[V10C23] Conflicts of a Harpy who Wishes to be Human
Translated by Jodas 10: A Job for a Con ManFlying with the Magical Flying Device, Tia paid careful attention not to let her altitude get too high as she closed in on the Wedge Tower. With her excellent night vision, Tia could already spot the silhouettes of several monsters flying near the Wedge Tower.
She tried to count them. At times like this, instead of counting them individually, it was best to memorize the size of a group of ten, then count how many groups of that size there were. Sevil taught her that.
(A flock of Eyeball Birds? No, wait, I think I see some other Monsters mixed in with the Eyeball Birds. There’s about three groups of ten… I think it might be better if I go on foot from here.)
Just to be safe, she kept the shorter leaping wings deployed. While Tia’s Magical Flying Device could switch between flying mode and leaping mode, if she wanted to fly for any real distance she would have to jump high up in leaping mode, then switch to the flying wings midair.
Thus, she developed a habit of keeping the leaping wings at the ready.
Even without that, leaping mode was handy for evasion and as a means of getting around itself.
Both in counting and using devices, she’d become much more competent than she was before.
However, Tia instinctively knew that such developments were not necessarily good for a Monster like her.
(First, to find the secret passage Kai used…)
Tia wandered around to the north side of the Wedge Tower.
The Third Spire: Water Bubble was located on the far end of the Wedge Tower from the gate. On a map, that would be the north end. Directly below it lied the underground room where Tia was held captive.
According to Sevil, that underground room had to have been connected to all sorts of places. The First Spire: White Smoke and the cabin in the gardens to the east, for instance. That said, both of those are within the Wedge Tower’s campus. They probably weren’t the way Kai used to get in.
(The way Kai got out from the Wedge Tower…)
Flying away, swimming through the drainage pipes… She had a feeling it was neither of those.
Kai wasn’t a mage, so he couldn’t use magic. She believed that part wasn’t a lie.
But Kai had the Witch with him.
Tia could not comprehend the Witch’s powers. But something told her they weren’t too dissimilar to the earth-attribute magecraft humans used.
Kai had access to that power. Therefore, when running away, she assumed Kai would elect to travel on — or perhaps under — the ground.
(He would make a path underground, then dig a hole that led outside… And he would have picked a place people wouldn’t notice.)
And it just so happened that there was a small copse of trees to the north of the Wedge Tower.
Tia turned her attention towards there and listened in closely. Her honed Harpy ears picked up the sound of an unusual wind current.
She pulled one of the candies that let her turn back into a Harpy from her pocket.
After removing her shirt and shoes then strapping the Magical Flying Device back onto her bare torso, she stuck the candy into her mouth.
Her girlish arms rended apart, white feathers sprouting out from inside. Her human feet changed into massive talons.
Now back in Harpy form, Tia did not fly, but instead sang in a faint voice. This was a song to plead for the support of lesser wind spirits.
(Give me some power, just a little bit, okay?)
Wind spirits enjoyed songs. A Harpy’s singing, with all the mana it contained, was apparently an exceptionally good offering for them.
As if excited, weak and invisible wind spirits rustled Tia’s white hair as they flew off in a loop around that copse of trees.
Eventually, those winds gathered at a single spot. The faint breeze kicked up the leaves off of the ground, sending them dancing into the air. The ground beneath showed signs of having been disturbed. Wiping off the top layer of dirt exposed a wooden plank. This plank was a hatch, perhaps. She slid aside the plank, and behind it was a staircase leading underground. This staircase of hard-packed dirt must have been made with magic.
Tia set the plank back down, then turned her eyes back towards the Wedge Tower.
Her Harpy hearing picked up a familiar cry.
“Luuuaaaaa—!”
Sung in a register too high for most humans or other Monsters to hear, it was the cry a Harpy made to call out to her fellow Harpies. It was a sound she hadn’t heard in so long she could almost cry.
Tia stepped out from the copse of trees and tossed an additional candy into her mouth. Then, maintaining her Harpy form, she raised her voice.
“Aaaaa—!”
Under the moonlight, a single Harpy descended in front of her.
She had wings colored in a beautiful gradient of orange and red like a blazing inferno.
The White-Winged Harpy called her sister’s name.
“Lala!!”
When dawn broke the morning after the Monsters took control of the Wedge Tower; the Monster of Winter, Jack, appeared before the Harpy, Charonlala, and the Vampire, Jill, and said this:
“Beside the humans who killed me, there was a Harpy.”
Apparently, they called that Harpy ‘Tia.’
Tia… Folulutia. Charonlala’s little sister who went missing a few years back.
When it was still Autumn, Jack, the Winter Monster, and Jill, the Vampire, left the Crystal Territory along with a few Snow Boars.
When they did, they encountered humans and Jack claimed he was pushed to the brink of destruction.
Standing beside those humans who cornered Jack was none other than Folulutia — Surely, Tia was trying to swipe Jack’s prey, Charonlala assumed.
Generally speaking, Monsters didn’t come to the aid of other species of Monster. From a Harpy’s perspective, it was natural to think of it as a chance to snatch some good prey.
But the truth Jack had said instead was the exact opposite of Charonlala’s expectations.
“That Harpy is a traitor who has sided with the mages of the Wedge Tower.”
Charonlala boiled with rage.
She would not allow anyone to slander her precious little sister like that, even if he was a Greater Monster.
“What could possibly make you think she’s a traitor!?”
There was nothing unusual about Monsters attacking other Monsters.
It was a common occurrence, especially if they were both angling for the same prey. Charonlala supposed the same thing had happened between Jack and Tia.
But Jack replied with his boyish smile.
“That Harpy was in human form.”
“Harpies can’t take human form! You’re a liar!”
“It’s not a lie. That was definitely the rainbow-colored Harpy Queen. Her hair and wings have all turned white by now, but her Monster-killing voice was the real deal. Why did she side with humans, I wonder?”
Jack had said that his whole body was blown away in battle against humans. It seemed that some of that stuff inside his head must have been blown away along with it.
Otherwise, a Monster wouldn’t care so much about something that happened in the past. Aside from her fellow Harpies, Charonlala never bothered to remember any discussions she had with other Monsters.
“Oh… I think maybe I’ve seen her too~. A Harpy with white hair. Actually, now that you mention it, she was in human form, wasn’t she? Oh, and she was flying around with this weird device strapped to her back.”
Jill, the Vampire, absentmindedly twirled his bangs as he spoke. That Monster thought it made him cool and stylish to do things like that.
Charonlala’s breaths were getting more ragged and she practically hissed in fury as she glared at Jill.
“Why… didn’t you say anything!?”
“You know, it’s just some Harpy. You can’t ask me to commit every meaningless thing to memory. Maybe I would have remembered her if she was a cute little human with tasty blood~.”
The way he talked pissed her off tremendously, but a Harpy like her was nothing compared to Winter Monster Jack and Vampire Jill. She was no different from some random bird who happened to be flying about nearby.
Of course those two wouldn’t bother committing such a random little bird to memory.
Charonlala ground her teeth when she heard footsteps approaching from behind. Extremely human-like footsteps — the Chancellor.
“Sounds like we’ve got a Harpy who’s turned on us, do we?”
“Hey, Chancellor. Did you not send her here yourself?”
The Chancellor shook his head at Jill’s question.
“No, the one I sent was the Werewolf. From what that Werewolf — Finn — said, it sounds like Tia was getting awfully cozy with the humans.”
Charonlala felt as if the blood drained from her whole body. A terrible premonition pulled at her heart.
Regardless, Charonlala chose to believe in her adorable little sister.
“Vampire. You said Tia was flying around with some weird device, right?”
“Yeah that’s right, isn’t it one of those things the humans call ‘magical devices’?”
“Then maybe Tia has lost the ability to fly? So she went up to the humans and tried to find another way to fly and…”
“I see.”
The Chancellor said something that sounded like agreement while in essence cutting Charonlala off.
“Perhaps this Harpy, who by some means lost the ability to fly, gave up on living as a Harpy and chose instead to live as a human.”
Charonlala was confused by the Chancellor’s words.
What was this bastard saying?
(A Harpy living as a human?)
Her heart pounded furiously.
After all, if such a thing was possible… The face of her lover flashed in Charonlala’s mind.
The blind pianist Kamil Hinkel. If only she could live together with him as a human. If only she could embrace him with featherless arms. She had long since lost track of how many times she’d made those wishes.
But it was impossible. Harpies could not become human.
“There’s no way that’s…”
“The Witch of the Boundary could do it, could she not?”
The Chancellor gracefully refuted Charonlala’s denial.
The Witch of the Boundary. A legend only rumored of among some of the Monsters.
That Witch, who lived in the space between the Crystal Territory and the human lands, lived in solitude, feared by human and Monster alike.
The same Witch made a deal with the King of Monsters. The King offered its colors, and in exchange, the Witch of the Boundary made the Crystal Rivets.
Charonlala had heard that the Chancellor had been the one to facilitate the deal between those two.
(According to the Vampire, Tia’s hair and wings had turned white… If her rainbow colors were the price of the deal, it would make sense)
Charonlala eyed the Chancellor with suspicion. His lips, just barely visible under his hood, showed a faint smile just as they always did.
“Chancellor, you know the Witch of the Boundary, don’t you? Can’t you go ask the Witch about Tia?”
“I am merely one who makes requests of the Witch of the Boundary, nothing more. In fact, I almost never hear the Witch of the Boundary speaking her mind at all.”
You useless bastard. Before Charonlala could curse him out, the Chancellor continued.
“But from my assumptions… I wonder if the White-Winged Harpy chose to live as a human knowing full well it would make her an enemy of Monsters.”
“Are you implying Tia betrayed us!?”
Charonlala leapt up and pushed the Chancellor to the ground with her huge talons pinning down his shoulders.
Now lying on his back, the Chancellor’s hood slipped off and his blond hair spread out over the ground.
The man’s heavily bandaged face still smiled as he looked up at Charonlala.
“Perhaps… Yes, imagine the White-Winged Harpy fell in love with a human, then had some foolish idea about wanting to become human… Or something like that.”
Feeling as if he was staring straight into her hmind, Charonlala was shouting before she even knew it.
“Shut up! SHUT UPPPP!!”
Harpies were Monsters. They could not become human.
Most of all, due to the humans’ attacks, the Harpies were on the brink of extinction.
Odds were that Charonlala and Folulutia were the only survivors. The two of them had to lay eggs as soon as possible to ensure their species lived on.
…There was no room for betrayal.
Charonlala spread her brilliant flame-like wings and declared:
“I will go find Folulutia and ask her myself. None of the rest of you lay a finger on my sister!”