Chapter 10
Chapter 10
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 10
Chapter Title: You're the Only One Screwed
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"What the fu..."
Rack immediately fired the gun he'd borrowed from Will.
His marksmanship was clumsy compared to the original owner, Will.
Most of the bullets just sliced through empty air,
but...
The engravings on the gun suddenly emitted a blue glow, and the flying bullets abruptly changed trajectory, heading straight for the beast.
The barrage of bullets tore into the beast's flesh.
The already mangled hide of the Brain Licker writhed violently.
"Die!"
Rack shouted bravely and aimed his final shot, but
"Grraaahhh...!!!"
"Shit, the distance..."
They were so close now that he could see the wrinkles in the beast's skin.
Even if he fired now, the impact would crush his body flat—it was inevitable.
Rack's face twisted in terror as he sensed death closing in.
At that moment,
Friction Zero
High-level physics magic that temporarily reduces ground friction to zero.
Fey burst out from behind, pointing her wand as she shouted.
The beast's fur-covered legs wobbled violently and slipped, tumbling down the slope.
Modification: Leaves into Blades
Incantation complete.
Szzzt.
The grass beneath Fey stood rigid, gleaming like blades.
And then,
The shockwave from in front of Fey's feet launched the stiffened grass blades like daggers.
The green-tinged leaves scattered everywhere—
—and embedded deep into the Brain Licker's massive body.
"Gyyyraaaahhh—!!!!"
The fallen Brain Licker let out a horrific screech that clawed at their eardrums.
"Huff, huff."
Rack, barely clinging to life, was just gasping for breath when
"What are you doing?! Give orders quick! You're the guild master!"
Fey's sharp rebuke snapped Rack back to reality.
"R... Right. Where is everyone?! Get out here now! You wanna run and end up with nothing?! Don't want the pay?!"
A few guild members emerged from the bushes at his words.
Whether it was his desperate cries or the promise of pay that reached them, who could say.
"Where are the others?!"
"No idea. Probably dead or bolted."
"Useless bastards...!"
Rack ground his teeth.
At that moment,
"He~llo~"
A voice echoed.
"Ru~n a~way~"
From where the Brain Licker had tumbled.
"Hate it so mu~ch~"
"Come he~re~~~ Stay he~re~~~"
A displeasing tone, like squeezing the vocal cords of the dead.
A familiar voice.
The kind from those who weren't here anymore.
"Mimicking the voices of people whose brains it ate... This damn ecosystem."
Rack gritted his teeth, preparing to attack.
Meanwhile, Fey, standing behind him, muttered the beast's cry uneasily.
"Coming...? What is...?"
But they had no time to think.
The Brain Licker's long trunk shot out like a tentacle, swallowing one guild member's head whole.
"Gaaahhh!!!"
The party staggered back.
Nom nom.
Regardless, the Brain Licker worked its trunk like a mouth, crunching the guild member's head like candy.
"Fuck! Attack! Attaaaack!!!"
"Hya!"
At Rack's shout, one guild member stepped forward.
A middle-aged man with long hair tied back and a flowing beard.
He drew his sword with the air of a martial arts master and swung at the trunk.
A blue flash lit up, and the Brain Licker's trunk was severed in one stroke.
"Nice!! Good job!"
Rack, who had fallen back, shouted.
The freelance fighter he'd hired at great expense for emergencies.
The guy who'd been a burden during the peaceful journey was finally earning his pay.
"Nothing special."
The man muttered contentedly.
And in response,
The Brain Licker spat the half-swallowed head right back at the man.
Bloody water, bone fragments, twitching brain matter.
And highly acidic gastric juices to top it off.
"Aah, aaaahhhh!!!!"
The slime dissolved the middle-aged guild member's skin and melted his muscles.
His body crumbled like tofu amid the acrid stench of burning flesh.
A pathetic death, utterly at odds with his proud demeanor.
"It's over... We're done for."
The guild's top fighter was gone.
That fact shattered the fragile teamwork Rack and the others had barely held onto.
Leading to one conclusion.
'Run.'
If you outrun the guy next to you, your survival odds go up—a simple, selfish calculation.
"Krak!"
Rack was the first to finish the math.
He slashed the leg of the guild member in front of him and bolted.
"Rack, you fucking bastard!"
"No choice now, we gotta...!"
Once trust crumbled, it was every man for himself.
"Wait! We need to stick together now..."
Fey tried to stop them, but all she got were the footsteps of cowards.
"Help, save me! Please!"
And a guild member bleeding from his leg, begging for his life.
On top of that,
The fallen Brain Licker regained its balance and charged at Fey again.
'This is... do or die.'
Fey fixed her gaze on the monster ahead, aiming her wand.
'Firearms are strictly forbidden in the forest, but...'
This wasn't the time to worry about that.
Was it the monster's footsteps or her heartbeat?
She couldn't tell. But,
Fey synced her incantation to the rhythm, drawing forth an elemental harmony.
"Turn the air to flame."
Heat waves erupted from the distorted air,
"Ignification."
The light surging from her wand tip formed a massive wall of fire just as it was about to collide with the beast—
"Grk, graaaaaahhh!!!!"
"Huh?!"
The Brain Licker suddenly veered off, fleeing in the direction it had come from.
As if something terrifying was behind it.
With no target, the flames fizzled uselessly into the air.
"...It... ran... away?"
Why?
An incomprehensible situation by any logic. Fey stared ahead in bewilderment, wand still raised.
And then,
Rustle, rustle—
"Uh... Will... sir?"
"Hey, what's going on?"
Will emerged from the bushes with his usual carefree stride.
I got back from work, and the company was gone.
Faced with the sudden scene before us,
Me and the other herb gatherers just blinked at each other.
"So... a beast showed up, and everyone ran off, right?"
Nod nod.
Fey, a mess of sweat and mud like when we first met, nodded vigorously.
I wasn't there, so I wouldn't know, but it was probably like running into a bear on a trip to Japan.
That time was dicey.
If I hadn't done my mosquito repellent spray and lighter fire show, I'd have been in deep shit.
"No one died, right?"
"Haa, haa... See for yourself."
So I went to check,
Aside from snapped trees and blood splatters in the grass, no casualties seemed apparent.
There was a nasty dark red puddle, but that probably wasn't blood.
Back after assessing, Fey looked at me in disbelief.
"...Will sir."
"Yeah."
"You were really just digging mandrakes the whole time? Heard nothing?"
"Yep."
The earplugs Rack gave me worked too well.
It went totally silent, like mute mode on the world.
So I dug away happily, like harvesting potatoes from my weekend farm.
Fey's face cycled through expressions as she heard my explanation.
Disbelief, anger, a bit of fear—
"Hah, yeah, well. That's just how it is traveling with you, Will sir. Hahaha..."
—before settling on resigned laughter as she plopped down.
"Anyway, what now?"
Excluding the guild member getting treated for his slashed leg by the laborers, Golden Duck guild was effectively disbanded.
What about the commission? And their abandoned gear?
"Obviously, we carry it all up. Do that, and it's all ours."
One of the veteran laborers said.
"Oh?"
"Guild master ran first. That's dereliction of duty, unilateral contract breach. By convention, it's ours. 'Course, we'll need to find a buyer for these mandrakes separately."
Wait, so then...
"All this is ours?"
"Sure is, if we make it back safe."
Baskets full of mandrakes, fancy guild gear, fat money pouches.
Get back, and we could live easy for years.
"Haa, still, Rack... Never thought he'd be like that."
Running was one thing, but wounding a teammate for a meat shield? Disqualified as a leader.
"...Those sleepy eyes were suspicious."
"Saying that now?"
Fey scolded me.
No retort there. Kinda embarrassing.
To play it off, I pretended to look around.
"Huh."
Wait a sec, come to think of it...
"My gun."
Oh yeah, Rack took it.
It's gone, so he must've run off with it.
"...Eh, whatever. Write it off as lost."
"Always so chill."
"What can ya do, life's what comes and goes."
Pity, but oh well. He'd already bolted with it.
Besides, nearly free gun anyway, and the payout was fat.
"Haa, anyway, let's head up quick."
"Sounds good, let's go."
If the company folds but you get a fat severance, you're golden.
We turned our steps toward the uphill path to the city.
"Huff, huff. Damn, damn it..."
At the edge of the Black Forest, the start of the path up to the Threshold.
Rack panted raggedly in the bushes, his body a wreck.
'What the hell... Am I cursed or something?! How does everything go so wrong?!'
After ditching Fey, Rack and the guild members fled opposite the Brain Licker's charge.
Solid plan. Buy time while it munched on Fey and the laborers.
"But why the fuck... did it come after us..."
But their plan went completely sideways.
Were their bodies slathered in honey or what?
The Brain Licker inexplicably turned and barreled after them.
At full speed.
The result was carnage.
Every guild member but him got trampled or crushed to death by the fleeing beast.
"And then... whatever took down that Brain Licker... what the hell..."
Rack's ordeal didn't end there.
Amid the guild corpses. Realizing flight was futile, Rack played dead and saw it.
A pitch-black shape bursting from behind him, pulverizing the Brain Licker's limbs.
'The... Black... Dog... too...'
Two top-tier no-gos in this place were slaughtering right in front of him.
'So... the thing the Brain Licker was fleeing from at first...'
The beast's body, covered in wounds from the start.
Black Dog's handiwork?
So the Brain Licker attacked them to recover strength while fleeing the Black Dog.
But why turn back to them at the end?
'What the hell happened...'
He pondered, but got nowhere.
No knowledge or wisdom to figure it out. All he had left was his body and Will's rifle with one bullet.
And,
"It's all that bastard Will's fault. Nothing's gone right since meeting him."
Baseless hatred, the fool's specialty.
"I'll kill him. Even if it costs everything, you... I'll kill you."
That was why the barely surviving Rack hunkered down at the forest's edge instead of heading to the Threshold.
'Coming.'
Rack's eyes narrowed.
In the distance, people chatting happily while carrying boxes.
'Yeah, with luggage and wounded, I got here first.'
Click.
Rack gripped Will's hunting rifle, aiming at its loathsome owner's face.
One eye burned with hate for Will.
The other gleamed with joy at his death.
'Not confident I'll hit... but this op artifact's power will guide it.'
Proven on the Brain Licker, so it would.
'Nice knowing ya, let's never meet again.'
Decision made, Rack tensed his trigger finger.
And then,
A red magic-infused bullet pierced through the magazine and Rack's skull.
"Ah...?"
Not Will's, but shattering the head of Rack, who had fired it.
Rack's body collapsed into the bushes.
Forgotten by all, fodder for wild beasts and insects—a fitting, hollow, miserable end for one who'd lived gnawing others' flesh.
And,
"We're here!"
Just like the way down, Will's group faced no interruptions, happily wrapping up their first expedition.