The End of the Hunt
Thud—!
Dueratos’s massive body crashed to the ground.
A spear-beast really did look best when it was dead.
I stood atop the corpse, breathing hard and rough. What I needed was the horn of the spear-beast. If it meant winning, I would do anything.
I didn’t even need a flaying knife. I drove my greatsword in, shoved the creature’s head aside with my foot, and carved the horn free.
Crack— crunch-crunch—!
A huge chunk of horn tore free and thudded down. I shook off my greatsword and eyed the edge.
“…I sharpened it just yesterday.”
The blade itself was starting to give out. I would have to leave a proper edge job to the outpost’s technicians. Still, given how rare the materials were, handing it over to strangers made me a little uneasy. Maybe I ought to go find Matillo.
“Alice-nim…!”
Pina came sprinting from a distance. She looked just as rough as I did after everything we had been through. We had deliberately kept our distance most of the time; the stench of monster blood we could never quite scrub off was overpowering.
Pina stared blankly at the dead spear-beast, then turned to me with a flat voice.
“Where’s the next one… the next monster… Let’s kill the next one too, right away….”
A little madness seemed to have crept into her. Maybe even Pina was finding it hard to stay sane under this kind of pressure. I shook my head at her.
“It’s over now.”
“…O-over?”
“Yeah.”
Life flooded back into her face as she looked at me.
“Finally—finally it’s over?”
“Yeah.”
“Really? No take-backs?”
She pressed the question as if she still could not believe it. I nodded hard.
“Let’s head back.”
“Oh, gods above… thank you….”
Why thank them for that? I looked at her and smiled a little.
“So… what are we taking….”
“That horn.”
“A horn again….”
“Yeah.”
Sorry about that, Dueratos. Every kill was for the sake of taking down Disastro; I hoped the dead monsters would understand. If I hadn’t killed them, Disastro would have eaten them anyway. Getting killed by a hunter was cleaner, wasn’t it? At least hunters left the body behind—even if they did take a piece or two.
I watched Pina gather up Dueratos’s horn in clumsy armfuls, then let myself drop onto the ground. I half-collapsed onto the wasteland sand and stared up at the sky. It was uselessly clear.
As I gazed at it, this body’s memories tangled themselves into the blue without my meaning them to. That place had been a sky burning ash-gray. “I” had fallen into despair there. That was why I could not afford to lose this clear sky. So die for the sake of peace. I would pour everything out—not the way a game works, but the way a hunter does.
For that, I had killed a great many monsters. Two a day at most, of course; taking one down ate nearly half a day. Still, I had managed at least one every single day. This place overflowed with monsters compared to anywhere else, and the open wasteland made them easy to spot. They had nowhere to hide, so they fought ready to die.
We had camped out here for about ten days… I never counted the exact number. Counting would have been meaningless anyway.
To haul the materials, I used other monsters’ parts. Linking the broad carapace plates of a Mesascorpio made an excellent platform; the edges curled upward so nothing inside slipped off easily. Then I pulled thread from the silk sacs of desert spiders—Pontoponto—and lashed the materials and the platform together. Pontoponto silk washed clean in water, so that was fine. I snipped the threads with Formico mandibles for a clean finish. All that remained was the hauling.
“…How are we supposed to drag this?”
“Good question.”
Pina and I stared at the mountain of materials and fretted. Gathering them had been great. Gathering them had been great, but… maybe we had hunted a little too recklessly?
“Population control and all that… th-that should be fine, right?”
“It’s fine.”
Every monster here had only appeared because of the Anomalies. The Hunter Association’s usual population concerns didn’t really apply… probably. And even if there were limits, I had a perfect excuse ready.
You going to kill Disastro for me instead?
…Of course I wasn’t planning to solo it. The whole point of this work was so we could all join forces. I could have tried alone, but life is precious.
I said it optimistically.
“The Association will look the other way.”
“…You know that sounded completely plan-less, right?”
“…….”
“Don’t tell me you really don’t have one? Really, really?”
As if I had been thinking that far ahead while I was doing it…. Still, I couldn’t show a pathetic face. I straightened my back as brazenly as I could and nodded with full confidence. They say staying silent gets you halfway there.
“Alice-nim only knows how to hunt, you idiot…. What if they ban you again?”
Didn’t even make it halfway. Ah, wrong approach. Her words hit the bullseye and left me drooping.
Ah!
A good idea struck me and I answered her.
“Disastro will be a special subjugation request. So even if they put a limit on me….”
“Th-then you can’t hunt anything else! That means the only thing left you can kill is that monster—Disastro!”
“Huh. You’re right.”
That would be dangerous.
“And that Disastro… you said it just goes around looking for food, right? What if it shows up faster because Alice-nim wiped out everything around here?”
I had already thought of that.
“I left the corpses, so it’s fine.”
“…Ah, that’s a relief.”
Pina nodded in acceptance. Nice work on my part, right? I thrust my chest out and nodded. She looked at me, then sighed at the pile of materials.
“…So how do we carry all this?”
I rubbed my mouth while I thought. We had hunted hard and gathered materials to our hearts’ content, but we no longer had the strength left to haul them. We would collapse from exhaustion long before we got them back.
Then a bright idea hit me and I clapped my hands.
“…Do we really have to carry them ourselves?”
“Huh?”
“Let’s make the prince do it.”
That was what soldiers were for, after all. I blinked at Pina several times. This is fine, right? That was the look I gave her.
Her eyes went huge as she stared at me, then she opened her mouth.
“Alice-nim isn’t even a monster. You’re a devil—definitely a devil. A devil who torments humans and monsters alike without mercy.”
“Eh….”
Harsh. Even so, Pina finally agreed once she realized there was no better option. See? I was right in the end. I couldn’t exactly argue that the idea was devilish, though. It just meant more work for the soldiers who had only been standing guard.
I stacked the materials as close as possible to the ruins hideout, just in case other monsters decided to mess with them. Come to think of it, we never even checked the ruins themselves. Nothing special had ever been revealed about them in the game either, so I hadn’t cared much. Once Disastro was dead, other hunters could poke around later if they wanted.
And so Pina and I finished our monster hunt dressed up as an “exploration.”
The wind was cool and the sand stayed put. Whether the sky was helping us or not, the weather stayed clean, and we reached Angolo far more comfortably than usual.
As we passed through the outpost gate, a sentry on duty asked,
“…H-Hunters, are you all right?”
The soldiers here lived side by side with hunters, so they tended to be friendly toward us. Seeing the state Pina and I were in must have worried him. Pina answered for me in a thoroughly exhausted voice.
“Ah, yeees… we’re fiiine….”
“I-I see.”
When our eyes met, the soldier flinched.
Was I that scary?
“Th-the Slaughterer….”
Please don’t call me that….
Then Pina asked him something else.
“Um… where is His Highness right nooow…?”
“His Highness? He’s handling paperwork at the moment. Support supplies just arrived. You’ll find him over at that warehouse.”
Pina bobbed her head like a zombie and managed a thank-you.
“Thank youuu….”
“Yes, please… rest well.”
The private watched us with a thoroughly sickened look. The only reason we looked terrifying right now was pure exhaustion. People say a face shows every hardship you’ve endured; that was us. We had taken every possible trial and storm head-on and were ready to drop dead.
If we didn’t shake off this fatigue somehow, we would stay like this all day. We were in no condition to meet the prince immediately, so we went straight to the quarters and dumped our gear.
The moment the packs hit the floor we both walked into the tiny bathroom without a second thought. No room for feelings this time. We just wanted to get clean, fast.
“Haaah….”
Cold water or not, I dumped it straight over myself and forced my mind clear. Pina reacted even louder.
“Kyaaah—!”
Everything that had piled up washed away under the cold stream. We scrubbed the filthy armor at the same time. Clotted monster blood came off me in thick sheets; sand poured off Pina. I wasn’t particularly germophobic, but no matter how much I washed I never felt truly clean, so we stayed under the water longer than usual.
Still, once we stepped out, the world looked different. Even these quarters now seemed beautiful and quaint. Maybe it was because we had been sleeping on the ground; when I flopped onto the bed, the hard mattress felt like heavenly down.
“A-Alice-nim, you can’t sleep yet.”
Right. I snapped awake and sat bolt upright. I had been about to peel off the old fatigue at last, but there was still work that had to be done right away.
Without a moment’s rest we left the quarters and headed for the warehouse the sentry had mentioned. The thought that we could finally rest once this was finished made the atmosphere turn grimly determined all by itself.
“Put that over there.”
“Yes, sir.”
Just as the sentry had said, Melchior was inside the warehouse directing the sorting of supplies with his scribe. At the sound of our footsteps he turned.
When our eyes met, Melchior blinked several times as if he had seen something he would rather not have.
I greeted him.
“We’re back.”
“…Have you come to kill me? Why are you looking at me with such terrifying eyes?”
Beside him, Biopia made a dramatic fuss.
“At last the day has come for even Your Highness!”
“Scribe, are you enjoying this?”
“Not at all. I am devastated. To lose my lord… sob sob—.”
“You don’t even bother to wet your eyes, yet somehow you still manage to move me.”
Biopia dabbed at the corner of her eye with a fingertip. The way she smiled without shedding a single tear was honestly more frightening.
Melchior gave her a long-suffering look, then turned back to us.
“Well, it’s been a while either way. Did you just arrive?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what brings you all the way here to find me? Do you have a report?”
“A report… I guess you could call it that.”
“Vague answer. What is it?”
I answered simply.
“I killed too many monsters. I need someone to carry the materials back.”
“…What on earth are you talking about?”
Melchior asked, looking half-dazed. I explained again, carefully.
“I killed so many monsters that I couldn’t bring the materials myself. I need people to carry them instead.”
“Ah… so that’s it. Just how recklessly did you slaughter them to end up like this? No wonder they call you the Slaughterer.”
“I killed them because I needed them.”
“Right, some sort of ‘purification work,’ then?”
“…No.”
Melchior tilted his head.
“Then what for?”
“Materials to kill Disastro.”
“Is that so?”
He snapped his fingers to catch Biopia’s attention.
“Scribe, go gather the soldiers who are resting. How many do you think will be enough?”
“…As many as possible? Ropes and hooks would be good too.”
“Then just send them all.”
Biopia’s eyebrow twitched at Melchior’s generous order.
“Er, Your Highness. Is that really all right?”
“Explain the situation to the soldiers. Killing Disastro comes first.”
“Yes, understood. Um, Hunter. Where exactly is the location?”
“I marked it on the map.”
I pulled the map from my pocket. It was crumpled and worn, but still readable. Biopia took it and nodded.
“Still, someone should guide them in case they get lost….”
“I’ll go.”
I answered without hesitation.
“If there are monsters on the way, they can kill those too.”
The more materials, the better.