Is this just the male lead’s sense of camaraderie?
‘...Or is this just another romance novel trope?’
But if it was a romance trope, the situation wasn’t exactly romantic...
— If you were in hell, I’d follow you there.
Now that was a proper romantic line.
— If you were in a sewer, I’d go down there with you.
— If you were at the bottom of the ocean, I’d sink right alongside you.
— If you were in a blazing inferno, I’d walk into the flames with you.
All of those would be fitting for a romance novel.
— If you were in military prison, I’d go there with you.
...This isn’t romantic at all. Why the hell was prison even showing up in a romance novel? Was this some kind of joke?
Anyway, I dropped my ridiculous thoughts about whether this was a romance development. The answer was too obvious.
“Just give me a few days. Before I end up in prison, I’ll take care of everything.”
I did have a trump card that could get me out of this mess.
I hadn’t wanted to go this far, but when I saw Rosan raising his hand to hit Aquila, my brain had just... snapped.
Relying on Ishina to play the mastermind role would take too long. It was better if I handled this directly.
Still, I was grateful that Aquila hadn’t stopped me or doubted me in that moment. I smiled at him.
“You probably didn’t even understand what I meant earlier, but you held back well.”
But his response caught me off guard.
“I understood just fine.”
“...Huh?”
“I could tell from your expression that you had a plan.”
“...Oh.”
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Back when we had been stuck in that black magician’s house, dodging all sorts of death traps together, I’d realized that Aquila understood me better than I thought.
And apparently, the same was true the other way around.
There was always something satisfying about realizing that someone else understood you as well as you understood them.
I grinned and lightly patted his arm.
“Wow, since when did you start knowing me so well?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you the same thing?”
“Hmm... I dunno. But I guess it doesn’t even matter at this point, considering how many times we’ve nearly died together.”
Aquila watched me for a moment, then did something rare—he smiled back.
He was always so expressionless that it was weirdly disarming.
“By the way, Salvia,” he said, “shouldn’t you be dealing with Dalin right about now?”
“—Oh, crap! That little shit—!”
***
Aquila watched as Salvia charged off, muttering something about destroying Dalin.
A slight smile lingered on his lips.
Her coral-colored hair, bouncing up and down as she ran, reminded him of a small fox’s tail.
"Since when did you start knowing me so well?"
He tilted his head slightly at the memory of her words.
“...Good question. When did I start knowing you this well?”
But his expression soon returned to its usual blankness.
Then, as if speaking to someone unseen, he called out,
“You can come out now.”
In response, Ishina slowly emerged from behind a bush.
His green hair was dotted with leaves, blending in so well that he almost looked like part of the scenery. As he stood up, he started plucking them out with an exasperated look.
“...I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.”
“What were you doing, then?” Aquila asked, his tone indifferent.
“I just knew you two came here often. And considering the way things have been lately, I figured if I left you alone, something was bound to explode.”
Ishina flashed his usual friendly smile, but there was an edge to it.
Aquila, however, wasn’t done. His voice hardened as he spoke again.
“Karon. You can come out too.”
The moment he said that, Karon cheerfully popped his head out from the bush next to Ishina’s.
“Hehe, you caught me!”
“...Why are you here?”
“I thought it looked fun watching Ishina hide, so I decided to copy him!”
“...Ishina, you could have stopped him.”
“Oh, please.” Ishina sighed. “Do I look like someone who could stop him from doing something stupid?”
Aquila ignored their antics and got straight to the point. His gaze was sharp.
“Did you two hear what just happened? Salvia got caught with a black magic artifact. By Rosan.”
“Wait, what?!”
Ishina immediately grabbed his forehead like he had just developed a migraine.
Aquila, as usual, didn’t react and continued,
“Salvia says she has a plan, but I have no intention of leaving Rosan alone.”
Karon, who didn’t even understand the full context, still nodded seriously.
“So... Rosan’s bullying Salvia, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then we need revenge!”
Karon clenched his fist, completely fired up.
Watching him, Aquila nodded in approval, as if they were having a very serious tactical discussion.
Meanwhile, standing between them, Ishina let out a defeated sigh and muttered,
“...She’s really something else. First, it was an illegal contract. Now it’s a black magic artifact. How does she always manage to break rules in so many different ways?”
***
“But Ishina, sir, do you happen to have some kind of plan?”
“What exactly do you expect from me...?”
I tried to pry for any information, just in case, but Ishina never revealed a thing. That was just how a proper hidden mastermind should behave.
Still, I had my own plan, so whatever he was scheming didn’t really matter to me. I headed straight to the women’s barracks and lay down.
“Hm.”
Lately, I had been spending most of my time just lying around in my quarters.
After that incident, Rosan couldn’t hold back his anger and immediately filed a report. The next day, I was summoned to the company commander’s office.
No matter how much I denied it, the company commander would definitely have believed Rosan’s claim that “Salvia was in possession of a black magic artifact.”
Because at the end of the day, Rosan had the higher rank.
That day, the commander didn’t yell at me or hand out any immediate punishment. Instead, he ordered me to stay put in the barracks.
He said I’d be notified once the disciplinary results were finalized. Military prison was already confirmed, but the real question was for how many days.
‘Originally, Rosan threatened to request a full inspection of all the soldiers’ lockers.’
But in the end, no search was actually carried out.
Not that I had anything else to get caught with, but still, avoiding the hassle was a relief.
And contrary to my expectations, Rosan never once came to bother me during my confinement.
So in a way, these past few days had been... surprisingly peaceful.
“Ugh, I’m so bored....”
I waved my hands around lazily from where I lay, then noticed a book nearby and dragged it toward me.
It was a military law book.
A few days ago, Dalin had come to me, saying, “Salvia, sir! I’ll find a way to prevent your imprisonment!” and had brought this book.
Then she read one line from the first chapter, gave up completely, and left it here.
“...Sigh.”
After reading so many books about monsters lately, just looking at text made me nauseous.
But sitting around doing nothing was even worse, so I decided to at least skim through it.
‘Who the hell reads military law books for fun? Other than Winter, anyway....’
As expected, all the legal jargon was a pain to decipher. So instead of actually reading, I just absentmindedly flipped through the 600-page tome.
At some point, I reached a blank page—the book must have ended.
I flipped through a few more empty pages when suddenly...
“...Huh?”
There was a folded piece of paper tucked between them.
I had no idea what it was, but I pulled it out and unfolded it.
It looked like a full-sized sheet of paper that had been folded into a smaller note.
And when I finally opened it—
“Wait, this is...?”
‘However, the author has found no visible signs of spontaneous monster birth.’
‘Monsters appear randomly, and there seem to be no patterns regarding the time or location of their emergence.’
It was exactly the information I had been searching for—notes about naturally occurring monsters!
‘What the hell is this doing here?’
I had no idea who had folded this up and stuck it in this book, but I hurriedly read on.
‘All naturally occurring monsters appear outside the empire’s borders.’
‘Among the Border Defense Army soldiers, I was able to find thirteen individuals who had personally witnessed a case of natural monster birth.’
‘This suggests that natural monster births are fairly common.’
‘However, an interesting point to note—
‘When the hetero sapiens still inhabited these lands, there were no recorded instances of naturally occurring monsters.’
‘It is possible that these records simply do not exist, but it could also mean that natural monster births only began recently.’
‘More research is needed to determine the truth.’
‘So monsters only started appearing naturally after the hetero sapiens were incorporated into the empire?’
Why?
Did monsters form from evil energy?
Had the empire itself been corrupting over time?
Of course, no matter what theories I came up with, I had no way to verify anything from inside the Border Defense Army.
And then, another thought suddenly hit me.
‘Who the hell put this note here?’
No one in this army reads military law books.
The only person who might bother was Winter—
...Wait, no.
There was one more person I knew who had voluntarily read this book before.