"A Tier 5 monster... that isn't the sort of thing the Silent Ridge produces."
Rumor held that the Silent Ridge had once been the site of a demon-race battlefield, and that monsters cultivated there off the broken demonic aura left behind.
Even so, the strongest monster ever recorded there had barely reached Tier 4. A report of a Tier 5 was the first of its kind.
The matter had begun as the responsibility of the Kingdom's patrols. Later, as the crisis escalated, the Church had also sent friars to take part in the extermination.
The local church, wanting to court the electorate in that area, would likewise organize a certain number of Holy Church members to go and put down the beasts.
What Viya had in front of her was the report from the front.
Their asks amounted to nothing more than calling for bodies and asking for money. They weren't in a position to make the Saintess herself come out.
Viya set the letter aside and rubbed another between her fingers. The contents were much the same: reports of magic beasts attacking people not far from the woods.
Realizing something was wrong, Viya fetched a map and found that the several places where beast attacks had broken out ringed the Silent Ridge in the shape of a crescent.
The nearest town to the area was Undawn. Viya's eyes narrowed slightly and she took up her pen to set down some points of caution: in essence, stay well away from the Silent Ridge, and send some of the faithful to distribute free food to the residents of Undawn.
Many of the villagers there lived by going out to hunt. With monsters running rampant, if the young and able of a household were killed or maimed, plague and famine followed close behind.
Her official work done, Viya rose and went to Marilou's door, glanced in from a distance, saw no movement inside, and pulled the door to again.
It was a very long night, until a wolf's howl outside the town broke the quiet.
At the camp, a blue-haired girl set down a great hammer. She wore the garb that marked a Holy Knight.
She looked over the men and women before her in their assorted gear and assorted expressions, bared her teeth in a grin, took a piece of roast meat from the fire at her feet and tore into it.
"Oi. Tell me, are you lot scared, coming with me to ambush a Moonlight Wolf?"
The several people in clerical dress visibly froze. They hadn't expected someone who looked so refined to eat quite so... boldly?
A bespectacled girl in academy robes, hanging back at a distance, shoved her frames desperately straight and pressed her lips together.
"A... a little scared, Lady Mia. I've already laid holy light traps along the route it's likely to come by. If it steps into one, that will weaken its will to fight."
Mia made a startled noise. "Hold on. Those clothes of yours. You must still be enrolled? What are you doing somewhere this dangerous?"
Generally speaking, however short-handed a mission against a savage-beast attack might be, nobody called in students.
Soldiers in the field mostly disliked students fond of lecturing them, and the two groups could hardly piss in the same pot.
"My name is Alice. My mentor said there were credits in it, so I came."
"Your teacher?"
"Yes. The eldest daughter of House Howell as it stands today, Ellie."
Mia's expression shifted a little. Clearly she knew the lady Alice had named.
The story went that Ellie was the elder sister of the present Saintess, Viya, and the Kingdom had long honored her as the Red Lightning: let that streak of fire appear on a battlefield and the outcome of the battle would reverse.
"So your teacher is someone that formidable. But you look like a scholar from any angle. Do scholars go to war now?"
Hearing her ability questioned, Alice pressed her frames and spoke with confidence.
"My teacher takes on a great many students. She says war today isn't only positional warfare; it needs information warfare more. I came this time to gather information on the Moonlight Wolf."
Mia followed about half of it. She had once been a mercenary down in the Undercity, licking blood off blades. Later the Holy Church came to the Undercity to conscript, and her boss sold her out and put her forward in someone else's place.
After all these years knocking about in the Holy Church, her clothes might be indistinguishable from a Holy Knight's, but out on a mission she still fell back on the old mercenary way of doing things.
So with the sort of tactics Alice described, Mia could follow the words, but she didn't see the point. Bringing a scholar to a fight to direct things blindly. Wasn't that obviously making trouble?
She trusted her instincts and her experience over data.
Alice understood, too, that the experience of these frontline Holy Knights differed in many respects from what she had learned in books, and chose not to argue the matter too far.
She turned instead to the round instrument in her hand, where colored points of light displayed the scouting devices she had planted earlier.
"The bombs to the west and the north have both been triggered. It's now highly likely to be moving toward the southeast corner, where we are.
"One moment. Let me take a look with scouting magic."
Alice narrowed her eyes and tugged at several fine threads, and only then did those around her make out the dense spiderweb of mana-thread strung all around them.
"Northeast. It's coming toward the northeast corner. We need to be careful."
Mia listened, blinking. She sniffed, and did indeed catch a whiff of wolf.
That came of long training and battlefield experience, yet this slip of a girl in front of her, doing nothing but moving her hands and consulting an instrument, could apparently match her for keenness.
"Stay where you are, all of you, and don't move yet. This magic wolf's ability is said to be considerable. Even at Tier 4 I can feel a faint sense of danger off it. None of you act rashly."
Mia hefted her great hammer and swept her eyes across them.
A timid girl with a staff spoke up. "Boss, why don't I go ahead and scout the way for you? If you go alone and take a wound, there'll be nobody to give you treatment in time."
Mia paused, then laughed. "You were never this fussy back when you followed me. How is it that since we were taken legitimate, you've started fearing death?
"Little Specs, keep an eye on the Moonlight Wolf's movements for me. If there's danger, get them out of here fast. I'll be up front."
Mia jerked her thumb at herself.
"I do have a name. Just call me Alice. There are several wolf whelps at your twelve o'clock.
"I suspect they're the Moonlight Wolf's eyes. This pack is noticeably more organized than they used to be.
"To have caught out that many hunters, we should be extra careful."
"Understood."
Mia went into the depths of the forest with the great hammer in her arms. The clear moon overhead cast down a faint light, and the mist in the Silent Ridge was heavy; with every step she took, the way behind her blurred a little further.
Closing her eyes, Mia followed the scent and, just as Little Specs Alice had said, found the first wolf. Her lightning-wreathed hammer went up high and came down on the wolf-beast's skull.
Another wolf, sensing the disturbance, backed up to gather itself and lunged in. Mia looked behind her, raised the hammer and swung again.
With her Tier 4 strength, beating these few monsters was no trouble at all.
"AWOOO!"
A wolf's howl scattered the mist overhead and let the moonlight through, and a lithe gray wolf came slowly out of the fog. As the moonlight fell across it, the crescent pattern on its head grew steadily clearer.
At the same time, the aura coming off it was climbing, step by step.
Mia's blood began to boil. It was a hunter's instinctive response to danger.
"That... that's a peak Tier 5 monster. Little Specs, go and write your letter, now. Tell them the Moonlight Wolf is at peak Tier 5!"