Return

Roko woke up in his bed in the castle in what he later found out was three days after the raid ended. Apparently he had to undergo a bit of magical surgery to realign his organs again but he was told he should be fine now. And the first thing Roko demanded was to go back to the camp.

 "Hey Roko! Glad to see you're awake and feeling well." Helena said, "Can you not just immediately go right into the deep end again?"

 "I went there for one reason and I haven't done it." Roko growled.

 "What do you think we've been doing? Don't worry, we got you covered."

 "No offense but I don't trust anything until I do it myself."

 "Yeah that's what they figured you'd say." Brook sighed, "So they already made preparations to go back to the orc camp already. Cleared it with Rivera and everything."

 "...Sorry. If I hadn't passed out at the end of everything this wouldn't have been necessary."

 "Did you not see yourself after the raid?" Helena smirked, "You were in no shape to do any searching, believe me. It's fine, I'm sure nothing's changed."

 "Now go on and gather your party." Brook said, "I'm coming along to make sure you're all good. Go on then."

 It took only a short while for Roko and company to return to the now barren orc camp. A completely empty camp with no bodies left around anywhere elven, orc or monstrous. Completely dry with no sign of water anywhere either. An eerily empty sight compared to the absolute pandemonium that Roko last saw it in. Roko was convinced that a random lingering monster they missed was going to ambush him. A paranoia that he slowly pushed away as he searched every room inside the orc's cave. His companions seemed quite comfortable as they all split up to help with the search. Though Roko's work still ended up having some interruptions.

 "Can I help you?" Roko asked as he shuffled through some simple orcish drawers.

 "Can I have my sword back?" Roland asked, irritated.

 Roko sighed as he stood up and pulled the sword off of his hip, "You mean this one?"

 "Yeah. That's MY sword." Roland scowled, "You probably picked it up in the middle of the raid and I'd like it back."

 "Aren't you still holding onto the cursed sword?"

 "Yeah but that's MY sword! You can't just take someone's sword! Especially when it's a named sword! Do you even know her name?! It's-"

 Roko tossed the sword over to Roland who barely managed to catch it in time.

 "There. Happy? Now leave me alone."

 Roland looked down at the sword in his hands and looked a little guilty but evidently not enough to return Roko's only weapon. So he ended up just leaving while grumbling something Roko could only assume was inane. His next interruption was much more pleasant.

 "Umm..." Corissa knocked on the door of the room that Roko was searching, "Roko? May I have a bit of your time?"

 "What is it?" Roko asked as he stood up from looking under the orc beds and turned to the princess.

 "I just...wanted to apologize."

 "Apologize?" Roko replied, confused, "For what?"

 "You told me to pray but I ended up doing something else." Corissa looked down meekly, "I just wanted to apologize for not following your orders."

 Roko scoffed softly. When Corissa said she had something she wanted to talk about, he had figured it was something like this, "There's no need to apologize."

 "Really?"

 "I'm not always right and you don't have to always follow what I say. If anything, I'm glad you figured something out on your own. If it wasn't for you, we'd all be dead now. So I genuinely don't know why you feel the need to apologize to me."

 "I just..." Corissa fidgeted awkwardly, "Didn't want you to hate me."

 "Is that the kind of person I seem to you?"

 "N-No, not at all! It's just..." Corissa looked down, "I felt like it it was necessary."

 "This happen a lot to you in the past?"

 "...Yeah..." Corissa said softly, "I...I've had...friends that get annoyed when I don't listen to them."

 "Were they girls?"

 "There were both."

 "Seems like people just want to control you."

 "That's what my parents said. I don't understand why though."

 "It's just pure jealousy. If they can't have what someone else has, they'll try to control it as if it was theirs."

 "But most of my friends are also royalty. What do I have that they don't have?"

 "Well, I wasn't there but I can almost certainly say it was beauty and attention."

 "Oh...those again..." Corissa muttered.

 "I'm surprised you still don't expect things like this given how prevalent this seems to be in your life."

 "But other people are just as pretty as me right? I mean, Helena, Kaguya and Momo are also really pretty right? I'm not that much prettier than them right?"

 "..."

 "Right?"

 "...So what exactly did you do to power up holy?"

 "Oh, I...don't really know how to describe it." Corissa bit her lip, "I...knew it wasn't prayer. I mean, I don't know what god I would even pray to so you could be right in theory! But...I just didn't feel like praying to a god was the right answer. Once I decided to stop praying and let my...instincts take over, I guess, I ended up discovering a new spell."

 "What spell was it?"

 "Ummm...I don't know if I can actually control it."

 "If it's an offshoot of holy, you've been able to control it without training pretty well so far. Are you really that concerned about it?"

 "Well...I suppose you're right." Corissa nodded, "It's called sanctuary."

 "Sanctuary..." Roko mused.

 "Do you know what this means?" Corissa asked, "Have you already figured out the true nature of this new spell?!"

 "Didn't your experience teach you to not overestimate me?" Roko sighed, "There's some ideas but it's not particularly developed yet and this isn't really the time to work on them right now."

 "R-Right! We're in the middle of a search aren't we?! I'll help you search this room! We need to finish all this today!"

 In the span of a whole afternoon, Roko investigated the entirety of the orc camp from the cave to its huts and with the sun setting on their search, Roko group all reconvened in the orc throne room with the exception of Brook.

 "Right, let's get this meeting started." Helena smiled, "So let's start with what we found. I think we all already know the answer but let's hear it from the man who brought us all here. Roko?"

 Everyone turned to look at Roko. Roko sat there on a crate as he looked back at everyone as he replied, "There is no grimoire here."

 "See?" Roland rolled his eyes, "We told you there was nothing here. Did you think we didn't know what to look for?"

 "No, I just need to look for myself." Roko sighed.

 "Well you did it. Are you happy after wasting all of our time?"

 "Roland, be nice."

 "Oh come on Helena, did we even learn anything from this?"

 "We did." Roko stated.

 "Okay then bucko, care to share with the class?"

 "Does anyone remember what happened the last time we ran into these creatures?"

 "That was all the way back in the Paramnesia Woods wasn't it?" Momo answered.

 "Do you all remember what happened to the grimoire there?"

 "We found a grimoire?" Roland blinked.

 "Have you forgotten already?" Helena sighed, "Roko risked his eyes to get that book out but in the end, it was burned by Aida wasn't it?"

 "With Varis' help, yes." Roko nodded, "Do you understand what that means?"

 "Uhhhh...that the monsters don't depend on the book?" Roland shrugged.

 "Yes." Roko said, surprising Roland with his response, "While the grimoire can be responsible for a lot of this eldritch kind of activity and destroying it can remove most of the immediate monsters, it is not wholly responsible for these monsters meaning these things can operate without an anchor like a book."

 "Did we not already know that?" Roland frowned.

 "It means destroying the book doesn't mean we destroy all the monsters everywhere." Helena explained, "And that means there could be more monsters out there."

 "Or that there are more books out there than the one we found." Kaguya added.

 "Or that the book reformed somewhere." Roko continued, "The real dangerous thing we learned is that activity of this level can be done without a grimoire."

 "This level?" Roland asked.

 "I'm referring to the cultivation of these creatures and the development of their ability to eat magic. As far as we understand, Waur taught these monsters to eat magic and this trait expanded to all other monsters of this type. Even without Waur or the orcs, these monsters still demonstrate this ability and I'm sure this means that this trait has become a natural part of them."

 "Okay...so the book isn't as important than we expected?" Roland asked, confused.

 "No, the book is important." Helena nodded, "We've seen for ourselves what happens when a human gains control of these monsters using a book. The problem is their scale of activity. Did you see how many there were?! There was barely enough room to swing a sword! How were there so many of them?! If there were so many of them hiding around, why don't more people know about them?! Seriously, they should be pouring out of the forests at this point!"

 "If I had to hazard a guess, I'm assuming information regarding these monsters have been suppressed for some reason." Roko sighed, "At least that's the feeling I get whenever I ask Zadkiel."

 "Think it has anything to do with gods?" Momo asked, "I mean, I know there was that whole cult and all but this latest incident has left it pretty clear that some sort of god is backing these things."

 "Depends on how much stock you place into Bedlam's whole shtick." Helena crossed her arms, "I for one could tell there was some sort of force aiding him but how intelligent it was was kind of nebulous. And that only accounts for Bedlam's case. What about the other unexplained monsters?"

 "I think it's fair to say that some sort of god is behind each monster we've encountered." Roko nodded, "As for how intelligent they are or even what they want from us...unless we get a grimoire and start communicating with them ourselves, there's no point in pondering."

 The princesses all nodded in agreement while Roland stood there a bit befuddled and irritated, "Okay so what was the point of all this then? What does any of this have to do with what happened here?"

 Roko sighed, "What I will say then is that at least this god in particular is highly intelligent. It may have not worked directly with the orcs but it still benefited from their evil and when they were presented with trouble, they called in reinforcements from outside the camp to this location to try and squash us."

 "What makes you say that?" Momo asked.

 "You've all looked around the camp. Have you found some sort of breeding ground yet? An area taken over by tentacles where more monsters are being made from the dead?"

 Everyone shook their heads.

 "Exactly. There's no grimoire and no lair meaning these monsters haven't established a base here for themselves. We stumbled into a learning area for them but both the orcs and the location are meaningless to them beyond an interesting experiment."

 "If we're so unimportant to them, then why'd they attack to such an extreme degree?" Roland scowled.

 "Perhaps this isn't even that extreme for them." Roko explained, "Perhaps this all meant a non-zero amount to this god so they spared extra forces to deal with us. Maybe they didn't want to save the orcs so much as deal with us from bothering them again. It's even possible that I'm wrong and this area did mean a lot to this god. Maybe one of the escaping orcs took the grimoire with them when they escaped. We'll never know."

 "I can say for certain no such item escaped the camp."

 "Brook!" Helena cried as the dark elf walked up to them as she removed her mask, "Where have you been?!"

 "Picking through some of the few books left here." Brook sighed, "I would've checked them earlier but everything was kind of wet."

 "What do you mean you're sure no such item escaped the camp?" Roko frowned, "How can you be sure?"

 "What do you think I was doing while everyone was fighting the war?" Brook scoffed, "I went around and secured their only escape route. Not that big a deal. Most of them were elderlies that they were trying to evacuate. Naturally, I secured all their belongings as well. Honestly, if you had told me you were looking for a book, I could've kept an eye out."

 "Was there one then?!" Corissa yelped, "A grimoire! I-It's like a hardcover book. Uhh...no titles. Kind of a single solid color with small subtle embellishments? T-The inside's just full of gibberish!"

 "Nope." Brook shook her head, "Nothing like that among any of the things that I found both then and now."

 "What about the elderlies?" Momo asked, "Last I saw you, you were tying them up against the trees."

 "Ah, they've been captured." Brook sighed, "We figured the orcs wouldn't have much documentation on Waur and his collection of cursed items so we've taken the elder orcs hostage to interrogate them for more details."

 "What are you going to do after you've gotten all the information out of them?" Kaguya smiled, "Are you going to kill them?"

 "Good question." Brook smirked, "We've promised them that they will be let go after we've gotten all we need to know out of them."

 "Are you going to?"

 "Hmm...objectively we don't have any reason not to. They're old, they'd probably die before doing anything worth killing them for."

 "Sounds like there's still considerations to be had." Roko noted.

 "Well, my mom fully intends to just let them go but we've had...one concern made from your little headmaster to kill or imprison them for life."

 "That extreme?" Helena raised an eyebrow, "From little old Zadkiel?"

 "Zadkiel didn't seem all that enthusiastic about it either from what I can tell." Brook shrugged, "Kind of weird really. Roko, what do you think?"

 Everyone turned to Roko expectantly.

 "Why me?" Roko sighed.

 "You are this guy's star pupil are you not?"

 "Since when was I anything even close to that?!"

 "Really? That was the impression I got."

 "I barely know that guy." Roko scowled, "Bastard doesn't tell me anything and just gives me more work."

 "Sounds rough. Anyway, about those orcs?"

 "Let them go." Roko said, "Just because they're prisoners doesn't mean you don't have to treat them ethically."

 "Are you doing this to spite Zadkiel by any chance?"

 "Even if I was, she wouldn't notice." Roko sighed.

 "Yeah, she sounds like a pain." Brook chuckled.

 "Rivera would know more about that than me. I try to avoid that asshole when I can."

 "Isn't she your headmaster?"

 "When was the last time you hung out with your school's principal? Even when you were in school?"

 "I mean...I guess that's true."

 "I think that's true for a lot of people." Helena chuckled, "I mean who actually likes their teachers?"

 "Wait, do you guys not like your teachers?" Corissa blinked, "I thought mine were neat."

 Roko stayed quiet. Brook put her mask back on. Helena just scoffed. Kaguya continued to smile in her always unreadable manner. Momo chuckled as as she replied, "I mean, I like Rokusho sensei."

 "Yeah but should you?" Roko muttered.

 "What?"

 "Nothing." Roko sighed, "At any rate our search here's concluded so we should start getting back to Granreveria before the day gets too late."

 "That's true." Brook nodded, "We should all return soon. Tomorrow's a busy day for you after all."

 "Wait, what?" Roko frowned, "Why?"

 "Because tomorrow, you're going to document any changes and side effects brought on by the cursed objects."

 "...I have to do it?" Roko pointed at himself.

 "Well yeah. You're the leader and all. We need an objective observation and report. Put that extra intelligence to good use too."

 "You're just as bad as Zadkiel."

 "Let's be honest, you were going to do that anyway."