The Deer King

A manga adaptation with art by Taro Sekiguchi was serialized online via Kadokawa Shoten's Young Ace Up website between July 2021 and March 2022.

In the years following a vicious war, the Empire of Zol now controls the land and citizens of rival Aquafa-except for Aquafa's Fire Horse Territory, where wild dogs that once carried the deadly Black Wolf Fever continue to roam free.

When a pack of dogs race through a Zol-controlled mine, Van, an enslaved former soldier, and a young girl named Yuna are both bitten, but manage to escape as the sole survivors of the attack.

She wrote, "in the Makokan segments, it reads like a fantasy version of the nonfiction book The Ghost Map, about efforts to discover the root cause of cholera", and concluded, "How all of this will come together isn't clear, but it's going to be a fascinating journey to follow.

This is one of those books that you could give to your friend who doesn't care for light novels but reads fantasy, and it's worth picking up.