Raising to Devour
“Caw! Clang! Caw!….”
Another Iron Wolf slowly suffocating to death. I whispered softly to its pitiful whimpers.
“Don’t worry. You’re not dying. You’re going to live with me.”
What would I even do with the hides? I’d just blow it all on gacha anyway. The most common drop would obviously be mana herbs, and thanks to Gluttonous Stomach I could eat them all raw to grow my mana capacity. So it wasn’t entirely a lie.
In other words, this thing wasn’t an Iron Wolf so much as a half-mana-herb…
“Ah. That feels gross.”
It sounded like I was predicting my own gacha bankruptcy. Feeling gloomy, I focused a little more mana into Weak Flame.
Skills from the gacha let you skip the long grind you’d normally need. They don’t just adjust your specs for casting—they etch the bare minimum of related knowledge straight into your body.
I was grateful for the spec correction, of course, but since it was still a “skill,” I figured the real value lay in the knowledge side.
Take Weak Flame, for example. It was a basic spell, simple enough that even the Magic Tower didn’t bother suppressing its spread. But was the version they learned really the same as the one I was using?
The gacha system said they were identical, yet a few things felt off.
On the Pan Continent, Weak Flame was just a spell for starting a fire. The heat was pathetic and you couldn’t shape it. You could pour in more mana to raise the output, but past a certain point the structure collapsed. I agreed with that part; the knowledge I’d received said the same.
But the claim that you couldn’t manipulate the shape made me tilt my head. No matter how hard I searched my memories, that restriction wasn’t there. In fact, it felt like a little effort might make it possible.
So I tried.
…And it worked.
“Huh?”
Instead of scorching the entire nose, I split the flame into two prongs that plugged only the nostrils. I blinked at the result.
I hadn’t used the usual “click” feeling to activate the skill, so I’d been a bit nervous… but there was no difference at all. I just wanted it to happen, and it did.
“Why does this work?”
Actually, thinking about it, maybe it was natural. The pickpocketing skill didn’t just let me steal wallets quietly—it let me snatch weapons right out of someone’s hands too.
I chuckled and returned the flame to its normal shape. Shaping it was possible, but it seemed to cost more mana. The Iron Wolf still suffered, yet its strength drained more slowly. The heat reached deeper, but the smoke from burning flesh decreased, lowering the suffocation efficiency.
I squeezed out what little mana I had left until I was on the verge of depletion before finally bringing the Iron Wolf down.
“Haa… I’m counting on you, Lady Rydia!”
“…This is strange. I was the one who made Yona my baggage carrier.”
Rydia pouted, clearly displeased, but her body moved dutifully as she sliced open the Iron Wolf’s belly with aura. To be fair, there had been Elly’s request, and Rydia had grown rather fond of raising me… but this was technically still my baggage-carrier training period. The logic was that you needed to be at least strong enough for the second floor before you could properly do the job.
I hadn’t really understood at first, but after rolling around on the first floor myself, I got it. At minimum, you had to avoid triggering traps for no reason, know how to process loot, and have the stamina to carry all kinds of baggage.
In short, right now I was too weak to even be useful as Rydia’s baggage carrier.
“Waa.”
“Waa won’t help you catch Iron Wolves.”
I shrugged off Rydia’s scolding and went back to butchering the half-cooked Iron Wolf. Skinning it was hard, and since I hadn’t been properly taught, a lot of it got damaged… but even at half price, it was still forty copper. Or I could use it to make my own armor. The leather armor I was wearing now was just the cheap starter set given to novice adventurers.
If I had armor made from Iron Wolf hide, I could fight more aggressively on the first floor. I looked at the hide I’d managed to peel off—tattered but intact—with satisfaction and tied it to the top of my bag. Including the two I’d already gotten, that made three stacked layers. Thinking that all of this was money made me feel warm inside.
“Hehe. Meat side dish tonight!”
“Don’t we eat meat every day? Elly-senpai serves meat at every meal.”
“Well, I am currently in the middle of being raised by Elly.”
“…That word sounds suspicious. What does ‘raised’ mean here?”
“You don’t know Key job? It’s short for ‘raise and eat.’”
“There really are all kinds of strange phrases… Though from what I can see, it looks more like Elly-senpai is the one being eaten rather than doing the eating.”
“Then it becomes reverse Key job. Either way, I’m fine with it.”
There was romance in Key job…! Proof of that was how often you found stories dripping with that trope when you consumed enough creative works. Helen being kidnapped by Theseus, Daddy-Long-Legs, “You’re the student and I’m the teacher,” The Tale of Genji, Princess Maker, The Count of Monte Cristo, and so on…
What mattered was that from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to the modern era, countless people across East and West had dealt with the “raise and devour” element. In reality there might be controversies, but as pure romance, there was no denying it.
“Which side do you think Elly would prefer? She doesn’t seem brave enough to make the first move on me, so probably reverse Key job?”
“I don’t want to know Elly-senpai’s preferences. Especially not when the person in question is right in front of me.”
“Yeah, no matter how you answer that, it’d get awkward. My bad, I didn’t think it through. Then what about you, Lady Rydia? Which side do you like?”
“…You’re asking me that here?”
Rydia looked flustered. I grinned at her.
“Yes, you, Lady Rydia. You said it yourself, didn’t you? You wanted to use me as a baggage carrier, but I was too weak, so you’d raise me to second-floor level before taking me along. Isn’t that exactly Key job?”
I slipped past the half-organized bag and stuck right next to her.
“You’re not going to say it isn’t, are you, Lady Rydia?”
“I-I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, come on. You gave me equipment under the pretext of reforming me, taught me how to fight, followed me into the labyrinth so I wouldn’t get hurt… and you even try to force the ordinary life you believe in onto me, don’t you?”
“…Force? I just…”
“I know. That wasn’t what you meant. I just couldn’t think of a better word than ‘force,’ but I’m not saying I hate it. Everything you do comes from wanting the best for me, right?”
I chuckled and gently laid my hand over hers.
“But what I want to say is this: you don’t have to live an ordinary life to be happy. Even someone as twisted as me can still have a decent enough life.”
“……”
Rydia couldn’t answer, apparently not expecting me to say something so serious. She seemed to be taking it quite earnestly… Though of course I meant it, this was still just buildup.
I squeezed her hand, which I’d only been lightly touching until now.
“So take responsibility.”
“…What?”
“If you’re going to shape me into your ideal, you have to take responsibility. Don’t raise me just to abandon me—devour me properly.”
“But Elly-senpai… I never even intended to do that in the first place…”
Normally Rydia would have snapped “Nonsense, don’t be ridiculous” and shut it down, but today her reactions were unusually soft. Maybe that was why my mischievous side surged and I said something I normally wouldn’t.
“Lady Rydia, do you know something?”
“…What.”
“In chivalric romance, adultery is romantic.”
“T-That’s…!”
Chivalric literature existed on the Pan Continent too—the wandering knight who traveled around defeating evil and winning the heart of a lady… or in this world, a gentleman. And because of the nature of such stories, they involved married men quite often…
“Key job is romance. Adultery is romance. So wouldn't hold hands-adultery be the ultimate romance?”
“Romance…”
I leaned in and whispered into Rydia’s ear as she stood frozen, lost in whatever fantasy she was having.
“Don’t you want to fulfill it? A romance.”
“……!”
Rydia’s eyes widened. But maybe the stimulation had been too strong—her mind snapped back and she glared, then delivered a solid noogie.
Thump!
“Kueeeng!”
“No more of that kind of joke. Enough. Pack up and get moving. We’re heading to the next area.”
Rydia turned her back to me as she spoke. Amazingly, even from behind, her chest was still visible from the side. Good grief…
While pretending to rub my aching crown, I kept my gaze fixed on the rare sight of that sideboob view and said,
“I’d love to, but the bag’s too heavy for me to carry.”
“Huh?”
“We’ve already hunted three Iron Wolves, remember? The hides weigh a ton.”
Iron Wolves were as big as bulls. Naturally, their hides were just as large and heavy.
“Could you carry just half for me, Lady Rydia? In exchange, I won’t hunt any more and we’ll head straight back.”
“…I can’t tell who the baggage carrier is anymore.”
Grumbling, Rydia still helped carry the load.