Full Moon Wolf 3
With the Full Moon Wolf gone, only the mournful howls of Horned Wolves echoed across the plains.
The full moon had vanished and the sun risen once more over the grasslands. In the clearing — torn open and raw where the earth had been ripped apart — we were casually mopping up the remaining Horned Wolves when adventurers came streaming in from every direction. These were people who normally operated on the twentieth floor and above, hired by the mages. Even if their numbers were a little higher than usual, there was no way mere monsters could bridge a gap in floors that vast.
The earthen pillar that had erupted from one corner of the plains, and the thunderous roar that accompanied it, might as well have been a victory salute. A salute announcing that an expedition which had wrapped up in a single day could now cash in on the byproducts of a massive Horned Wolf outbreak.
"Uh, Sir Roland? I'm not sure there will even be a next time, but…"
"Yeah, yeah. I get it."
One of the mages approached me with an awkward expression amid the throng of adventurers. While the hired hands swarmed in to finish off the Horned Wolf stragglers, the mages were all combing through the devastated clearing together.
The reason: the Full Moon Wolf's byproducts, scattered and buried under the dirt that had blanketed the entire area.
…Not having a corpse left behind means no bloodbath, which is nice, but I can't say I love the shockwave flinging the loot all over the place. Sure, I put a little too much force into it because it was a boss monster, but I didn't expect the byproducts to end up buried under half a mountain of dirt.
"Ah, found one!"
"Me too… wait, no. This just looks like a regular Horned Wolf drop."
Apprentice mages — graduate-student types, more or less — were crawling around on the dirt floor hunting for byproducts, and kindhearted Irene had joined in, digging through the soil with her delicate hands. When a Candidate Saint was practically crawling on the ground to help the less fortunate, how could a party member just stand there watching?
Irene's holy barrier had shrugged off the dirt bomb without trouble, but a few of the Horned Wolves standing nearby had apparently been killed by flying gravel, so Full Moon Wolf and Horned Wolf byproducts were mixed together. Faced with the absurd situation of digging money out of the ground, Hanna's expression darkened a little.
"Ah, figures. The Full Moon Wolf byproducts are all unsellable quest items. The Mage Tower's going to scoop them all up to build the tenth-floor gate, and there won't be a single scrap left over. You guys need to drop the delusion that you're going to gear up with the money from killing the Full Moon Wolf…"
Of course they weren't going to hand a player byproducts that would easily fetch a few hundred gold coins if sold.
She must have been nursing her own little get-rich-quick fantasy, because her lower lip was sticking out a mile as she muttered to her viewers. I couldn't hear her voice, but I could see what she was doing, so Irene — who happened to be walking past — carefully spoke up.
"Um, Sister Hanna? If you're very tired, shall we go back to the carriage and rest for a bit?"
"No! I'm fine. It's not that I'm tired — I, uh, just got startled. I was wondering when I'll ever get that strong myself… hehe."
Having accidentally made it look like she was sulking at a five-star healer, Hanna scrambled desperately for an excuse. Watching the two of them, Grace — who had just finished digging up a whole pile of Horned Wolf byproducts — quietly handed her haul over to Hanna.
Then, leaving behind a still-apologetic Irene and a frantically smiling Hanna, Grace came over to me.
"Hey, Roland. Were you always this strong…?"
"I was strong enough to take monster-subjugation contracts out on the kingdom's fringes, yeah."
"Nooo, I mean I had no idea you were this strong. You make those knights who used to come help with the village hunts look like nothing."
For a moment she wasn't Grace the scout at all, but Grace the girl from a slash-and-burn farming village, clinging to me with a little whine in her voice. Looking into those eyes — a mix of admiration and a touch of embarrassment — I had a pretty good idea what was going on.
"What, did they tell you back in the village that I fought a life-or-death battle to protect you all?"
"…Ugh, seriously."
I grinned as I asked, and her face went sulky the way it does when you've hit the bullseye. Leaving the village to become an adventurer, joining my party the second she saw me, throwing herself at me under the pretense of being drunk — that almost incomprehensible drive of hers had love mixed into it, sure, but also something like a sense of debt.
She didn't seem to mind, though. She gave my arm a couple of light taps, then dropped her gaze back to the dirt and started scuffing through it with her foot. Not bothering to hide the laugh that slipped out, I crouched down beside her and started digging too.
We kept at it until Hanna thrust her staff high into the air and declared:
"We've collected every last Full Moon Wolf byproduct—"
She must have checked the quest window, because she announced with absolute certainty that there was nothing left. The young apprentice mages straightened up from the dirt floor and broke into bright smiles. Being freed from digging through the earth for byproducts — it wasn't exactly scavenging shell casings, but it was close enough — was reason enough to be happy.
Of course, they wouldn't be getting any real rest. Now they had to use the Full Moon Wolf byproducts Hanna had so diligently gathered to construct a gate connecting the tenth floor to the city.
It's a game, so it shouldn't take long to build — but building it fast means throwing a ton of manpower at it, and who else is the Mage Tower going to conscript if not these kids? A few of them seemed to have figured out their immediate future, because the moment they straightened up, their faces fell right back into misery.
"You found everything? Let me see."
"Sure, Grace. The Mage Tower's going to take it all for research, but looking before we hand it over should be fine."
Grace sidled closer, face full of curiosity. At that, not only Irene but the nearby mages and adventurers also drifted over for a look. Byproducts don't lose value just because you show them off, so Hanna pulled them from her inventory with a flourish.
A horn fragment the size of a human forearm. An eyeball that looked like a crystal orb. A fang a good handspan long, and a claw even larger than that. If Horned Wolf byproducts looked like shards of crystal, the Full Moon Wolf's drops were the kind of thing you could put on display in a boutique as luxury goods and nobody would bat an eye.
At that beautiful sight, the onlookers' mouths fell open in pure awe.
"What are you all standing around for? Is Hanna supposed to handle the cleanup all by herself just because she took down the Full Moon Wolf?"
"No, sir!"
"That's right, Janson. The expedition may have ended in a day, but the research has not. If you want your paper for the Association reviewed, you'd best start preparing right now. And as for you adventurers — the Mage Tower intends to pay a premium for byproducts from Horned Wolves that were under the Full Moon Wolf's influence. We have no intention of paying extra for ordinary Horned Wolf materials."
An old man strode up and scattered everyone with a few sharp words. The hired adventurers lit up and took off in pursuit of the Horned Wolves still scattered in every direction, while the mage called Janson collected the Full Moon Wolf byproducts from Hanna.
"Ahem. Good. The theory for the gate is already prepared, so don't you worry, Miss Hanna. All that remains now is—"
He must have been one of the old men from the carriage earlier. Having driven off the adventurers and mages, he latched onto Hanna and started talking. What lived in his eyes wasn't some dirty old man's lust — it was that indescribable something unique to mages.
Watching Hanna's face crumple in an instant, I cracked open the chat window — and closed it again in under five seconds. Existing viewers and new arrivals alike were spamming burning emotes in perfect unison. Superhuman eyesight or not, there wasn't a single readable character left.
Using the paid chance time with donations was fine, but the viewers couldn't handle the mage-style rambling that came after, huh. Then again, even Grace — who's as friendly and smooth-talking as they come — once bailed out of an inn because she couldn't make heads or tails of what they were saying.
"Ah, um… Ah, Roland! We need to go report to the Adventurer's Guild, right?"
Hanna, desperately racking her brain, looked at me with pleading eyes and spat out the best lie she could invent on the spot. There was no real reason to separately report that the Full Moon Wolf had been subjugated and that the Mage Tower had purchased all its byproducts.
That miserable little face of hers was so cute that part of me wanted to mess with her and play dumb… but what actually bothered me was the viewers' chat.
What the hell went down inside that carriage while we were climbing the Tower for the existing viewers — and even foreign-looking usernames — to be spamming fire icons like this? Even if they get chat-restricted, watching the stream isn't banned, so they're going absolutely feral.
"Yeah. We should report to the Adventurer's Guild, and considering the kids Irene looks after, heading straight to the Temple wouldn't be a bad idea either. It ended so quickly — better they don't worry for nothing."
"B-but Miss Hanna…"
"Ah, that's right. We can't show them the Full Moon Wolf byproducts, but if we tell them the story, I'm sure they'll love it. Just the other day a Horned Wolf came out of the alley behind the Temple and the children were terribly frightened."
"…Well. I suppose it can't be helped."
Even the shameless old man was powerless before Irene's bright, sunny smile. When a priestess said she was taking Hanna back for the orphans at the Temple, he could hardly throw a fit about it.
Looks like tonight's not a drinking party either — we'll be spending it at the Temple. Of course, Hanna would gladly choose playing the clown in front of a bunch of kids over staying with the mages. She latched onto Irene's arm like she believed she'd be dragged off to the Mage Tower the second she let go.
"Oh my, you must have been so frightened. Honestly, even I jumped when I saw that wave of earth crashing into the barrier."
"Y-yes. So maybe we should head down quickly…"
Come to think of it — Charlotte too — do all mages just have a chatty streak? Looking back on the ones I've met over ten years of adventuring, roughly seven or eight out of ten were talkative.
……And by the way, these damn viewers are way too honest about their desires. The moment Hanna grabbed Irene's arm and hurried her steps, Irene's figure was naturally put on display. That thick, flat nun's habit got tugged just enough that her voluptuous body was forcibly revealed.
The instant a chest that rivaled Grace's own generous size swayed against the habit pulled taut from behind, the fire icons in the chat window I'd reopened out of curiosity flipped to heart icons in a heartbeat.
Seriously. Painfully honest.