Volume 2 - CH 17

The next day. …I managed to fall asleep somehow or other. For the time being I woke up Livia who was hugging me tightly.

“Hey, wake up there Livia.”

“……Hmm? Ah, good morning…” Livia separated from me as she rubbed her eyes. She looked pretty happy. “…Thank you so much lord Crest. I’ve suppressed all those feelings that have been bubbling up inside me!”

“I see, that’s good then.” I guess just sleeping together was enough to deal with her lust.

“I might need to ask you for this again in the future… is that alright?”

“…Yeah.” I don’t want to be a bad influence or anything… I might have to deal with being unable to sleep due to nervousness again, but that wasn’t much of an issue. I left the house with Livia. Everyone had already started working inside the village.

Though I say that though, the monsters were mostly just training. As I left the house Goblia and Rufina joined in accompanying us.

While leading the werewolves in sword training, Orphe noticed me and bowed his head. “Good morning Crest.”

“Good morning.”

“What’re you doing today?”

“…I figured I’d go search for some new monsters. Also I still haven’t killed 25 poison snakes yet so I’ll go take those out.”

“…I see. So you’ll be checking out the area north of here then?”

“Yeah.” As I responded such, the werewolves’ expressions turned grim. Is something up? “Is there a problem?” I asked. Orphe seemed to notice something as he proceeded to make a bitter smile before putting his hand on his hip.

“If you continue further north, there’s the werewolf village we’re from. The only real danger with that is that the remaining guys there might notice you.”

“…I see.” So the werewolf village is northward huh. If I didn’t meet the goblins and continued north, they might have been the first monsters I’d have run into. Would they have accepted me? I wondered. “If that’s the case then I’ll make sure not to go too far north. I’ll stop around the poison snake area.”

“Sounds good. You don’t really need to worry too much though. There are other monster villages further north from the werewolf village. They probably haven’t looked too much into the south since they’re more worried about that area. That’s exactly why we escaped to the south after all.”

…Alrighty then. I guess the lower world is full of monsters fighting in power struggles. Looking at them in just that aspect, it’s a lot like the power struggles of the nobility. …Since power is justice in the lower world it’s a lot easier to understand though.

Aristocrats clamor around with back room deals and the like after all…

“Well I’ll be heading out now then.”

“I’ll come along too. I know a lot about the north area.”

“Alright.” We left the village in the hands of Darkle before the four of us headed out to the north. …This village doesn’t really have a gate or a fence. It might be best to raise its defensive capabilities later.

Monsters even just wander in of their own accord at night. With Rufina using her nose, and me using perception technique, we set out to find some poison snakes.

“Hey Orphe, are there any other villages to the north?” I’d like to make more alliances to build a firmer place here. The werewolves up north might attack too… Since I don’t know what the future might bring I want some more companions.

“…Villages, huh. There definitely were some, but since we didn’t really interact with them I don’t know much. I think there was a slime tribe but…”

“…Slimes, huh. Do they have some intelligence too?”

“I know the queen of the slimes came to meet my father once before. They were able to speak properly then.”

“…I see. Guess I didn’t really know much when I was living in the upper world.”

“Doesn’t that go both ways? I don’t know much about the upper world.”

“…Right.” I told him a bit about the upper world. …I didn’t really touch much on the difficulty with aristocrats or other unpleasant topics.

“…I see. A world without monsters… That’s a pretty surprising thing from our perspective.”

“That’s correct. But the fact that you came to the lower world lord Crest, that’s the more surprising part. It’s very interesting.” Added Livia.

…I guess so. At that moment, Rufina let out a small bark.

“…Rufina, oh.” After barking, Rufina sat down and patted the ground with her paw. There was the trace of a giant body dragging itself across the ground.

Orphe looked at the ground and brought his nose close. “It’s probably from a poison snake. …Yeah, definitely. There’s no mistaking the characteristic smell of a reptile.” …I see. Werewolves must have a good sense of smell.

“Thanks Rufina.” I hugged Rufina close and scratched her chin. Rufina seemed to prefer being pet on the bottom of her chin rather than on her head. She happily slid closer to me.

At that moment, I got a reaction from perception technique. Was it a poison snake?

“Alright everyone, looks like there’s a monster over there. Let’s go.” I called to everyone before heading in that direction. …Hm? As I stopped moving for a moment Orphe tilted his head.

“What is it Crest?”

“…Well, it seems like there’s another response.”

“…Another response? Is it monsters fighting against each other?”

“No…” Rather than fighting each other, it would be better to say one of them is trying to escape the other. “Looks like something is attacking, and the other is trying to get away.”

“Not much we can do but go see for ourselves. Unless they’re really strong we’ll be all good.”

…I guess he’s right. We’re the strongest fighting force in the village. If we can’t do anything against it, then that’s just back luck. No use thinking more about it. As we got closer to them, they turned towards us.

Then, a poison snake came barrelling through the trees. In front of it was… a humanoid watery lifeform, frantically running away.

“It’s a slime.” Said Orphe to my surprise.