Mysterious Game (9)
"..."
The forest no longer held a trace of life. Even the scent had long since been carried away by the wind. And yet, within those silent woods, something grotesque was stumbling about, wandering aimlessly.
Half of its face was swollen with some unidentifiable tumor, its skin webbed with black veins. A single black tentacle, pulled from the bent ridge of its back, curled like a scorpion’s tail. Judging from the ragged clothes hanging off its body, one could guess that it had once been human.
"Krrk."
And here, once again, the wolf pack gathered to hunt down a loser who had been left behind by the group. They had been driven off earlier by an unknown monster within their own territory, but no sign of that creature could now be detected by the wolves’ senses.
Only that one straggler kept wandering around in the same place.
No matter how beastlike they are, are they really falling for something this simple?
Watching the scene unfold so starkly before him, he let out a dry laugh. It had been his choice, in the end, but the one carrying it out was the avatar.
"The wolves have taken the bait. They bare their fangs and attack a target that’s clearly alone. It’s certainly a blatant tactic, but the wolves are hungry and have nowhere left to retreat."
With Agares’s voice, heard only by him, the wolves all at once growled and surged toward the minion.
The minion knew neither pain nor fear. It obeyed the order, whipping its tentacles in furious resistance, but there were simply too many wolves clinging to its body and biting down.
"Now the true predator appears."
And at that very moment, with Agares’s strange laugh, all the trees around them began to tremble.
Nesting (D)
"Aaahhh!"
Lena, who had been hanging from one of the dense webs strung high in the trees along with the Great Lord and the other minions, let out a scream that was almost a shriek and hurled herself toward the wolves below the instant the order came down. No, she fell.
The wolves were thrown into confusion, horrified by the enemies that had suddenly appeared from the sky.
Lena slowed her momentum by driving the tentacle that had replaced her hand into the nearby tree, then fired another tentacle straight through the wolves’ bodies, skewering them dead.
The other minions and the Great Lord did the same. Ordinary wolves had no answer for tentacles and carapace, for a surprise attack launched in a manner no one could have imagined. It took less than a minute for the ambushed wolves to be wiped out without putting up any real resistance.
"Haa... haa..."
After battle had come again, Lena clutched at her chest and panted.
When she fought, a wild frenzy rose within her, letting her forget fear, and that was enough to keep her steady. But once it was over, she still lacked experience, and she always needed time to calm the excitement churning in her heart.
⊳ Lena has been selected for a reward.
⊳ A wolf has been granted to her.
"I-is that for me?"
Seeing Lena like that, the Great Lord moved according to the choice presented to him. He had already begun using both Devour and Essence Infusion on the wolves, and now he handed one of them over to her.
Lena also dimly understood that someone stood behind the Great Lord. She had already guessed, in her own way, that this entire process was being directed by the being who had sent the Great Lord.
"Thank you. My hero, my god."
Kneeling in reverence, she offered her sincere and polite thanks, not only to the Great Lord but to the one behind him as well. She didn’t know who he was, but she knew he was paying attention to her. For her, after losing everything, that alone was enough.
Devour
She thrust her transformed hand into the wolf she had been given and absorbed every last bit of its nourishment.
This is it.
This was clearly different from the first meal, when she had been forced to eat human flesh. She gave a faint smile as strength flooded through her body.
A single wolf did not contain much nourishment compared to a human, but by now she had come to savor and crave the intoxicating surge of power that filled her body.
The growth and progress she could perceive in real time. The power gained through a single act of Devour. It was a truly horrifying authority, but once she had experienced it, it became all too desirable.
"You’ve finished your meal."
Moving on to the second choice, the investigation of a special wolf, did not take long. Since the Great Lord could swallow a wolf’s worth of nourishment almost instantly, even Devour itself was over in no time.
The wolves’ compatibility had all been abysmal, so only one of them became a new minion through Essence Infusion. Even that one, like the others apart from Lena, had become nothing more than a doll stripped of self-awareness.
What’s more, he hadn’t bothered feeding nourishment to the other minions, since they weren’t worth the investment. So as soon as Lena’s long-awaited meal was finished, the Great Lord began on another task.
"This wolf..."
Lena’s eyes widened when she saw the lone wolf the Great Lord had set aside. It was a little different from the others, which were all gray.
From one leg outward, black waves spread over its body like spilled ink, contaminating it.
This is a trace of contamination by Magi. Once fully consumed by Magi, most creatures lose their reason and rampage, just like the fox spirit before.
The presence of a nearby source of contamination is certain.
Quest: Investigate the source of contamination caused by Magi
The Great Lord went beyond merely devouring the wolves; with his Insight, he identified what it was and uncovered the event itself. What remained was for a higher being to judge the matter.
Lena, suddenly tense, looked up at the sky. She sensed that the being she wished to worship as a god was making a decision.
Quest accepted.
Before long, their course was set. And once a path had been chosen, the Great Lord would follow it without hesitation. Leaving behind the wolf corpses that remained as nothing but mangled wreckage, they began moving deeper into the forest.
Magi...
Perched atop the Great Lord, Lena sank into thought. Contamination by Magi. It was a concept she had first learned in the village at the edge of the frontier forest.
Now that she understood the truth—that the fox spirit which had threatened her and sacrificed her mother had gone berserk because of contamination by Magi—she bit her lip.
The man who had caused it all was the hunter Jeff, who bore a grudge against the mother and daughter. But in the end, the root of the problem had been this very thing. So Lena considered Magi itself to be one of her enemies as well.
"Why? What’s wrong?"
"Nothing much, Boss. It’s just that this guy said something odd."
As the sun was beginning to set, someone approached him at the tavern on the outskirts of the village. One of his underlings jerked his chin toward someone nearby. In the back alley, a person could be seen getting beaten down by his gang.
"Something odd?"
"He said he was looking for mercenaries to take on a request, but then started spouting nonsense about us being too weak, so we were teaching him a lesson. He’s an old man from some rural village not far from here, apparently. Says his village was attacked by some awful monster spider and ruined. He barely escaped while the others were being attacked. Says we’ve got to hurry and save them."
"A monster spider, huh."
He snorted at his subordinate’s words. A monster spider. It was certainly a shocking thing, but unlike in the past, these days it was just another phrase. The countless monsters crawling out of the hell once called the Demon Realm had already seeped into this land long ago.
"What a completely insane world."
"So what do we do? It’s probably just some common spider beast. We could make a tidy sum if we catch it, right?"
"Probably."
Still smirking, he was offered a hunt. They were, from the beginning, the sort of outlaws who roamed a chaotic world and made money by doing anything profitable under the guise of being “mercenaries.” Hunting monsters was one of those jobs.
The dreadful beasts that had begun appearing one by one were monsters that harmed people, but paradoxically, there was much to be gained from their corpses.
Sell a useful part to a craftsman, sell it to a mage, and compared to the high risk of plunder and robbery, it was a fairly stable and lucrative way to make money.
"Get the others ready. Since the job’s landed in our laps, let’s go take a look."
In the end, he made his decision. In these restless times, where more and more people wandered from place to place seeking fortune through force, even fighting monsters was a form of competition.
He intended to catch that monster spider before another team got to it first. He never even entertained the thought that they might lose. They had never failed once before, and they had confidence in their own backing.
"W-wait! Are you really going to hunt that spider? Impossible!"
"Old man. Haven’t you been beaten enough?"
"Please, you must stop. That spider is surely no mere beast—augh!"
"Do we look like a bunch of nobodies to you? A giant spider? We’ve taken down plenty of monsters like that before."
"Stupid old fool."
But the one who grabbed at their departing legs was the elderly man they had been extorting and beating under the pretense of a request fee. Even while they were pummeling him again, the old man kept shouting at them not to go.
"Take it easy and come back. We’ll leave at dawn tomorrow."
Watching the scene for a long moment, he left those words behind, then turned around and returned to the inn where he was staying.
A monster spider that uses tentacles.
Like his underlings, he was confident as well. Still, it wasn’t as if he had no concern at all.
The old man’s rambling testimony. And the old man’s eyes, filled with sheer, absolute terror. With his own experience, he was certain that no mere monster could leave a person’s gaze looking like that.
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