18. Hunting Requires Preparation (1)
18. Hunting Requires Preparation (1)
My day began by climbing the watchtower and spying on the snakes while still half asleep.
Normally, I'd eat a quick breakfast and begin with a walk along the beach that doubled as reconnaissance. With the decisive battle against the snakes approaching, however, I had no choice but to move the schedule forward. Once I exterminated the snake bastards, only the dungeon would remain.
If I broke through the dungeon...
Could I escape?
The dungeon interior was the only part of the island I had never visited, so it was certainly the only place where I might find a clue to escaping. The problem was that I had no idea what might be lurking below.
Worst case, another final boss from Survival Academy could be waiting inside.
Of course, there was no way that bastard was sleeping on an island like this... but one of that bastard's followers might appear. The island had never appeared in Survival Academy at all. Maybe they'd planned to release it as DLC. They had milked DLC hard enough to make players sick.
Something like: New map! New quests! New companions! New monsters! Uncover the secrets of an uninhabited island with your companions! Their ads were so lifeless that I sometimes wondered whether the company even had a PR team. Hah. Now I even missed that.
Those days when I sat slouched in a chair, hands on the keyboard and mouse, playing games in complete comfort.
The days when I cursed the DLC as much as I wanted while my body, ever honest, typed my card number into the payment screen like a sucker.
Speaking of games reminded me—I hadn't opened my Status Window in months. Fat lot of good it did. There was no leveling system that let me allocate stats, and I couldn't even read the damn thing. It might as well have been designed solely to humiliate me. I'd rather be able to pick it up and use it as a weapon.
Still, opening the Status Window after so long didn't seem like a bad idea.
Even if it had been busted during those ten years of being stranded, now that Survival Academy's heroine had shown up, something might have changed.
I shouted a word I hadn't missed in the slightest.
"Status Window!"
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"...Fucking hell. I was a moron for expecting anything from the Status Window."
It was the same as ten years ago. Why give me a Status Window that couldn't even perform its one job?
Stats, Skills, whatever—everything appeared in alien gibberish, so the Status Window gave me nothing. Hah. If you were going to transmigrate me, you could at least hand out some cheat codes! I wanted an EX-rank growth Trait or something so I could become an apocalyptic overlord and beat bears and snakes to death with my bare hands instead of running around setting traps and using poison!
"Ah, forget it. Status Window, my ass. I'll just stop caring."
It wasn't that important right now anyway. Spending that time observing the snakes' movements would be more productive. I waved my hand and swept the Status Window out of my sight. Caught by my gesture, the Status Window scattered and vanished like smoke.
Yaaawn.
I took out a strip of tough jerky from home and put it in my mouth. Its salty flavor tingled on my tongue. Nothing worked better than salty jerky for driving away drowsiness. Come to think of it, I was almost out. Once this was over, I'd catch rabbits and make enough jerky to fill an entire crate.
While I was at it, I'd make enough to wipe out every rabbit on the island.
If, and only if, the whirlpool vanished, then I'd have to start a long voyage.
But that only mattered if there really was a clue to escape inside the dungeon.
Ah, I was thirsty. The salt made my tongue sting. I took out the leather waterskin I'd made recently and drained it in one go. Well water really did taste good. Water distilled from seawater tasted strangely flat, and boiling an entire pot just to obtain a single cup was the height of inefficiency. I'd been grateful for even that when drinking water was scarce, but now that the well was purified, I no longer needed it.
Ahh. That hit the spot. I wiped the cool water from my chin. Drinking while surveying the island from above felt fantastic. Today was quiet, though. The snakes appeared to have stopped the zombie rush at last. The fact that I couldn't see the Hydra bastard moving was proof enough. Maybe it had collapsed from exhaustion by now.
"About time, then."
If the Hydra was exhausted, there could be no better opportunity. An exhausted enemy was vulnerable to ambush. But judging by the state of the snakes' territory, things were not quite that simple.
"It has turned into a Poison Swamp."
The landscape created by poison, acid, blood, and corpses was gruesome even to me, and I had seen more than enough horrors. The green forest from only a few days earlier had vanished. Rotting trees stained purple stood among hills laid bare where other trees had melted away, and violet swamps dotted the exposed ground.
It had literally become a land of death.
"...Did I overdo it?"
They weren't going to evolve in some bizarre direction, were they? A mad snake with poison coating its whole body instead of only its fangs. One that spat venom like a water gun. Or anaconda-sized snakes that became venomous...
I shuddered at the horrific possibilities. It was pointless speculation. The snakes were already irritating enough with their underhanded behavior; if they evolved like X-kemon, they'd become several times worse. I'd already been living through a hell-difficulty castaway story. Surely the difficulty couldn't rise any further. Then again, before I could claim evolution didn't happen that easily, I remembered that Survival Academy had mutant monsters that evolved rapidly.
God, my head was spinning.
Running through every possibility gave me a headache. Spending all day alone inventing scenarios that went nowhere must have made my chronic delusions flare up again. After ten years in a place where one mistake meant death, becoming an expert at shadowboxing with imaginary threats was unavoidable, but I really needed to break the habit.
"...Screw it."
I decided to go eat.
Nothing was going to change by agonizing here anyway. It was better to discuss things with Reni over a meal. After all, the actual combat would be handled primarily by me and Reni.
Karina was our healer, so she would stay behind and wait for us. We had no guarantee that Reni and I would escape the battle uninjured, and we didn't know how the dungeon might react once the snakes were gone. We needed reliable insurance, and a Saintess capable of powerful healing magic was perfect for the role.
If I remembered correctly, Karina wasn't much of a fighter. Even as a final boss, her only real pattern was spamming magic.
And even that was weak...
"Don't ever say it's over if I'm breathing..."
I hummed awkwardly to a song whose tune I couldn't even remember and headed home.
--------------------
"Ah, you're here? Sit down! I made breakfast!"
...She had become a real islander. I thought that as I stared at the clams and caterpillars floating in the boiling pot.
"Yohan! Here!"
Karina held out a bowl brimming with soup toward me. I carefully took the bowl and sniffed it.
It gave off an indescribable aroma, a mix of the larvae's distinctive earthy smell and the scent of the sea. I flicked my eyes over to Reni, who was bringing the soup to her lips with a half-resigned expression.
Reni could stand to learn from Karina.
Karina ate everything without complaint, whether it was caterpillars or lugworms.
...Or was Karina the weird one? Given her looks, you'd think she couldn't touch that kind of thing, but she sure ate it well.
Except for the first day, she had shown almost no reluctance. If anything, she seemed to like it.
...That was just my imagination, wasn't it?
"Is it good?"
"...Yeah."
I gave Karina an awkward answer. I could speak to Reni well enough, but around Karina, words caught in my throat and made it hard to breathe. Nearly two weeks had passed, yet nothing had changed. Was it because I'd never dated anyone, or because talking to the unattainable flower named Karina forced me to crane my neck toward the top of a cliff?
Either way, the answer was the same. I'd reached that conclusion so often I was sick of it: there was no point agonizing over the question.
"How are the snakes doing?"
"It's turned into hell."
How many snakes could possibly be left? It was difficult to estimate how many had survived in land ruined that badly. More importantly, the terrain itself had become dangerous, so the entire plan needed revision. We couldn't step into a Poison Swamp that looked capable of turning our whole bodies purple on contact.
Even with Karina, healing magic wasn't unlimited. If it had been, I would've assembled a Hydra raid party long ago and taken the bastard's head.
"A hellscape... is that a good thing?"
"No. The forest has collapsed, and a swamp filled with toxic fumes has formed. We need to scout it."
I could go alone, but since we had to fight together anyway, scouting with just Reni was more efficient. In an emergency, just having bait—no, a reliable partner—would put me at ease. She hadn't fully recovered, so she wasn't radiating that terrifying quasi-final-boss pressure, but...
The creatures here were strong, but the two of us should be able to handle them.
"Once we eat, we'll head out for reconnaissance right away."
"It's been a while since I got to stretch my muscles."
Reni seemed happy to get outside. Karina's insistence that a patient remain still had apparently frustrated her. I emptied my bowl and placed it on the tray I'd made two days earlier to make carrying dishes to be washed easier.
"Still can't get used to this..."
As I listened to Reni grumble, I packed the necessary items into my trusty leather pouch. Jerky to stave off hunger and various tools. Little bottles for holding poison. And leather to cover my body. The rest of the materials I could procure locally, so carrying only this much was enough.
"Let's go right away."
"Ah, wait. Karina, check your surroundings whenever you go outside, and please don't leave the house unless necessary. With us gone, I can't guarantee your safety. No, wait—you should stay inside the shelter until we return..."
"Reni. I'll be fine, so hurry up and go."
I couldn't tell which was more impressive: Reni, who could make a face of pure exasperation appear on the good-natured Karina, or Karina, for stopping at mere exasperation.
If even I were overprotected to that degree... actually, I might kind of like it.
Having it was better than not having it, after all.
"Hey, what's with you? Why are you spacing out? Are you sick?"
"It's nothing. Let's head out."
It looked as though this would be a noisy reconnaissance mission.
Something about Reni made me think so.