The Survival Strategy of the Contract Duchess - Chapter 116

“I wonder if that mage is alright.”

In the middle of their glide, the chieftain Sasha was riding on spoke cautiously. Sasha, completely engrossed in the breathtaking scenery below, couldn’t tear her eyes away from the mountains even at her words.

“It’d be hard to block magic used in an instant, but Kyler threatened him as much as possible, so he’s pretty intimidated.”

“No, that’s not the problem.”

Sasha finally looked up when she trailed off.

Sasha was flying at the very back, letting everyone else go ahead in case something happened, so she could see the mage’s rear view. He was trembling so much that you could see it from here.

“Well! I was worried he might be up to something, but seeing him like that puts my mind at ease.”

He acted like he’d take care of all the monsters if he was left behind, but it seemed like heights were his weakness. Sasha and she chuckled and enjoyed the sky together.

They gleefully flew through the sky and arrived at the problematic waterfall. Besides the ridge she had climbed up, they circled around it before landing, admiring the waterfall’s spectacle.

Of course, besides admiring it, they also looked at the waterfall’s structure and the location of the ‘hole’ that was faintly visible when they lowered their altitude slightly in front of the waterfall, from where they had flown.

“Human~”

A young monster who hadn’t been properly introduced called Sasha a human and ran up as if it would jump into the sky. As the four of them landed right next to the waterfall, the four jumped off their backs. Rihal was careful not to slip on the frozen ground with his trembling legs.

“I’m only seeing you after three days, what’s making you so happy?”

Even as she said that, Sasha also had a bright smile as she stroked the head of the young monster who was pushing its head forward. Kyler was experiencing a lot of chaos in his head and heart at the sight of the human and monster acting so friendly, even though they hadn’t seen each other many times.

Originally, they could have lived like this. It felt a bit unfair to have repeated war-like events for hundreds of years just because they didn’t speak the same language.

“The waterfall seems smaller than I remember.”

Kyler focused on what he had to do first, rather than being absorbed in complicated thoughts. He patted the back of the monster that had carried him, gesturing as if expressing gratitude to a friend, and then headed straight for where the waterfall’s water was flowing from.

“Currently, both sides of this river are frozen, narrowing the width of the water.”

Dylan, who had followed right next to him, began his analysis. But even though it had narrowed, the threatening stream of water remained the same.

If that ‘hole’ that he had glimpsed while flying in the sky was a bit bigger, more of it would have been exposed by the narrowed stream of water, but since that wasn’t the case, it seemed a bit small.

“Rihal.”

Kyler called the mage in a low voice.

But he didn’t hear a response from him. No matter how loud the waterfall was, it wasn’t so loud that he couldn’t hear his voice.

When Kyler and Dylan turned around, they saw the mage still catching his breath and coming towards them.

“You were so full of vigor, but what attack. Get a grip.”

Dylan shook his head as he looked at him. The serious knights didn’t show any laughter, but they frowned at the mage and quickly approached.

“How can you be okay after flying like that? I really don’t feel well right now.”

“Look at this river. Can you freeze it?”

Kyler wasn’t a kind man enough to listen to his grumbling. The only person he could listen to that kind of thing from was Sasha.

Before he knew it, she had also approached and was waiting for an answer to Kyler’s question.

“Ugh! I can freeze this part with my power, but I can’t block all the water that keeps pouring in from behind. To freeze all of that, I’d have to keep flying around here and build a 100m wall.”

“Or keep moving in the direction the water is flowing and freeze it as you go.”

As Sasha said that, following up on the mage’s words, the mage raised one corner of his mouth in a smirk, as if he had regained his energy.

“So it’s temporary, too.”

“Hmm, it’d be difficult.”

But Sasha was not to be outdone. She nodded, accepting his sarcasm as it was, and scanned the surroundings a bit more.

“That’s enough.”

But Kyler threw out a quiet word. That’s enough, a 100m wall? Freezing the river while constantly moving until he runs out of energy?

“Freeze the ice here. Like blocking only the middle with a large rock.”

Those who didn’t understand his words immediately gradually realized what he was trying to do. Dylan and Sasha’s eyes met, and finally turned to the mage.

“Well, I’ll try.”

“Then we should take refuge here.”

Sasha said urgently as the mage was about to take a stance. If they obstruct the water’s path, it will leak to the side. Even Kyler, who was thinking of changing the water’s path, hadn’t thought of it and turned back to the monsters.

“You’re telling me to ride that now?”

“Then either use magic there and get swept away by the water, or Dylan and I can change the water’s path without you.”

As if representing Dylan’s feelings of revulsion towards Rihal, who was only adding complaints and whining to his dissatisfaction, Kyler scolded him coolly.

He didn’t like doing nothing either, so he pouted his lips and trailed after them as they walked towards the monsters.

“We will build an obstacle in the middle of that waterfall. If we change the waterfall’s water path, the hole in between might be visible.”

Kyler went straight to the chieftain monster and explained. Even among the many monsters gathered here, he immediately noticed that she was the chieftain.

Sasha repeated his words once again in her own voice without delay, and the monster kept her gaze fixed on Sasha.

“Then what will happen?”

The monsters were not a very intelligent race. In terms of being able to speak, they felt very similar to humans, but the part that could think didn’t seem very deep.

Right, if they knew there was a hole down there, wouldn’t they have figured out a way to do something about it in hundreds of years?

“If the water stream is obstructing the way to enter the hole, then just remove it.”

“Then how will you block that hole?”

That part was not something they had found an exact solution for. Kyler paused for a moment, lost in thought, and then looked at the monster head-on.

“If you haven’t been able to do it for hundreds of years, then you won’t need your strength to close that in the future either.”

Kyler’s words could have been rude, but the monsters had intelligence that was not enough to twist how that could have a bad meaning. The chieftain, who understood it exactly as it was, nodded.

“Then I will gradually find out if there is a way to close the hole while keeping the water stream from covering the hole.”

“Ah! Even if we come to this world through that hole, we can just go back there if that’s not blocked.”

Sasha finally realized what Kyler was trying to do. She nodded and made sounds of “aha” repeatedly.

“Right now, we’re making ice with magic, but if we steadily pile up stones or something and completely change the water stream even if we come over here, we’ll be able to go back.”

“But, what if monsters come over here rampantly!”

The mage was listening to their story from behind and screamed. He shouted urgently by himself, but no one was swayed by his words.

“We were living our lives without problems in that place. We don’t like those who come over here and control us, and we don’t like being killed by knights while trying to avoid them.”

All of the monsters standing behind the chieftain moved their heads up and down as if agreeing with her words.

That was the only way to solve this right now. It would be nice if they could block it completely, but it didn’t seem like they could solve it even if they went down and mobilized people to come up.

That was the conclusion she came to after seeing that the concept of a ‘hole’ was not a real hole in the ground, but was opened up as black as if there was a hole in space.

“Is there anything we can do to help?”

The chieftain monster was now looking at Kyler as she spoke. Because words were not conveyed and even expressions were not conveyed, Kyler could not immediately hear the meaning, but he strangely did not feel any resentment or hatred towards this being who was trusting him.

“Just moving us like this has saved us time and a lot of things, so it’s been helpful. This is something we’re doing for the peace of the empire, so we’ll solve the rest without your help.”

It was a deep-seated problem that had been caused by this hole that had already been created and had been around for a long time. It wasn’t just one side suffering, and it wasn’t that one side was taking advantage of it.

In the end, they were just repeating the same pain over and over again.

“You must have had a hard time for a long time enduring this terrible thing of falling into an unexpected world, suffering, not being able to return, and eventually ending in death.”

Kyler looked at the monster without expression. Just as he couldn’t recognize the monster’s expression, neither could they. Words would be conveyed through Sasha, but in the end, if they understood, the important thing would be conveyed.

“We couldn’t help it either.”

This could be seen as understanding rather than forgiveness. It wasn’t something to forgive or not, it was something they had to understand each other, Sasha thought as she looked at Kyler and the monster.

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