The Child Hunter Little Red Riding Hood (5)
The crackling sound of electricity filled the air.
“Kyaaah! You said you’d heal me! You said you’d heal me!!”
“Thwack! Don’t be such a baby!”
Little Red Riding Hood’s small hand slapped my back. That was probably what had happened.
“I don’t know about that, it hurts! Waaaaah!”
“Thwack!”
She was poking my side, but why was my back so sensitive!
After asking Grandmother about it, she suddenly started clapping and waving her arms, then brought something red toward me.
According to her, it was a technique to heal injuries.
Of course, I was skeptical, but what could I do? I was injured, and she was holding a gun.
“If Grandmother does it, it’s way more painful than this. But if Mom does it, it doesn’t hurt? Why is that?”
“How would I know! It’s not about healing, it’s that my HP is dropping!”
“What’s HP?”
Crackle!
“Uwaaah!”
Whether Grandmother or not, it really hurt like hell.
Not a metaphor, but literally, it was pain so intense I thought I was dying.
The pain of having my wound area electrocuted! I’d never been electrocuted before, but...
“Kyuweeeek! It hurts! It feels even more painful than when I was bitten!”
“Not really... It shouldn’t hurt that much...”
Crack!
Even after Little Red Riding Hood pulled her hand away, the pain lingered. What exactly had she done?
“Still, the wound is healed, right?”
“Healed...? It still hurts like death, what...”
Hmm?
It doesn’t hurt that much, does it?
It hurt right after she pulled her hand away, but after a little while, it felt much better.
Still, it was painful enough that I could barely move, but I could bend my body enough to see the wound area.
There was a hole in it, right? This was supposed to be better?
“Can you really heal it all with this?”
“I can, but you’re a wolf. What if it heals and then bites me?”
“What do you think wolves are?”
“Good animals.”
Little Red Riding Hood took the third most threatening pose from what she could do.
She raised both hands above her head and did a “Kyaang~”
By the way, the first was aiming a shotgun, and the second was aiming a knife.
“It really does make sense...”
It was surprising that wolves and humans could communicate. That alone was shocking.
Under those conditions, there could be someone who wanted to torment humans like the brown wolf.
Instead, if such people made wolves seem the worst...
“I’m not a wolf... I’m human... I am human...”
“?”
I knew nothing about this fantasy world.
The only things I’d met here were the gun-toting healer Little Red Riding Hood, the muscular grandmother, and the wolf.
“...Still, a human is better than a wolf.”
So what if it was another world.
I had to live by my own standards, right? I was familiar with being human, so what?
Even as a wolf now, I wanted to eat grilled meat and sleep in a bed.
More importantly, when I see that wolf, these world’s wolves are inferior...
“...Little Red Riding Hood.”
“Huh?”
How much red qi had she been exposed to?
The sky visible through the trees was dyed red, and the shadows grew longer, deepening the forest’s darkness.
In such darkness, it would be hard to figure out what was happening.
“The wolf that was there earlier, did you remove it?”
“...No...?”
It was gone.
The wolf that had been slammed into trees dozens of times, flattened.
The brown wolf whose jaw was dislocated and mouth couldn’t close, rolling around.
The wolf that was barely alive, lying beside a broken tree, panting.
It was gone.
“Little Red Riding Hood. The thing you did when you found me earlier, can you do it one more time?”
“Uhn...”
Red qi spread from Little Red Riding Hood’s body again.
Earlier, she used it to immediately locate my position.
But this time, Little Red Riding Hood’s expression when she looked around wasn’t good.
“None... There’s no wolf anywhere nearby... Is it dead...?”
“Nearby... I wish it was, but can it move after being injured?”
“Th-then...?”
“I don’t want to think about it, but maybe that wolf has a way to heal its body like you.”
That damned wolf kid...!
It wasn’t because it was strong, but because it wanted to live that it was hanging on!
“It might have already moved far away. If it wasn’t aiming at us...”
Not attacking when we weren’t paying attention meant its recovery wasn’t that good.
At least, it probably didn’t have the ability to face both me and Little Red Riding Hood at the same time. So what was it aiming at...?
“Maybe it was aiming at your Grandmother?”
“Grandmother?”
Hmm.
That muscular grandmother.
The healer grandma who shoots red qi from her hands.
“...It seems like she’ll repel it on her own. What do you think?”
“Our Grandmother is super strong! Second in the world! Next to Mom!”
“I see. That’s good news...”
The grandmother who blasted away the bush path I couldn’t break through with red qi. Stronger than me.
That stupid wolf thought Grandmother was weak, so it was just getting beaten, not dying.
It would be better if it just ran away...
“-You came here because you heard the witch’s words, right?”
That guy. He definitely said that.
“Little Red Riding Hood. Do you know anything about witches?”
“No! Uhm... Yeah!”
“You know or you don’t know.”
“I don’t know! But Grandmother and Mom do. Do wolves know the witches too?”
“Witches?”
Was this world calling witches with respect?
But the witches were trying to help the wolf.
Respect? Fear? Which one was it?
“It seems like that wolf was sent by a witch.”
“Uhn? Why would the witches send us a wolf? My mom is a witch and we’re close. We often go over and get gifts.”
“Th...at’s right...”
Maybe because they didn’t want to give gifts.
Or perhaps they were hiding it from this child because their relationship wasn’t good.
A cynical thought was about to form, but looking into this pure child’s eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to say those things.
“Hmm... For now, let’s go see your Grandmother.”
“Yeah!”
Let’s proceed with the story for now.
When we got there, I hoped that huge Grandmother had beaten the wolf to a pulp.
If that was the case, maybe it would have been better if the wolf had charged instead of running.
“...But Little Red Riding Hood. When Grandmother sees me, she won’t try to kill me, right?”
“Uhm... I don’t know!”
“Do you want to ride on the wolf’s back? Please say you want to ride.”
**
We walked for a while longer.
The sunset sky gradually darkened.
“Heehee~ I’ll tell Mom I rode a wolf!”
“Yeah, yeah. If only your body was fine, you could have boasted about running on a wolf. What a shame.”
“Waa! I want to! Do it!”
“I’m in pain.”
My side still hurt a bit, but this much pain I could endure.
The endurance I built from being beaten by my father since childhood was not just a decoration.
Compared to going to school, entertaining a kid wasn’t that hard.
“If only this kid knew more about this world...”
Since we were going together, I asked about this world, but because she was young, I didn’t get any meaningful information.
The only thing I learned was about the power this child and her Grandmother used.
“So that red power can’t be used by anyone?”
“Yeah. The basics are taught by Grandmother and Great-Grandmother in the village. And sometimes Mom brings people from outside. But they all struggle.”
“Hmm. I see.”
The village, of course, but it seemed they didn’t live in the forest eating and sleeping.
And having to bring people from outside to teach meant not everyone could do it. The people brought also struggled.
That said, was Great-Grandmother a martial arts instructor?
“A technique to amplify life energy. It might be even more incredible than I thought...”
Kuakwang!
Legs suddenly kicked up from a sudden explosion sound.
The sound coming from a bit away. It wasn’t a gunshot, it had to be something like a cannon.
No.
We knew.
We already knew what that sound and vibration were.
“Red Qi?”
“Grandmother?”
That stupid wolf... finally gave up and touched... Grandmother...!
By now, it was probably in a terrible state, dying.
I didn’t feel particularly sorry for it.
“Grandmother beat the bad wolf?”
“I guess so.”
Wild animals are famous for having good sense of smell.
Sniff sniff. First, my bloody scent was strong nearby. It hurt.
And if I concentrated a little, it seemed like the scent from when it was in a mess earlier.
Was this the brown wolf’s blood scent?
And...
“Little Red Riding Hood. Your Grandmother must have blocked it well so it doesn’t hurt me?”
“Uhm... I’ll try!”
“Yeah, yeah. Really. Seriously, please. I don’t want to die yet...”
...And?
There was another scent mixed in. It could be, but...
For some reason, I was sure this was blood scent.
“If there’s another one bleeding blood...”
Kuak!
Again.
The explosion sound using Red Qi rang out.
But this time, a little weaker.
“...Little Red Riding Hood. You said you wanted to ride on the running wolf, right?”
“Yeah! Can it run? Doesn’t it hurt?”
Of course. I didn’t feel the pain in my side.
“Whatever, let’s try. Hold tight.”
“Kya!”
Instead, my heart hurt.
It wasn’t because I was running.
When talking to the brown wolf that revealed its true nature, I felt something was wrong.
Kuung!
The third Red Qi, a little weaker.
Little Red Riding Hood, who was shaking her body dangerously and having fun, seemed to sense something odd and grabbed my fur without saying a word.
Please. No way?
That Grandmother was super strong. She got beaten by a wolf that almost killed me?
That hopeful thought was being pushed back by the deepening bloody scent.
“Grandmother!”
“Aigoo! Don’t come this way! ...No! Why is the wolf with you?”
What we saw as we ran at full speed.
Grandmother limping with legs covered in blood, and arms and neck wrapped in red.
And.
“Bad friend... you finally came...”
“You bastard...!”
We were right.
Grandmother wasn’t weak.
“What the hell are you!”
The problem was that wolf.
The brown... no, now it should be called red wolf.
Its head was half shattered.
In a terrifying state, more than I thought.
Perfectly fine.
“Friend... didn’t the witch tell you not to do this?”
Standing on two legs.
“You... what’s your real identity!”
“Haha... Friend, don’t be like that. I’m being sincere with you...!”
Perfectly fine? That had to be a lie.
The sound of stepping on mud, and the wolf’s body swelled.
“Kehek! Kuhuk!”
And red light visible between the swollen body.
I’d seen that light before.
“Red...!”
“Haha! You knew, right? Yeah! If you eat the family that handles this power... Kuhuk! Invincible body...”
The wolf’s body swelled as if it would burst and opened.
Invincible?
This wasn’t a body without rivals, but one that wouldn’t give enemies.
“Stupid wolf! How dare you covet the red power?”
“Grandmother, no!”
Little Red Hood Grandmother clenched her fists, gritting her teeth.
“The red power is stored in blood. If you eat it, the curse engraved in the blood won’t transmit to you. And those without the red talent can’t withstand it and explode! Our bodies are like poison!”
“Khehek! I know!”
“Stupid. You know nothing. How much hardship our clan had to go through because the talent declined.
Without training that grinds bones, you can’t withstand red qi. You wicked wolves aren’t strong enough!”
No. No way.
You know, right.
“Grandmother. This wolf... doesn’t die easily.”
The red qi was messing with the wolf’s body, but after breaking it a lot, it stabilized.
And in the stable state, the wolf’s body recovered again.
“Friend... you really tormented me earlier...”
It hurt.
I thought it was almost healed.
“You said you’d go to the end, right?”
The side wound where Little Red Riding Hood had stopped healing,
started bleeding again and felt like it would burst.
“I told you. I can’t heal you.”