"Mom, I'm hungry..." His finely woven silk clothes were caked with dust and grime now. The little boy reached out with a filthy little hand and tugged at the adult beside him.
"Be good, just bear with it a little longer. Daddy's gone hunting — we'll have food soon."
The gaunt woman stroked the child's head, glancing around at their surroundings.
"Hey! What are you looking at? This is mine."
A ragged, beggar-like man clutched a small lump of moldy black bread, gnawing at it.
Inside the crude wooden shelter, a few refugees pointed and whispered about the destitute noblewoman and her son.
"I thought all the royals and nobles at the capital were already dead. Didn't expect to find a living noble here."
"Nobles? The Kingdom of Ert is gone! They're no different from the rest of us now! We'd be better off figuring out how to find food around this godforsaken jungle."
"Yeah. If we don't find food soon, we might..."
A man, skin and bones, watched the other equally starved, half-dead figures slumped beneath the wooden shelter, and swallowed hard.
With the kingdom destroyed and no means of transport left, the refugees had no choice but to flee on foot. The other kingdoms near Ert were all quite far away — even a carriage traveling through the night would take several days to reach them.
For people who had lost everything, food had become the single greatest threat to their survival.
"Why would Gaderia up in the Northern territories send the Demon Race to destroy our kingdom? There are so many nations in the Central Lands — why did the bad luck have to fall on us?"
"Damned Demon Race — they should all be wiped out! I'll never live under the same sky as them! I'll make them pay this debt, I swear it!"
"Oh, please. Who do you think you are? A knight of the Empire? A Mage of the Mage Association? The Hero? There's no way anyone could beat a monster like that."
"Why hasn't a single merchant passed through? All that secret stash of money I kept on me before we fled, and nowhere to spend it... eh, wait — good thing my wife didn't hear that."
The mood hung low, tinged with chaos.
A sturdily built man in a suit led three outsiders into the refugee camp.
His suit was already worn and shabby, but the once-noble man kept his head held high as he introduced the place to the three newcomers.
"This is where the last survivors of the Kingdom of Ert have gathered. Though I must say, what a surprise — never did I expect to run into Lord Rolwen, famed among Ert's mercenaries."
In the Kingdom of Ert, Demon Hunters were more or less synonymous with mercenaries.
"I can hardly believe it. I was gone only a short while, and the kingdom's already been destroyed? Were Squad Three and Squad Four — the ones left behind — wiped out by the Demon Race too?"
Rolwen's fists clenched tight; anger surged through him at the deaths of his brothers in Squad Three.
Timmy said nothing, his eyes betraying a deep sorrow.
"Yes. It all happened in a single night. If those Demons calling themselves Gaderia hadn't left in such a hurry, there might not have been any survivors at all."
The man in the tattered suit sighed. "I wouldn't recommend heading to the kingdom's ruins right now. The Demons who destroyed it might still be lingering there."
"Dad!"
The little boy ran over excitedly. Several gazes followed him, landing on the man in the tattered suit — and on the chicken in his hands.
Nanoda had originally just wanted to use a spell to track down a delicious roast chicken to satisfy a craving.
Instead, she'd stumbled — quite by accident — onto a refugee out hunting, and the two of them had simply decided to travel together.
"Since we found this food together, let's share it. I'd appreciate it if you all could keep an eye on things while I prepare it."
The man led the child toward their "home."
It was a crude structure of wood, roofed with a few thick leaves — little more than a doghouse of a shack.
"Such a shame — it's a rooster. If only it were a hen."
With no stable source of food, how long could a single chicken really last them? And what about the other refugees, eyeing them just as hungrily — might they do something rash, resentful of the man's former life of nobility?
The one thing the man in the suit could take comfort in was that Rolwen, the strongest fighter in all of Ert, was right here.
"Looks like everyone here is desperate for food."
Timmy's offhand remark struck a chord with Nanoda, and she suddenly wanted to try an experiment.
"Wait, hold off on cooking that chicken. I might have an idea."
The man in the tattered suit glanced at Rolwen. Seeing him nod, he lowered the short blade he'd rested against the rooster's neck and, with obvious reluctance, handed the bird over to Nanoda.
Nanoda began drawing in the ambient Mana around her, converting it into her own; a pillar of Mana steadily swelled around her.
She then drew a magic circle on the ground and set the rooster down in the middle of it.
The spell activated!
The rooster, its comb standing tall and red, began pacing back and forth within the magic circle, its rear end wiggling non-stop.
As its pacing quickened, it finally let out a shrill, ringing crow.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!"
Something white appeared at the rooster's rear.
With a soft plop, a round little object dropped out from beneath it.
The rooster collapsed where it stood, legs tucked beneath it, motionless.
"What... is that?"
Rolwen, looking faintly disgusted, picked up the thing that had fallen out from under the rooster. His eyes went wide with disbelief. "An egg? It laid an egg?!"
"Good heavens!" the noble couple exclaimed together, while the little boy asked, wide-eyed with curiosity, "What is it?"
"Magic that makes a rooster lay eggs."
Nanoda had simply forgotten, until now, to ever try out this so-called legend-class spell.
This experiment had gone far better than she'd expected.
Not wanting to waste the Mana she'd already gathered, Nanoda cast the spell a second time.
The rooster jolted upright as though struck by lightning, resumed its pacing, and then, with another long crow, laid a big white egg.
"One more time."
A third egg. A fourth. A fifth.
On and on the spell went, and on and on came the eggs.
The rooster seemed tireless, laying egg after egg.
"Hey! Am I seeing things? Why won't this chicken stop laying eggs?"
"With a comb that bright red — turns out it's a hen after all?"
"Whoa, look closely at its face. Doesn't it look like it's about to pass out?"
"Good grief, there's practically a whole basket of eggs now. Brothers, should we swallow our pride and go ask for a few?"
Nanoda watched the rooster keep laying eggs, a faint, curious smile playing on her lips.
This Magic that makes a rooster lay eggs seemed to have glitched somehow — the spell kept firing, and the rooster kept laying.
It was, without question, the ultimate spell for tormenting roosters.
As Rolwen watched the eggs pile up, he suddenly realized the refugees might never go hungry again.
As for Nanoda, her reasons were twofold: partly to test out the spell, and partly to win over the goodwill of these people — fed false impressions of her kind — before she revealed her true identity as one of Gaderia's own.
Atop what had once been called the Kingdom of Ert, now nothing but ruins—
Revolte picked up the glowing crystal lying on the ground.
A moment later, an image flickered into being.
Schlacht, his mismatched black-and-white eyes opening wide, spoke in a voice heavy with gravity: "Get ready. It's coming."
____
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