CH 63

“Where from?”

“Below!”

Yells Ahri while sticking out her spear.

The magic elements in its tip start to swiftly stretch forward, exactly where a cloud of dust suddenly jumps up. The sharp magic elements pierce the ground as it swells.

“It’s hard, I just barely killed it. The enemy is a mole type.”

The ground stops swelling.

Ahri easily defeated armored salmon, but she says she just barely took out this one. I need to be more alert.

“Seilook, go up high!”

I tell Seilook to take cover in the sky.

“Two more are coming. Please take care of the one on the left!”

The ground swells on both sides, and Ahri sticks out her spear again.

“Hipopo, left!”

The ground swells and cracks, and monsters jump out. They look like a mole mixed with some sort of other being. Like a pseudo-mole.

“Bumoh!”

Hipopo stomps, and it looks like it got the nose of the pseudo-mole, but it actually managed to evade Hipopo’s attack while receiving just a scratch. Hipopo’s timing was thrown off because we’re trying not to get in the way of Ahri’s attacks.

The pseudo-mole wraps itself around Hipopo’s leg and starts climbing. It looks like it has insect legs growing out of its abdomen. I hear rustling as it moves very quickly.

I quickly take out a scroll, but then I see a white shadow in front of me.

“Seilook!?”

I thought Seilook was still up there, but it descends quickly and swings its sharp claws.

The pseudo-mole wrapped around Hipopo’s leg is ripped to shreds in an instant.

“Wow. So this is a dragon’s…”

I can’t help but sound impressed, and Seilook casually goes up again.

“Thank you Seilook!”

“Kyuu.”

The ground continues to swell as more monsters appear. But with Seilook’s aerial support, they are quickly dealt with.

“It is over.”

“Ahh. Thank you Ahri. You too Hipopo and Seilook.”

Hipopo responds by wagging its tail and Seilook by coming down and making a sound.

Both Hipopo and Seilook approach a pseudo-mole taken out by Ahri. They approach it with their noses, and go bumobumo and kyukyu, like they’re talking about it.

“Is something there?”

Asks Ahri as she looks on with a puzzled look on her face.

I put on my harvesting gloves just in case, and observe the monster’s corpse while activating a transcribe scroll.

“Apparently it’s a chimera type monster. Mole, mouse, and centipede. And this right in the middle of its abdomen… Is that a mushroom? This monster is four things mixed together. It’s not something we often see around here.”

“Yes, I have never seen a mixture of four types.”

“It must be a new species. So what caught Hipopo and Seilook’s attention?”

“Bumobumo…”

Hipopo shakes its head.

“Hmm. It looks like Hipopo is sensing something unpleasant. But I can’t see poison or anything on the transcribe scroll.”

I put the monster back on the ground.

“Should I not collect it?”

“Bumoo…”

Hipopo sounds unsure.

“Thank you you two. It looks like you’re not sure, so I’ll burn them just in case. Is it all right if we spend a little time on this?”

“Yes, I will help.”

Says Ahri.

I say no, since it’s best if she doesn’t touch them without protective equipment. I also splash a little potion on Hipopo and Seilook’s limbs where they touched the monsters.

I gather up all the corpses, put them all inside a hole dug by Hipopo, and set them on fire.

As the fire burns, I can see the mushrooms falling from the abdomens of the monsters and moving for just a second before burning up.