* * *
In the end, I headed to the eastern forest late at night with Brownie.
Securing visibility in the darkness with just a single torch was difficult….
“Light it up more. If our Chihuahua trips and gets hurt, are you going to take responsibility? Do you even know how important she is to our dungeon?”
“For a measly 100 eon, aren’t you asking for too much!?”
“Ah, whatever, whatever! Do you think fairies don’t have a job shortage? There are plenty of fire fairies willing to light the way even without you! If you’ve got complaints, I’ll swap you out for someone else!”
“Who said I don’t want to? I was just adjusting it so her eyes wouldn’t hurt!”
I hired a low-ranking fire fairy for 100 eon per hour.
The fist-sized fire fairy circled around us, brightly illuminating the area, so seeing ahead wasn’t a big problem.
It was just a bit noisy.
“Do we really have to… go meet the monster tonight?”
“While we’re at it, we should handle it quickly! If we dawdle and the humans kill it first, what then?”
I regretted bringing it up, only to get scolded more by Brownie.
“Especially that one with the eyes of someone who’s seen it all! He’s still in his prime, yet his eyes are dull and he looks completely unmotivated—I don’t like him one bit.”
You’re talking about Ragner, right?
He might have a slightly sleepy look, but it wasn’t that bad….
“But is it really all right? What if it doesn’t recognize me and attacks…?”
“I told you, there’s nothing to worry about! Attacking you is the same as attacking the Demon King. Any monster in its right mind will recognize and honor you!”
But… to be in your right mind, you first need a head, don’t you? That one doesn’t have a head….
Finally, we arrived at the place where we had encountered the Dullahan.
I really didn’t want to do something this dangerous. Coming to a forest where a dangerous monster roams at midnight with no one to protect me.
No, pull yourself together.
What’s the use of lamenting what’s already happened?
Since it’s come to this, like Brownie said, I’m going to scout the Dullahan and bring it back no matter what.
That was when, after waiting for quite a while.
Clank, clank.
The heavy sound of armor I had heard during the day came from afar.
“It’s coming.”
“Oh!”
Brownie spun toward the direction of the sound and let out an exclamation mixed with joy.
“Huh?”
Then it tilted its head and said something ominous.
“That was it?”
“I told you. A headless knight.”
“I thought it was a zombie or a lich when you said undead monster. I didn’t think it was a Dullahan….”
Come to think of it, Brownie had gone into a frenzy after hearing only that I’d met a strong undead monster.
It hadn’t even heard the full explanation that the monster was a Dullahan.
“Why are you reacting like that? Is there a reason a Dullahan won’t work!?”
“This is a bit tricky.”
“Wh, what? Why are you being so scary….”
“Let’s step aside for a moment first.”
Brownie pointed to a distant spot and zipped away, and I hurriedly followed.
“Um… there’s a problem.”
“I walked an hour to get here in the middle of the night without sleep. To go back, I have to walk another hour. I spent 200 eon too! If all of this turns out to have been meaningless, I’ll be so bitter I won’t be able to sleep.”
I have to wake up early tomorrow and walk another hour to go to work!
The dungeon was nice because it was practically remote work…. Ahh, the sorrow of a commuting office worker.
It was a hell of my own choosing, so I had no right to complain, but still.
“Tell me quickly. Can’t we scout the Dullahan?”
“It’s not that. We just need to do some prep work first.”
“Prep work?”
Brownie crossed its arms and spoke in a troubled voice.
“Do you know how undead monsters come into being?”
“Um… skeletons are undead monsters too, right?”
“Yes.”
“They die and come back to life.”
“Correct. When demonic energy settles into the corpse of a person or animal, it becomes a monster.”
Sometimes the skeletons creeped me out when they described the graveyard as their hometown. Especially since I remembered there were plenty of graves near where the temple was being built north of the village.
Maybe some of our skeletons came from there.
“Dullahans are the same. When demonic energy settles into the corpse of a dead person—specifically a knight or swordsman who wielded a blade—it is born. In particular, the more outstanding one’s combat skill was in life, the higher the chance of becoming a Dullahan. Ah, and of course, the corpse must be missing its head.”
“I see….”
Then since they were skilled before becoming a monster, they’d be skilled after becoming one too, right?
If I could somehow bring it to the dungeon, it was certain to become an elite employee.
“Unlike ordinary monsters, Dullahans develop a clear sense of purpose after becoming monsters. Namely, they wander in search of their head.”
It felt like listening to a scary story, and I swallowed hard.
As if on cue, the fire fairy seemed to be deliberately building the mood, spotlighting only Brownie’s face, making it even eerier.
“So that means….”
“It means it can’t communicate until it finds its head.”
“Ugh.”
Find its severed head!? How am I supposed to do that?
I rubbed my goosebump-covered arms and tried to calm down.
“I can’t do it! Absolutely not!”
“Why? This might actually be better for us! Once we find its head, it’ll listen to us well! We can work it to the bone for an absurdly low wage!”
“Even so… a corpse… a head… ugh.”
A severed head is a severed head even without my glasses. Gaussian filtering doesn’t work on that!
“Chihuahua, are you going to be that weak?”
“Fine, say we find it! How exactly are we supposed to find it?”
Surely we weren’t going to dig up every grave one by one?
I was just barely getting friendly with the villagers through my restaurant part-time job—if I got caught digging up graves, I might be banned from the village.
Ragner might even come to execute me, saying I’d finally shown my true colors.
“The clues are already all there. First, isn’t it strange that a monster as strong as a Dullahan is wandering inside an area firmly protected by the barrier?”
“Ruadis said the same thing—that it was strange. She said especially for undead, since they have bad compatibility with barriers, it should be even more difficult.”
“There’s no need to overthink it. It’s because the monster was naturally born inside the barrier. Which means there was never any need to break through the barrier in the first place.”
“Ooooh….”
“Another thing. Dullahans have a strong obsession with their lost head. That’s why it keeps circling near its head.”
“Then… there’s a high chance it’s somewhere in this forest?”
“Exactly!”
Somewhere in the eastern forest of the village, there was a severed head…. Just imagining it sent chills down my spine.
Once I became conscious of it, even a head-sized rock made me flinch.
“Let’s find it quickly.”
“…….”
“We can just search around the Dullahan’s patrol range. Whether you call it a twist of fate, the Dullahan circles near its own head but can’t find it directly. Because it has no eyes, so it can’t recognize it!”
That made sense—the monster had been spotted two weeks ago. Even walking while looking only at the ground, it should have found it by now, but it couldn’t because it had no eyes.
“It’ll take a long time to find, won’t it? Ah, an hour just passed.”
The fire fairy chattered in an excited voice.
Well… thanks to that, I didn’t need a watch.
After that, though terrified, I chased after the Dullahan with the single-minded determination to bring an elite employee to the dungeon, searching for the severed head.
“Two hours passed.”
“Haa…. Is this really possible?”
“You’ve only been searching for an hour and you’re already whining?”
“I can’t help it. The area the fire fairy lights up only reaches so far.”
The surroundings were too dark, making the search difficult, and moving cautiously to avoid being noticed by the Dullahan rapidly accumulated mental fatigue.
If I had my way, I wanted to go directly to the Dullahan and ask for its cooperation, but Brownie stopped me.
If I made a wrong move, it might refuse to let us go until its head was found….
“Still, it’s not a cunning one.”
“Why?”
“At least it doesn’t pull the bizarre stunt of cutting off someone else’s head and putting it on its own shoulders, right?”
“…What?”
As the only human with a head here, I couldn’t help but be alarmed.
‘You should have told me that from the start!’
I reflexively clutched my neck and glared at Brownie with all my resentment.
“That’s why I’m saying you’re safe. You’re properly wearing that around your neck too. Ah, is there any more clues? Its roaming range is too wide.”
That was when it happened.
Something glinted among the dense bushes in the distance.
Something faintly reflecting the light cast by the fire fairy came into view.
