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Chapter 359: Liger Subjugation, and the Night Watch.

(Author note: This time is from Homura POV as well.)

Having one of its eyes destroyed by my bo shuriken, the blood liger charged towards me, filled with rage.

“Maybe defeating it by myself is a bad idea…”

In that case, my job would be making sure everyone else can defeat it.

I took out a small bottle the size of my thumb from my inside pockets, and dripped a bit of the somewhat-sticky liquid inside onto my katana.

“Guorugaaaaa!”

“Yo, to.” (Note: sounds she’s making. Think grunting when lifting stuff, something like that.)

While dodging a strike from the charging blood liger, I made a small cut on its shoulder as it passed by.

With this, it’s mission complete. Now I just need to wait for the poison to circulate.

What I had slashed the liger with was a paralytic poison made from the Cursed Frog inhabiting Eashen.

It’s a poison that obstructs breathing as well as paralyzes the body, and of course, it spreads faster the more the afflicted target moves around. Although, at a glance it might seem be simply tired.

I’ll just let someone else finish it once it’s weakened.

And as I was thinking that, the beastman Miu-san arrived first, and lopped off the tail of the blood liger with a thick knife immediately.

“Gyauaaaaa!?”

The liger turned around and spit flames towards Mir-san. Abert, who had followed Miu-san and had apparently predicted that move, came forward to block the flames with a shield.

Well, I wonder about that one?

“… U, hot!?”

Although he held out for a while, eventually Abert threw the shield away and escaped. That’s natural. If you try to receive a fire breath with a metallic shield that’s obviously what’s going to happen.

“[Come forth Light, a shining barrage, Light Arrow]!”

This time, arrows of light from Sarges-san came flying from behind Abert. Of the three arrows, two were dodged but one managed to inflict a wound on the side of the liger’s head.

The liger started wobbling. I have no idea if that’s due to the hit from the light arrow just now or the poison, though. However, it’s definitely beginning to weaken.

“There!”

“Fun!”

Rose’s whip entangled one of the liger’s front legs, while the other one had a deep wound gouged out by Dom-san’s battle axe.

“Gugyaaa!?”

The eyes of the blood liger, which had fallen to the ground and could only struggle in place, contained only bloodlust and rage.

Towards that liger, Abert’s sword, Miu-san’s knife and Dom-san’s battle axe were swung down. I’m completely in spectator mode.

“Out of the way! Oraa!”

Running past me, the revived Gallon swung his bastard sword down towards the head of the blood liger.

The sword swung with brute force crushed the skull of the liger, and destroyed its nose and mouth as well.

The blood liger which became stained in blood, just like its name, stopped moving after that.

“Keh, that’s what you get.”

Ah-ah. That guy just took the best part like that. Even though he basically didn’t do anything.

Also, this is…

“God, what are you doing this time!?”

“Ah!? Why do I have to get shouted at by you again!?”

Gallon shouted back angrily towards Rose. I’m tired of seeing this pattern, but the only one here who would shout at that man is that nee-san after all.

“The fangs of a blood liger can be sold at a high price! If you break them like this, there’s absolutely no value left in it! Can’t you think before you swing that sword of yours!?”

“Gu…!”

That’s correct. Not just the blood liger specifically; that kind of fangs can usually sell for a decent sum. However, the two fangs of this particular blood liger in front of us had been hit by Gallon’s sword strike, and had both been broken in the middle.

These fangs, which are often used for handicrafts, would obviously garner a higher sum the larger they are. If a fang’s been broken in the middle like this, its value would drop like a rock.

As such, one should pay attention to that when defeating it.

Miu-san took the broken fangs out of the liger’s mouth. Following that, with practiced movements, she removed the claws from the four limbs as well.

“I want the fur and skin as well, but now’s impossible.”

“? Why is that? If it can be sold, then we would help with the dismantling as well…”

“It’ll be tiresome carrying a whole liger’s worth of skin and fur on us, and the smell of blood is too strong too. It might attract other magic beasts.”

Rose answered Abert’s question.

Seems like this tattooed big-boob nee-san knows a lot about magic beasts and their handling. She might’ve been a hunter before this.

Well, if I used the rucksack I got from His Majesty, the smell wouldn’t leak out and there’d be no problems in transporting it too.

“Then just bury the fur and skin somewhere else. We can go get that on the way back.”

When Dom-san said that brusquely, Rose and Miu-san looked at each other and nodded, before starting to dismantle the blood liger together.

Since we’d only get in the way even if we tried to help, the rest of us just watched from the side.

“Can you eat the meat?”

“If you like the taste of shoe leather, go ahead.”

As Abert asked a question while looking at the dismantling work with interest, Rose answered without looking at him.

Generally, carnivores are too muscular and taste bad, after all. Well, there are ones that are somewhat edible among them. And dragon meat was amazingly delicious, too. Although I almost never get to eat that.

While Abert and I were looking at the dismantling work, the other three, Dom-san, Sarges-san and Gallon were resting at a place close by.

When the two of them finished the dismantling, we buried the fur and skin under a large tree quite a distance away from where the corpse of the liger was.

The fangs and claws were given to Dom-san to carry. Once the test is over, we would sell everything to the guild and split it evenly between the seven of us.

“Then, let us move. We need to at least reach a place close to the foot of that mountain by nightfall.”

Just like Abert said, it’s dangerous to move around once it gets dark. You might get separated from the group, and the chance of magic beasts attacking also increases.

We silently marched towards the mountain.

On the way, as we were moving forward while repelling the small magic beasts that came our way every now and then, a sudden shrill sound like a bird’s chirping resounded around us, and we reflexively stopped our feet.

“What was that just now!? A magic beast!?”

“Hororo Bird. It’s a magic beast, but not dangerous. Good at using a loud voice to threaten others.”

While everyone else looked around with their guards up, only Miu-san continued walking forward while leaving those words.

The group relaxed when they saw that and continued onwards. Rose caught up to Miu-san, who had walked ahead, and struck up a conversation.

“You seem to know a lot about magic beasts.”

“I was born in the region close to the Great Sea of Trees within Mismede, after all.”

“Ah, that’s why. I was in the hunter’s guild in the empire, so I know a bit about magic beasts as well, but that’s up north, you see. I don’t really know that much about magic beasts to the south.”

Hmm. So Rose nee-san was from the empire’s hunter’s guild. That’s why she was that knowledgeable about magic beasts. She used to hunt them, after all.

“From your clothes, are you born in the east?”

“Eh?”

Rose suddenly turned around and shoved a question to me as well. Since we three are the only girls, it might be easier to talk with me.

“We, well yeah. I’m born in Eashen.”

“Eashen, eh. You’ve sure come from far away. Ah, the king of Brunhild was also born in Eashen, wasn’t he? Was that why?”

“Ah, un. That.”

The replies I gave to Rose turned out a bit clunky. Un, I’m bad at lying, after all.

His Majesty wasn’t born in Eashen. However, the talk that he was seems to be a common rumour in the world.

In the first place, Brunhild was formed in a true sense when the clan of ninjas under our Chief had came under His Majesty right after he was given a plot of land between Belfast and Regulus.

And after that it was the Four Heavenly Kings of Takeda and their subordinates, so at the beginning almost all the inhabitants were from Eashen, apparently.

There’s also a lot of Eashen elements in the town like food and other things, so it can’t be helped that such a misunderstanding would surface.

Still, I wonder where did His Majesty come from? Yulong? Wait, that’s impossible. I don’t think the gentle His Majesty would be able to leave his home country alone until it became like that.

“Ah.”

“What is it?”

Miu-san, who had been walking in the front, stopped walking all of a sudden, and Rose stopped her feet as well. The cat ears on top of her head twitched.

“The sound of water. We’re close to a river.”

“A river?”

Rose called over Sarges-san from behind her and had him check the map.

“There is indeed a river on the map. If we follow that upstream, we should be able to reach the foot of the mountain we’re heading towards.”

While confirming their direction with the map, Sarges-san gave Rose his conclusion. For the sake of caution, all of us had a copy of the map of this island, but the one Sarges-san had was the most detailed and accurate. The accuracy of a map changes with its price tag, after all.

Well, the map on the smartphone-chan I have is the most accurate though! It even shows our current location!

We eventually reached the river, and started following it upstream towards the mountain that was our goal.

To be honest, walking alongside a river has its pros and cons. You know, magic beasts are also living beings and thus need to drink water, right? So we might have a chance meeting and something like that.

Well, since the visibility around here is nice, we can easily spot a magic beast from afar and run away though.

We might’ve gotten lucky, as not a single magic beast showed up in front of us as we walked along the riverbank.

Eventually, the sun sank below the horizon, and we decided to set up camp at an open spot near the river since it was too dangerous to continue onwards in this darkness.

We started a fire with dried branches that we gathered, and started eating the rations each of us had brought.

“Where are you going? It’s dangerous to go too far away, you know?”

Rose spotted me who was silently trying to leave the circle everyone else made around the fire, and called out.

“Just, just going to pick some flowers.” (Note: a Japanese female-only expression for “going to the toilet”, if you don’t know.)

“Ah… Sorry about that. Take your time.”

I left Rose who had a wry smile on her face, and went deeper into the woods.

In truth, I was also going to eat, but seeing what came out of the rucksack I decided there’s no way I could eat this in front of the others.

I climbed up a random tall tree and took “that” out from within the rucksack.

“If I eat something like this in front of everyone, there’s no way I won’t be suspected, Your Majesty…”

The right side of the bowl was filled with freshly-cooked rice. The left was filled with karae roux, from which the appetizing smell of spices drifted. And the sparkling Fukujinzuke. This is, without a doubt, karae rice.

Our king really is weird.

“However… Ah, so delicious!”

This karae rice is a masterpiece. Since I told them I was going to pick some flowers, I couldn’t take my time eating this.

However, I wasn’t thinking about that at all as I wolfed down the food in front of me. This is really delicious, you know.

After I finished eating, while drinking water from the water bottle, I sent a message to His Majesty for the periodic contact. No problems over here… Done.

Well, it wasn’t really without problems. Honestly, watching the fight against the blood liger, I felt that they’re completely not up to it. They were getting into each other’s way, too.

As they’re an improvised party I’m not expecting any decent teamwork from them in the first place; however, being able to adapt to situations like this is another requirement for adventurers as well. Well, that’s my two cents as an outsider, though.

If I stayed away for too long they might get some weird misunderstandings, so let’s head back to the camp for now.

With my belly full, I moved to a spot a bit of a distance away from the campfire and lied down on the grass.

Everyone else were eating the food they brought. Normally, when you think of travel rations it’s preserved meat or fish, beans and nuts, and dried fruits, but for short trips like this one people would bring stuff like bread or fresh fruits.

“? The smell of karae…”

“What are you saying. I understand how you would miss the taste of your homeland when you’re eating that kind of bread though.”

Miu-san, who was twitching her nose and sniffing the air tilter her head, and Rose laughed while tapping her shoulder.

Although Miu-san turned to look at me for a while, I pretended to not notice. The nose of a beastman is strong after all… Am I busted?

When I looked at everyone else, there was Dom-san who was making some sort of meat-and- vegetable soup with a pot that he brought along. He even had alcohol.

Abert, who also saw that, reacted.

“Is it really fine to be drinking alcohol when we need to be careful of night assaults by magic beasts?”

“Don’t be an idiot, to a dwarf this amount is the same as plain water. It’s impossible to eat a meal without some alcohol.”

Abert could only give up after being told that. Dwarves being heavy drinkers is common sense, after all. I know someone who’s even more of a heavy drinker, though…

That person wouldn’t be drunk even if she looks hopelessly drunk on the outside. Actually, I have a feeling she can freely control her drunkenness. She did win once against all the dwarven craftsmen in a drinking contest.

Even though she looks like a girl even younger than me… There’s nothing but weirdos among His Majesty’s relatives.

Leaving aside Dom-san who continued to drink, Abert opened his mouth.

“We would need someone to watch the fire at night, but what do we do for the rotation?”

I checked with the smartphone just now; it’s around 8 pm currently. The time could be understood from the position of the moon and the stars as well. From now until next morning would be around nine hours, I’d say.

We decided on a 2/2/3 split of watch duty. We didn’t do a one-by-one rotation because if the person on watch duty fell asleep, there would be no one who would stand watch. If there’s two or more, we can each cover the others.

However, now that it’s come to this the way we are to be paired up with each other becomes important. At least, that’s what I thought when Rose instantly dragged me in and made us three girls into one group… Well, not that I mind.

With that, we’re left with the four men; since it seems like there might be problems occurring if Abert and Gallon were put together, they were split into the two groups of Abert/Sarges and Dom/Gallon.

We argued a bit when deciding the order, but in the end, we settled on us > Abert/Sarges > Dom/Gallon. The Abert/Sarges group, who had to be woken up in the middle of the night, drew the shortest straw.

As the night became deeper, the temperature dropped further. Besides us girls who are doing the first watch, the others took out thick mantles and rolled up in them before heading off into dreamland.

Of course, we too had mantles or other similar articles on ourselves to block the chill as we sat by the fire.

We should be able to reach the location where firewheel grass grows by tomorrow. It’d be good if there’s no fire lizards there. I heard that adult fire lizards are pretty big, and they also generally move around in groups.

When I moved my eyes upwards, I caught Rose looking around.

“? Anything happened?”

“No, I was just wondering if the overseer from the guild is around right now. I can’t sense anyone around, so I was thinking whether that person is actually looking at us right now or not.”

She is, you know-. At least, the person right in front of you is.

Besides, there’s no way our Chief would use someone who would let their presence be detected by novice adventurers as an overseer.

“There definitely is one. Most likely, from Brunhild’s intelligence department. Far above our league.”

Miu-san said that decisively in contrast to Rose’s words. Oh, she’s firm. However, Rose raised one of her eyebrows and made a surprised expression.

“Why would Brunhild’s intelligence department come up here? Isn’t this a job related to the guild?”

“One of the examiners was a relative of the Sovereign King of Brunhild. If so, using something like that isn’t weird. Their mission is probably to monitor our movements, and also to rescue us if anything happened.”

She’s pretty sharp. After hearing Miu-san’s explanation, Rose started looking around again, but since she couldn’t find anything, she decided to start talking to Miu-san again.

“So does that mean if we fall into a dangerous situation, we would be rescued?”

“Probably. But if that happened, the test would end there. Failure of the request, no rank ups, and no rewards.”

“That would be troubling… Still, it’s reassuring. That means we’d be safe no matter what happens, right?”

“I’d like you to not trust them too much, you know-.”

I cut into their conversation.

“The other side is ultimately an overseer whose job is to conduct surveillance on us, and would probably only move when we’re in some serious crisis. They probably won’t move unless it’s on a level where someone might lose an arm. Well, if a high-ranked magic beast that we can’t do anything against popped up, they would probably come in right away, though.”

“N. It’s not guaranteed that the other side would make it if they moved after confirming something happened to us. We shouldn’t count on that.”

Just like Miu-san said, there’s the possibility that we might be dealt serious damage before the overseer managed to resolve the situation.

Well, I’m here to prevent that, though. I think I can at least buy enough time for help to arrive.

“Tch, adventuring really is filled with dangers.”

“Still, it can earn a lot. This time as well, if we succeed it’s two white gold coins.”

“Amazing, isn’t it. I wonder what I should buy…”

My face slackened a bit unconsciously as I thought about the rewards.

The wage given by the knight order isn’t that high. We get a lot of special privileges in exchange, though. Things like being able to use the game room, and also being able to have free meals at the canteen as long as it’s below a certain amount. Since His Majesty is providing the funds for most of our basic necessities, we aren’t really troubled by our relative lack of money.

Sometimes, His Majesty would give us extra money while saying it’s a “bonus”, too.

For the rewards this time, I wonder if it’s something like that as well.

“When the pay is this good you start suspecting some deeper plots, eh.”

“They probably intend for us to buy good equipment, no? If we do get a promotion in rank, that means we would be receiving requests that are higher in—”

“You’re noisy, you girls! How the hell are we supposed to sleep!?”

Overwhelming Rose’s voice, Dom-san’s angry shout came from behind us. The three of us shrugged and looked at each other with awkward faces. We were indeed a bit too noisy.

After that, we continued the night watch in silence for a while, but eventually we started talking about various topics again—in a smaller voice—until the time when we handed off the watch to the next group.

- Pixel