Chapter 6: Better get moving
I kept careful watch on my surroundings so that I wouldn’t be caught off guard by monsters as I considered which way I should go.
These were my choices:
Go right on the highway
Go left on the highway
Go into the forest
The main benefit of the road is that it must lead somewhere, right?
The place I’m at right now is pretty high, so I can see the road stretching far to the left and right.
That is to say, I can see quite far into the distance.
But… even with my eyesight of 1.5 (TN: good vision), I can’t see any shops or buildings.
If there are any towns, they must be some distance away. It may be hours, or in the worst case, days, before I can get there.
As for the forest, there seems to be wheel tracks leading from the road deep into the forest, although the tracks are very light.
That is to say, people do go in and out of the forest. It’s even possible that there is a village in the heart of the forest.
If there is a town in the forest, it’s probably closer than anything I could find by taking the road.
After much hesitation, I decided to go towards the forest.
If I run out of MP, I’ll have to use a tree branch as a weapon, I thought, as I began walking to the forest.
MP is a limited resource, after all. If possible, I should try to drive away any enemies that appear with a branch.
———————–
My journey in forest had been going for about 2 hours.
And I, the great Kamisaki Misuzu, was totally exhausted.
The first enemy I encountered in the forest was a small tree stump monster.
Even though it wasn’t that slow, it didn’t look very scary so I was able to calmly cast [Blaze] and shot out a little fireball which killed it instantly.
If it’s like this, I should be able to manage. Or so I thought, but I was naive. I was totally unprepared for the hardships ahead.
After that, it totally sucked.
Listen, OK?
For the 22 years of my life, I led a peaceful and cultured lifestyle.
For a city kid like me, survival was unreasonable.
When I was in j.a.pan, I could barely kill a mosquito with confidence.
If I came across a c.o.c.kroach, even in the middle of the night, I’d wake up my dad or my older brother and get them to kill it.
As long as it was in the room I’d definitely hide outside.
Some people say b.u.t.terflies are cute, but I don’t like them either.
City life banzai! Nothing beats a clean, air-conditioned room!
In other words… well, you get the idea.
Also, I couldn’t ignore my own morals while striking down enemies.
This forest seems to mostly have low level monsters, so the monsters I was attacking were all really small.
And they weren’t even ugly – they looked like baby bunnies or wildcats.
So, look.
Would you be able to hit a cat or a dog or a bunny?
If there’s a normal girl out there who likes beating up cats, please introduce me.
And it was even worse with insect-type monster.
I got so freaked out by them that I just couldn’t attack.
It was like, my body felt totally drained of energy.
Anyways the gra.s.shopper-like insect was flying around, so to try to shoo it off I picked up a stick and waved it around but then I hit the bug by accident.
I could feel the bug’s body being crushed under my hand… ugya~ｇｙ＆％＄＃＋＊！！！！！
I didn’t want to feel that kind of shock again so I threw my weapon (which was just a tree branch) away.
Which brings us to the subject of magic. I could kill using fire or ice.
[Fire]
[Blaze]
[Fireball]
With stuff like that I could burn.
And of course, I wouldn’t have to see a corpse!
As for ice…
[Ice Crash]
[Ice Dust]
[Frost Shatter] (TN: lit. “freeze and shatter”)
In an instant, the enemy would freeze up and then shatter into dust-like particles. There’s no corpse that way, either.
I didn’t chase after anything that ran from me.
There were normal animals in the forest too, like bunnies and foxes.
When they got too close to me, they would scurry away. So it was all OK.
On the other hand, monsters, no matter how weak, would attack me the moment they saw me.
Monsters were my enemy.
But like I said, I didn’t really want to kill them.
If they came at me, I had to fight. I’m too slow to be able to run away.
I didn’t want to die, so I had to kill.
I didn’t want to think about it too much, so I burned or shattered all the corpses.
Well, I know. It doesn’t really make a difference.
I, Kanzaki Misuzu, mind feeling like tofu, a reborn human, got to thoroughly experience the feeling of taking life away from a living thing. (TN: I’m blanking out right now on a better translation but the tofu part literally says “tofu mind”).