Translated by CadmarLegend

2/3 chapters

Chapter 256 - Survivors

"Is this about right, nii-san? Are there any more dog people left in the mine?"

"...... There is a chance. Maybe some of them are still alive, but, well, that's not a problem. I'll station a few Balt knights when I get the mine up and running again, just in case. If there aren't too many, that should do the trick."

"I see. Then I guess there will be no problem. Anyway, will we now have a steady supply of iron? That's good. Hmm...? It's a lot noisier over there."

"Yeah? Ah, I can hear it. What's going on?"

　Baito-nii and I quickly hunted down the mamono "dog people" who had made a home in the mine.

　We left poisoned meat near the entrance to the mine, and the dog people brought it back and ate it with their entire pack.

　In no time at all, they had a mass food poisoning outbreak in the herd.

　Even the strange creatures known as "dog people" could not do anything about being poisoned.

　After a few days, no more of them came out of the tunnels, and when we went inside to investigate, we found their dead bodies lying all over the place.

　After their extermination, we finally managed to get all the corpses out of the tunnels.

　As I watched, we were discussing a policy to get the mine up and running again.

　But then, there was a slight buzz in the air.

　We wondered what was wrong, but it seemed that one of the dead dog people we had taken out of the mine was still alive.

　Perhaps it had been in a state of suspended animation and had come back to life.

　It crawled out of the pile of corpses, pushing other corpses out of the way.

"Everybody, get back," I said, "I'll deal with it if it's an undead or something."

　I called out to the people around me who had just seen the survivor.

　To be frank, I don't know the conditions under which undead become undead, but there is always a chance.

　Well, I think it's safe to say that there are no corpses rotting around us.

"Ku, kuun."

　A survivor emerges from a pile of dog-men carcasses.

　The people around me watch its movements.

　I, who had stepped forward, took out my Holy Sword, Grand Barca, from its sheath at my waist and held it in front of my body.

　I was ready to intercept any attack that came my way.

　The dogman cried out in front of me.

　Like a weak puppy, his body shook and quivered as he lay on his belly on the ground, as if in a prone position, and he cried out with a coo.

　The other creatures had blackish fur, but this one had a whitish color.

　The dogman was a bipedal dog-like mamono, but when it lay face down on the ground, it looked like an ordinary dog.

　His entire body was covered with white fur, and his head was covered with dog ears.

　However, unlike an ordinary dog, it was wearing a waist minnow-like garment made from goat fur, which gave it a sense of intelligence that was different from that of a dog.

　I am not sure if it needs clothes when it has hair all over its body, though.

"Coon, coon." (TLN: Dog SFX)

　It could be surprisingly cute.

　I thought so for a moment when I saw such a thing.

　But then I also thought that I should kill it as soon as possible before it does something strange.

　I finished observing the surviving dog person, I moved the holy sword in my hand and was about to slash at them.

　But then, I caught a glimpse of an ornament held by the mamono.

　I was interested in it.

　I stopped the movement of the holy sword just before I was about to swing it down, and while maintaining my posture, I told Baito-nii something.

"Nii-san. I want to check out that survivor. May I ask you to help me catch him?"

"Nn? You want to catch that guy alive? All right, hold on a minute. Hey, you guys, seize that guy. Don't kill him."

　My brother called out to the knights around him.

　Then they surrounded the area to prevent the dog from escaping and secured the prone dog-man.

　※　※　※

"I knew it. This white dog might be a different mutation from the other dog people."

　I was examining the dog person we had captured.

　There was no one by my side.

　My brother and his knights were already heading back into the cave to check for any other survivors.

　Meanwhile, I stayed outside to check on the dogman we had captured.

　Unsurprisingly, I found something.

　I found out that this dog-man had slightly different characteristics from the usual ones.

　It might have something to do with the fact that his fur color is different from other dog people.

　Perhaps this dog-man was a different species within the dog-people family.

　It was my hypothesis that he was not born with white hair by mutation, but that there existed a race of white dog people that was different from the black dog people, and that for some reason the white was mixed in with the black.

　And perhaps I am not wrong.

　My basis for that belief is that this guy survived.

　Perhaps, this dog-man was the lowest rank among his people, and he was not given enough food.

　He was much leaner and smaller than the other dog people who had died from eating poisoned meat.

　The white-furred dog man was left out of the pack, even though it was believed the dog people were highly-communicative creatures.

　You could even put this type of story as an analogy to the "Ugly Duckling" folktale.

　But this is what helped the dog man survive.

　Because he was the last to eat the poisonous food, he did not eat the meat after seeing his companions dying.

　It must have gotten carried along with the other corpses because it was too hungry to move, also looking dead.

　However, there was another reason why this dog-man caught my attention.

　It was in the ornaments he carried.

　The dog people were not very smart, but they seemed to have a habit of decorating themselves.

　They made simple collars and other ornaments from found iron alongside other things and put them around their necks.

　And it was the same with this particular dog-man.

　Unlike the others, though, his collar was not made of iron.

　The collar worn by the dog-man — it was made of silver.

　Neither Baito-nii nor Payne had told me that silver could be mined from the mine.

　It is possible that this silver was picked up elsewhere and processed into a collar.

　However, as far as I could tell, none of the other dog people's collars were made of silver.

　So, I noticed this and captured the white dogman.

　And then, after a while, I examined the dog person who had woken up and found out more stuff.

　The main thing was... this creature could use a spell to turn iron into silver.

　In this way, I succeeded in obtaining a mamono that could use alchemy to turn iron into silver.