"As the price, that is. Our...! Th... thro... throa... our thro..."
Prepared to sacrifice.
The contractors sat gathered in one place with their eyes closed.
"...Throes?"
"What is he even saying..."
Sensing something off, they lifted their heads
and stared at their Guide, who was stammering.
"What are you doing, right now?"
"I-I mean. I have to... say the price..."
"...Guide. Don’t tell me!"
At that,
several contractors flared with anger, eyes blazing.
"Are you suddenly afraid of death now?"
Just a few more words
and the contract would be carried out.
Yet the Guide could not go on from there.
There could only be one reason.
"T-that’s not it!"
"Not it, my ass, damn it!"
Now, at this point—
he must have grown afraid of death.
"Y-you sacrificed other people just fine all this time!"
"But when it’s his turn to sacrifice, he’s too scared to do it, is that it!"
The contractors who had been kneeling in that sublime mood just moments before
shouted in a great fury.
Some even—
Thud!
"This is absurd! If you’re so scared, I’ll do it instead."
As the Guide,
the man who had led them—
Wonjun—was roughly shoved aside as another contractor rose to his feet.
"You made the first contract with the Master and seemed to act for the greater cause, so we called you Guide and followed you... who knew you were such a worthless human."
"I-I told you. That’s not it!"
"I pity the others who died following your orders. Out of the way!"
The other man shoved Wonjun aside
and took his place.
Gazing at the air,
he shouted to their Master, who would be there.
"A contract! The wish is the same. Exterminate that army!"
[The price?]
"Isn’t it obvious! Mine, and everyone here’s..."
The man shouted boldly.
"Ev-everyone’s..."
"...?"
"O-our thro... thro..."
At some point,
he could not continue.
"...Are you not going to finish?"
"M-my thro... Ahem. Guess my throat’s dry. One moment..."
Thinking the reason he couldn’t continue was that his throat was parched,
the man hastily looked around,
grabbed a water bottle beside him, and gulped it down.
Gulp... gulp...
"Haah!"
After draining the bottle,
he spoke with a grave expression.
"The throats of all of us here..."
But
his sentence began to stretch out again.
"Th... thro..."
"Thro...?"
"...I can’t! No, I won’t!"
Suddenly shouting like that,
the man backed away from his spot.
"W-won’t?"
"Damn it, I must’ve been crazy. To try to make a contract like this."
"You! What are you saying!"
"What else would it be but madness!?"
The very person who had shoved aside and lectured the Guide just now shouted, perfectly brazen.
"To hell with humanity’s salvation—I don’t care!"
"...!?"
"In the end, my life is what’s most precious! To offer that up? That’s insanity!"
"How can you say that now! You knew and went along with us!"
"Till now I was crazy. I almost threw away my precious life for nothing."
Prepared to sacrifice,
those who had been praying solemnly—
"Damn it, in the end you’re just afraid of sacrifice!"
"We all agreed to sacrifice—are your lives that precious!?"
That sublime mood collapsed in an instant.
The atmosphere shifted as sharply as a market brawl turning into a fight.
Watching that,
‘S-something’s wrong.’
The Guide,
Wonjun, broke into a cold sweat.
‘I was definitely ready to sacrifice.’
It wasn’t a mistake.
He had always been prepared to offer his life and carry out the [Contract].
Not only he,
but everyone here—even at the cost of their lives—
for the future of humanity,
they had been ready to offer their lives and annihilate that army.
And yet—
‘Now, my life feels too precious?’
"As the price, we offer our lives."
At the very moment he thought it would end if he said those words,
his mind became dominated by
a drive so powerful he had never felt anything like it in his life—
a
‘will to live.’
Therefore,
Wonjun could only be appalled.
"This is impossible...!"
Even before the world fell apart like this,
he had not had such strong attachment to life.
And yet he—
ruining the great work out of fear of death.
Though he keenly felt it himself,
his reason—not his feelings—
kept sounding the alarm: ‘Something is wrong.’
If there was a reason it had become like this,
it was surely—
Clack, clack...
Heavy leather boots with studs
thudded up the stairs of the building.
"You bastards...!"
Turning toward the direction of the sound,
the Guide ground his teeth and shouted.
"What did you do to us...!"
"Huh?"
The soldiers who came up the stairs—
the moment the Legion and the contractors met eyes,
"What do you think."
The Chef at the very front
answered with a bland expression.
"Cooking."
****
Borjin had said it.
The minions the demon sends down to protect its contractors—
they may be numerous, but they aren’t that strong.
‘A demon is a being that contracts, not one that gives freely.’
Those are nothing more than ‘bonus items’ sent down to protect the contractors.
Compared to the main thing, they must be weak.
Indeed, just as he said:
Barghasts, Hell Knights, and the like—
there were monsters stronger than expected,
but aside from those, many of the minions the demon had supposedly sent down for free
were swept away by one cast of Minjae’s magic.
‘...Or is it that Minjae just got too strong?’
It wasn’t only Minjae.
Going through many battles, more than a few squad members had gotten stronger than expected.
If a Squad Leader–grade soldier wanted to, they could leave the Legion and easily found a guild of their own.
Add to that the gear from various military units—
we piled in every piece of equipment specialized for war.
We got too strong.
Those guys weren’t weak, but still...
Anyway!
The real problem when subjugating those contractors
was not those minions that were always lying in wait.
‘It’s the monsters they’ll summon by offering their lives in a moment of crisis.’
The monsters summoned that way are never weak.
Even the Great Chieftain of the Green Manes lost his life to a monster summoned that way.
Even if we’ve brought in and improved gear from multiple military units
and pre-identified the weaknesses of every sort of minion,
we still wouldn’t be able to handle it easily.
Besides...
‘There’s still a lot that snags.’
Those humans over there—
there are too many parts that make it a bit uncomfortable to just let them die.
In that case,
there’s only one method.
"Just make it so they can’t summon, right?"
—...Grk.
When I first said that,
—If there were a way like that, do you think we wouldn’t have done it?
Borjin dismissed my words as absurd nonsense.
—The natives seem to mistake my race’s intelligence for something like wild animals, but that’s not it at all.
"Well, that’s because... you keep growling grk-grk."
—Even a child one week after birth in the tribe knows that preventing the summoning itself would be best!
One week?
I’d heard they grew fast, but can they talk from week one...
—The problem is, it’s impossible to stop that summoning.
"Impossible? Why?"
—At best, ‘stopping’ means physically covering their mouths. You cannot stop their contracts that way.
That—
‘I know from experience.’
The first Demon Contractors we met.
Our squad subdued them in an instant.
We quickly sealed their mouths so they couldn’t pull anything strange.
But
even with his mouth sealed, with nothing but muffled ‘mmph mmph...’ sounds, he proceeded with the contract.
A monster was summoned,
and they ended in a pathetic dust-death.
‘...It didn’t feel great.’
Honestly,
it wasn’t a sight you wanted to see.
—In the end you have to stop them from attempting the contract itself... and I can assert that’s impossible.
We’d talked about this before as well.
—For some reason, the demon’s followers... have conviction.
"Conviction, huh."
—They truly believe what they are doing is right. That it’s justice... grk. I do not know what kind of brainwashing they underwent, but they did not listen even to their own mothers.
"...Hmm."
—Since you have decided to let my race live, I’ll advise you earnestly. It will be more efficient to research how to subjugate the strong foe they will summon. Stopping the summoning... unless you cut their throats before they open their mouths, is absolutely impossible.
At those words,
I looked blandly at Borjin’s face.
He’d fought Demon Contractors
and his race had taken near-extinction damage because of it,
yet he was a survivor of a race that ultimately succeeded in subjugation.
The information he brought was quite useful.
In fact, when I described the monsters I discovered inside,
he told me all about them, even their weaknesses.
‘It matches the information gained by [Chef’s Eyes], and there were even better pieces of intel.’
For the survival of his race,
he had decided to cooperate with us completely.
His advice, like his information, would be quite useful.
I’d intended to respect it to a point, but...
"Hmm. That part’s not it."
—Grk?
At least on this point,
I had to call it out.
"Since you’ve decided to cooperate with our unit, there’s something you need to know."
You say it’s impossible to stop the summoning?
Good grief.
This is why you can’t have a conversation with someone who lacks a soldier’s mindset.
"There’s no such thing as ‘can’t be done.’"
—...?
"You keep trying until it can be done."
Even if something is considered impossible,
giving up because it’s impossible is not the mindset of a soldier.
If you keep at it with grit and stubbornness...
surprisingly often, the ‘impossible’ turns out to be pretty easy.
—Native, I have no idea what you are trying to say. Not at all...
"Well, just watch."
So then,
after I ordered the subjugation operation to the squad through a Guild Message,
"The stream I saw earlier... ah."
I found a brook that led
to the place where the contractors were staying.
Babble, babble...
A brook that didn’t seem to carry much water.
But there were few surviving humans to begin with.
With the water system not functioning properly right now,
this was a quite useful water source.
And at the same time—
‘Those guys are humans who eat and drink, too.’
The only potable water source
used by the humans who had settled near here.
If I started work too close, they might notice.
So I moved as far as I could.
Splash...
I dipped both hands,
scooped some flowing water, and had a taste.
"Kh."
Midwinter brook water.
A chill, refreshing taste skimmed through my stomach.
Water flowing in nature had fine flavor on its own.
But
it was still, in the end, a raw ingredient.
"There’s plenty of room... to make it tastier."
Grin.
Smiling in good spirits,
I lay my hands atop the flowing water.
A while back,
something Minjae said came to mind.
‘Originally, Earth had no mana.’
But
after Doomsday,
mana came to exist in the world,
and it permeates and exists in every little thing.
In the invisible air,
maybe even between the cells in my body,
and—
‘in this water flowing down the brook.’
And
mana has flavor.
What draws out that flavor further is mana cuisine.
The branch of that mana cuisine, precisely, is—
"Elemental Cuisine."
[Skill — Activating ‘Elemental Cuisine’.]
Plunging my hands into the cold water,
I murmured so,
and—
Bzzzzzt...
the flowing brook stilled,
and began to move at my hands’ command.
Thus,
the cooking began.
