This is from Corporal Franz’s point of view.

***

My name is Franz.

I had lived my whole life in my hometown village, but now I serve in the kingdom’s army as a corporal.


My village was a little special, famously known as the birthplace of a certain famous figure.

The name of that famous figure was the Great Sage Otfried.

Because the Great Sage was born, raised, and still lives there, the village was somewhat well-known.
For whatever reason, maybe because of his influence, there were many villagers who were good at magic. I happened to be one of them.


Normally, I made a living as a hunter, going into the forest to hunt animals.

But this year, circumstances have forced me to stop hunting. That being the great winter cold wave.

Because of the heavy snowfall, many animals did not survive the winter, whether they were still hibernating in spring or never woke up at all. Either way, the number of prey dropped sharply.

If things continued as they did, I wouldn’t have been able to feed my wife and daughter anything good. My wife kicked me out of the house, telling me to do something about it.

Lately, my wife has been acting more and more like the old lady next door, the Great Sage’s wife. They talk often since they live next to each other, but honestly, she scares me.

All the women in that household were strong-willed. The Great Sage’s wife, her late daughter, and the Great Sage’s granddaughter. Every one of them.

Even the granddaughter, having lost both her parents, grew up to be a splendid young woman. The complete opposite of her good-for-nothing younger brother.
Last I heard, he was traveling with the Great Sage himself. I wondered how he was doing now.


The cold wave caused problems elsewhere too. It seemed that Fortress City, the front line against the Demon King’s army, fell. Because of that, the kingdom started recruiting new soldiers to prepare against the Demon King’s army.

With no hunting work left, and my wife pushing me out the door, I ended up becoming a soldier.

My skill in fire magic was recognized, and despite being a new recruit, I was appointed corporal and found myself with subordinates.

Good grief… am I really cut out to be a soldier? I used to work alone, but now I’m working under the kingdom.

And I have to lead four men as their corporal.


Still, the Great Sage gave me some basic training back when I was a kid, so I do have confidence in my skills.

Well, as long as the pay is better than a regular soldier’s, it’s fine. I have to send money home to my wife and daughter after all.

I then left the village proudly, promising my family I would earn a fortune.


But right after becoming a soldier, things went bad. I was assigned to an expedition unit.
Apparently a witch had appeared in a border village, and we were to hunt her down.


Mobilized for a witch hunt, we arrived at the village.

But unexpectedly, it seemed the witch had fled into the forest right as the army arrived.

A court mage sent from the capital began issuing instructions to the soldiers as the officer in charge of the witch hunt.

Apparently, he was a highly ranked and powerful figure, serving as the deputy chief of the court mages,

He even brought along a few court magicians under his command.
Honestly, having someone like that in our ranks is pretty reassuring.


We were ordered to search the forest for the witch who fled.
As a corporal, I led my four subordinates into the woods.

And there, deep in the forest, we found an unnatural mass of vines.

It was a strange clearing with no trees, as if a hole had opened in the forest.
At its center, an enormous mass of tangled vines was packed densely together in a strange, almost unnatural way.

Well… yeah.
No matter how you look at it, it’s suspicious.

I had worked as a hunter for many years, but I had never seen anything like this in the forest before.

Perhaps the witch was hiding inside.
It would be the perfect place to conceal oneself.

I instructed my men and began approaching the mass of vines.


Then, the vines stirred slightly.

Someone was definitely inside.
Looks like we hit the jackpot.

We readied ourselves and moved forward.


And that was when I saw something surprising.

From between the vines, the face of a beautiful young girl appeared.

“Hel…lo.”

Inside the vines was a girl delicate enough to look straight out of a painting.

She was the very image of a forest maiden.
The girl had long pale-green hair and a perfectly symmetrical face.

I hadn’t met a woman this beautiful since my wife.
Though, to be honest, this girl might be even more beautiful, but I couldn’t say that aloud. I was truly shocked.


She possessed such beauty that if someone told me she was a noble’s daughter, I would believe it immediately.
In fact, that seemed far more convincing than if she claimed to be an ordinary village girl.

She greeted us, but she spoke hesitantly, perhaps from nervousness.
Just who was she?

She clearly wasn’t the person we were looking for.
The description we were given of the witch did not match her at all. Looks like we found the wrong person.

But why would she be in a place like this?
This forest was considered a cursed forest, said to be infested with dangerous monsters.

It’s far too dangerous for a young girl to be here alone.

“Miss, don’t be afraid. We are soldiers of the kingdom. Come here where it’s safer.”

I offered her my hand.

But for some reason, she refused, saying she couldn’t come to us.
Observing her face, she looked awfully troubled.

My subordinates began shouting, saying she must be tangled in the vines and unable to move.
They all rushed forward to help her.

Trying to show off and impress a pretty girl, no doubt. Honestly, they’re hopeless fools.

But the next moment, we saw something completely out of place in the forest.

“Don’t… come”

As she raised her arm to stop us, her upper body rose out of the vines, revealing her form.

For some reason, the girl was naked.

No, strictly speaking, she wasn’t entirely naked since the vines covered her chest.
But it was close enough that the word naked was not an exaggeration.

It had been a long time since I had seen that much of a young woman’s bare skin.
My heart leapt in shock as I realized I just witnessed an outrageous sight.


However, I then realized something was off.

It’s strange for an ordinary girl to be dressed like that.
Unless she were a dancer or a woman of that trade, no one would walk around wearing so little. And yet here she was, alone deep in the forest. It made no sense at all.

This was insanity
I couldn’t fathom how a girl could be out here wearing such an embarrassingly revealing outfit.

My instincts as a hunter whispered that there had to be something behind that beautiful face.

But at the same time, she really did look confused and troubled.
Maybe there was some deeper reason for it.

“Young lady, are you from that nearby village?”

“…No, I live alone.”


Suspicious.
I didn’t believe it. No one could live alone in a dangerous forest dressed like that. It’s impossible

A girl her age, wearing almost nothing, alone in a forest full of monsters… I couldn’t believe my own eyes.
I started to worry if she had lost her mind.

“Come out quickly.”

“I… can’t. The vines are… tangled.”

Well, that would be one reason.
But it was probably a lie.

If the vines were monsters, it might be possible, but the idea that someone could just get stuck in ordinary plant vines and be unable to get out was completely unbelievable.

Or maybe she was too embarrassed to come out dressed like that.
We were five grown men staring at her, after all.

She might be scared something would happen to her if she came out.
Then I should act properly, like a gentleman.

If I showed sincerity, maybe she would relax and open up to us.

“No way. We can’t leave such a beautiful girl alone. Wait there, we’ll rescue you.”

Then, one of my men stopped me and brought up an old tale from his homeland.

He said that if you meet a beautiful woman in the forest and she invites you over, you must never follow her. She might be an Alraune.

In the southern regions, Alraunes were monsters said to live in the woods.
They were vicious monsters, luring people in with their beautiful appearances and then ensnaring them.

Their upper body was human, but grew a large flower from the waist down. Their lower half was that of a plant-like monster.

It made sense.
What kind of normal girl would dress so indecently in the forest?
She wore no clothes, just vines wrapped around her chest.

Maybe she really was a forest monster.
A monster wouldn’t own clothes, so logically, they would use vines as a replacement.

And by exposing her skin, the kind that drew in men, she was luring her prey in just like this.

And it worked. We had already been walking toward her.
We were acting just like the men in those stories who’d fall for an Alraune’s trap.


Things were starting to look ominous.


“Miss, could you show us your legs?”

Even tangled in vines, she should be able to move her feet.
If she could show us her leg, or even any of her lower body, it would prove she was human.

But, if she couldn’t show her legs, then she definitely wasn’t human

Sure enough, the girl replied that she couldn’t move her legs.

It wasn’t proof, but she was almost certainly not human.
But then again, it didn’t prove she was a monster either.


So I decided to try something else.

I threw my spear at the vines, making sure it wouldn’t hit her even if she had legs.

The moment the spear struck, the girl flinched in fear. But any normal girl would react the same way.

I thought the vines moved slightly, but it might have been my imagination.

So, I chose to gamble, boldly declaring that she was an Alraune.

“I’m… not an Alraune! I’m human! Please believe… me!”

For some reason, her words sounded deeply convincing.
There was such an intensity to her desperation that I wondered if she really was human.

But it was obvious she wasn’t used to talking to people.
When I pointed that out, she admitted far too easily that she was a monster.


The vines, which had been completely still until then, suddenly began to move.

The vines pulled the spear out.

The girl stretched slightly and sighed, as if saying she had no choice anymore.

Then, the vines around her started moving all at once.

At last, her full form revealed itself.

From her waist grew a huge crimson flower.
Below it hung layers of leaves, and beneath those was a massive bulb rooted in the earth.

But the most terrifying part was the bulb itself.

It bore a huge, ominous mouth like that of a carnivorous plant.
She’s basically openly declaring, ‘I’m carnivorous.’


That was close.
Had we gone any nearer to help her, those vines would have grabbed us and she would have fed us to that bulb.

If my subordinate hadn’t recalled the tale of the Alraune, I would surely have become her nourishment.

I had been completely fooled.

Whistling, I gave the girl my praise.
I see… so she really was a monster after all.


Now it made sense.

Why she wasn’t embarrassed despite wearing something so indecent.
It was because she was a plant monster.


She never possessed human sensibilities to begin with.
So she didn’t even understand how shameless her appearance was.
She only showed her skin so she could draw in human men, her prey.

If she had been a human girl, she’d be crying about never being able to marry now.

But for a plant monster, things such as ethics don’t matter.
Exposing skin was simply a tactic to lure in her prey, human males, closer. That’s probably the extent of her thinking.

Honestly, realizing she was a monster was oddly more relieving than thinking I had stumbled upon a forest nymph.
It meant I hadn’t ran into some madwoman wandering the forest half-naked.


The girl—no, the Alraune—glared at me.

She must have been frustrated that her identity had been exposed.
Or maybe she was lamenting about losing an easy chance to catch prey.

Either way, the monster should be dealt with.


Weapons raised, we advanced.

Little did we know that it would become a nightmare.

But that nightmare was only the beginning.

Many lives would be ruined before this one day was over.

Including mine.

Although compared to everyone else, I suppose I was one of the lucky ones.

After all, I was the only one who managed to leave that village alive.

***

Author’s Note:

This time the chapter was from the corporal’s point of view.
Because he learned magic from the Great Sage as a child, he was unusually skilled despite being an ordinary villager. And since he had only just become a soldier, he was still only a Corporal. Soldiers were promoted from private⇒corporal and then onwards.

Next Time: Letter; Remittances from a Corporal Working Far From Home (Part Two)

TL’s Note:

The corporal has been retroactively changed to Corporal-san for the previous chapters