AN: Once again I am late, and once again I am sorry

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“...Kale, can you find out what’s in there?”

 

I had no doubt in my mind that the guy paladin was right; Surely some kind of monster or something must have made its home in there. I’d been hoping that the gaping hole in the side of that granary storage was just some leftover damage from when whatever it was had attacked the manager a month ago, but seeing as he’d said that he could hear something coming from there, it seems like that’s definitely not the case.

 

At least we seem to have to discovered it before it found us.

Otherwise, we might have found ourselves in a much more dangerous situation.

 

Kale focused for a moment, his feathers rustling softly in a faint breeze that only they seemed able to feel. I stared at him the whole time expectantly, waiting to hear what it was that we were going to fight, but Kale only shook his head a minute later, his eyes looking the tiniest bit frustrated at something.

 

“...I was able to tell that whatever it is inside was quite large, and I could sense a very minute amount of movement, but I couldn’t seem to find out exactly what it was. I apologize, Saintess.”

 

He looked truly upset that he couldn’t do what I’d asked him to do. If I could've reached high enough then I definitely would have given him consolation head pats right now. …I guess arm pats will just have to do for now.

 

“It’s okay, Kale-”

 

“But perhaps there is a silver lining.”

 

“Oh?”

 

What? Why did he pause for a moment there? And why did he interrupt me just now?

 

“If whatever it is that’s in there isn’t moving very much, it means there’s a chance that it might be incapacitated.”

 

…Oh? Well if that’s true then it’s great, but it doesn’t really add up very well. The guy paladin could hear noises coming from in there, ones that probably aren’t supposed to be there if he decided that he should be warning us all about them. And didn’t Kale himself just say that something was moving around in there?

 

Was he just saying that last part because he didn’t want me to be too disappointed in him or something…?

That’s super cute, but it’s not very helpful right now.

 

“...Well, I guess we’ll just have to go and see for ourselves, huh?”

 

If Kale can’t reliably scout the thing out for us using his wind, then we’ll just have to see what it is with our eyes. We’ve got the drop on it, so I’m sure we’ll be able to take it down. Whatever it is, I doubt it’ll be any more scary than that big boss beet that we just fought, right?

 

~~~

 

So, we got all ready, applying [Benediction] sheilds to everyone and whatever other buffs that people had. Gillene stayed back, far out of harm’s way with the butler at her side to protect her, and the paladins, Kale, and I all slowly crept towards the building. At first, we’d tried to enter through the front door, but something must have been blocking it, because the doors absolutely refused to open. In the end, we were forced to climb in through the oh-so-conspicuous hole, hoping that whatever we’d come there for wasn’t waiting exactly on the other side, but readying ourselves for a fight just in case it was.

 

Buuuut sadly, or I should probably say happily, there was absolutely no fight to be had.

 

From the looks of it, this building was used to house vats of flour. Maaany many vats of flour. Vats that were about the size of a small apartment, big vats of flour. Enough flour to feed an entire bustling town, lots of flour.

 

And one of those vats was clearly making strange sounds, and wriggling around every now and then.

 

We cautiously made our way over to the suspicious vat, climbing up the stairs next to it to peek our heads over the railing and see what was inside. And in there? In the squirming, oddly noisy vat? Do you know what we found?

 

A beet.

A frigging beet.

A big boss beet, just like the one we’d fought in the farming village.

 

For a moment there I panicked and froze up, remembering how terrifyingly tough the last beet had been when we’d encountered it. But then, when I saw that a few seconds had passed and yet the beet still hadn’t done anything, I calmed down a bit, actually taking in the beet’s situation in stunned silence like everyone else was. Yes, there was a beet in the vat, but there was also a strangely gooey, sticky, glue-like concoction in there with it, encasing and trapping the beet inside of it. Occasionally the beet would whine and strain feebly against the concoction, looking like a weak, slightly shriveled baby while it did so, which explained the noise and movement that I was told about. I really couldn’t understand the predicament that it was in, no matter how much I tried. Everything I was seeing just really didn't make any sense.

 

All I knew was that I had to give Kale a quick mental apology for doubting him earlier.

 

“Uh… What the heck is going on here?”

 

I looked at Kale, who could only shake his head back at me, equally as confused as I was, and then at the two paladins. The lady paladin didn’t even look back at me, only scrunching up her face in disgust at what she was looking at, but the guy paladin actually opened his mouth, once again contributing some useful knowledge.

 

“This is a flour vat, Your Holiness. This Mendax Beet seems to be stuck in a particularly poor consistency of dough.”

 

Ohhh… Wow, so this stuff is supposed to be dough? Well I guess that all makes sense, considering that this is supposed to be a granary filled with food and stuff. But still, how crazy. How bad does your dough have to be that it becomes inescapable to a literal monster?!

 

…And you’re telling me the townspeople eat this stuff?

 

“That’s nonsense, Werner. How could this vat have possibly become mixed into dough?”

 

The lady paladin snapped at him, sounding like she’d heard the silliest thing possible. She still hadn’t managed to pull her gaze away from the grossness that was inside the vat though, openly cringing like she was seeing the most disgusting thing ever when the beet began to squirm around again.

 

For his part, though, the guy paladin didn’t seem too bothered by her words.

 

“It’s quite easy to turn Tillet flour into an adhesive if you don’t know how to cook it correctly, if that’s what this is. In poorer places, it’s even used as a component for building, although the structures it makes aren’t particularly considered very strong or long lasting. …But Rayanne is correct, it’s strange that water was able to get into the flour like this. All the other vats are covered, so that nothing can get in.”

 

Hmm, he’s right; Every other big vat nearby this one has a garbage can-like lid over it. There were a few chest height barrels across the way that looked like they weren’t covered, but they seemed to be the only exceptions.

 

“Well if we don’t know, then why don’t we just ask Gillene or the butler about it?”

 

I’d said it thinking it was obvious, but with the way that the guy paladin was staring at me like he’d forgotten that was even an option, I guess it wasn’t as obvious as I’d thought. Or maybe he's just not used to not being the one with all the answers.

 

“Ah… Um… Ahem, yes, I was just about to suggest that very thing, actually. Let me just… go fetch them for you.”

 

Yeah, alright. I get it. I nodded along with the guy paladin’s words, shooing him away, even though it was obvious by his expression that he was embarrassed.

 

~~~

 

Gillene hadn’t really been much help at explaining things, considering that she’d literally never been to these granaries before, but the butler knew enough to explain everything to us. The guy paladin had been right, and the vats did indeed contain Tillet flour. After seeing the state of the dough in the monster beet’s vat, he quickly hurried over to the open barrels across the way, running his hand on the inner sides of one of them before pulling his glove back out and inspecting the chalky residue that had been left on it. He nodded and frowned, and then looked up at the ceiling, his eyes snapping to a few key places before he sighed and came back to us, looking serious and certain.

 

“... It would seem that Turick had activated the emergency rune before his untimely undoing.”

 

He gestured to where the doorway should have been, which now had a large sturdy rock slab in the way, and to several spots on the ceiling, where torched-looking scrolls had seemingly been nailed in.

 

“As the granary manager, he’d been entrusted with a special rune to use in case of intruders or fire. Perhaps he’d activated it in the hopes of protecting the granary from this monster.”

 

Huh… Okay, I get it. So that stone there only showed up because of the emergency rune, which was why we couldn’t open the door, and the scrolls are… What, are they supposed to be some kind of sprinklers, then? That makes sense I guess, if there’s supposed to be some kind of fire suppression system. It totally explains how the flour got watered and everything… except actually, I don’t think it really does.

 

“...But how did the water get in the vat? Why was it open? Wasn’t it supposed to be closed like the others?”

 

I mean, I doubt that this one would have just been open from the beginning for no reason, right? Not with all the stuff still in it, and the manager guy’s body wayyy over there. These boss beets might have some long tentacles, but they certainly couldn’t have been that long, right?

 

“Ah yes, well… This is merely speculation, but I believe I understand what happened here. The Mendax Beet must have wandered into the granary area, chased from its natural habitat and starving for minerals, surprising Turick and causing him to activate the emergency rune. Then, after the monster had finished off Turick, it must have come to this particular building, lured in by the salt reserves that we currently have stocked here.”

 

“...The salt reserves?”

 

I looked at the butler, confused. What salt reserves? The room was clearly filled up with a bunch of flour vats…

 

“Yes, the salt reserves.”

 

The butler wandered back over to the barrels, picking one up with a surprising ease and bringing it over for us to look inside.

 

“As you can see, the water supply must have affected the salt, slowly dissolving it and leaving only this odd powdery residue behind after it evaporated. One of the barrels is completely empty now, so I believe that the monster must have eaten that while the salt was still whole, and then gone looking for more once the other barrels became filled with water. Presumably that must have been the moment that it flung back the top of that particular flour vat and began digging through it looking for more salt, since it knew that this was the room that the salt was kept in. Unfortunate for it that Tillet flour reacts rather quickly when introduced to water… Well, I’m sure that all the thrashing from the monster must have accelerated the process as well.”

 

Uhuh, I see… Really, this butler must be a super sleuth or something, to be able to put all that together. Orrr he just really knows a lot more about what’s going on in this stupid fantasy world than I do.

 

“So the beets like salt, huh? I never would’ve guessed.”

 

“Yes, it’s quite commonly found on the mountain in the forest that the Mendax beets come from. It’s quite a nuisance that this batch of salt has been reduced like it has… We won’t be able to get more for quite a while.”

 

“Oh? We won’t?”

 

This time it was Gillene who replied to the butler’s words, looking like what he’d said didn’t make sense.

 

“I knew that the supplies from the nearby farms had been cut off in several places, but I hadn’t heard any such report about the salt mining operations. Has that, too, suddenly gone wrong?”

 

The butler’s lips pursed, as if he’d just realized that he’d said something that he wasn’t supposed to. Gillene stared at him harshly, as if she wasn’t willing to let the bit of information that he’d just let slip pass by so lightly. The moment that her eyes darted to me, as if she were considering getting me to make him talk, the butler quickly spoke up with a sigh.

 

“No, My Lady… Such measures will not be necessary. I’ll talk. These monster attacks… I’m afraid these unfortunate attacks are all due to the Lord’s actions; The granary, the farms, the salt mines, all of it.”

 

“What-!”

 

“But I promise you, My Lady!”

 

The butler dropped down onto his knees, looking like he was begging for Gillene’s understanding.

“I promise you that what the Lord is doing is for the greater good!”