Stolen Prey
Gathering their own ingredients for dinner would have been good experience, but winter made that difficult. In the end, the three of them made do with the meal kits they had brought along.
Nicoletta was satisfied enough with that. Anything beat a slapdash stew of whatever scraps you could throw in a pot.
After finishing dinner, Alice's party carefully washed the dirty dishes at the water source they had secured, so the smell wouldn't draw monsters. Cold hands were simply the price of doing it right.
Before setting out after the Fantanotor, Alice gave her satchel one last check.
"The Waterburst Fruit is only for when there's no drinking water, or for emergencies. These paralysis mines are useful, but I usually just catch things myself. It's easier."
"For capture, then?"
"Capture would work, but the process is a hassle."
Capturing a monster took several times longer than simply killing it. You had to bring a transport crew, haul the thing back, and keep a constant watch so it didn't wake up along the way. It would help the Association scholars, sure — but plenty of other people could handle that kind of work. It didn't have to be Alice.
She pulled out items she rarely used and showed them to Nicoletta.
"These are pellet bombs. They draw a monster's attention."
"Pellet bombs?"
"You fire them with this slingshot. They pop on impact — useful when you need to lure a monster with sound."
"I see. They look like children's toys, but I suppose monsters see them differently."
There were other tools as well — recovery potions, small bombs, and more — but Alice barely used any of them. She had killed so many monsters that control alone was enough. Most of what she carried were things Noah had bought for her long ago. She kept them carefully not because she needed them, but because she couldn't bring herself to throw them away.
Alice checked her watch. It wasn't past six yet, but the sun had already dipped low. The plan was to sleep one night and head back on the second day, so until sundown they would search for monster tracks.
"Let's get ready," Alice said, fastening the buckle on her greatsword. "We're only looking for tracks, then we come straight back. Monsters will be heading to their dens around now, so keep the noise down."
"Yes ma'am~"
"Got it!"
Pina and Nicoletta answered with confidence. Alice tipped her head back and looked at the sky — not a cloud in sight. She lowered her gaze and rolled up her sleeves.
Might as well finish this quick.
Winter days are short. They hadn't wandered far before the world had already turned to night. Moonlight took the sun's place and lit the land bright, with the stars lending a hand beside it.
And so the monsters still out in the winter cold followed the vanished sunlight home to their dens. The Fantanotor was one of those. The first plan had been simple: find its tracks, confirm its route, then pull out.
"Ugly."
But the plan had already gone sideways from the start.
I was standing in the moonlight, examining a monster corpse. Its belly had been torn completely open, ribs laid bare, guts trailing out across the ground. And it wasn't just the stomach. One of the front legs had been yanked until it tore free of the torso, and the head was twisted a full hundred and eighty degrees.
Pina stepped back and gagged.
"Hrrk — uegh…"
No — she was actually throwing up. I made a point of not looking.
Nicoletta, standing beside me, seemed to have a stronger stomach. She asked without much reaction at all.
"Is this the Fantanotor?"
"Yeah."
Dark brown scale-armor, an elongated snout, and a ridge of sharp spines running from the neck all the way down the tail. It was definitely a Fantanotor — our commission target.
The problem was that it was already dead, and we hadn't done a thing. Dead in a particularly gruesome way, at that.
"Brutal."
"The thing we were hired for is dead. Does that count as completing the job?"
I nodded.
"If we bring back proof it was a Fantanotor, sure."
If we wanted the easy payday, that would have been fine. Would the ranch owner ever know the difference? Keep quiet and no one but the three of us would ever find out.
But I wasn't that kind of hunter. If anything, I hated situations like this.
It felt like an entire day had been ripped out from under me. Choosing the commission for Nicoletta, packing the gear, setting up base camp — all of it, wasted. I hated this hollow feeling of having my prey stolen out from under me.
"What a pain."
Nicoletta asked, "Hm? What is?"
"Something killed the thing we were after."
"True. I was looking forward to watching you fight. A little disappointing."
Nicoletta touched the corner of her mouth. She had come to see a hunter's work, and I couldn't even show her combat — the very heart of the hunt. It was like sitting down for a course meal and never getting the main dish.
Pina seemed to catch what I was thinking.
"Ugh… Alice, are you going after it?"
"Of course."
Nicoletta tilted her head. "Uh — after what? The Fantanotor is already dead."
"Whatever killed it."
I nodded. Judging by the state of decay, it hadn't been dead long — a few hours at most. The monster was still somewhere nearby. That much was obvious.
A Fantanotor was a mid-tier monster in its own right. Anything that killed one and made a meal of it had to be at least upper-tier. Maybe even something that had come back through time.
Then Nicoletta raised a perfectly reasonable point.
"It has nothing to do with the commission. Is that still okay?"
I answered with perfect clarity.
"I'm a Master Hunter, so—"
"Oh, so Master Hunters get a free pass. Of course — the Association designates them specially, so they must have that kind of authority…"
"…It should be fine, right?"
"Ah."
Truthfully, I wasn't sure either.
Dangerous upper-tier monsters were treated as public hazards. Normally you reported them to the Association and they became official subjugation commissions. But I was a Master Hunter. If I took one down on my own without filing a report, wouldn't they just look the other way? Even if it was off-commission, catching a dangerous upper-tier monster ought to buy some flexibility. That was my thinking, anyway.
Nicoletta hit the mark dead-on.
"So it's an abuse of authority, then."
I hurried to give a reason.
"Whatever killed the Fantanotor is probably upper-tier. That's why."
Something like the ancient Alberoelva could not be allowed to happen again. More than a few people had died because of that monster. Matillo had taken a wound across his back from it. And if Matillo hadn't been there — if he hadn't shielded her — Pina would have been in danger too.
If only someone had known sooner.
I spoke quietly.
"You find the dangerous ones and kill them, so nobody dies."
You had to kill them before they hurt anyone — before anyone died. That was the law of this world.
And it had stolen my prey. It was going to pay a fitting price for that.
At those words, Nicoletta's expression suddenly turned solemn. Pina's did too.
…Did I say something wrong?
I looked at the two of them, both silent, and felt like I should say something — but I had no idea what, so I just kept quiet.
Nicoletta spoke at last.
"I understand wanting to protect even one person. The commission was never the real issue. If a monster like that is nearby, any hunters moving through this area are in danger. And if it heads toward Antico, the danger only gets worse. Stopping that kind of thing is…"
She talks a lot.
While I was still processing, Pina cut in.
"You don't want to see anyone die again, do you? Alice is right. There might be other hunters around here — we need to go after it quickly."
Yes. That was exactly what I'd been trying to say. Turns out if you just stay quiet, half the work does itself.
Pina clenched a fist.
"Then let's pick up the trail again."
Nicoletta, who had mostly just been following along until now, rolled up her sleeves and stepped forward.
"I don't know how much help I'll be, but I'll pitch in."
I nodded with a faint smile. After all that back and forth, it seemed we were finally on the same page.
Finding tracks that weren't the Fantanotor's was easy. The two of them had fought right here, after all. Judging by the scene, the Fantanotor had taken a one-sided beating. Every scrape and impact mark belonged to it alone.
Pina gently ran her hand over the ground.
"I've never seen claw marks like these. They look almost like a person scraped them."
Five-fingered gouges ran across the dirt. The hollowed-out mounds of earth in front of them suggested something had pulled a buried rock free with its bare hands.
Nicoletta, still examining the tracks, added her own observation.
"There are footprints over here."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Looks like something stamped the ground flat."
The footprints were smaller than a yeti's, but roughly similar. The distinctive feature was an extra toe set beside the curved outer edge of the foot, like a hand.
I found fur. A clump of it mixed into the dirt — stiff, dark-brown hair.
"This is…"
I was starting to get a clear picture.
A black-furred creature that used five fingers, with a toe on the side of its foot like a monkey. And it had toyed with a monster's corpse with casual, vicious cruelty.
There was only one thing that fit.
An upper-tier monster: the Dual-Headed Ape, Orco.
A monstrous two-headed ape.