Monster Doomsday
Fiore couldn't stay in Antico forever.
She'd only stolen a brief stretch of time to come see me; her anomaly investigation was still very much underway. Having confirmed what kind of hunter I was, she returned to Primavera without a shred of lingering regret.
"Alice, let's meet again with the advance party."
"Yeah."
"…And, um, let's play cards together too."
Meetings, it seemed, always turned hollow in the face of parting. But since we would meet again someday, parting itself was hollow too.
I never paid much mind to anyone's absence. Live long enough, and you were bound to run into each other again.
To keep from overreaching when I hunted mid-grade monsters, I decided to shore up my foundation first. Speed and decisiveness always mattered. Watching Fiore scare off low-grade monsters had driven the point home — using a butcher's knife to kill a chicken, she'd said. Among hunters, that was the most basic of basics. No — even for a single chicken, a hunter threw every available means at the problem to guarantee no failure.
So what I had to do was already decided.
Mindless request grinding.
…Not so different from a game, but that was life for you.
I skipped capture requests whenever I could. Capture meant taking the monster alive on principle, which was neither particularly fun — and that was the important part — nor did it yield any materials. So I took subjugation requests with truly reckless abandon.
As of today, I hereby declare Doomsday — the day of monster annihilation.
Miteraos, you dared send me into the past? In return, I'll ravage the ecosystem for you. If you don't want to watch monsters die, then come out and face me yourself—
…That was the vibe.
Though if it actually showed up, the gear gap alone would probably kill me from a single graze. And once I was dead, I wouldn't even get to shout about the gear gap. Better to give it everything I had before I left myself something to regret.
I wasn't a gamer anymore. I was a hunter who fought with my life on the line. If this place was real, then even a stone bridge I'd crossed a hundred times still demanded care not to fall through. Fortifying the path I walked and securing my own safety — that was always my first priority.
I passed the time killing monsters.
After Fiore, a string of new roommates came and went, but between their requests and mine we rarely crossed paths. I never stayed at the lodging long enough myself, so every new roommate left me feeling awkward all over again. In the end, Pina was my only friend.
The time that slipped past showed me the rhythm of this world.
"A lot of time has gone by, hasn't it?"
Pina murmured beside me. I stopped walking and looked up at the sky.
Autumn sunlight flickered through gaps in the clouds. The scorching heat of summer was gone. Red-stained old trees swayed coolly in the autumn wind. Antico in autumn was crisp and pleasant.
Farewell, Cooling Powder.
Antico had become the kind of world Fiore — who hated hot days — would have loved.
My rank was currently 40. After nothing but killing monsters all this way, I'd reached a level where people could reasonably call me a mid-tier veteran. It was almost strange that nothing had gone wrong so far.
That didn't mean I wasn't tired. Even something you loved wore you down if it was all you ever did. It wasn't my body so much as my mind.
And then, suddenly, I found myself turning over the last piece of advice Fiore had given me before she left.
"And… I think it would be good if you took a little better care of yourself. Monster hunting isn't everything for us hunters. Rest that restores your balance matters too. I hope you'll keep that in mind."
I hadn't really understood why she'd said it. I knew my life was precious, so I was always careful. I stayed focused and did everything I could not to take a single hit. That kind of concentration left my mind utterly drained at times, so I made sure I rested enough.
But other things besides monster hunting… I didn't do those, did I?
Right. My life revolved entirely around the hunt — as if nothing else were allowed to exist. Then again, it was my top priority… and it was fun… and the sense of accomplishment was enormous…
Still, I couldn't deny I'd been running a little too hard.
With my work finished for the moment, I finally decided to take a short break from hunting. For a while I'd been cramming requests in the forest, killing Ekriki and Luga-lac — the former for weapon materials, the latter for armor to replace my leather gear. Beyond those two, I'd been running myself ragged grinding rank.
All that remained was to take down the stronger mid-grade specimens and challenge the high-grade tier. No need to rush. At this pace, joining the main story would come in no time.
As Fiore had said, hunting wasn't everything a hunter did. There were plenty of requests that didn't require killing anything at all. Gathering, exploration — that sort of work. I was certain Pina knew far more about those than I did. After all, she'd been doing exactly that kind of request right up until she met me. In that respect, she was my senior. Technically she was my senior by days served, too…
So instead of only taking subjugation requests, I turned my attention to the odd jobs the villagers needed done. It was the same work I'd been forced through during Noah's crash-course tutorial, and coming back to it felt strangely nostalgic.
What was Noah doing right about now? Not knowing what she was hunting or where she was headed left me a little restless. I had no idea when she'd return, but I could only hope she came back safe and sound.
Five days.
Not even a full week — five whole days spent on truly petty requests. Fetching medicinal herbs. Chopping useful old timber from the forest. Hauling stones from the woods because someone wanted to build a stone wall.
…I was a glorified errand runner, plain and simple.
"Hmm…"
This was extremely… boring. I was already sick of it. Most of the jobs didn't even take a full day, but nothing about them satisfied me. I had no idea how Noah had managed this kind of work.
"We're done for today!"
Pina, on the other hand, loved this stuff. Safe, zero risk of dying, no need to think — just put your body to work and earn money in proportion to the effort. It was true that these small requests brought in more consistent income than monster hunting.
My complaint was that rank climbed far more slowly than when I was killing monsters. The requests resolved quickly, but rank barely budged, and my growth froze solid.
Hunting a monster took two days if you were lucky, three to four on average, and a week or more if things dragged. High-grade monsters would take longer still, but at my current mid-grade level that was the standard time investment. A short hunt could rake in a huge bounty, but there was no guarantee the search-and-subjugate cycle would wrap up quickly. If the bounty didn't justify the time spent, you ended up with a situation where the cost outweighed the gain — a hungry hunter.
But I had never once found that time boring or hard. Chasing monsters felt like a game of hide-and-seek where I was it and the monster was hiding. Not the cute kind, of course — a horror hide-and-seek with lives on the line.
Right. From now on, it was hunting and nothing else.
Having made up my mind, I stood before the receptionist again. I'd been seeing her face a lot lately, though we still hadn't exchanged names. I was starting to think I should at least ask. First, though, I asked her about subjugation requests.
"Got any subjugation requests?"
"Ah — at present, Hunter, you are unable to accept simple subjugation requests."
"Huh? Really?"
"Yes, that does appear to be the case."
"Alice, this is a problem. At this rate we'll be stuck doing odd jobs forever."
What?
Pina said it from beside me like she found the whole thing amusing. If this stood, I was going to be stuck with that dull, tedious work indefinitely.
"Isn't there anything we can do?"
"Y-you do realize you've taken down far too many, right? Even I never expected subjugation requests to be cleared at this pace. Please refrain from simple subjugation requests for the time being. Emergency subjugations would be fine, but those almost never come up. For about a month, please take other kinds of requests instead."
"Huh?"
I reeled at the receptionist's words. What was she talking about? I had no idea a rule like that even existed. This was clearly some underhanded scheme to pad out playtime.
I blinked in despair. The receptionist gave me an awkward, apologetic smile.
"Even if you look at me like that… this is Association policy."
A month of forced restraint!
For me, it was catastrophic. What even was I, if I couldn't kill monsters?
Life never went the way you wanted. It was a life lesson I kept learning over and over.
"Fine…"
I slumped a little. Did the receptionist have any idea how much my hands were itching from not being able to hunt?
"Well… actually, there is another problem. If you could resolve it, we might be able to work something out."
"Oh? What is it?"
"We've been getting reports of poaching lately. That's part of why population control is such a sensitive issue right now."
Poaching. So people like that really did exist. I nodded at her words. The receptionist tucked her light brown hair behind her ear and sighed.
"We've also confirmed that monster materials are being illegally circulated out of Antico. Whether that's the cause or not, some hunters have been heading out on requests and coming back empty-handed."
"…Is that so?"
"If the poachers are caught, the population numbers should stabilize. Then that month might get shortened a bit."
In other words, I didn't necessarily have to wait a full month. Right. Decision made. This was all the poachers' fault, wasn't it? Whether they'd killed more or I had… honestly, I wasn't sure.
"I'll take it."
I told the receptionist quietly.
"I'll catch the poachers and bring them in."