One-Click (3)
I really hate the rain. I hated it even before getting stranded in this godforsaken dump.
Whenever it rained, clear blue skies were out of the question, and the humidity spiked to miserable extremes. It was especially unbearable during the summer monsoon back home—between the sweltering heat and the suffocating damp, I always felt on the verge of melting. If air conditioning had never been invented, I probably would have dissolved into a puddle of slime long ago.
Rumble-crash!!
"What absolute, goddamn trash weather."
I cursed under my breath, squinting out at the torrential downpour that practically blotted out the world. After going through the trouble of actually praying for the rain to let up, what did I get? Far from answering my humble request, the heavens had blasted a massive hole in the clouds.
This is why I hate gods. I don't mind religious people, but I can't stand deities.
Does whatever bastard is sitting up there hate me so much they just wanted to screw me over?
If so, they had the pettiness of an insecure toddler. I shook my head in disgust.
Still, since it had been almost a full week since the last rain, I had prepared thoroughly. I secured waterproof tarps over the outdoor oven and the blast furnace so they wouldn't get soaked, and hauled the buckets storing live fish into the cave. It was a shame about the fish traps set in the river, but I had no choice but to leave them to their fate. The downpour had unleashed itself at the crack of dawn, jolting me awake in a panic to run around securing the perimeter.
I need to start figuring out the warning signs before the sky opens up.
I had a loose grasp on the rain's weekly cycle, but knowing the precursor signs would let me take precautions far more reliably. It would have been wonderful if common sense from Earth applied here, but... this was the Forest of the Four Seasons. Ordinary logic had no purchase in this place. I would have to decipher the forest's own bizarre meteorological cues.
When the hell is this going to ease up?
I stared into the gray deluge. There wasn't the faintest hint of it slowing down. This storm operated on a completely different scale of violence from the previous one. With rainfall this relentless, the river had surely swollen to monstrous heights. And with a swollen river, all sorts of freakish aquatic creatures would get washed upstream.
What's it going to be this time? Surely nothing like a shark, right?
I resolved to stay on high alert for the foreseeable future. The last thing I wanted was to get caught with my pants down again.
While I was standing there, staring blankly at the relentless sheets of rain, a sudden sound pierced the gloom.
"Kreeegh!"
"Huh?"
A beast's shriek cut cleanly through the roar of the downpour. Wondering what was going on, I peered past the cave entrance.
"Kreeeegh!"
"Keng! Ke-keng!"
"Squeak! Squeee!"
A swarm of small and medium-sized wild animals was huddled right outside my cave.
There were rabbits, deer, wild boars, monstrously oversized rats, bizarre critters I had never seen before in my life, and even a raccoon dog—the spitting image of the one Ppareumbo had butchered. As I stood dumbfounded, wondering why on earth such an assortment was gathering on my doorstep, the raccoon dog at the head of the pack locked eyes with me.
"Keng! Kreegh!"
"Squeak squeak?"
"Oink?"
"..."
A bad feeling crept up my spine. Without making any sudden movements, I quietly slid the iron barricade into position.
If that mob surged inside, the shelter would turn into utter pandemonium. Worse, there was no telling what kind of lethal parasites or exotic pathogens those wild beasts were carrying.
"Keck! Ke-keck!"
Seeing me calmly set the iron gate in place, the raccoon dog jabbed an angry claw in my direction, chattering furiously. It was practically screaming: We're all trying to survive out here! You think it's fair that you're the only one hogging a dry roof, you selfish bastard?!
My response was short, sweet, and to the point. I casually raised my middle finger.
Whether wild animals understood the international sign of disrespect didn't matter in the slightest. As long as it brought me catharsis, that was plenty.
Wild animals can never be trusted.
Naturally, the adorable Wonmo and my symbiotic guardian, Fast Tree Sloth Ppareumbo, were honored exceptions. Besides, this was entirely the beasts' own fault. If they wanted shelter, they should have built their own houses earlier.
Not that I have much room to talk, considering I stole this cave from its original owlbear owner.
Regardless, no one was setting foot inside my home. If they wanted in, they'd have to try breaking through.
As I snorted and locked the barrier firmly in place, the raccoon dog seemed to formulate a plan of its own.
"Keng!"
"Oink-oink!"
The raccoon dog stepped over and slapped the wild boar hard on its flank.
Immediately, the boar began scraping its hind hooves against the mud, bracing its massive shoulders to charge. A sharp jolt of survival instinct hit me. That bastard is definitely going to ram the gate.
In that case, I only had one viable option: arm myself to the teeth.
Since they couldn't leap over the spiked iron barrier anyway, I could turn this into a defensive siege using the fence as my rampart.
"Oiiink—!!!"
Before I even finished adjusting my grip on my weapon, the boar launched forward at terrifying speed. As expected of a native creature of the Four Seasons Forest, its acceleration was unnatural. Its bulk was equally absurd, rivaling the mutated monstrosities you'd see in old monster movies.
Fortunately, half a month of surviving in this hellhole had taught me one undeniable universal truth.
Thwack—!!
Reach is everything. Superior reach reigns supreme.
Before the boar could slam its skull into the iron fence, I punched an Aura Blade straight through the center of its forehead. If I had been wielding the Heavenly Demon's Sword, striking from that distance might have been dicey. But the weapon in my hands right now was the Mithricon Sword.
My Aura had already ballooned into an absurdly massive vessel, and the Mithricon Sword amplified that energy into an even more colossal eruption. Thanks to that absurd projection, I neutralized the charging beast long before its tusks ever grazed the iron bars.
Thud!
With its brow caved in, the boar collapsed like a dropped sack of stones. The heavy tremor and dull impact echoed clearly above the roar of the rain. The remaining beasts looked completely stunned, having never anticipated their heaviest hitter dropping dead in the blink of an eye.
Still holding the blade ablaze with swirling, flame-like Aura, I gestured toward them with the tip.
"Come on."
"..."
"Come get some, you little shits. Step right up!!"
"Kreeeegh—!!!"
And so, a siege battle erupted across a single iron fence.
Relying on my overwhelming reach and the sturdy barrier, I skewered and slashed to keep the animals from swarming the entrance.
Clang!
Occasionally, a rabbit or deer packed with freakish hind-leg strength kicked violently against the barricade, rattling my teeth. Thank god it was made of forged iron; had it been wood, it would have shattered into kindling within the first ten seconds.
"Get the hell away from my house—!!!"
"Kreegh!"
The siege to defend my shelter ended the moment their self-appointed commander—the raccoon dog—took a lethal slash to the chest. With their leader dead, the rest of the animals lost their nerve and scattered into the undergrowth.
Gasping for breath in the aftermath of an unprovoked battle, I slumped hard against the cave wall.
I swear to god, the absolute insanity I have to deal with...
This hadn't happened during the previous rain, which made it all the stranger. Perhaps the sheer violence of this downpour had flooded all their burrows and crushed their nests. Letting out a heavy sigh, I looked out past the iron bars.
Starting with the massive wild boar, quite a few carcasses lay strewn across the muddy clearing. My survivalist instincts screamed at me to field-dress the meat, but I simply didn't have the stamina left.
Besides, with this rain and humidity, they'll spoil before I can cure them anyway.
As wasteful as it felt, I'd have to bury the lot. Digging a mass grave would suffice—right by the trench where I buried the gorillas.
[Photo: Pile of dead wild animals outside the cave]
[Photo: Battered iron barricade showing heavy dent marks]
These animals suddenly mobbed my cave and tried to break in, so I had to fight a defensive siege.
When the homeowner says you can't come in, you don't come in. Why the hell did they think they could force their way inside? ;;
Seeing the users engrossed in their own discussions, I logged off the Gallery.
Peering outside once more, the curtain of rain seemed to have thinned slightly. At this rate, it would probably stop completely within the hour.
Assuming it rains roughly once a week going forward...
On days with severe downpours, wild animals will come seeking shelter. I made a firm mental note of it in my survival log.
Wonmo was still curled up in the corner, sleeping like a log without a single care in the world, blissfully oblivious to the desperate siege I had just fought to protect our hearth. Well, considering how out of left field the attack had been, I couldn't really blame him.
Drip... drip...
Roughly an hour later, the rain finally tapered off. I looked outside.
A radiant, brilliant sun beamed down as though the sky had never shed a single drop.
Thunk! Shovel-thud!
A lot of good clear weather did when I was breaking my back hauling and burying animal corpses. I dug into the sodden soil, fervently praying that no giant mutated earthworms would wriggle out. Fortunately, none did.
"Puh-ha!"
"...And what the hell are you?"
Instead, an odd little mole popped its head out of the churned dirt. It stared at me with wide, glossy black eyes, then panicked and scrambled away as fast as its stubby limbs could carry it. It had clearly been sleeping underground until the sudden deluge flooded its tunnel.
Shaking my head at the absurd sight, I finished burying the carcasses cleanly.
The drainage ditch is holding up well... which leaves checking the river, I suppose?
Since the river would still be swollen with high water, there was no need to rush. I had plenty of domestic chores to attend to first anyway.
If this circus repeats every time it rains, it's going to be a massive pain in the ass.
Now I had to factor in not just the forest's lethal wildlife, but its erratic weather patterns as well. After confirming that the outdoor oven and blast furnace had survived without structural damage, I geared up.
Because there was no telling what horrors might crawl out of the flooded river, I strapped on the Heavenly Demon's Sword instead of the Mithricon Sword. Wonmo was still dead to the world, so I left Bbarmbo behind to guard the shelter and headed up the trail.
By the time I reached the riverbank, the scene was exactly what I had braced myself for.
ROAAARRRRR—!!
"Damn it all."
I cursed aloud at the churning brown torrent. The swollen river carried the crushing momentum of a waterfall turned horizontal. Naturally, the fish traps I had carefully set had been swept clean away.
The only silver lining was the shoreline. Several river fish were flopping helplessly in the mud along the bank. Gathering those would easily sustain me until I could weave new traps.
Wait a second...
Among the stranded catch, one creature stood out like a sore thumb.
Last time, it had been a giant electric eel. This time, it wasn't an eel at all. It was a pufferfish.
Yes, a pufferfish. A creature with an absurdly round, bloated physique that looked bizarrely like Wonmo. A marine beast that had somehow washed all the way up into a freshwater river.
Did it rain over the ocean too? Or how the hell did this thing end up here?
Some species of eels adapt to freshwater, so that was somewhat plausible, but a pufferfish was on another level of strange. This was undeniably a saltwater specimen, so by what baffling ecological mechanism had it traveled this far inland?
Regardless of how it got here, I had zero desire to eat it. Pufferfish are loaded with lethal tetrodotoxin. A single prick could drop an adult human into agonizing paralysis, and considering this was the Four Seasons Forest, whatever poison it carried was bound to be vastly worse, not milder.
And butchering one is supposed to be notoriously difficult.
You can butcher ordinary fish with clumsy guesswork, but never a pufferfish. The procedure is infamously unforgiving; you can't just wing it by copying a recipe. On the Gallery, there were plenty of horror stories about amateurs trying to follow preparation videos only to end up six feet under. Unless you were a certified master chef, it was best not to even look in a pufferfish's direction.
Just to be safe, let's nudge it back into the current.
Holding my shield firmly in front of me, I nudged the pufferfish gently forward.
Perceiving the touch as an attack, the fish suddenly inflated its body to twice its size. Looking closely, it wasn't an ordinary pufferfish at all—it was a porcupinefish, bristling with dense, needle-like quills. Getting nicked by one of those would guarantee a lethal dose of venom. Even if the medicine Allfather gave me granted broad poison resistance, basic survival demanded extreme caution.
I'm sending you home, buddy. Get moving.
Tapping it lightly with the rim of my shield, I rolled it toward the water's edge.
Krrrrr-k-k-k—!!
A horrifying, mechanical grinding sound echoed from inside the fish's belly.
BANG-BANG-BOOM—!!
With an ear-splitting detonation, razor-sharp spines blasted out in every direction like shrapnel!
By sheer instinct, the moment that sickening sound began, I had hunkered down completely behind my shield, leaving me unharmed. But the nightmare didn't stop there.
Pop! Bang! Crack! BOOM!
The flying quills exploded a second time in midair, billowing out thick, noxious clouds of purple smog!
Puffing up its body was step one. Launching its spines like a claymore mine was step two. And those spines detonating into poison gas was step three. I was struck with genuine, terrified awe at a three-stage self-defense mechanism. And absurdly enough, that still wasn't the end of it.
Ssshh-shk—
Like a shark instantly replacing lost rows of teeth, brand-new, razor-sharp quills sprouted instantaneously across its bare hide.
The instant I saw that, terror short-circuited my brain. To hell with gently nudging it—I drew my leg back and punted the bastard with all my might!
Splash!
With a clean kick, the pufferfish sailed in a high arc and splashed dead center into the raging river. Now it would wash downstream into the lake. Or maybe all the way back out to sea.
"Cough! Hack! Cough!"
Hacking violently against the stray fumes, I beat a desperate retreat back toward the cave.
How the hell does that happen even when I was being careful?!
What an utterly magnificent, terrifyingly psychotic forest.