Monster Company Tycoon - Chapter 26

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Monster Company Tycoon
26
***
In the end, I found myself heading into the Eastern Forest with Brownie in the dead of night.
A single torch wasn’t nearly enough to see by in the darkness….
“Brighten it up a bit more. What happens if Chihuahua trips and gets hurt? Do you have any idea how crucial she is to our Dungeon operation?”
“You’re only paying 100 language units an hour and you expect all this!?”
“Enough, enough! You think fire sprites have unemployment problems? There are plenty of them willing to light the way without you! If you’ve got an issue, I’ll just swap you out for another one!”
“Who said I didn’t want to? I was holding back because I didn’t want to blind you with the light!?”
I hired a lesser fire sprite for 100 language units per hour.
Thanks to the fist-sized fire sprite circling around us and casting its bright glow, I could see the path ahead well enough.
Though it was admittedly quite noisy.
“Did we really have to go hunting monsters in the middle of the night?”
“Now that it’s been mentioned, we need to handle it quickly! If we dilly-dally and those humans end up taking care of it themselves, what then?”
I regretted bringing it up at all—Brownie just gave me more grief for it.
“Especially that one with the eyes of someone who’s seen the whole world already. He’s still in his prime, but his gaze is so dull and lifeless, and he looks like he has no ambition whatsoever. I really can’t stand it.”
Are we talking about Ragnar right now?
He did have a somewhat sleepy look about him, but it didn’t seem quite that severe….
“But are you really sure about this? What if he doesn’t recognize me and attacks?”
“Don’t worry about it. Attacking you would be the same as attacking the Demon Lord. Any monster with sense will know to show proper respect!”
But… for a monster to have sense, it would need to have a head in the first place. And he doesn’t have one….
At last, I reached the spot where I had encountered Dullahan.
I really hadn’t wanted to do anything this reckless. Here I was, venturing into a forest crawling with dangerous monsters in the middle of the night with no one to protect me.
No, focus. Get it together.
There’s no point dwelling on what’s already happened.
Since I’m already here, I’ll do what Brownie said and recruit Dullahan to bring him back with us.
After waiting for quite some time, it happened.
Clank, clank.
The heavy sound of armor I’d heard earlier in the day echoed from the distance.
“He’s coming.”
“Oh!”
Brownie spun sharply toward the sound and let out an excited gasp.
“Huh?”
But then she tilted her head, her tone shifting to something ominous.
“Was that really him?”
“I told you. The headless knight.”
“I thought you meant a zombie or a lich when you said Undead Monster. I never imagined it would be a Dullahan….”
Now that I think about it, Brownie had panicked the moment she heard about a powerful Undead Monster from me.
She’d never even heard the explanation that it was a Dullahan.
“Why are you reacting like that? Is there something wrong with a Dullahan!?”
“This is going to be a bit complicated.”
“What, what is it? Why are you being so ominous….”
“Let’s step back for a moment.”
Brownie gestured toward a distant spot and fluttered away, with me scrambling to follow.
“Listen… there’s a problem.”
“I came all the way here without getting any sleep, walking for an hour at night. To go back, I’d have to walk another hour in the dark. I’ve already spent 200 language units! If this whole trip turns out to have been pointless, I swear I won’t be able to sleep from sheer frustration.”
And I need to wake up early tomorrow to walk another hour to my shift!
The Dungeon was basically remote work, which was great…. Ah, the sorrows of a commuting salaryman.
This is the hell I chose, so I have nothing to complain about.
“Just tell me. Can we scout Dullahan or not?”
“We can, but there’s some preliminary work that needs to be done first.”
“Preliminary work?”
Brownie crossed her arms and spoke in a troubled voice.
“Do you know how Undead Monsters come to be?”
“Um… Skeletons are Undead Monsters too, aren’t they?”
“They are.”
“They come back from the dead, right?”
“Exactly. Magical Energy takes root in the corpses of people or animals, and they become monsters.”
Sometimes when the skeletons talked about the cemetery as though it were home, it gave me chills. It especially stood out now that I remembered the graves piled up near where the Temple North of Village was being built.
I wonder if there were any skeletons from that place in the Dungeon?
“Dullahan is the same. When Magical Energy settles into the corpse of a dead person—particularly a knight or swordmaster who wielded a blade—a Dullahan is born. The stronger the person’s combat ability was in life, the higher the chance they’ll become a Dullahan. Oh, and naturally, the corpse must lack a head.”
“I see….”
So if the monster was skilled before it died, it would remain skilled after becoming a monster?
If I could just bring it to the Dungeon somehow, it would definitely become an elite employee.
“Unlike ordinary monsters, a Dullahan develops a clear purpose after transformation: it searches endlessly for its lost head.”
I swallowed hard, my stomach churning at the gruesome tale.
The fire sprite seemed determined to set the mood, spotlighting only Brownie’s face like a theater lamp, making the whole scene even more eerie.
“You mean….”
“Until it finds its head, there’s no reasoning with it. Simple as that.”
“Ugh.”
Find the severed head for it? How am I supposed to do that?
I rubbed my arms, which had broken into goosebumps, trying to compose myself.
“I can’t! Absolutely not!”
“Why not? It might actually work out better! Once we find the head, it’ll listen to every word we say! We could work the thing for an absurd pittance!”
“But… even so… a corpse… a head… ugh.”
A severed head is still a severed head even with glasses off. There’s no blur filter that can fix that.
“Chihuahua, are you really going to whimper like that?”
“Fine, assume I find it. How exactly am I supposed to look?”
Please tell me I don’t have to dig up graves one by one.
I’d only just started getting close to the village people through my part-time job at the tavern. If they caught me desecrating graves, I could end up banished from the Village entirely.
Ragnar might even come to put me down, deciding I’d revealed my true nature.
“The clues are already out there. First, isn’t it strange for a monster as powerful as a Dullahan to wander inside an area fortified so heavily by a Barrier?”
“Luadis said the same thing was weird. She mentioned that Undead Monsters especially have a bad affinity with Barriers, so it would be even harder for them to cross.”
“No need to overthink it. The monster spawned naturally inside the Barrier’s perimeter. Which means it never had to breach the Barrier in the first place.”
“Ohh….”
“Second point: Dullahans become obsessed with their lost head. They keep circling around the area where it is.”
“So… the head’s probably somewhere in this forest?”
“Exactly!”
Somewhere in the Eastern Forest lay a severed head. The thought alone sent shivers down my spine.
Once I was aware of it, even a rock the size of a human skull would make me flinch.
“Let’s find it quickly.”
…….
“Just search around where the Dullahan patrols. As a cruel twist of fate, the Dullahan circles its head but can never actually find it—because it has no eyes to see!”
True enough, the monster had been spotted two weeks ago. Even just walking while staring at the ground, it should have found the thing by now. But without eyes… it couldn’t.
“This is going to take forever, isn’t it? Wait—an hour’s already gone by.”
The fire sprite chirped merrily.
Well, at least I won’t need a watch.
After that, despite my fear, I pressed on with single-minded determination to bring back an elite employee for the Dungeon, trailing the Dullahan as I searched for its severed head.
“Two hours.”
“Sigh… Is this even doable?”
“Complaining after searching for barely an hour?”
“I can’t help it. The fire sprite’s light only reaches so far ahead.”
The darkness around us made the search difficult, and moving cautiously to avoid alerting the Dullahan was bleeding my mental stamina dry.
I wanted to approach the Dullahan directly and ask for its cooperation, but Brownie had vetoed that idea.
She said it might refuse to let us leave until we found its head.
“But it’s not entirely unreasonable, at least.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t go around severing other creatures’ heads and placing them on its own shoulders, does it?”
“…What?”
As the only human here with a head still attached, I couldn’t help but panic.
‘Why didn’t you mention that earlier?!’
I reflexively wrapped my hands around my neck, glaring at Brownie with resentment.
“So you’re safe, see? You’re wearing that necklace pretty securely. Actually, are there any other clues? The territory it patrols seems too wide.”
That’s when it happened.
Something glinted between the thickets in the distance.
A faint reflection of the fire sprite’s light caught my eye—something was gleaming in the darkness.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————