Chapter 187 – Bear-san Exterminates Some Moles
As Marina started to lead the way, Misa happily darted to her side.
She must really trust Marina, huh.
Well, I did find her party to be quite trustworthy as well. When they had been attacked by the orcs, they stood and fought without trying to run.
I noticed Marina was looking at Misa with a warm expression, too.
「Marina, where is the rest of your party?」
I asked her as we approached the gate.
When her party had been escorting Gran-san, there had been four of them. I couldn’t recall their names at all, though.
「Oh, Masurika and Euri are off doing something else. Bringing Elle here with me is more than enough for this request.」
Ah, without her, she wouldn’t be able to get the moles out from underground.
The fields came into sight a short while after we pa.s.sed through the gate.
How vast. I could see several people working on them.
When we got close enough, Marina called out to one of the workers.
「Excuse me. We are here because there was a request for mole extermination at the Adventurer’s Guild.」
「Oh, you came for that? That’s great…」
The man turned around to look at Marina, but his gaze soon fixated on me instead.
「A bear?」
「Oh, you don’t have to mind her.」
Marina took a glance at me before telling him to not worry.
I wanted to thank her, but wasn’t that a bit cold?
Yet, the man got even more interested in me and kept staring at me for a while longer.
「Alright, what about these children with you?」
The man turned to look at the girls.
「They came here just to watch, so you don’t have to mind them either. Anyway, where did the moles appear?」
「Oh right. It’s right over there. They have already ruined a lot of crops, so please take care of them quickly.」
The man finally stopped staring at us and pointed to where the moles were popping up.
Marina thanked the man, and we started to walk in that direction.
I used detection magic just to confirm that there were no monsters nearby, and it turned out that Marina was right. It was just unfortunate that it couldn’t detect any moles, either.
Detection magic could only pinpoint monsters and humans. Since moles weren’t considered monsters, my detection magic didn’t work on them.
I was only able to detect the people working the fields.
I took another look at my map and realized there were quite a few people around.
I didn’t recall pa.s.sing anybody, but there was a dot behind us as well.
I turned around to check, but couldn’t see anyone.
The dot was idling near a big nearby tree, so maybe they were resting or skipping work there?
Farming must be hard work.
「It must be somewhere around here. Elle, I’m counting on you. Also, please step back everyone.」
Marina gave her orders when we arrived at the spot.
「I will check the state of the area, then.」
Elle began walking around the field.
「There sure are a lot of holes here.」
I took another closer look as well and noticed that there were indeed many hole-like shapes.
「How are you going to find the moles?」
Misa asked curiously.
「Maybe I could use water magic to draw them out. Well, the easiest way would be to dig them out using earth magic, but I’m kind of bad with that. Okay, here we go.」
Elle put her hand near one of the holes and began using her magic.
Water started to pour from her hand and into the hole. More and more water flowed into the hole, and just as I wondered what would happen next, the water started to come back up.
Was she taking the water out?
The three girls watched her in complete amazement.
「Just letting you know, Elle is using some difficult magic.」
Marina boasted to the three girls, who looked at her with serious expressions.
「Really?」
「Summoning water is easy, but manipulating that water is rather difficult.」
Marina kindly explained to Misa.
True, I could bring out water without a problem, but creating a golem out of it was much harder.
Hmm, maybe it depended on the imagination of the process?
「Marina, would you mind cutting your conversation short? They’re about to come out.」
Marina turned around and readied her sword when Elle told her that.
「Everyone, it’s dangerous, so please step back a bit further.」
We took a couple of steps back and continued watching from a distance. As Elle sucked out the water, a black thing flew out from the hole.
「S-something came out!」
It was a mole, but it was larger than the ones I had seen on TV.
Marina thrusted her sword into the mole that was sucked out from the ground, killing it instantly.
Two more moles flew out, which Marina dealt with just as swiftly as the first one.
「Only three, huh.」
「That’s good enough. Let’s go to the next hole.」
Elle walked over to another hole.
「Misana-sama, it’s really not interesting at all, right?」
Misa tilted her head.
「Elle’s magic is amazing, though.」
「Thank you for your compliment, Misana-sama. It’s not really that great at all.」
「But, Marina said that your magic is amazing.」
「It’s hard to use, but it’s still only considered middle-level magic. If I don’t touch the water directly, I can’t control it at all. More advanced magic users can move the water without having to touch it.」
Hm? Didn’t that mean that I was doing some amazing stuff, considering I could make water golems move from afar?
「Could you please think of me as a slightly amazing magician instead?」
Elle smiled at Misa.
She had to bend forward slightly to meet Misa’s eyes, and that emphasized her huge b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
They were really big. One day, mine will be that size as well.
In the end, I also helped with exterminating the moles.
Well, all I did was look for holes. The extermination was Marina and Elle’s job, so I didn’t help with killing them directly.
「Marina, there’s another hole here.」
Misa called out to Marina from a spot quite far away.
「Okay. We’ll go over there once we finish up here. Elle, let’s go.」
Elle used her magic and repeated her, by now, well-practiced process.
Since there were several people looking for the holes, we progressed pretty quickly. Still, when we ran into the holes that were too close to each other, we sometimes ended up with some empty ones.
The extermination was going smoothly otherwise.
「How long will we do this for?」
They already took out a lot of moles, but it was probably impossible to take them all out.
「There’s no way of knowing when we will be done, so it depends on the time and Elle’s magic. If Elle’s magic runs out or it gets dark, we will have to stop. Still, thanks to your help, we already reached our quota, so we just have to report back to the guild. If the damage gets worse again, they will put up another request.」
n.o.body knew how many moles existed down there anyway. We could only wait and see what would happen after we exterminated lots of them.
「Elle, are you still okay?」
「I’m fine.」
「In that case, should we keep going for a while longer? Also, what do you girls want to do?」
「We’ll follow along.」
Misa answered. She must be enjoying her first mole subjugation.
Noa wanted to stay, too, so Fina agreed as well.
「Still, there’s a lot more than I thought.」
「True. We haven’t even cleared half of the holes, and we have already gotten rid of quite a few.」
Marina and Elle discussed between themselves, but it seemed like they couldn’t come to a conclusion as to why there were so many.
It wasn’t like anyone in our group knew how many moles were there normally, so I wasn’t able to judge whether we had removed too many or too few.
The three girls were thinking the same.
「Are there more than usual?」
「Yes, there are. Usually you don’t find and subjugate this many in such a short amount of time.」
「Maybe… there’s a Big Mole around here…」
「A Big Mole?」
Like, a large mole?
「Yeah, that would be possible. Let’s stop hunting these moles for now and look for a hole that might have a Big Mole in it.」
「Marina, what’s a Big Mole?」
Misa asked the question I had on my mind.
Nice, Misa. If it had turned out to be exactly what the name suggested, I would be terribly embarra.s.sed from asking.
「A Big Mole is basically the mom of the moles. We have to subjugate it before it gives birth to a bunch of baby moles, or they will finish off all the crops here.」
「Still, if that’s the case, we should get other people to help us. Things will end up badly if we subjugate it too late.」
「It should be fine if we look for the hole first. Besides, we should be able to take it down ourselves.」
「Okay, then let’s go look for it.」
Following Elle’s instructions, we began to look for a big hole.
The hole should be about the size that a child could fit through. Just how big could these holes get?
Just as we started looking around, a man came running up to us.
「Excuse me!」
The man was completely out of breath by the time he got to us.
「Did something happen?」
The man took some time to catch his breath before replying.
「There’s a big hole over there, and all our crops have been destroyed in that area.」
「A big hole?」
「A Big Mole?!」
「Yes, it might be so. I thought that it would be better to let you know. It will be a problem if this continues. Please do something about it.」
The man bowed.
It seemed like the hole with a Big Mole inside had appeared.
The man then guided us to the hole so that Marina could investigate it.
When we got there, I noticed that the hole was indeed big; big enough for a child to fit through.
「It is quite big, yes.」
Elle circled the hole and confirmed its surroundings.
Most of the crops around the hole had been eaten.
「It might indeed be a Big Mole’s hole.」
I still hadn’t figured out what a Big Mole was. It wasn’t a monster from my understanding.
I used my detection magic but still detected no monsters.
The only thing that it reacted to here were humans.
Oh, the guy who skipped out on work was still under the tree.
「Do the honors, Elle.」
Elle chanted the same magic as before and poured water into the hole. When she reversed the flow, however, nothing came out.
「Is it not inside?」
「I don’t know, maybe not.」
Elle looked around the barren field.
「It should still be around.」
「Maybe it’s so big that my magic isn’t strong enough to pull it out.」
Elle had sucked all the water out, but we didn’t sense any moles coming out.
I hadn’t planned on helping out, but it would become a problem if any more crops got ruined.
「Want me to do it?」
「You want to do it, Yuna?」
「If you can, could you? I don’t think my magic is enough.」
「I know you’re really good at earth magic, but you can use water magic as well?」
「Yeah, I can.」
I used water magic just like Elle had, making water pour out of my Bear Hands’ mouths into the big hole.
「That’s a lot of water.」
「That’s more than double the amount of mine.」
Through the water magic, I could tell what was going on underneath. I could feel that the water was touching something.
「There’s something big down there.」
「You can tell?」
「Somewhat, yeah.」
I started to suck up the water, just like how Elle had.
Yup, I could definitely feel something huge about to come out.
「Marina, take care of whatever comes out.」
「Yeah, leave it to me.」
Marina readied her sword.
It would come out any time now.
The thing that came out was… a mole?!
「A Big Mole!」
Marina yelled out.
It wasn’t that big, though.
It was about the size of a wolf, but well, that was definitely not the size of a regular mole.
「Marina! Don’t let it get away!」
「Got it!」
Marina thrusted her sword into the Big Mole once it came out. Her sword went right through its body, executing it with a single hit. The Big Mole’s body then fell lifelessly to the ground.
「It’s big.」
「I didn’t know there were moles this big.」
I could understand Fina being fine looking at the dead mole, but it was weird to me that Misa and Noa seemed to be unfazed as well.
When I had first come to this world, I had been disturbed by the sight of a wolf’s corpse.
The children of this world sure were strong.
「Yuna, thank you for helping us.」
「Yes, thank you so much. My magic just wasn’t strong enough for it.」
The two of them thanked me.
「The farmers would be troubled if the moles kept eating their crops, right?」
The crops they raised with love.
I couldn’t leave the farmers to fend on their own, knowing that they were suffering.
Back in my world, I would hear news about crops the farmers put a lot of effort into getting destroyed by a typhoon or some other natural disaster.
I might even eat food made from the crops here one day, so it was something I had to protect.
Author’s Note:
I planned to write up until their return to the mansion, but I just couldn’t get to it.