TERNLF Vol. 2 Chapter 2 Part 2

“Toa, I’ll leave that one to you.”

“A-Ah, right.”

Resigned, I also tore open a beastkin’s clothes the same way Grassa had.

“Ah.”

“What is it… Wait, I’ll handle that one. You take the other guy instead!”

I dampened the strip of cloth with 【Blessing Water】 and, averting my gaze from the beastkin woman in front of me, handed the rest over to Grassa.

“I mean, who would expect one of them to be a female beastkin…”

There were beastkin whose appearance made it impossible to tell male from female at a glance.

I had heard as much before.

Especially among those with very strong animal traits, they only looked like bipedal beasts to us, and even a specialist would struggle to judge their sex on sight.

“If everyone looked human with just cat ears, bunny ears, or dog ears on top, it would be a lot easier to tell.”

Just as I grumbled, this group of four that had attacked us were almost entirely beast-like, covered in fur from head to toe, making it impossible to tell their gender.

In any case, I made sure the next beastkin I worked on was definitely male before tearing his clothes, wiping away the blood, and forcing a potion down his throat.

With all that fur, I could barely see his wounds or complexion, which made it hard to tell how well he was recovering.

“For now, let’s tie them up.”

If any of them suddenly woke and went berserk, we would be in trouble, so I took a wire-cored rope from storage and bound his wrists and ankles.

With this, even a beastkin, who were stronger than humans, would not be breaking free so easily.

I moved on, and in the same mechanical way bound the other beastkin Grassa had already wiped down and given a potion to.

Judging from how his previously broken bones had mostly mended, those high-grade potions were earning their keep.

“It still feels strange that they heal correctly without splints, but I’m not complaining.”

In my previous world, you had to fix a broken bone in place and shape if you wanted it to heal right.

Here, recovery potions and healing magic somehow removed that need entirely, though I had no idea how the principle worked.

Once I finished tying up the two male beastkin, I tugged on the ropes to make sure they would not slip loose, then turned my back and called out to Grassa.

“Grassa, are you done over there?”

“Yeah, all good. Go ahead and tie this one too. I’m going to help Nikka.”

“Got it.”

Watching Grassa lay the female beastkin down and run over to Nikka, I approached the woman myself.

The clothes I had torn so carelessly earlier had been neatly repaired by Grassa, so there was no issue for me to look now.

“If I am careless with how I tie her, Grassa is going to give me that look again…”

Muttering under my breath, I took another wire-cored rope from storage and secured the female beastkin as well.

Some time later, all four beastkin finally regained consciousness.

However, the two who were not the leader or the woman immediately began thrashing wildly, making it clear that a calm conversation was not in the cards.

So we knocked them out again and used multiple wire-cored ropes to lash them to a nearby tree.

Which left us with the leader-type male and the female beastkin to question.

“So, to summarize, you did not come here to kidnap beastkin. You chased your own kidnapped companion all the way here instead.”

The leader, who introduced himself as Vezzo, nodded as he spoke.

Relieved that he would likely recover under Nikka’s care, I answered him.

“That is what I have been saying from the start.”

“Have you?”

Vezzo looked canine—probably a wolf beastkin—but his memory was so short that he might as well have been a bird beastkin instead.

Not that I knew whether bird beastkin were actually bird-brained.

“Toa, I do not think you actually mentioned Cheki by name.”

“…Did I not? Even so, I definitely said we were not kidnappers. You lot did not seem interested in listening, though.”

“Right, totally.”

Grassa chimed in lightly.

At the moment, we were sitting and talking on chairs I had shaped from earth with magic.

Vezzo and the female beastkin—Lumisola—were restrained, just in case, with manacles formed from the same earth, locking their arms and legs to the chair frames.

It looked a bit like torture furniture, but there were no spikes and no current running through it, so it was not as bad as it seemed.

“I really am sorry about that. We have had several people taken, and everyone is on edge… Especially Vezzo. His little sister was kidnapped about half a year ago.”

Lumisola spoke in a tone full of apology.

“Your sister…”

“I warned her over and over never to go near the outer edges of the forest. And then I fell ill…”

Vezzo spoke through gritted teeth, clearly frustrated.

From what he told us, while he lay bedridden with a serious illness, his sister had gone out to search for medicinal herbs needed for his cure and had been abducted by slavers instead.

To make matters worse, it had been pouring rain that day.

Even for beastkin, whose senses of smell, hearing, and sensitivity to vibrations were all far superior, it had been impossible to notice strangers sneaking into the forest.

No, it was more likely that the slavers had chosen that precise kind of day on purpose.

“Vezzo… It was not your fault.”

“She is right. The only ones to blame are the slavers.”

“I agree as well.”

All three of the women tried to console him.

But for him, that was not the point.

“…Guh…”

He had failed to protect someone he ought to have protected.

And part of that failure, to his mind, lay with him.

Because of that alone, he could not forgive himself.

I kept my mouth shut, choosing not to offer any hollow words of comfort, and simply waited for his heart to settle, until at last the blood flowing from his tightly clenched fists stopped.

“…These kidnappers you mentioned, did they only start showing up recently?”

Judging that Vezzo had calmed down enough, I resumed the discussion.

“The first time was about a year ago. Before that, the only outsiders to enter our forest were the Dwarves.”

“We have fought wars with humans a few times in the past, so ever since then, there has been almost no contact. Both sides agreed it would be better to stay out of each other’s affairs.”

I did not know the details, but before the Kingdom ruled the entire southern half of the continent, there had been several countries around this forest as well.

Back when each of them was still a small nation, none possessed enough military might to even consider picking a fight with the beastkin of the Beast Forest.

However, once the Kingdom began expanding its influence in the south and subjugating those small nations one after another, the northern countries started forming alliances in order to oppose it.

In time, that alliance became a federation of several states and took up the banner of resistance against the Kingdom of Preasole.

From that point on, the federation set its sights on the Beast Forest, a veritable treasure trove of resources.

After all, scattered throughout the great sea of trees were numerous dungeons, and its abundant mana birthed powerful monsters and, in turn, high-grade monster materials.

At first, the federation dealt with the beastkin on equal terms, buying up the resources they harvested from the forest and brought out to sell.

Yet when their war against the Kingdom began to tilt against them, they suddenly marched an army through the neutral buffer zone and into the depths of the forest that had been off-limits until then.

Beastkin were stronger than humans one-on-one, but at the time they lived scattered in countless small communities with no unified fighting force.

The federation army had studied that in advance and simply picked them off piecemeal.

At first, the beastkin suffered defeat after defeat against their overwhelming numbers.

But from there, the once-scattered tribes began to gather, dividing roles according to each race’s specialty and forging a unified beastkin army.

There was no way humans could win against beastkin who had banded together and were fighting in their own forest.

The federation forces suffered one crushing defeat after another, retreating again and again.

In the end, the federation, having bled away much of its national strength, also fell into a disadvantage in its war with the Kingdom and was ultimately destroyed.

Afterwards, the Kingdom absorbed the former federation’s lands.

In order to deal with the remaining resistance there, it concluded a non-aggression pact with the beastkin, and that arrangement had continued to the present day.

“Of course, it is not as though we have no contact at all,” Vezzo added. “Even so, the agreement that no one enters deep into the forest should still be in effect.”

So they had grown complacent as well.

The first to go missing had been a young male beastkin.

He had gone out saying he was going to gather mushrooms that only grew along the forest’s outer edge, and simply never came back.

At the time, few of them believed that his disappearance meant he had been kidnapped.

The reason was that he had constantly talked about wanting to leave the forest and see the outside world.

“The beastkin who live in this forest, unless they are warriors acknowledged by their tribal chief or the Council of Elders that governs our people, are forbidden to leave the forest.”

Apparently, while the borders between human territory and beastkin territory were not drawn with clear lines, both sides did their best not to cross into the other’s lands.

That was simply how things were.

“Even so, there are sometimes young people who hate that custom so much that they run off into the outside world,” Lumisola said.

Youngsters who wanted to escape from a closed-off community.

Stories like that were common enough.

“Has that sort of thing happened a lot in the past?”

When Grassa asked, Vezzo gave a wry smile.

“Every few years, one or two fools break those laws… I cannot say I do not understand them. I once longed for the outside world myself.”

“So why did you decide the girl was kidnapped?”

“Because the second case was a girl living in a village close to human lands.”

The second incident occurred not long after the first man went missing.

On that day, the girl who was later said to have been abducted had gone out with a friend from the same settlement.

The two of them left the village together to pick flowers and medicinal herbs along a riverbank a short distance away.

According to the testimony of the friend who went with her, they arrived at their destination shortly before noon.

They began gathering plants together, and had already collected their target quantity while the sun was still high in the sky.

After deciding to rest for a while before heading back, they sat by the river, watching the fish leap as they chatted idly. And then—

“One of them went into the forest to ‘pick flowers’ in the other sense of the phrase and never came back, huh.”

“That is right. The other girl waited for a while, then went to look for her. When she could not find her anywhere, she panicked and rushed back to the settlement to report it.”

By the time the settlement’s people reached the scene, the sun was already setting.

Everyone there searched the forest for the missing girl.

But no matter where they looked among the trees, they could not find her—

not even much of her scent lingered.

“Some of our trackers can follow a scent even several days old. Even they found nothing.”

“In that situation, it is pretty clear she did not just decide to disappear on her own like the first guy.”

“Of course. We had already confirmed that she had no particular longing for the outside world.”

When volunteers from that settlement contacted other communities, they learned that the circumstances around the first male’s disappearance had actually been similar.

Even if someone had said they wanted to see the outside world, that did not prove they had truly left the forest.

For all they knew, he might have simply been injured somewhere after losing to a beast or monster and become unable to move.

So his settlement had organized a search party as well, yet even their best trackers had lost his trail partway through.

Originally, they should have realized something was wrong right then.

But the beastkin had grown complacent, dulled by years of peace.

“In the end, those two cases never reached the Council of Elders. Because of that, the third incident—my sister being taken—was allowed to happen.”

Three missing people in such a short span was abnormal by any measure.

When, on top of that, two of them had no reason to run away on their own, the beastkin as a whole finally started to move.

But even if they had mobilized, they still had no idea who the kidnappers were.

They did not know where the victims were being taken either.

And without proof that humans were responsible, they could not simply march up to the Kingdom and lodge a complaint.

So instead, they gathered beastkin especially skilled at sensing presences and split them into numerous units, weaving a warning net that covered the entire Beast Forest in the hope of catching whoever slipped in.

“…And we just strolled right into that net,” I muttered.

“That is correct. And then you carried on with suspicious behavior again and again. You cannot seriously expect us not to suspect you.”

“I still wish you would have at least listened before attacking… Anyway, it is our turn now.”

I let out a small sigh and told Vezzo about Cheki’s abduction and how that had led us to this forest.

Of course, I included the part about how there was a high chance the kidnappers were Dwarves.

“Impossible. I have never heard of Dwarves engaging in kidnapping.”

“But it happened.”

As Vezzo and Lumisola sat there, disbelief written all over their faces, Grassa stepped in to press the point.

“For all we know, the ones who took the beastkin might be Dwarves too. I mean, Dwarves are allowed to pass through this forest freely, right?”

“Yes. We do not obstruct their movements. Since the war long ago, when they aided us, we have built a close relationship with the Dwarves.”

During the war between the beastkin and the federation, it had been the Dwarves who supplied weapons and armor to the beastkin.

The Beast Forest lay between the mountain range where the Dwarven kingdom stood and the plains where the federation had once been, serving as a kind of buffer zone.

The Dwarves did not wage direct war against humans, and they had continued conducting trade at designated locations since long ago.

Even so, for the Dwarves, the beastkins were an even more important partner than the humans.

Because the forest the beastkin inhabited brimmed with dungeons and monsters, and the Dwarves constantly needed the resources they produced.

In particular, unlike humans, the beastkin were not very business-minded, which meant the Dwarves could buy similar resources from them for far cheaper than from humans.

For those reasons, Dwarven merchants basically had the right to move freely through the Beast Forest.

“And that right could be abused for slave hunting. We know for a fact that Cheki was taken by Dwarves and brought through this forest.”

“But that child is human, is he not? I cannot believe Dwarves would lay hands on the beastkin.”

“You think they would kidnap humans but somehow draw the line at beastkin?!”

As Vezzo and I argued heatedly over who the culprits might be—

“Um… Excuse me for interrupting.”

Someone tugged lightly on the hem of my clothes.

Nikka had stepped into the conversation.

“I might be overthinking this but…”

“You noticed something, Nikka?”

“Well… Back in the capital, among the people whose injuries I healed, there was a beastkin woman. Do you remember her?”

There was no way I could forget.

It had only been recently that we rescued those slaves who had been sold off by the Blackra Trading Company and, together with Nikka and the others, healed their wounds and restored their stamina.

“I remember her. Her fingers were…”

I caught myself there and corrected my wording so Nikka’s ability would not be exposed.

“She was the girl with the injured hand. The dog-eared one.”

Yes, among the slaves we saved in the noble district, there had been several beastkin.

Most of the beastkin, with their superior physical abilities, had been forced into grueling physical labor.

Among them, those whose appearance was closer to that of humans…

I recalled one of them in particular: a dog-eared woman.

She had been a so-called beast-eared type of beastkin, with little to distinguish her from a human aside from the ears and tail.

“Yes. I was thinking that she might be Mr. Vezzo’s younger sister.”

That possibility certainly existed.

According to the records in the secret ledger, where even slave transactions had been written down, beastkin had occasionally been traded since long ago.

If I remembered correctly, in just the past half year there had been two beastkin names listed.

One of them had been a bear-type beastkin.

Which meant the other, the dog-type beastkin woman, was very likely Vezzo’s sister.

If I remembered her name correctly—

“Lenzia!? Is Lenzia safe!?”

Vezzo shouted.

Right, that beastkin woman had introduced herself as Lenzia.

There was no mistake.

I let out a long breath, then began to explain to the struggling, bound Vezzo about the slaves we had saved.

I told him how the Blackra Trading Company had been secretly dealing in human trafficking, which was outlawed in the Kingdom, as well as various other prohibited goods.

How, after many twists and turns, we had crushed both that organization and its trading partners.

How we had saved as many of the people who had been sold off as we could and how my brother and the members of his faction had taken responsibility for sheltering them.

I glossed over the details of Nikka and the others’ abilities as I spoke.

“Among those you saved…”

“Lenzia was there, was she not? Is my sister safe?”

Vezzo pressed me, his voice taut with impatience, and Nikka answered in a calm tone.

“Lady Lenzia is all right. Lord Toa’s older brother should be watching over her with great care right now.”

“I see. She is safe… Thank goodness.”

I held my tongue on purpose and simply watched as Vezzo rejoiced in his sister’s safety, eyes brimming with tears, and as Lumisola let out a breath of relief.

Thanks to Nikka’s【Skill】, Lenzia’s body had been restored to full health.

But emotional wounds were not something【Resurrection】could heal.

Perhaps due to racial traits, her emotional recovery had been much faster than that of the humans who had suffered the same treatment, yet that did not mean we could relax.

I was no expert when it came to caring for the heart.

So I had entrusted everything to the specialists my brother had gathered using his faction’s influence, and could only pray their efforts would bear fruit.

For now, I focused on reassuring Vezzo.

“The capital still seems to be in an uproar, so I cannot promise it will be right away, but my brother will make sure everyone is safely escorted back to this forest before long.”

“If she is alive, that is enough. I will report this to our chief as well.”

“I am counting on you. And now, about our side of the story…”

Once the matter of the capital was settled, I went into more detail about why we had come all the way to this forest.

After listening, the two beastkin gave their honest impressions.

“Like I said before, I still cannot believe Dwarves would stoop to kidnapping.”

“I cannot imagine that race, who only care about digging holes, making things, and drinking, going out of their way to abduct humans.”

That was quite a harsh assessment, but my own view of Dwarves did not differ much.

Which was exactly why I could not understand why such Dwarves would abduct a traveler like Cheki…

No, that was not entirely true. There was one possibility that came to mind.

“I have been trying to figure out why Cheki was taken, but I just cannot find a decisive reason. I even wondered if they had come to take back the Oath Bracelet.”

The material for that bracelet was Hihiirokane.

It was a rare metal, even to the Dwarves.

Which meant that the bracelet ending up in a human merchant’s hands in the first place might have been some kind of mistake, and the Dwarves abducted Cheki after he bought it in order to retrieve it.

That was one theory I had considered.

But if that were the case, taking only the bracelet would have been enough.

The Oath Bracelet was not a cursed item. It could be taken off.

“In that case, it is more likely the Dwarves were after this Cheki himself, not the bracelet.”

“Probably. It is not as though we know anything about Cheki either. We only happened to be staying at the same inn. Without knowing who he really is, there is no way for us to guess what reason they might have.”

Not to mention, I had not even met Cheki in person.

Right now, instead of dwelling on the reason he had been kidnapped, we needed to focus on rescuing him.

“So that is why you were using strange methods to look for this ‘Mole Tunnel’.”

“Strange… I suppose it might look that way to someone who does not know what they are seeing.”

While Vezzo and I traded those remarks, Lumisola asked with a wry smile:

“So did you manage to find that Mole Tunnel?”

“We have a rough direction, but not the exact location yet. The underground in this forest is full of obstacles.”

“In that case, from here on, we will help you search for this Mole Tunnel.”

“You will?”

“Of course. From what we have heard, there is a chance those Dwarves have betrayed us, kidnapped our kin, and sold them to humans.”

It was only a possibility, but if Dwarves were involved, they could have done it without arousing suspicion among the beastkin.

“We cannot say for certain that Dwarves are behind all of it, but in Cheki’s case, the culprits are almost certainly Dwarves.”

For now, the priority was to capture the ones who had abducted Cheki and bring him back.

And for that, we had gained powerful allies in the beastkin.

“In that case, first let us track down the Mole Tunnel and chase after the culprits.”