Cause of Death: Laundry
Cause of Death: Laundry
"Wow, this is actually pretty doable."
A few hours after hunting the mutated water deer.
Kim Mari's party had been progressing smoothly ever since.
Part of the reason was that their party was stable, but more than that, the monsters they encountered simply weren't that strong.
Even if they had mutated from Demonic Energy, most of what blocked their path were weak herbivores like squirrels or rabbits.
Not that the monsters were swarming them in droves, either.
It was as if the monsters were deliberately avoiding the area; there were very few living creatures at all.
Only the occasional nimble, stupid herbivore showed itself here and there.
No matter how vicious beasts got, they still respected each other's territory.
This land, after all, belonged to someone.
Of course, Kim Mari's party, unaware of this, was busy patting themselves on the back for how manageable it was.
"At this rate, maybe we'll actually reach the Deep Layer entrance?"
"It is kind of doable...?"
"No, we don't know yet. The monsters we've seen so far have all been herbivores. We can't let our guard down because we never know what'll show up."
The only one keeping a level head and cautioning the party members was the wizard.
But even that wizard was slightly buoyed herself.
As the party said, the run had been smooth. The viewers watching the stream were also delighted, saying it had been a while since they'd seen a high-level fight.
But that confidence came to an end not long after, when they ran into a new monster.
"Kwooo, kwoohoo..."
An enormously large monster appeared before their eyes.
A creature with the head of an owl and the body of a bear. Blade-sharp feathers were densely packed along both of its forelegs.
It was a large monster called an Owlbear.
Anyone could see this thing was trouble. Kim Mari immediately checked its level.
[Owlbear Lv 107]
"...Ah, fuck."
And then she swore without a second thought.
It was a level they couldn't even begin to contest. A monster with a whole ten-level gap over the current world rank one.
This thing that had popped up out of nowhere was something even a raid party would struggle to bring down.
Losing all will to fight, she immediately ordered her party members to retreat.
"R-Retreat!!"
[Kyaaaaak]
[RUN! RUN, YOU FOOLS!!]
Under normal circumstances, they might have escaped.
Because Owlbears were relatively docile as monsters went.
But the unfortunate part for them was that they had already trespassed into the Owlbear's territory.
It had no mercy for those who invaded its domain.
"Hwokooo!"
The absolutely enraged Owlbear charged at Kim Mari's party.
It moved with tremendous speed, completely out of proportion to its massive frame.
At this rate, it might just catch them.
Swearing internally through clenched teeth, Kim Mari gave her party members an order.
"Damn it! This isn't going to work! Let's just wound one of its legs and run!"
Even this thing surely couldn't keep up a chase with an injured leg.
With that in mind, Kim Mari gripped her axe fiercely.
Her party members stared down the Owlbear with resolute expressions.
One leg. If they could just hurt one leg!
"Hwokoo!"
Before long, the enraged Owlbear's attack came flying. It swung a foreleg full of sharp feathers horizontally at the vanguard.
Kim Mari gritted her teeth and took a defensive stance.
But.
"Kheok!"
She didn't stand a chance of withstanding the thing's brute force.
Its appalling mass sent her body flying far away.
Even though she'd guarded, one of her arms ended up with a fairly major injury.
Even for something that strong, this was too much.
To throw the tank out of the fight in one hit—just what kind of monstrous strength was this?
What was even more terrifying was that the attack didn't end there.
"M-Mari!"
In that brief gap while she was knocked out of action, the creature continued its attack.
Its next target was the fleet-footed archer.
Taking advantage of the moment their attention had been drawn to Mari, the thing body-checked the archer.
Thwack—!
That was the end of it.
The archer, flung far away, crashed into a tree and died instantly.
It wasn't an attack the physically frail archer could have survived.
By that point, the wizard's magic was ready.
"Saxum funda!"
Also known as Rock Bullet.
A spell that created a stone in the air and launched it at the enemy.
Although hastily thrown together, it was still an attack not to be ignored, packed as it was with mana.
But.
Crash!
The Owlbear's body didn't even get a scratch.
Her magic had hit its leg, but the stone just shattered into pieces and disappeared instead.
A blow heavily compressed with Magical Power had done nothing but rile the thing up even more.
"Unbelievable..."
The wizard murmured in a hollow voice.
And those were her last words.
"Hwok!!!"
Because the enraged Owlbear had bitten her body in half with its beak.
The wizard, too, vanished into a scatter of light motes.
All that was left on the ground was the hat she'd been wearing.
"Insane..."
Watching the scene, Kim Mari spat a curse. Half her party members, whom she'd painstakingly prepared, had died in that brief interval.
The male priest who'd been healing Mari trembled and muttered, his hands shaking.
"O-Oh no, we have to run..."
By then, he was in the grip of sheer terror.
Since this was a game that aimed for realism, the sight was incredibly brutal.
Sure, dying only stung a bit and that was all, but there was still a kind of horror that came from the imagery.
"Nngh...!"
Suppressing a groan, Kim Mari immediately grabbed the male priest's hand and started running.
Whether they could escape or not, she didn't know. The odds were probably that they couldn't.
But even so, they pounded their feet in earnest.
Because they absolutely did not want to die.
*
I was quite fond of eating meat.
But a person couldn't live on meat alone three hundred sixty-five days a year.
Even though it was rich in protein and delicious, you got sick of the grease pretty quickly.
So, sometimes there were times when I craved something other than meat.
Today was one of those days. For some reason, I had a hankering for greens.
Thus, for the first time in a while, I was foraging instead of hunting.
I busily cut away fruits and greens and stuffed them into the pouch tied at my waist.
The fruit I planned to eat that evening, and the greens I was going to serve as a side with the meat later.
Eating the plain greens on their own was a little tasteless, after all. The vegan's path was long and arduous.
"Hoo, peaceful."
I'd have loved it if it stayed like that.
It was just when I'd gathered a decent amount.
All of a sudden, I heard screams coming from ahead of me.
"Hyaaak! Hyaaaaak!"
"Somebody save me!"
And those screams were getting closer in real time.
'What's this?'
Tilting my head, I checked it out to see a man and a woman dashing this way.
Judging by their expressions, they were terrified, as if something was chasing them.
I looked behind them to see what they were running from, and sure enough.
There was my neighbor-friend, Mr. Owl Bear, chasing after them.
His expression was all scrunched up in anger—he looked royally pissed off.
Those two must have trespassed into Mr. Owl Bear's territory.
While I was assessing the situation, they spotted me.
"Huh?"
The two who'd noticed me wore dazed expressions, their escape momentarily forgotten.
And that was a very bad reaction.
"Ack!"
Because in that brief moment of distraction, the man who looked like a priest tripped.
Maybe because of the forest's tangled terrain, he hadn't seen the exposed tree root below.
The Owlbear seized the opening from his fall and closed in rapidly.
First, before I thought to do anything else, I turned on the Player's Eye.
[Oh it's Yor hi]
[Dayum, look at that outfit]
[Wow hello I'm a fan]
[Yor isn't the issue right now! You have to run, god damn it!!!]
[Kyaaaaak! RUN, YOU FOOL!]
Sure enough, they were Otherworlders.
And of the streaming variety among the Otherworlders, at that.
Time kept passing even as I was evaluating the situation like this.
"Hwokuuk!!"
Before I knew it, my neighbor-friend had closed the distance and swung his forepaw.
The frail priest's body was cleanly torn in two and scattered into a cloud of light motes.
"Ah, nooo! Jae-hoon!!"
The woman screamed wretchedly at the sight.
From what the chat window mentioned, this screaming woman's name was apparently Kim Mari.
It was a name that reminded me of the fried food I used to eat at a snack shop.
It was a truly pitiable scene, but.
Our friendly neighbor, Mr. Owlbear, didn't miss even that instant.
He dug into the brief moment Kim Mari was screaming and swung his sharp forepaw.
"Keheok!"
Pwok!
She went flying far away, the breath knocked from her lungs.
Not dead, but clearly badly injured at a glance.
Blood was pouring from the skin where the feathers had cut her, and she couldn't move her body well—something in her bones must have been damaged.
Now that the priest was gone too, leaving her like that, she'd die of excessive bleeding.
She must have known she was done for either way. She looked at me and yelled.
"Run away! That thing is a monster!"
I put my hand to my forehead.
And then I looked over at the utterly furious Owlbear.
"Now, now, Mr. Owl Bear, why are you so upset?"
Honestly, I felt a bit of an inner closeness to the Owlbear.
He was docile as long as you didn't cross into his territory, and he played the role of a guardian spirit that protected my house.
He'd clean things up for me before they got to my house more often than not.
I was thankful for that, so I'd thrown a goblin corpse into his territory on the sly for him to eat once.
It was definitely not because I was too lazy to dispose of the corpse myself and dumped it on him. Truly.
Anyway, because he was that kind of creature, I really didn't want to fight him.
But there was no way a monster blinded by rage was going to listen to reason.
Not recognizing his own neighbor, he swung his claws at me.
Shhik—!
A sharp sound rang out through the air.
I dodged his attack and furrowed my brow.
'Haa... should I just run away?'
Since they were Otherworlders who'd just come back to life anyway, dying wasn't really my business.
I hadn't trespassed into his territory, so just running away until he calmed down was also an option.
I was naturally planning to use that option.
But the problem was the direction he was rampaging in.
If he charged straight ahead rampaging like he was, he'd reach the spot where my laundry was hanging.
"Huhk!"
Even I couldn't help but genuinely panic at this.
Not my laundry!
I'd been fully prepared to die if all my laundry didn't dry today!
So I had no choice but to block his path.
If our opinions were running on parallel tracks, there was nothing to be done.
One of us would have to see blood.
"Mr. Owl Bear, I’m truly sorry it has come to this..."
I drew the spear I carried on my back.
The familiar grip burrowed into my senses.
I didn't deliberately launch a preemptive strike.
An opponent that angry would come charging in to attack me on his own.
"Kwooo!"
Sure enough, the Owlbear swung his forepaw again.
I could block it, but I could see the trajectory of the attack anyway.
There was no need to waste energy blocking it.
So I twisted my body lightly and evaded his strike.
He'd used his turn, so now it was my turn.
I smoothly transitioned to the offensive. I immediately raised my spear and stabbed at his foreleg.
Pshuuk—!
"Hwok-hwok!"
Several of the steel-like feathers were cut and red blood leaked out.
From far away, I heard Kim Mari, who had been in the process of dying, exclaim with admiration.
"Whoa..."
But whether that happened or not, I just frowned.
'Ah, shit.'
Because I hadn't cut as deep as I'd thought I would.
He was an Owlbear, after all. His strength was one thing, but his hide was incredibly tough.
The fact that I was in an unenhanced state was significant, too.
If I'd done some blood enchanting on the spear, I could've just taken the whole limb off.
'But I can't exactly draw blood in front of her...'
I thought, looking at Kim Mari.
If I manipulated my blood, she'd obviously find it suspicious.
On top of that, info about 'Demon's Blood' had supposedly gotten out among the Otherworlders recently.
I couldn't just openly manipulate blood in front of her.
'Well, nothing for it.'
I gave up on that idea quickly.
It was a little harder to use and sliiiightly less efficient than that.
Still, there was one more thing I knew how to use.
Everything in the world contained mana.
Whether the amount was great or small, everything in the world was born with the potential to become great.
And some among them polished and refined themselves until they learned to control their own mana.
Strengthening the body, compressing mana, converting it into magic...
And I was a human who had survived over ten years in this place.
I'd fought in close to a thousand battles, and brushed past the line of death dozens of times.
When you were thrown around that much, being able to move mana freely was simply a prerequisite.
Why? Because if you couldn't use it, you'd have been dead a long time ago.
Wooong—
I wreathed mana around the tip of the spear. I circulated it rapidly through my body and infused myself with vitality.
A bluish something wrapped around the spear's shaft.
I readied a thrusting stance in that state.
Kuguguk, my muscles contracted, concentrating power into a single point.
If I loosed my strike like this, my spear would probably shoot forward like a spring.
"Hwokkkukk!"
By now, sensing the danger, the creature had taken a defensive stance.
His two forelegs, hard as steel, formed an X. You could feel the powerful will behind it: he meant to block whatever attack came.
But it was futile.
If he'd wanted to block it, he should've interfered before I readied the thrust.
That was the price he paid for failing to stop it.
Having gathered sufficient power, I simply drove the spear forward at him.
And that was the end.
Pang—!
The steel-like feathers were scattered into the air along with droplets of blood.
A horrifying shockwave spread outward in all directions, centered on the Owlbear's body.
What was left behind was one Owlbear corpse, with a huge hole punched clean through its two forelegs and its head.
"!!"
Kim Mari's exclamation, tinged with consternation, rang out.
I left that voice behind me and inwardly paid my respects to him.
'Goodbye... my neighbor-friend.'
I didn't forget to shed a single tear in my heart, either.