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Chapter 2 – 7 (part 1)
Rock Birds and the Mixed Thieves
Guuuuu~. The first thing I heard after waking up was the sound of s.h.i.+romaru"s belly. He went without dinner yesterday, and sounded extremely hungry. He was sat next to me, watching me without moving a muscle.
“Good morning, s.h.i.+romaru. You want to eat?”
“Wan!”
He gave a spirited bark. Some drool was dribbling down from his mouth.
I quickly changed my clothes and went down to the garden. There were a number of guests gathered around the well. Because of that, I made s.h.i.+romaru stay in the bag. I washed only my face then decided to head out of the city.
As I was leaving the city, a refres.h.i.+ng breeze blew over me. A small way away from the gate, I let s.h.i.+romaru and Slalin out of the bag and started to make breakfast. To apologize for yesterday, I took out some boar meat and used some magic to grill it.
It was thigh meat with the bone in (around 15kg) but even still, s.h.i.+romaru bit into it directly, and completely devoured it in about a second. Eating only meat isn"t good for you so I also added in some veggies, but he devoured all of those too.
While watching him eat with all his might, I myself ate some grilled meat in between hunks of bread.
As you might expect, s.h.i.+romaru didn"t want any more, but Slalin was right in front of me, pestering me for some.
I grilled some more meat for today"s lunch and put it away inside the Magic Bag. The gatekeeper caught a whiff of the grilled meat and was eyeing us, but I pretended to not have seen him.
It was a little early still, but I thought I should go and do what I set out to do today: Rock Bird hunting.
I brought Tanikaze out from the bag, and Slalin hopped inside. s.h.i.+romaru stayed outside, as it had been a little while since he had been able to run outside to his heart"s content.
Because all of my preparations were already in the bag, as long as I had food, I could go at any time. And I had prepared the food just now.
I attached the reins to Tanikaze and put on the saddle, then adjusted the stirrups. I mounted up and called out to s.h.i.+romaru, to get ready to go.
I directed Tanikaze and we started on our way. Directing him wasn"t very different than ordinary horses. However, while he"s running, Tanikaze"s magic power decreases, so every so often you need to replenish it. Maybe if I made him run all day long at full speed, he might run out of magic power completely.
I made Tanikaze run at a canter (a speed around 20km/h). s.h.i.+romaru ran alongside Tanikaze for the most part but occasionally, he would run ahead or take a detour to the side.
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I pa.s.sed by a number of merchants and travelers on the way. They were all surprised to see Tanikaze but seemed frightened of s.h.i.+romaru. Each time I apologized as we went by. In less than two hours we had reached our destination, the mountain.
I had heard that the Rock Birds typically live halfway up the mountain or higher, so I took Tanikaze to the foot of the mountain, then began to walk.
I returned Tanikaze to the bag, and after taking a short rest, started the hunt.
I used Investigation and it responded with a number of reactions. They were practically all deer or rabbits though, and occasionally wild boars, not the Rock Birds I was looking for.
I gave up on the area near me and concentrated on climbing the mountain instead. After nearly 2 hours of climbing, I finally entered Rock Bird territory. I found feathers and what looked like bird p.o.o.p scattered here and there.
The radar displayed two reactions about 100m away. I held my breath as I approached, and two Rock Birds were indeed there. It also looked like there was a nest.
From a distance of maybe 50m away, I took aim then shot two Air Bullets out in succession. The two bullets. .h.i.t the birds beautifully, directly in the head and they went down immediately.
s.h.i.+romaru came rus.h.i.+ng in, with Slalin riding on his back. I approached the birds, then put my captured prey into the Bag.
I peeked into the nest above and found 2 eggs there.
"Ohh, lucky~! There"s two of them, even!”
Rock Birds often only lay one egg, and many of them are small. Knowing that, these eggs are plenty big and their sh.e.l.ls seem thick too. Maybe the parents had strong magical power, or food had been plentiful.
These eggs were 25cm tall and 20cm around, shaped like an oval. They also weighed about 3kg. They were bigger than ostrich eggs from my previous world. Normally they"re a little smaller than this.
I put the eggs in my Bag and destroyed the nest. Rock Bird nests were a way of displaying their territory, and it made it easier for other birds to locate themselves nearby.
“Now there"s another reaction, just 200m ahead!”
I continued to hunt just like that, and in 3 hours I had nabbed 20 Rock Birds and 13 eggs. That was probably already enough, so I decided to stop the hunt.
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At the same time, I took my sword out of the bag. I told s.h.i.+romaru to be ready to fight at any moment. Since about an hour ago, I sensed that some people had been stalking me. There were five of them. I couldn"t tell their genders or race, but I figured it was highly likely that they were up to no good.
While keeping my guard up, I descended the mountain. The people stalking me gathered together and also went down. Just as I suspected, it seems they"re up to something.
When I was approaching the foot of the mountain, I broke into a run at top speed. This struck at the five stalkers when they weren"t expecting it and they panicked. I ran all the way to a meadow that had good visibility, and finally stopped there. I took out Tanikaze, and made Slalin hop inside on standby. I purposefully made s.h.i.+romaru stay in the forest, and told him to stealthily sneak up on the five people from behind.
5 minutes later, the five people showed up. There were 3 men, and 2 women. All of them human. One of the men stepped out in front.
“Oi, Brat. Why did you run away!”
“In that case, why did you guys follow me through the forest?”
The five of them seemed agitated by my words.
“Did you think I wouldn"t notice? With such a c.r.a.ppy way of following me.”
In truth, these five were pretty poor at tailing someone. They seemed careful about their range but all five of them walking together was noisy, and they didn"t really hide themselves. It made me wonder, did they want to be seen on purpose?
“Like I care! Hand over all your Rock Birds!”
“Give us your horse, too!”
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They said, mocking me then laughing. I remained quiet and just stared at them, then one of the women got carried away and said,
“That white wolf that was beside you, the one with the silky hair, he looked good too.”
“Hand him over as well, I want to skin him and wear that fur.” They said.
I just stood there dumbfounded. Meanwhile, slowly coming up from behind…
“Okay, that"s it. What do you think, s.h.i.+romaru?”
Just then, s.h.i.+romaru who had snuck up 10m behind the five of them, let out a howl and rushed toward them.
CRACK!!
A huge sound rang out, and the two women were blown away. One went flying into the air, the other rolled into the men as if she was a bowling ball.
With just one blow from s.h.i.+romaru, the five of them had been utterly defeated. At first glance, they didn"t appear to be dead, but they were seriously injured, with a lot of their bones broken. I lightly kicked the man who spoke first, to wake him.
“So, what was it that you wanted from me?”
I said to him, as he groveled on the ground.
“Don"t mock me….. do you even know who I am?”
“Dunno!”
I said, and punched him in the face, knocking him out. I searched the pocket on his chest but didn"t find anything like a guild card there.
For the time being I tied them up with rope, and decided to bring them back with me to the city.
[Translator"s Note]
Correction from last chapter: Tenma went from D -> C rank, not to B (for some reason I remembered him as being C rank already). Sorry for any confusion!
Hi, Refulgent here, if you like my translations, you can show your support by leaving a comment / constructive feedback at [ FourSlimes . com ]
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