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Chapter 360: The Fire Lizard Herd, and the Nest.

(Author Note: We’ll be following Homura POV this time as well. Please stay with it a while longer.)

“Already morning. Wake up.”

“Nn…?”

I opened my eyes as my body was being shaken by Miu-san.

Yesterday night, after we passed the watch to Abert and Sarges-san, I lied down immediately but wasn’t able to fall asleep quickly enough. Thanks to that, I’m still a bit sleepy.

I washed my face in the river next to the camp to wake myself up completely. The sky’s already becoming brighter.

Abert looked around at everyone before beginning to speak.

“Let us depart then. We need to find some firewheel grass before the day ends.”

“We should probably pay attention to our surroundings as we proceed from now on. We don’t know where the grass might pop up, after all.”

The firewheel grass was said to grow in mountainous regions. Like Rose said, I feel that we’re already pretty close to areas where the firewheel grass could grow.

It could be growing right around that corner, even. Better be careful.

We observed the environment around us carefully as we proceeded on the mountain path.

After we walked for about three hours, the forest around us gave way to boulders. It should be somewhere around here.

There are some plants growing around here, but they aren’t firewheel grass. They’re all growing in places like under the shadow of large rocks, so even my mystic eyes are finding it tough to search.

There are boulders taller than Gallon all around us, so the visibility is really bad. It’ll be a hassle to search through all this.

“What now? Do we split up and search?”

“There’s the fire lizards, don’t forget. It’s dangerous to move around alone.”

“Grouping up would only eat away the time we have. It would be faster for us to split up. If we take too long, we wouldn’t be able to make the deadline of tomorrow evening.”

Dom-san and Sarges-san replied to Abert’s proposition. True, if we spent too long finding the firewheel grass and failed to meet the deadline, that would be putting the cart before the horse.

“I’ll go and look for them myself. Spending time arguing about this is the biggest waste of time.”

Gallon left those words behind and started looking around in the surroundings by himself. He has a point.

“Still as selfish as ever.”

“However, what he said is correct. Time is passing by even as we stand around like this.”

Following Gallon, Sarges-san also split away from us and began searching around. We looked at each other, and decided to go at it individually as well.

I climbed onto the tallest rock formation around here and looked around with my mystic eyes. It’s kind of a late question, but is it fine for me to look for it too?

Since searching for the firewheel grass is technically part of the test as well, if me, who is an outsider, help in that… Etto, un, I don’t know.

If I don’t know, I ask someone else!

Let me send a mail to Chief.

Pi.

>The firewheel grass, is it fine for me to look for it?

The reply from Chief came.

Pi.

>No problem. Continue with the mission.

(Note: I forgot to mention this the last time, but they’re using some weird expressions with their messages… I think the general meaning is the same, but I have no idea if this is some kind of reference, a dialect, or something else.)

Un, seems like it’s fine. Alright, I’ll look for it seriously!

Nothing…

I spent several hours after that looking for the thing, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. Are they really on this island?

The purpose of the test was to see how they would act when carrying out a request; in that case, what if the request content actually didn’t really matter and there’s actually no firewheel grass here?

…No, it’s His Majesty we’re talking about. He might’ve gotten here earlier to pick out all the firewheel grass around except for those in hard-to-find locations. He has a bad personality after all-.

Though, I don’t think he’s bad enough to ask us to go pick something that isn’t there. If His Majesty says there are, there probably are.

“Ow ow ow. My waist hurts after all that bending down to look for the grass.”

I looked up and stretched. My back’s sore after so long… I put my hands on my waist and bent my upper body backwards in a large motion.

The world became upside-down. Since my body is soft, I can even look directly backwards like this… Eh?

Something was on the rock formation behind me.

A large reptilian body and sturdy-looking bronze-colored scales. A thick tail, and sharp claws. The slit eyes that are common among reptiles stared at me without blinking.

I half-turned my body without breaking eye contact to face it from the front.

At the same time the world returned to its normal orientation in my eyes, the lizard in front of me jumped at me.

“Uwaa!”

I dodged the slam attack with a side turn. I took out some bo shurikens and threw them at it, but the red scales deflected them easily. Hard!?

It probably got angry from the fact it was attacked; flames spew out from all over its body. There’s no mistake, that’s a fire lizard!

“To find a fire lizard before any firewheel grass, what bad luck…”

I drew the ninjato at my waist and held it up in a reverse grip. What to do… Even if I apply poison onto my katana like the last time, it’d probably evaporate from the heat; in the first place, I doubt I can even pierce through those scales.

If only I’m Shizuku. That girl is good at water arts so she probably could just put those flames out with a *psha*. I’m good at fire arts, so…

“Having said that, there’s no way I’m gonna run. Since no one else is looking, let’s just do this.”

I first moved to a location upwind from the lizard, before throwing a small pouch concealed in my sleeves which contained scale powders from darkness butterflies.

“Gyua!?”

Receiving the powder that causes blindness directly in its face, the fire lizard rampaged around in a craze. Even if it’s called a fire lizard, no matter what, gushing out fire from its eyes is impossible, so it cannot protect itself against this.

Now that it cannot see its surroundings, this is the perfect chance.

I started lifting up the larger rocks around here and throwing them one after another at the fire lizard. Using blunt attacks against a physically tough opponent. That’s common sense.

“Gue! Gugya!”

After receiving a few watermelon-sized rocks to its head, the fire lizard definitely looks weakened compared to earlier.

Not boasting, but I have a decent amount of physical strength. If it’s rocks of that size, I can throw them around easily. I seem to be hearing voices that are asking me if I’m fine with that despite being a girl, but I can’t help it. It’s convenient in a lot of ways, you know?

“Gyuaaaaa!”

“Oops, that was close!”

The fire lizard spit out flames from its mouth. It’s similar to the fire breath the blood liger we fought yesterday used.

“This guy!”

“Gyafu!?”

I started throwing even bigger rocks at the fire lizard.

Eventually, the fire lizard stopped moving, and the fire surrounding its body disappeared. While sprawled out on a large rock, it stopped breathing with its tongue dangling out of its mouth.

Alright! Com! Plete! Victory! Eh? I didn’t look like a shinobi?

It’s fine as long as I win! In the first place, shinobis are people who wouldn’t choose their methods in order to achieve their goals, super-rationalists anyway!

I poked at the dead fire lizard. It’s not hot. Actually, if I have to say it, it feels cold. Weird.

This fire lizard should also have harvestable materials, but I don’t know what they are. The skin? If so, I might’ve hit it too hard with the rocks.

Miu-san or Rose might know about it. Should I go and ask… No, I should focus on finding the firewheel grass first.

If there are fire lizards here, that means there should be firewheel grass around too…

When I was going to resume searching while thinking that, a sudden explosion of light lit up the sky.

Well, I say explosion but it’s really just light. The flashes that shined bright even though the sun is up repeated several times in the sky north from here.

Is that light-attribute magic? Maybe it’s [Flash]… That means it’s Sarges-san.

Some kind of signal… Has he found some firewheel grass, or… I shot a glance at the corpse of the fire lizard next to me, and started running towards the location where the flashes shot up from.

When I got to the location, which was a recess between rock formations that looked like a valley, Sarges-san, Gallon and Dom-san were there surrounded by a whole group of fire lizards.

To be exact, it seemed like they were chased into this valley-like place and got stuck in a pincer attack.

The attacks of the fire lizards, which had flames wrapped around their bodies, were endured by Gallon and Dom-san in each direction.

“[Come forth Light, a shining barrage, Light Arrow]!”

From behind Gallon’s shield, Sarges-san released arrows of light.

The three light arrows hit several fire lizards consecutively, but they didn’t do much besides blowing them backwards.

The strength of a magic is proportional to the amount of magic power the caster pours into it, as well as the caster’s own proficiency. I feel bad for saying this, but Sarges-san doesn’t seem like he can use very strong magic.

To be honest, if he poured all of his magic power into a spell, he might be able to defeat several of them; but if he falls down afterwards due to magic power exhaustion, there’d be no point.

I threw some bo shurikens at the lizard group around Dom-san.

While there’s no way the shurikens would be able to pierce the tough scales, they did draw the attention of the lizards that got hit. Dom-san swung his battle axe down towards the fire lizards that looked towards me and showed openings.

After that, he swung his axe sideways to restrain the other fire lizards as he propped up his shield and got back into a guarded position.

Eventually, Miu-san and Rose, as well as Abert joined up with us, and it turned into a group battle between the fire lizards and the seven of us.

Having said that, the three who were stuck in the valley between two groups of fire lizards are still in that situation. What to do…

It’s not like I can’t handle this, but I was told to not stand out too much… Ei, whatever! It can’t be helped in this situation!

“Dom-san, hold your shield up and get ready!”

Dom-san didn’t seem to understand why I said that, but still put his shield up.

I took out some “special tools” from the punch at my waist, and threw them at the fire lizards in front of Dom-san.

An instant later, the fire lizards in that area were blown upwards together with a loud explosion noise. Rock pieces also blasted outwards, and the shield Dom-san held up rang continuously with the sounds of those pieces hitting it.

The fire lizards stopped moving due to the sudden explosion. Dom-san, Gallon, and everyone else froze up as well, though.

“The three of you, get over here now while you can!”

“Ah? O, ou!”

Gallon and the others ran past the fire lizards that dropped down, and regrouped with us.

Like that, we decided to leave the valley area and move to the exit before turning around there to fight any fire lizards that chased after us. If it’s there, we won’t have to worry about getting caught in a pincer.

“Oi, shrimp! You don’t have any more of those just now!?”

“Don’t call me shrimp. I do have a few left…”

“Then just throw them!”

“You there! Do you know how much those grenades cost to make!? It needs things like magic enchanting, and just one of those cost quite a bit! It’s around three silver coins, you know! Enough money to buy three luxurious meals goes up in one use, you know! Do you understand, you muscle idiot!?”

When I unintentionally shouted back at Gallon who said something stupid, Rose grabbed my shoulder from behind.

“Calm down a little! I know it’s expensive, but nothing’s more important than life. When we receive our rewards, we’ll give a bit to you, so…”

Really? You won’t go back on your words later, right? Those aren’t equipment given to members of the knight order, but ones bought with my own money, after all. There’s no way His Majesty would give us something like this.

After getting everyone’s agreement, I took out my remaining Koga-brand explosive grenades from my pouch. Three left. While that’s not enough to kill the remaining fire lizards outright, it should be easy to finish them off after they are blown away by the explosions.

“Fly away!”

I threw the grenades at areas where the number of fire lizards are high.

With three loud explosive noises, the fire lizards were blown away, and the ones that received damage were struggling on the ground.

“Now! Start from the weakened ones, and make sure you finish them off!”

Following Gallon’s words, everyone started killing the fire lizards that were immobilized from the blasts. While there might be parts like the skin that we could recover from them as materials, this isn’t the kind of situation where we can do that.

I, as well, was going around and stabbing my ninjato into the soft throats and bellies of the fire lizards that were overturned by the explosions.

The group of fire lizards were still in a state of confusion thanks to the explosive grenades, and some ran away, while some others were no longer in a state where they can fight.

Eventually, after Dom-san cut down the last fire lizard there, we all sat down on the spot.

“That, that just now was dangerous…”

“Definitely. Without the little girl’s explosives, we might’ve been taken out back there.”

Abert and Dom-san muttered that while taking a breath. Like I said, stop calling me a little girl.

“Thank you. You saved us.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine…”

I waved one hand at Miu-san, who said her thanks to me, while still lying down.

This is bad… I’ve been pretty active just now, weren’t I? They won’t say something like “now we can’t do the judging for the test properly thanks to you”, right? Right?

While praying that I don’t receive a scolding message from Chief later, I stood up.

Around us, numerous fire lizard corpses were strewn about.

“Can we sell these?”

“The fire lizards? We can, but they won’t give us much of a profit. The skin would sell for the most, but there are magic beast skins that are just as hard and have a better texture. It’s dirt cheap, basically.”

I was shocked at Rose’s reply. All that work for basically nothing, eh.

“Still, why did that many fire lizards… Did you guys do something?”

“We didn’t do anything! When we tried to get around that rock formation over there we found some fire lizards, and as we were fighting them more and more kept showing up!”

And before they realized, they were surrounded, apparently. That’s a clear lack of attention to their surroundings there. Minus points for you guys.

As I was thinking about that while looking at Gallon who’s retorting to Abert, Miu-san suddenly started sniffing the air as if she realized something.

“This is…!”

Miu-san started walking towards the valley-like rock formation. Wa-wait, that’s dangerous you know!? There may still be fire lizards there after all.

I chased after Miu-san, and everyone else also followed.

When we got out of the rock valley, and climbed onto a tall slope, in front of us was the sight of a whole field of firewheel grass growing profusely, like a flaming red carpet.

“This is…”

“Amazing…”

Abert and Gallon stood there dumbfounded. Sarges-san cut off a stalk growing by his feet at its roots and confirmed it.

“There’s no mistake. It’s firewheel grass.”

“Hahaha, we did it! We found it!”

“Un. We did it.”

Rose hugged Miu-san, who was next to her, and rejoiced.

This area was surrounded by tall boulders all around, so my mystic eyes wouldn’t have found it. It’s like a secret garden.

“I see. This is why there were so many fire lizards.”

Like Dom-san said, this place might’ve been a feeding ground for the fire lizards. To the fire lizards, this is a place they wouldn’t want outsiders to intrude upon.

“Alright, for the sake of precaution, everyone should take a few stalks for themselves.”

No one objected to Abert’s words, and everyone started picking up stalks of firewheel grass. The request only asked for one, but we need to consider things like dropping it accidentally too.

Besides, these might sell for a good price too. Everyone else probably thought the same thing as me; we all took as much as we could. Possibly due to having achieved our objective, everyone started chatting lightly.

“I was wondering how this would go, but it turned out pretty easy, didn’t it?”

“You’re saying that? During the time with the blood liger, weren’t you in a pinch?”

“Well well, we can get the two white gold coins with this. Let’s just say our thanks.”

“However, there’s something I don’t agree with…”

“… Un. Might’ve been too easy.”

“Two white gold coins with just this… Is there something else…?”

As the six of them were talking, I spotted something weird higher up the rock formation.

I jumped up to the top. Even though it was on top of a large rock, there were things like straw and grass laid out over there. The top portion was also caved in in a bowl shape, as if something large had been on top of it.

Wait a second, isn’t this some kind of nest…!

… That huge number of fire lizards didn’t eat the firewheel grass underneath. Why is that?

There’s a reason why they couldn’t eat even if they wanted to. The fire lizards could only come in and eat a bit when “it” left its nest. Since if they’re ever found, that could only mean death—

“Everyone! Run away from h—”

“GogaaAAAAaaaaa!!”

Together with a roar that sounded like it would tear the very space apart, the owner of the nest showed up in the sky above our heads.

Scales glowing with a dull light and sharp fangs. A long neck and a tail with a sinister-looking poison barb attached at the end. It had no forelimbs, but two large leathery wings.

It’s the wyvern.

Two crimson eyes looked down, as if in mockery, at us.

- Pixel