would make his standing as heir solid.
Heir to the Blante clan.
The reach of that was no small thing.
And what power, then, would fall to an adjutant?
The corner of the adjutant's mouth crept up.
***
'Hm. Is this how it goes?'
Ethan circulated the mana as Pheon had explained.
He felt a coolness somewhere in it, which Pheon explained was the side effect of the dark mana.
But the sensation did not feel as bad as he had thought.
If anything, a moderate coolness felt as though it cleared his mind.
'I mustn't depend on it, though.'
Mana was only a means.
This was the first windfall he had come into. He was still a long way from keeping up with the protagonist's party.
An outlying domain like this carried little weight in the novel to begin with.
Ethan intended to go up to the capital once this subjugation was over.
'That's where there's plenty to intercept.'
Everything here he had got.
'The Black Ogre.'
Put this one down and the pretext would be enough.
By rights he would have gone to the Academy in the manner of being thrown out of the clan; now he would be able to go with the clan's support at his back.
'How much is it, I wonder.'
Interest stirred in him.
This was the first time he would face a monster worth the name.
'Hugo was a bit of a disappointment, though.'
Hugo turned werewolf had been strong, and easy to handle.
Trusting nothing but his physical ability, he had rampaged, so only honest attacks came in, which made him easy to predict and not a demanding opponent at all.
— Go left just ahead.
Pheon guided the road from beside him.
Ethan's night vision was entirely ordinary.
Pheon, by contrast, was as good as a spirit body.
Bound to Ethan though he was, darkness was no great obstacle to a spirit body.
So naturally he was guiding them to where the Black Ogre lay.
— How did I come to such a state as this......
Pheon muttered a self-mocking lament over his lot even as he gave the directions.
— And you. How did you work out that I had the Black Ogre's position?
"It just seemed likely."
Ethan answered in a small voice.
In truth he had not known.
The description of the Black Ogre had not been well laid out in the novel.
'Because it was the one the bloodsucker had his eye on.'
By the novel's original development, Belmont ought by now to have been laying the groundwork to make the Black Ogre his own retainer.
Only, because Ethan had arrived a little early, Belmont had not yet made any preparation at all.
'Th-the Black Ogre, you say?'
He remembered Belmont's trembling eyes when he first asked about it.
The man had looked hesitant to speak, and once Ethan glared at him he took fright and confessed everything he knew.
'Still a young one......'
A Black Ogre's growth is fast.
All of it finishes inside 1 year of birth.
This one was about 6 months old.
And still, though it had not reached its full form, it reigned as a predator.
A young one that had not even made its own territory yet, he was told, and with no match in the area it was rampaging as it pleased.
Still, young did not mean stupid.
It was said to be extremely wary of humans moving in a body.
Which is why Ethan moved at night.
The Black Ogre was not nocturnal.
To put it exactly, it did not bother about the time of day.
Day or night made no difference to its hunting, so it moved when it wanted to.
Sense desirable prey nearby and it would open its eyes out of sleep, he was told.
'In that case there's no reason to delay.'
Only the wasted time was a pity; fear and tension did not come to him.
What came through was no more than a will to compete, and interest.
Watching him, Pheon felt a complicated thing.
'A fellow whose heart I cannot read.'
There was no hesitation in Ethan's conduct.
And he did not act blindly either. He acted boldly on the ground of a sound reason.
'That movement was no ordinary thing.'
As a man who had thrown the sword away and chosen the bare fist, Pheon could see how astonishing Ethan's movement was.
There was nothing excess in the way Ethan carried himself.
The shifting of his center of gravity was free, and his sense of distance was perfect.
It was not a familiarity learned only in theory. Ethan's movement was a veteran's.
Drawing an opponent in, and turning a weakness into an opportunity.
Ethan was practiced at all of it.
He was young yet. In a situation where accumulating real experience was difficult, where he had learned such a thing was a real curiosity.
At first Pheon had simply assumed he was one of his own kind.
A man who feels nothing for the sword and settles things with his body.
Pheon knew it too.
The sword's advantages were definite.
Its lethality was far superior, and the techniques derived from it were boundless.
Systematized swordsmanship was very awkward to face with a bare body.
Conversely, a man with a sword found facing a man without one very easy.
And Pheon had chosen the fist.
There had been no grand reason for it.
He had simply wanted to, and so he did.
Disregarded by the whole clan, Pheon in the end proved his own ability.
But that was exactly the problem.
The Blante clan, being a great sword clan, reveres strength.
A clan governed by the logic that the weak are meat for the strong, where the strong devour everything.
And then Pheon, whom nobody had thought of as a rival, raised an anomaly.
From where they stood, it could only be an irritation to the eye.
So the heirs made common cause and betrayed Pheon.
Pheon struggled desperately and went into hiding, but in the end he lost his life.
And in that place, of all places, there happened to be a relic that bound death energy, so Pheon did not ascend; he remained as a spirit body.
'Will this fellow achieve my dream in my place? I still cannot tell......'
Pheon was looking forward to Ethan's course all the more.