Water Bear
Shan, who had been unconscious, stirred awake when I drank the remaining tea.
[Tiss, what was that just now?]
To answer the question, I slowly finished the rest of the tea.
[Hmm, the first taste is rich and aromatic, and the aftertaste finishes it off quite nicely.]
When Shan evaluated food, it was quite fun that she could speak without restraint in front of people and flow smoothly in an instant.
[In other words! It was, it was delicious. Tiss... I, I want to drink one more cup.]
A soft chuckle escaped me.
The sight of Shan sticking out her tongue to lick up the last drop while the tea was still warm was so cute that I couldn’t help but smile a little.
Over the past few days, Shan’s interest in food had increased significantly.
Perhaps because she had tasted all kinds of delicious things from the human world besides the offerings.
“Angel-nim, does the tea suit your taste?”
“Yes, it’s delicious. What did you boil it with?”
“I boiled it with dandelion flowers. I tried boiling the ones we grew in our house’s flower garden into tea.”
“Skillful.”
“Hehe, it’s one of the few talents I have. Angel-nim, would you like another cup?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Leave it to me!”
While Dorothy ran off to prepare another cup of tea, Mary returned after organizing the supplies.
“Sorry, it took a while. New Order suddenly came looking for me.”
Mary explained briefly to me and Emily what had happened outside earlier, saying she was late because she had to inspect the supplies they sent.
“Mary, is it okay to just take these supplies? They might have tampered with them.”
“I took samples, tested them, and mobilized ability users to inspect them, but nothing unusual came up.”
“If that’s the case, it’s fortunate.”
If it were Beelzebuth that I knew, she wouldn’t have tampered with the supplies from New Order, as Mary said.
Beelzebuth preferred to use her overwhelming capital and power rather than pressing down with force, to make the other party voluntarily bow their head.
In the original story, Beelzebuth only used actions that could be exposed as a last resort.
Since the poachers were confirmed safe even after the superior-grade monster’s attack, they were likely to retreat for a while and prepare new strategies.
While the two discussed New Order’s intentions for a moment, Dorothy returned with the tea she had boiled and poured another cup of dandelion tea for her sister and me.
“The tea is ready! Be careful because it’s hot!”
Clink.
Dorothy smiled brightly, arranged the teapot and cups, and turned around.
A pleasant aroma of tea spread subtly in the living room.
“Thank you, Dorothy.”
Hmm.
“Nice. It must be because Dorothy personally grew and boiled it, so it’s especially delicious.”
Mary carefully tilted her teacup, brought it close to the rim of the cup to deeply savor the aroma.
“There isn’t anyone who grows plants as well as Dorothy. Not only do they grow quickly and sturdily, but if Dorothy touches flowers that are dying, they become fresh in an instant. I wither and die if I just touch them. If it were Dorothy, the youngest academy valedictorian might be possible.”
Is it an ability?
Perhaps Dorothy has an ability related to that.
“By the way.”
As Mary’s praise for her sister continued.
“Oh, sister. I’m embarrassed.”
Dorothy blushed and said she would enter the room first, then slipped out of the living room like she was running away.
[Ooh, definitely....]
Shan exhaled as if she had realized something.
Shan, what has she been observing in Dorothy that keeps prompting her to wake up?
Mary, who was smiling while looking at Dorothy’s back, looked at me and Emily alternately and asked curiously.
“By the way, what is the relationship between Tiss and Emily? Are you perhaps relatives?”
Eh.
I hadn’t thought about it separately because it wasn’t necessary when passing through the Mono rail.
“Um...”
“Friends, maybe? Right, Tiss-chan?”
Emily, who noticed my brief hesitation, answered first with her usual lively tone.
“What? Friends? That... Emily?”
From Mary’s reaction of disbelief, it seemed she could roughly guess Emily’s usual image.
“It’s a friend if the intentions match and words flow.”
“... No matter how I look at it, it’s hard to believe.”
“Mother, do you think I have no friends and am a lonely snake kid?”
Emily even faked a sigh.
“No... I didn’t think that far.”
“Oh~ Then you thought similarly?”
“You... Haa, okay. If I talk more, I’ll get tired.”
“Huhu.”
[Friends? What does that mean? Is it eating?]
Shan tilted her head at the unfamiliar word for someone who had been alone until now.
“I came to meet Mary because I wanted to introduce this kid to her, since I’m bringing Dorothy along.”
“That’s what it is.”
I slowly explained to Mary what I had thought before coming.
“Predation... It’s similar to the ability of legendary heroes. Amazing?”
Mary said it was a quite rare and powerful ability, and congratulated me saying it was fortunate that I was born with it.
Fortunate.
At that word, the past events flashed through my mind.
Even if I consider escaping my predetermined death and coming this far as luck, it’s not bad.
Among the heroes who killed Abaddon, there is one with an ability similar to predation.
It’s not that it causes the characteristics of monsters I and Shan ate, and the hero’s ability is closer to gaining stats by eating monsters.
Since it’s not entirely impossible to gain abilities by eating monsters, Mary could fully understand.
“Ah, I see. So that’s why Emily suggested eating friends.”
Mary’s gaze turned to Emily, and she nodded her head while muttering.
“... It’s not entirely because of that.”
Emily shook her hand with a bitter expression.
“No, it’s not. It’s because of the Management Bureau’s orders, right? As the next hero candidate.”
“You’re completely off the mark.”
What kind of nonsense is that?
I looked at Emily with a gaze asking for explanation.
Mary hesitated, thinking she might have misspoke, but Emily nodded calmly, saying it’s fine.
“You can tell that much. I didn’t deliberately hide it.”
Emily sighed and quietly began to reveal her true identity.
“I introduced myself as a wandering hunter, but my actual job is Watcher. Do you know what a Watcher is?”
“I’ve heard rumors.”
In the Area, there’s a rumor that the Management Bureau sends ghost-like beings to monitor people.
How do baseless rumors spread in this city.
The identity of that being is the Watcher.
An agent of the special unit directly under the Management Bureau in the central zero area overseeing Neo Sion’s Areas. Only those with monitoring ability, excellent combat prowess, and absolute trust from the Management Bureau are selected as Watchers.
But... Emily is the Watcher?
Honestly, it was hard to believe.
[Tiss. Could it be that Beelzebuth’s retreat... noticed Emily’s existence... ?]
Indeed, according to Shan’s words, Beelzebuth’s last action is understood.
“That’s why at first, I fought Emily to the death. At first, I thought the Management Bureau had come to clean up here directly.”
“Mary.”
When Mary saw that Emily was the Watcher, she was in a panic, and Emily glared at her with slightly widened eyes, but it was just like a plain bad guy.
“It’s really surprising. How did a snake-like woman like this come to be?”
Surprising? Emily?
A combination of words that doesn’t match at all.
“Emily was pure?”
“Yes! That kid was really naive when I first saw her. Even as a Watcher, she couldn’t even see well, so she got lost in the forest, and as someone from the city, she believed people’s words too straightforwardly, like her head was missing a screw.”
Mary recalled that time and nodded as if it was fun.
“At first, we fought desperately, but at that time too, a sudden swarm of monsters came. If we continued like this, we’d all die, so we stopped fighting and fought together with Emily against the monsters for a few days. Then, before we knew it, the girl naturally got recognized by us, misunderstandings cleared, and we got along well.”
“Wait, wait, that’s enough. If you don’t want to start a reveal battle, stop here. Got it, Mary?”
Hmph!
Mary, with the final warning not to talk more, finally closed her mouth.
As expected, she’s a bad guy.
It was a bit confusing.
What came first?
Was Emily a parasite?
Or was her identity as the Management Bureau’s Watcher?
And... does the Management Bureau know all of this?
Perhaps my information has already flowed into the Management Bureau?
No, that doesn’t seem likely.
The moment Emily revealed her weakness to me first, we became entangled in each other’s strings.
It’s unlikely that Emily is here next to me because she’s a Watcher.
It’s difficult.
My game play time isn’t short, but it’s not enough to claim I know everything about this game.
Perhaps Emily might not be the kind of character who just dies and disappears in the tutorial.
“Enough, enough. If you know too much, it might become dangerous. Sometimes you have to know how to protect your friend’s secrets, right?”
Emily put her index finger to her lips and smiled with a ‘shh’.
This time, her expression truly radiated a black villain aura.
“I got it. The conversation got a bit off track. You said Tiss’s ability is predation? If it’s similar to the legendary hero, then I guess monsters are necessary, right?”
“Yes. I heard there was an attack by superior-grade monsters. Could I see the monsters you hunted?”
I honestly said I wanted to see the monsters hunted by Mary and the poachers.
I also revealed that the predators can’t be used anymore.
Then, seeing if there’s a monster I need among them, and if possible, honestly say I want to take one monster whole.
It might seem a bit petty, but it’s better to hear yes or no clearly.
No need to beat around the bush with poachers whose livelihood is hunting monsters.
“I roughly understand what kind of ability it is. You can get some special power from the monster, right? Good. I didn’t expect to be able to repay the favor of saving Dorothy so quickly.”
Mary said she was grateful that I spoke so refreshingly.
“But, is it okay? The superior-grade monster’s loot is obtained after paying a huge sacrifice.”
“Ah? That’s fine. It’s not as the leader of the group, but as Dorothy’s sister Mary.”
As the leader of the poacher group, Mary has the right to distribute the hunted monsters evenly.
Mary said she would keep her promise to help up to what she can do by using that right.
She said not to worry, as she would give monsters only up to the amount allocated for herself.
So, we went to the place where the monster corpses were stored.
Various monster corpses were being processed or preserved.
Some as food ingredients, some as armor and weapons, some as things sold in the city and downtown.
Multiple workers were processing and treating the monster corpses.
There are many kinds.
Since Area 7 was Abaddon’s territory, most were insect-type, but there were also some mixed in with various monster corpses like other animals, plants, birds, etc.
While I was looking through the scattered monster corpses, a massive something caught my eye.
No, that’s...!
[Why, why Tiss?]
Is this real?
That’s... a Water Bear!
A giant Water Bear was slumped and lying there.
The shining hard exoskeleton on the rough skin wrapped the entire body like thick armor, and the round short legs hung down to the ground.
“Do you know what that is?”
“I don’t know either, first time seeing it. It’s too hard for its size and dullness, so it’s hard to kill. Besides that, it’s not a particularly threatening monster, so maybe it’s just a normal monster at the level of barely intermediate grade.”
Of course, if only looking at actual combat power, it could be.
But the value of that guy doesn’t proportion to simple combat power.
Rather, it has enormous value compared to its easy-to-hunt difficulty.
The monster called Water Bear is a ‘rare species’ monster based on the complete creature worm in the game.
As the name suggests, it’s very rare, so few people have directly seen it, and the population itself is an extremely rare mob.
[Should I do this with this?]
Nod.
The biggest feature of that guy is insane survivability.
In the world of Project Zion where all sorts of out-of-the-ordinary ability users are rampant, obtaining the essence of that rare Water Bear would clearly give adaptation and survivability to various environments.
Swallow.
Just thinking about it made my mouth water.
Above all, the biggest problem is that if I miss this now, there’s no guarantee I can hunt a complete Water Bear again.
As befits a rare species, in the game too, it’s not that it has a specific habitat, but only encounters in event form with low probability.
After calming my excitement as much as possible, I requested the Water Bear from Mary.
“Then, can you give this to me? I intuitively feel that I need it.”
[Thump thump!]
Please.
I waited for Mary’s answer with a trembling heart.