CH 78

…When I thought about my children, I really wanted to see them.

I want to pet Iska and Fio’s shy heads, be cuddled by Nina, Stella, and Ratz, and cook with Ariamel.

……I want to read a picture book to the three taking a nap.

It’s really a waste of time to just look at the faces of these kidnappers.

The “deal” time is tomorrow morning and the location is in this forest, so there is still time to spare.

Emilia is supposed to deliver the kidnapped children to the guild and report the information to them.

And maybe the guild will suggest reinforcements, but I’ll leave that up to Emilia. As long as you don’t know the size of the enemy, it’s better to have more fighting power… but that’s only when you can count it as “strength”.

Just because it’s urgent doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. It would be terrible if they were dragging us down.

At the very least…I don’t want to say too much, but if only they were as good as “Blood Axe”. Ganzas are very well coordinated, even if they look like that. The individual abilities are only subtle, though.

Still, if they work as a team, they will be able to compete with some of the higher-ranked teams.

“Hey… hey”

“Ah?”

One of the kidnappers called out to me while I was thinking about something with my arms crossed. His face is covered with dried blood from his nose and mouth.

“W-Would you give me some water?”

“…”

Water… Hey.

At those words, the other kidnappers also turned their faces towards me.

“Hey, please.”

Saying that, the kidnappers were glancing at a large bottle with a lid a little further away.

“Come on, man.”

“Hehe…I’m sorry. I owe you.”

“Why?”

“…Heh?”

I stood up and approached the kidnapper, who was dumbfounded and confused.

“Is that the water you’ve been glancing at?”

He said so and pointed to the bottles that were lined up.

“Oh, oh! That’s right.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“That’s what I said, ‘Okay.'”

I grabbed the guy’s arm and threw him toward the bottle without hearing the last of what he had to say.

The man flew through the air with a look of uncertainty on his face as to what had happened, and was knocked to the ground when he hit the bottle he had specified. The impact knocked the bottle over and the lid came off.

I heard several short screams coming from behind me.

“Uh…Uh…gehogeho…what the hell…ah”

A man looks up, swooning, perhaps having hit his lungs, and his face turns pale when he sees the bottle with the lid open.

By the way, no water spilled from the fallen bottle. Well, there was no water in the bottle to begin with.

“Hey hey…ha, help…”

The pale-faced man is tied up and crawls like a caterpillar, desperately trying to get away from the bottle.

But

At that moment, four insect legs stretched out from inside the bottle at a tremendous speed, grabbed the man, and started dragging him toward the bottle.

The man let out a scream and twisted his body to desperately resist, but his head was easily dragged into the bottle.

He flapped his legs and flailed about for a little while, but then his body jumped once with a gurgling sound and he stopped moving.

The unpleasant sound of something being chewed made some of the kidnappers behind me scream and vomit at the sight.

I knew it was a mimic of a mimic insect.

Although you may imagine mimics mimicking treasure chests in dungeons and attacking the unsuspecting adventurer, mimic insects can enter anything that can fit their bodies and still be covered by a lid.

When the lid is on, they are basically docile; when it is opened, they attack anything that moves nearby without regard.

That’s why I left it for so long…

It’s a nasty parasite.

And the mimic insect now changes its target to us and moves at high speed using its legs extending from the bottle.

After closing the distance to some extent, it extended its four legs toward me as it had just caught the man earlier.

“Kuku..you’ve got the wrong opponent. Burn to death, Fireball.”

I grabbed one of its legs and forcibly pulled it toward me in the opposite direction, then shot magic directly into the bottle.

The impact breaks the bottle, and a mimic insect, which has become a fire ember, emerges from inside.

After moving erratically for a while, it lay down on it’s back while raising an unpleasant death cry, folded it’s legs and stopped moving.

After confirming that it has stopped moving completely, I use magic to extinguish the fire.

“You guys knew that mimic insects were living in those jars, didn’t you?”

I slowly turn back to the kidnappers.

“You’re trying to trap me… If you’d been mature, you’d have had time to be quiet and reflect, at least until tomorrow. How are you going to pay for it? Huh?”

When the kidnappers saw my face, they became paler and trembled more than when they saw the mimic insect.

……It was certainly intended to scare them, but now it looks like I’m scarier than monsters.