Chapter 9, Episode 17: Homecoming
The next morning, we were marching through the forest at a much faster pace than yesterday because of one reason—Glen was at full power.
“Take that!” he shouted from ahead, taking out yet another monster unfortunate enough to cross our path.
I had been a little concerned after the sheer volume of liquor he’d drunk, but he woke up more energetic than ever, saying, “Nothing gets you going like eating a belly full of food and swimming in booze!”
Even though he had a stockpile in his fanny pack, Glen must have had to restrict his diet in the Sea of Trees—which dampened his strength because of his unique condition. If I wasn’t watching him storm through the woods now—thanks to the bottomless feast and decent sleeping conditions I provided last night—I would have never believed that he was at anything less than full strength yesterday.
“Wait,” the Raging Dragon said, abruptly stopping in his tracks. This was out of the ordinary, because he hadn’t so much as paused for any monster so far.
Last night, he’d told me that there were two factors that contributed to him reaching S rank. One, of course, was his automatic power-up, but the other was his Sixth Sense skill. Sixth Sense wasn’t a rare skill—even some non-adventurers had it. Glen’s Sixth Sense had been honed by his experience of surviving certain death scenarios—which he would get himself into because of his impulsive behavior—with nothing but his signature brute strength. Now, he could apparently sense dangers ahead, albeit in a very vague way.
“Something annoying’s coming up,” he said.
“Annoying? It’s not like a very powerful monster, then,” I interpreted.
“Yeah. A real pain.”
A bunch of weak monsters, then? I guessed. Raptors were often on the move, though, and Glen was the type to charge into raptor nests. What other monsters are in the area? “Does it feel like we’ll avoid them if we go around?”
“Probably,” Glen said.
“Then they may be gluttonous flies.”
“What’s that?”
“In short, they’re large, carnivorous flies. Relatively large, anyway. They’ll get as big as five centimeters. The problem is their piercers. They swarm on any animal—dead or alive—each tear off a piece of its flesh and fly back to their hive. Rinse and repeat until all that’s left of their prey is bones,” I explained.
Gluttonous flies were like flying piranhas, but more terrifying for a few reasons. Firstly, the prey was usually eaten alive because each bite was so small. One bite could cause infection because the flies fed their larvae by leaving the chunks of meat to rot in their hive. And even if someone were to survive the encounter with the flies, the bleeding from the bite wounds usually drained their stamina and lured other monsters to them. Staying away from the territory centered around their hive was the usual way to avoid an encounter, but there was another way. Fortunately, Glen noticed them from quite a distance, so it wouldn’t be difficult to pass through their territory with the right preparations.
Within the barrier I set up to repel rain, I set up another layer—of Lightning magic targeting insects. Then, I just set up a stone slime where we were now in case of an emergency.
“That’s all it takes?” Glen asked.
“Gluttonous flies have powerful bites, but they’re just as frail as normal insects,” I said. That’s why their method of attack was a hit-and-run: swarm, bite, flee, repeat. We would turn their nature against them, using ourselves as bait to make them fly into the Lightning barrier, kind of like an old-school fly zapper. “Even if that doesn’t work, we can jump back here with Space magic,” I added. “Even though, I don’t think you’d be fazed if they were to bite you.”
“Yeah, I don’t sense any danger. Just a lot of work.”
“Besides, the rafflesia hotel that’s symbiotic with the gluttonous flies is very valuable,” I said.
“Ya don’t say.” Glen charged ahead, faster than he’d gone all morning.
Soon I heard disturbingly loud buzzing, and a cloud of small bugs swarmed us, but the flies zapped into smoke as they flew into the barrier.
“What’s the monster I’m looking for?!” Glen roared over the deafening buzzing.
“Rafflesia hotel! Look for a bright red flower! It serves as their hive, so it should be in the direction where flies came from!”
“I see it!” Glen said, sprinting in that direction. “Got it!” he called.
I chased after Glen to find him grabbing a vine wrapped around his neck to tear the rafflesia hotel off of a tree.
Completely undisturbed by the flies making a desperate swarm to protect their hive and larvae, Glen walked over to me and held up the flower. “This is what sells, right?” he asked.
“Uh— Just the petals. We should cut them off and leave the rest.”
The rafflesia hotel, nearly dead, writhed its tentacle-like vine stretching out of the giant flower with a hole in its center. Thanks to Glen, I got a close look at the hole and the hundreds of wriggling larva within. Gross. I swiftly sliced off its petals with my sword and chucked the rest of the hive against a tree far away.
We rushed out of gluttonous fly territory, where we stopped to have cleaner slimes scrub us down.
“This is nice,” he commented.
“Are you starting to see the charm of slimes?” I asked.
“It’s quick and easy. Not that I hate taking a bath, but what’s the point of wasting time?”
“Yes. You definitely don’t seem the type to just...relax and enjoy things.”
Now that Glen mentioned it, the cleaner slime was a great bathing alternative for those with busy lives. If I had one in my previous life, I definitely would have gotten used to the convenience. Taking a bath was a nice way to relax at the end of the day, but sometimes there’s not enough time.
“How much will these petals go for?” Glen asked.
“I’ve only ever read about the rafflesia hotel,” I prefaced. “But they would easily pay for a mansion.”
“With one stupid flower? Nobles pay out the nose for stupid crap, don’t they?”
“It only grows this far into the Sea of Trees. That coupled with the gluttonous flies make it too dangerous for most people to even attempt harvesting it. Considering that it’s probably rarely on the market, the rich may see any price as a good price.”
Rafflesia hotel petals were treasured because they were used to create a dye for a specific shade of red called noble blood. There were few stories out there explaining the naming of this color: how the color was a vibrant red that resembled fresh blood, for example. Or how the rafflesia hotel was a metaphor for nobles exploiting the people through taxes.
I was telling Glen these stories as we carried on...until Glen sensed something else ahead.
“That’s...a human?” Glen hedged.
“This far in?”
“Yeah. They’re alone too...if it’s really a human.”
Glen and I had been on our own until we met each other, so it wasn’t out of the question to think someone else was here, but... “Undead?”
“Doubt it. The Undead feel like this...ooze. Don’t you have any guesses, Professor Ryoma?”
“The only humanoid monster I know is the Undead. Nothing from my research of the Sea of Trees either,” I said.
With how close we were to Korumi, it thought it was possible for an Undead to wander over here. For now, we decided to put a pin in identifying the threat and started moving again with caution.
Eventually, we found a male adventurer wearing armor marked with dents and scratches all over, bleeding onto the roots of a heatwood tree. He wasn’t moving. Just when I was beginning to think him dead, the adventurer groaned.
“Light Ball.” Without a second thought, I fired a Light spell at the body. Even though Glen said he hadn’t sensed an Undead, I had to be sure. If he was human, he might have been too gravely insured to speak for himself. With the added danger of other monsters being drawn to his blood, this was the quickest way to see if we were dealing with an Undead.
The ball of light found its mark, but nothing happened. He didn’t writhe in agony nor turn into dust. If he really was a human in dangerous conditions, it was nothing short of a miracle for him that we found him still in one piece.
“What do you want to do?” Glen asked me. “It’s sketchy.”
“I can use healing magic. I’ll approach him.” Keeping my guard up, I did just that. I called to him as I did to make sure he was conscious, but he could only groan in reply. I made it next to him without being attacked, or anything. With the help of a slime, I examined the man: he was wounded all over, but there was nothing out of place about him.
“High Heal.” I cast the spell to his arms and legs where he was bleeding out the fastest. But something was wrong, and it took me a precious second to realize—the bleeding didn’t stop.
The man crumpled to the ground, as if all the bones in his body melted away. He arched his back way too much and bounced like a worm, trying to jump onto me. I instinctively punched it away with a Wind-powered fist, and it slammed against the heatwood trunk behind it like a rubber doll. In the next breath, I laced my sword with fire and sliced the thing in half from what appeared to be its right thigh to left midriff.
The monster—whatever it was—remained unaffected, and made a run for it. It didn’t grow back body parts like the immortal snake, but watching what still looked like a man’s torso ditch his legs and scurry away with its arm was straight out of a horror film. Then, the monster suddenly shape-shifted into a small luring ostrich.
I made a sound in realization. Even as the monster sprinted away as fast as a real luring ostrich, I knew I couldn’t let it get away—not anymore.
“Barricade! Binding Ivy!” Barricade created a wall of trees to wall the monster in while the ivy entangled it. Because these Wood spells relied on existing vegetation, they were very difficult to pull off where there were few trees but very powerful tools in the Sea of Trees.
“Not so fast!” I yelled as the monster deformed again in an attempt to escape its bind. Before it could get away, I performed the familiar contract.
“It stopped,” Glen noted. The monster had stopped, having formed a magical connection with me—it worked. “What is that thing?”
“A slime, apparently.”
With a monster appraisal, I could see exactly what kind.
Mimic Slime
Skills: Mimicry (10) / Mimicry Memory (2) / Rapid Movement (8) / Attract Carnivores (2) / Maximize (7) / Minimize (7) / Predator (3) / Consume (4) / Ingest (4)
“Level 10 Mimicry... I only noticed because it reverted to its slime form for just a moment when it shifted from a human torso to a luring ostrich,” I said.
“Huh. What a weird slime,” Glen said. “It looked human on the outside, at least when it wasn’t moving.”
“It was human on the inside too. I couldn’t tell it wasn’t human even when I examined it inside and out to staunch the bleeding. Well, seeing how it tried to run away in ostrich form, it may be able to use the skills of whatever it’s mimicking... The Rapid Movement skill, and even the Attract Carnivores skill would belong to a luring ostrich.” I ordered the mimic slime to shift into a luring ostrich again, and had it do a couple laps around us. It was just as fast as the real thing.
“That’s incredible... Think of all the ways that could come in handy,” I muttered to myself.
“Forest full of party tricks,” Glen grumbled.
I assumed that the slime’s Mimicry Memory skill would allow the mimic slime to recall the shape of what it’s mimicked in the past. However, when I asked the mimic slime to show me what it could transform into, it could only change into a luring ostrich and a raptor. Apparently, it hadn’t met whatever conditions it had to meet to commit the form of the adventurer to memory. It was surprising to see a single slime have both the Maximize and Minimize skills, but that accounted for its ability to change its size in the process of mimicking. In its original form, the slime was the size of a basketball. If it couldn’t change its size, its mimicry wouldn’t trick anything. As for the Predator skill—
“Are we going?” Glen urged.
“Oh, sorry. I’m very intrigued by this one.”
“Research, research, research, huh? You academic types.”
“Wait,” I said. “Did I tell you I was researching slimes?”
“No, but I have someone, acting like you are now, who’s really pushy about me taking his quest. After seeing you pull out all sorts of slimes since yesterday, it was easy to piece together.”
That made sense. S-rank adventurers were sure to attract government-level quests, which could include acquiring samples for government-funded research. Not that I thought Glen would accept that kind of quest in a million years.
With our threat neutralized, we carried on through the woods. I could hold off my curiosity for when I’d have ample time to research the mimic slime.
***
We walked for another four hours, until we reached a spot where most vegetation—other than heatwood trees—was crushed or trampled over.
“It’s easier to walk through here,” Glen said.
“We’re almost at a lake.” This lake was home to many large species of monsters. One of them was the cannonball rhino: a massive species—with an average length of five meters—that formed a herd. Monsters of that size would leave a noticeable trail, naturally.
“Big monster territory, huh? What rank is this cannonball rhino?” Glen asked.
“B, if it’s alone. Its hide is much tougher than steel armor, and it resists magic. It’s also very fast for how big it is. An adult cannonball uses Neutral magic to boost its strength.”
Sturdy, heavy, and powerful: that was a deadly combination that could come charging at us. Taking a cannonball charge head-on was almost always lethal. I’d even read a record of one stray cannonball rhino charging through city walls—leading to its common name, wallbreaker rhino.
“That being said, unlike most creatures in this forest, the cannonball rhino is docile. This would be the one time we should try to avoid monsters as we pass through,” I said.
“Fine. But if they find us, it’s fair game, right?”
“If it can’t be helped...” I sighed. I shot my shot, but I seriously doubted that Glen would ever try to avoid a monster, much less hide from one. I could only pray that we wouldn’t cross paths with a cannonball.
“Nothing here,” I noted of the lakeshore we’d come to. “Good.” Now was the time to get out of Dodge. “If we walk eastward along the lake, we’ll come to a stream. If we follow that up as quickly as we’ve been going, we’ll make it to Korumi in an hour.”
“So we’ll make it before sundown,” Glen said.
I checked the direction with the compass I’d packed, and we headed east.
We were attacked by a few monsters along the way, but nothing rattled us at this point. If anything, the blade rats—flying squirrels with razor-sharp skin—were a little annoying. In contrast to their adorable appearance that might charm many hearts in a pet shop, they were assassins of the forest, silently gliding right for our throats. After dealing with the gluttonous flies and blade rats, I was reminded that even small monsters could be incredibly dangerous.
“Hey... Those are Undead monsters ahead,” Glen said. “Lots of them.”
I had sensed that there were fewer creatures around as we progressed. In other words, our paths so far had been teeming with the vitality of the Sea of Trees. Korumi village was close.
“Here they come,” Glen announced.
“I’ll take care of the Undead with Light magic,” I said. “You make a path for us.”
Hearing our feet crunch the grass, a zombie turned our way. This one was clearly unalive, with its guts disemboweled and throat torn out.
“Light Ball.” There was no need to wait for it to approach us. My spell landed right on the zombie’s head, blowing it to smithereens. That was one opponent down.
As we walked along the stream, we took on one Undead monster after another, most of them zombie beasts. It was like all the monsters we’d faced so far came back to haunt us as zombies, hissing and shrieking and growling. It almost felt like I was playing a boss rush, but one that wasn’t fun at all.
“It stinks!” Glen shouted. “Why am I punching zombies bare-handed...? Why are there so many of them, anyway?!”
“They’re spawning from Korumi,” I said.
Firing Light Shot left and right, we tore through the Undead to carve a path until...
“The gate!” Glen declared.
Four years since my reincarnation and six days since stepping back into the Sea of Trees, I finally made it back to my birthplace in this world.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login