4. Here We Go Again (1)
4. Here We Go Again (1)
As befitted an island crawling with monsters, something had a way of happening on this nameless uninhabited island whenever I started to let my guard down.
The monsters that carved up this island—especially the two I'd labeled kaiju—occasionally got into territorial disputes. When that happened, animals fleeing the pressure would come stampeding over, while skeletons or goblins that had wandered out of the dungeon might approach as well.
Or a natural disaster would show up to demolish my house without notice because hey, it was renovation time.
Anyway, living alone on a deserted island meant I had to be neighbors with all of that. Still, I hoped nothing serious had happened this time. It would be nice if it were only some adorable little monster trespassing into my territory. They tasted awful, but their hides were useful...
Before that, I had to say something first. I grabbed the doorknob and started to turn it, then let go and knocked.
I heard cloth rustling on the other side. She'd apparently been drying off and was hastily throwing on clothes. Ah, this really wasn't the time. I clamped down on my urgency and waited until the sounds stopped.
Once they stopped, I opened the door and spoke.
"Something came up. There's a place we need to go."
"W-what happened?! And a place to go?!"
Karina looked at me with a bewildered face, but right now I had to evacuate her before answering. Without a word I scooped her up and immediately got us out of the house.
I had a hideout set up in case of attacks like this. The plan was to drop her off there, then head out to investigate whatever was causing the tremors.
"Please, just explain!"
"I don't know either. But it's dangerous."
"Where are we going right now?"
"There's a hideout. Wait for me there."
At my obliging reply, Karina said she understood and settled obediently in my arms. Was it my imagination that her face had gone a bit red? Not the time to care about that. I ran straight to a spot about two hundred paces from the house. It wasn't all that far for a hideout, but since it was originally a backup shelter in case the house collapsed, there'd been no need to build it far away.
"This is...?"
"A hideout."
The hideout was a shelter I'd dug out of a small hill. I usually covered it with soil so it wasn't easy to spot, and being underground made it relatively safe from monsters. Most importantly, the higher elevation kept it fairly safe from disasters like tidal waves.
I kicked the dirt away from the door and pulled it open. With a scrape of hinges, the entrance to the hideout swung inward. Now that I thought about it, there was no fire in here. I hadn't set one up separately. I had some firewood stored, so I just needed a spark.
"Do you know how to start a fire?"
"Uh... I'm sorry, I don't really know how."
She used holy magic, so I hadn't expected otherwise, but there it was. I climbed down into the dark hideout, set her on the cot, picked up a piece of firewood, and activated a Skill.
"Craft."
The roughly cut firewood instantly transformed into neatly processed pieces of wood and fell from my hands into the brazier. Every scrap had been purged of moisture. From among them, I stuck the tip of a stick—conveniently carved for spinning—onto a dry piece of wood and began rotating the stick between both palms.
It was a method anyone had probably seen at least once. Truly primitive, but one of the simplest if you could pull it off. Of course, the easiest way would have been to bring in an ember from somewhere or use a lighter or matches, but where was I supposed to get those on a deserted island?
It wasn't like I could conjure fire with magic. So the only solution was to brute-force it with some elbow grease. Actually, I could make something like a lamp to carry embers. Once this whole mess was over, I would have to make a few.
"That's..."
"Get some rest."
"...Be careful."
"...Yeah."
Someone seeing me off, huh. That was new.
------------------
The first place I needed to check was the outer edge of my territory, where I'd set the traps. For the last few years, my boundary line—packed with every trap I'd laid over the years—had never been breached.
That was because, after years of trial and error, I'd researched the smells they hated, the toughness of their hides, and the weaknesses in their body structures, then designed the traps around those. Even monsters that had charged in full of fight at first got a bitter taste of my traps a few times and stopped coming anywhere near.
But tremors.
Monsters sometimes traveled along the boundary, but today the shaking had lasted a long time. Things had been so quiet lately that it looked like something must have gone down again.
Was it the snakeheads, or the bearheads...?
Most likely the damn bearheads. Unless their alpha moved, the snakes wouldn't make the ground rumble, and fittingly enough for snakes, everything they did was so insidious they'd never pull something this brazen.
"Northwest, huh."
I felt out the tremor's location. It was a knack I'd picked up from dealing with this so often. Hard to put into words, but it was a survival skill I'd naturally picked up after watching bearheads rampage for ten years. If I hadn't learned it, monsters would have been using my bones to pick scraps from between their teeth by now.
Anyway, my territory was south. The bearheads were northwest. The snakeheads were northeast, so as expected, the bearheads seemed to be behind this disturbance. I immediately turned my steps northwest. As I passed the beach and entered the forest, an unsettled atmosphere greeted me.
The air felt off.
Strange.
For how much commotion there'd been, things were quiet.
What the hell had happened?
Staying alert, I edged farther inside. How much farther did I walk? By the time I was almost to my territory's boundary line, a foul stench stabbed into my nose.
A familiar smell. A stench I was sick of inhaling on this island.
Surrounded by the thick coppery scent of blood, I climbed a nearby watchtower and scanned the trap-laden boundary. I spotted several bear corpses impaled on the sharp wooden stakes. Occasionally a clueless bear or two would blunder into a trap and die, but...
"Way too many..."
One, two, three, four... eight bears had gotten caught in the traps and been turned into pincushions.
This was clearly abnormal.
Monsters might lack intelligence, but their survival instincts were supreme. They could sense a fatal situation with uncanny accuracy and stayed the hell away. A couple of stupid ones sometimes ended up as trap fodder, sure... but by the same token, if it wasn't that, stuff like this was rare.
That was why the monsters and I had been caught in an unspoken standoff up to now.
If a fight broke out, a victory without wounds would be impossible, and the third party would simply reap the benefits, so it was better not to fight at all.
But it looked like something had gone down on the bearheads' side. If I remembered right, there were around thirty bears in the group. Eight was a fifth of them—which meant a fifth of the pack had panicked and hurled themselves into my traps.
What the hell had happened?
A generational takeover? A natural disaster? Or... had that shithead Hydra with its million heads finally stirred up trouble?
My head was spinning. Without solid evidence, there were way too many possibilities to make any kind of guess.
I might have to infiltrate bear territory soon.
The only information I could extract here was that something had gone down in their territory. If I couldn't pinpoint exactly what had happened, I couldn't prepare for the threat. But the immediate priority was pulling all these bodies out and repairing the traps.
If the defense line got broken through while I was out scouting, there'd be no bigger catastrophe. I had to keep my territory safe before I could do anything else, scouting included.
Thoom. Thoom. Thoom...
The tremors were gradually fading. I noticed it from up on the watchtower. Once the shaking completely died down, I could climb down.
When the tremors finally ceased, I descended from the watchtower and carefully picked my way among the traps.
Step by cautious step, I threaded through and examined the impaled bears.
All of them had gone cold, tangled in my traps. Except for one.
"Tough bastard."
Was it because it was a bear? Transfixed by a spear made from the bones of its own kind and dying, the bear looked up at me with half-lidded eyes. No emotion registered in its gaze. It might've already lost its sight. The bear's hide was so saturated with blood it'd take forever to drain.
"Farewell."
I raised my shovel and drove the blade into the not-yet-dead bear's neck. With the familiar recoil in my grip, the bear's eyes rolled back.
"Gotta haul the bodies... then reset the traps."
Bear carcasses had a lot of uses.
Their hides were super tough, so I could make leather clothing or a new bed. The meat was awful, but if I diced it small, I could use it as fish bait, or just bury it somewhere.
The bones worked as material for traps or tools. The bears on this island were bigger and tougher than ordinary bears, so their bones made excellent crafting material.
"Craft."
I slid one of the bone stakes out of a trap and murmured. In an instant, the bone that had moments ago impaled its kin's body transformed into a skinning knife that would strip flesh from the bones of its own kind.
And so I started the grueling work of taking the carcasses apart and hauling them out. Quick and precise, since I never knew when new uninvited guests might show up.
By the time the sun was tipping low, a huge pile of flensed hides and bones lay in front of me.
As for the traps...
"Repair."
The bones that had been stacked nearly twice my height almost all vanished, and the traps regained their proper forms.
This was why I'd been able to lay down and maintain this many traps. A damn useful Skill, aside from the catches that it only worked on structures or tools I'd made and required matching materials.
"...How the hell am I carrying all of this?"
The thought of making multiple trips was a pain.
But what could I do?
If I wanted to live, I had to. Couldn't just leave useful resources behind.
I hoisted the bones and hides onto my shoulders and started hauling them into my territory.