“……Clove?”
“Yes.”
RUSTLE— RUSTLE—
After dismounting from my horse, I searched through the nearby undergrowth.
‘Clove’ was a wild herb characterized by its broad leaves and sawtooth-shaped edges.
It was quite literally a weed that grew on almost every mountain and field. It did not take long for me to find a clump and bring it to the Marquis.
“…Are you truly saying that this purifies the contaminated mana in a monster’s corpse?”
“Yes. Among commoners, it is also known as a remedy that can be brewed for stomach trouble or applied to boils on the skin.”
“Huh…….”
The Marquis let out an exclamation of surprise at the remarkably specific explanation. However, uncertainty was still evident on his face.
As expected, it was not easy for him to believe.
“Father, if you still find it difficult to believe, why not test my claim here, even if only briefly?”
“Here… right now?”
“Yes. Purifying an entire goblin corpse would take some time, but if we cut off a small part, we should be able to confirm the result within a few hours.”
At those words, the look in the Marquis’s eyes changed.
“From this moment onward, everyone except the 9th Battalion assigned to scouting will gather the plant called ‘Clove’!”
“…Pardon?”
The knights and soldiers appeared bewildered, but the Marquis had no intention of retracting his order.
And so, an enormous heap of Clove was gathered in no time.
“What must we do now?”
“Fill a container with water and simply soak the Clove and the monster’s corpse in it.”
“…It is that simple?”
“Yes.”
The Marquis placed a finger cut from a dead goblin and as much of the gathered Clove as possible into a pot, then began the experiment.
Hmm, with this much, we should see a meaningful result in only an hour.
My prediction proved exactly right.
“M-Marquis! The leaves of that plant are beginning to turn black!”
“I-Is the contaminated mana truly…?”
Another commotion broke out among the knights.
The mercenaries also caused a great fuss, saying that they had never witnessed anything like it before.
Even the Marquis looked thoroughly astonished.
“Evan, what is happening?”
“The contaminated mana inside the corpse is being absorbed by the Clove.”
I gave a light shrug as though it were nothing and told him that it was time to examine the result.
“…Very well.”
SWISH.
When the Marquis lifted the goblin’s finger from the pot, everyone’s attention became fixed upon it.
HMMMM—
He closed his eyes and concentrated as he channeled Aura into the goblin’s finger.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP—
It was a tense moment.
At last, the Marquis’s eyes snapped open. In a slightly trembling voice, he said,
“The contaminated mana truly… has been purified.”
* * *
Everything proceeded rapidly after that.
For the time being, the Marquis piled the monster corpses onto the wagons that had transported their supplies. He also sent men back to the castle with orders to bring several more wagons.
MURMUR— MURMUR—
“Hey, did you see that goblin finger being purified earlier?”
“That was f***ing incredible.”
“Right? We called Clove ‘Crop’ in my village. I used to drink it whenever I had a stomachache.”
Hearing the soldiers and mercenaries talking among themselves, I smiled inwardly.
‘Hehehe! This rumor will spread in no time.’
Once that happened, there would be tremendous demand for monster corpses.
There was no need to worry about distribution channels, either. Merchant companies would flock to our marquisate and establish them on their own.
‘Besides, I know exactly which parts of which monsters are valuable.’
That meant I could pursue the business with maximum efficiency.
Even now, I was passing it off as knowledge from my days as a commoner while instructing the knights to harvest only the most profitable parts from each monster.
‘Hehehe! This is an incredibly sweet deal.’
Countless plans and schemes had already taken shape inside my mind, and the smile never left my lips.
* * *
A strangely manic gleam filled his eyes.
A wide grin stretched across his lips.
Pervan watched his youngest son with a complicated expression.
‘How can this be…? What exactly just happened?’
All of Evan’s memories had been artificially fabricated.
They had investigated the lives of countless commoners throughout the empire, combined the information into plausible memories, and implanted them into him…….
‘Hmm… Did we include even this in the initial setup information?’
No matter how much he thought about it, he could not remember doing so.
To begin with, this was something even he had not known.
‘Then could someone else have tampered with Evan’s memories without my knowledge…?’
That was impossible.
Pervan had personally conducted the final verification of every stage of the process.
That left only one possible answer.
‘This information truly… came from the memories of the commoners we combined.’
It was an astonishing discovery that even ‘they’ did not know about.
A discovery that might someday overturn the balance of the Asron Empire… or perhaps even the entire continent of Arvania.
That was precisely why the Marquis found the present situation rather unwelcome.
It would become troublesome if this attracted ‘their’ attention.
‘…There are far too many witnesses to silence now.’
Had he known this would happen, he should have ignored Evan’s words from the beginning.
Yet if he had done so, this great discovery would have remained buried forever.
For a man who had devoted his entire life to magical research, that would have been regrettable in its own way.
‘For now… I have no choice but to observe their reaction.’
There was no answer to be found by worrying about it now.
Instead, there was something else that required his attention.
SHNK.
“YELP—!”
Having just slain the final member of a group of kobolds—creatures resembling dogs that walked on two legs—Pervan stared intently at someone.
Raph.
He was the commander of the 3rd Company of the 9th Battalion, and he had been covertly observing Evan for some time.
The look in his eyes, however, was far from ordinary.
‘Is he about to make his move?’
Pervan knew that the Marchioness had arranged a scheme to eliminate Evan during this Monster Subjugation Campaign.
However, he had no intention of stopping her.
“The Main Force will proceed immediately to the next objective! The 9th Battalion, which is responsible for scouting, will remain behind and process the kobold corpses according to Evan’s instructions!”
Instead, he intended to assist the Marchioness’s plot.
Even if it involved a certain degree of risk, he needed to properly verify Evan’s abilities at least once.
‘…No monster can kill Evan anyway.’
That was assuming the abilities Pervan had designed manifested properly.
The same should hold true even against a knight, not merely a monster.
Regardless of whether the threat was genuine, however, the Marchioness and those who had joined her scheme to kill Evan were utterly insolent.
GRIND.
‘Vermin who do not even know their place…!’
Vowing to make them pay dearly for this, Pervan led his forces forward at a gallop.
As a result, the innocent monsters were the only ones who suffered.
* * *
‘Hehehe… Luck is on my side as well!’
Raph, the commander of the 3rd Company of the 9th Battalion, rejoiced.
The moment the Marquis and the Main Force departed, he turned toward Walter, the commander of the 9th Battalion.
Just as the Marquis had suspected, they had secretly received a separate order.
GLANCE.
Their eyes met, and Walter gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Raph then carefully approached Evan and began putting the plan into action.
“Young Master Evan, you asked us to inform you if we noticed any unusual vegetation earlier, did you not?”
“Huh? I did.”
Evan Verdin, the illegitimate young master who had been issuing various instructions to the soldiers, stared directly at him.
For some reason, however, Raph felt as though Evan’s eyes could see straight through him.
It left a foul taste in his mouth.
It almost seemed as though Evan found him laughable.
‘A brat who was nothing but gutter trash outside the castle until recently…!’
Anger surged within him, but he had to endure it for now.
“I discovered a rather unusual plant over there. Would you accompany me and take a look?”
“An unusual plant? What did it look like?”
“Pardon…?”
“I asked what it looked like.”
“Ah, well… it…….”
Raph stammered at the unexpectedly bold questioning.
What was he supposed to say?
He simply blurted out whatever came to mind.
“It-it had blue flowers, and they seemed to glow faintly… It was about this large…….”
“Hmm~ Is that so?”
The illegitimate young master repeatedly tilted his head.
‘Damn it. What if he refuses to go?’
With the battalion commander assisting him, they could find another method if necessary.
Still, Raph wanted everything to proceed cleanly.
As he began to grow increasingly anxious—
GRIN.
Evan Verdin suddenly smiled.
It was the innocent smile of a young child… yet also the smile of a mischievous little devil whose next action was impossible to predict.
For some reason, merely looking at it filled Raph with unease.
“All right. Let us go and see.”
“…Yes!”
Something about the situation felt deeply ominous, but it did not matter.
He was probably only nervous because of the magnitude of what he was about to do.
After all, even if Evan was illegitimate, Raph was still about to murder a young master of a marquis’s family.
‘Still… as long as I succeed, I will receive enough money to live the rest of my life without working!’
GULP.
The thought of the money he would receive made him swallow.
After informing the battalion commander, the two separated from the group and entered the dark forest.
* * *
STEP— STEP—
I followed Raph through the forest for quite some time.
Just how far did this fellow intend to take me?
‘We have come far enough by now. Can he not simply get on with it already….’
I had known for quite some time that he had been targeting me from the very beginning.
Then why had I followed him?
‘Haah, I really have no confidence in this.’
That was right.
No matter what happened, I had absolutely no confidence in my ability to lose.
So I merely wished that he would reveal his true intentions as soon as possible.
“Hey.”
“…Yes?”
“Do we still have farther to go?”
“Ah, just a little farther…….”
What a cowardly bastard.
I had grown so frustrated that I even considered making the first move myself.
At that moment, however, I noticed a faint blue light in the distance.
“Huh? Is it over there?”
“Yes? ……What???”
It seemed that he did not know what it was, either….
Nevertheless, the mana reaction I sensed from that direction was real.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
My heart suddenly began pounding wildly.
I could already feel it.
THUD-THUD-THUD—
“W-Wait?! Young Master, wait for me!”
Before I knew it, I had begun running.
The faint light grew clearer and stronger the closer I approached it.
At last, I reached the source of the light.
WHOOOSH—
‘Ah…….’
A sweet fragrance, intoxicating enough to nearly steal my senses, washed over me.
A field of blue flowers glowing with a gentle light stretched out before me.
Whoa, jackpot….
I knew exactly what they were.
“Y-Young Master? What is all this?”
“H-Hehehe! You are asking… what is this?”
TREMBLE.
My entire body shook from the sheer thrill of it.
“This is Mana Herb!”
“…What?!”
It was a plant that contained mana.
After slowly absorbing mana from the soil and the atmosphere over many years, it came to possess mana of exceptionally high purity.
However, humans were incapable of cultivating it, and it was an exceedingly rare Spirit Herb even in the wild.
RUSTLE—
HUM… HUM… HUM….
When I bent down and touched one of the flowers with my finger, a clear and crystalline resonant tone rang out from the jewel-like blue blossom.
At this level, there was no question that it was of the highest quality.
It would fetch virtually any price one cared to name.
‘Wait…….’
The mana concentration in this place could not help but be extraordinary, considering that ‘that’ was sleeping beneath it.
Its influence could not have merely caused monsters to swarm throughout the region.
‘Could there be a Mana Stone Mine underground…?’
I felt it with absolute certainty.
There was one.
One hundred percent.
‘Hehehe! I should conduct a thorough search later.’
Of course, ‘that’ would also be sleeping somewhere beneath the ground, but what did it matter?
It would not awaken for another five years, and a slumber that had continued for hundreds of years would not be shallow enough to end simply because humans broke apart a few stones.
While I allowed my optimistic fantasies to run at full capacity—
SHING—
The sound of metal being drawn interrupted my pleasant contemplation.
‘Oh, right. I completely forgot about that bastard.’
I turned my head toward the sound.
A knight blinded by greed stood there.
Raph had drawn his sword.