CH 47

Chapter 47

Chapter 47 – It seems to be travelling into the forest for the request

This forest, without having been given a specific name, was simply an area called a forest.

According to Shion, “There isn’t anything particular unusual in it either, it’s just a forest”, she told, but upon Renya’s diagnosis, it takes around around 1 hour to slowly walk from one end to the other end of the city of Kukrika, therefore I believe it to be around 4 km in total.

In other words, if you consider Kukrika’s square measure to be around 16 km², hasn’t this forest, which is several times that, around 60 km² – 80 km² in just its square measure?

Because it will be at least called a sea of trees, if it even has 30 km² in my former world, to call this forest, which boasts twice that square measure, a simple forest is a pointless gap between different worlds, Renya feels.

However, going by Shion’s group’s point of view, if it’s the Miasma Forest, which is the place where Renya descended for the first time into this world, its size extends the size of this forest by several hundred times. Thus it seems it that the people consider it to not be something to the degree of receiving a name.

Usually almost no people enter the forest. It appeared to be a quiet forest, but just now quite a number of people entered inside and a somewhat noisy mood of various people drifted about.

“Just how many parties are going to participate in this?” (Renya)

Pressing his hands against his hips, Renya, in a different appearance than usual, raised his voice in amazement.

The hem of the long coat, with its base colour being black, is an elaborately made article with silver embroidery at its edges.

With his trousers also having the basic colour of black, he is wearing his usual leather breastplate and arm protectors on top of that. In addition, he has boots, which were reinforced with iron plates, equipped.

The clothes were made by Frau in the night before their departure and presented by her to him.

While looking at Shion relentlessly thrusting her elbow into Rona, who tilted her head to the side unable to read the situation as she was wondering whether it was necessary for fairies to sleep, Renya, who received that, ended up unintentionally staring at Frau without knowing what kind of material was used just by touching it.

According to the points explained by Frau while she was bashfully rubbing her hands together as she was stared at by Renya, the speciality of silkies is related to clothes to begin with. There’s no one as superior as them when it comes to the treatment of fibre.

“This Frau, using the fiber grasses she has been cultivating in the garden and the thread of a certain creature, which is living there, has created a cloth with the compiled thread by matching it with her own mana”, Frau explained proudly.

It couldn’t be helped that the gazes of everyone except Frau, turned towards the garden for some reason or another.

If you only looked, it was a slightly big garden of a mansion around there and had a kind of unchanging, ordinary scenery, but just what the heck is going on in this garden, everyone’s thoughts aligned pretty much.

“Silkworms?” (Shion)

Shion asked while considering for it to likely not be that different, however her question was denied on the spot by Frau.

“It’s different ~no. The texture of the silk is better ~no. However, its toughness falls behind ~no.” (Frau)

Putting aside the durability, is toughness really necessary for clothes? Everyone present at that place wondered about that. But that could be only deemed as something natural.

Besides, Frau, who doesn’t realize that, begins to passionately explain about the toughness of the clothes, she passed to Renya.

If you believe her words completely, they possess a certain degree of heat-resistance and cold-resistance and in addition they are self-purifying, albeit only slightly. They possess a self-repair function. While being cloth, it defends against sudden impacts by causing a reversible hardening. It has the effect of considerably lowering the sharpness of edged weapons and protects against blades by letting them slip.

With the effects being a cheat for something you have someone else use as simple clothes, they are moreover massively overspec’ed.

“Isn’t that something precious?” (Renya)

He felt anxious about the origin of the materials, but more than that, Renya was worried whether Frau hadn’t done something unreasonable. However, Frau smiled.

“No problem ~no. It’s something of the level that it can be made again, even if it gets torn ~nano.” (Frau)

Hearing that the same thing can be created once again, Shion and Rona make difficult faces.

If that’s the truth, it’s not unlikely for it to become a situation in which the city’s dry-goods stores hang themselves altogether.

“I see. Thank you.” (Renya)

Giving her his thanks, Renya strokes Frau’s head.

Shion looked at Frau, who receives that in bliss, while squeezing and biting her handkerchief for some reason, but Renya pretended to not notice that.

Being seen off by Frau’s smile and with this and that, Renya’s group arrived at the forest, however they have started to setting loose a feeling of disappointment unable to hope for much loot with big number of preceding visitors.

Where profitability is concerned by just hunting more and more, adventurers, who are extremely fond of money, shouldn’t have any restraints.

Even though they are still in the vicinity of the forest’s entrance, the struggle for prey has already started. As quarrels between parties are apparently occurring, that only spurs on the clamouring.

“It might be difficult to hunt in the outer circumference parts.” (Shion)

Looking through the gaps in the trees, Shion says while watching with a sidelong glance a group disputing over something.

What is lying at their feet is the corpse of a kobold, which is a monster walking on two legs with a dog head.

It’s a monster at a level that the magic stone, which can be looted, is inferior to that of a goblin, but it’s a truly unproductive view of them quarrelling over stuff like who brought it down and how much goes to who.

“Do you have an idea where the forest octopuses live?” (Renya)

“Basically, it should be close to water.”

“They are amphibian?” (Renya)

“I don’t quite understand that word, Renya, but they appear to hate for their body to get dry.”

Then go back underwater, he ended up thinking instinctively, however he reconsiders whether his own part to play a role in would disappear since it would be the job of fishermen to catch them then.

“Let’s catch them in the centre of the forest then as it’s a location that has quite a few swamps in its surroundings.”

“Swamps, eh…?”

Likely those were filled with stagnated water. Once he ends up thinking that it’s probably a scenery you can’t call clean by any standard, his feelings get depressed and complicated, too.

Assuming it’s a source of a river, it’s probably usable. Also, if the supply of ingredients ends up smelling of mud and is filthy like the other day, I won’t have much motivation to go to that place.

Without a map, it’s extremely hard to walk straightforward in a forest without a path.

Although intending to go straight ahead, one will end up slightly straying to either left or right, but miraculously Shion’s intuition-like sense works for such things? If she instructs to go straightforward this way, they advance straightforward just like that.

Due to Rona muttering “Probably it’s something wild boar-like?”, Shion retorts (tsukkomi) with a backhand blow even though it causes quite the loud sound while heading towards the heart of the forest as the one being in charge of leading them.

Walking for around 1 hour while pushing their way through the undergrowth, they seem to have gotten quite close to the centre. And then the sea of trees parted.

In a slightly opened space, a swamp, which was hidden by slightly greenish water, appears.

Bending his knees at the waterfront, he gently tries to touch the water with his finger.

Renya frowns due to the bit slimy sensation, but even as he brings his nose to the wet fingertip, the level of smelling like mud is just minute, the water doesn’t seem to be as dirty as I expected.

However, it’s mostly impossible to use it as drinking water, Renya judged.

It didn’t look like the sliminess and stench will disappear, even with boiling and filtering.

Once he looks up to the sky, he can see a blue sky as if it was torn wide open only at that place.

From within the sea of trees you couldn’t see the sky as the leaves and branches have grown far too thickly.

Although Renya couldn’t see the sun, he guesses that there’s probably still time until sunset going by the blueness of the sky.

“Since we came here with the schedule of 2 days and 1 night, it’s necessary to build a camp-site, but… I want to do some hunting.”

“With a large amount of adventurers having entered the forest, it might be difficult since there’s no presence of monsters.”

Shion looks sullen.

Thanks to stepping into the forest to some extent, the level of tumult in the outer parts was gone, but the monsters, who were hunted and driven away, are probably patiently enduring for the storm to pass by running about trying to escape or holding their breath.

“It might be more efficient to aim for one shot at a big prey, rather than earning income by hunting several small game.”

“Even if you hunt more than 100 goblins, they wouldn’t result in a big amount of money.” Renya says while recalling the defensive battle in the pioneer’s village.

“Renya, adventurers, who said such things and died, there’s too many to count.” (Shion)

Being rebuked by Shion, Renya ducked his head.

As the argument is far too sound, there’s no room to object.

He picks up pebbles at his feet while getting up.

“Mmh?” While Shion throws a puzzled look at him, Renya threw the picked-up pebbles into the thickets a bit away by exercising wrist snaps.

Renya, who confirmed a faint response and a small, high-pitched cry, takes out a knife from his bosom and heads towards the thicket, where he threw a stone.

A light brown furball, having hair as if it’s a bundle, cowered there.

Given that it apparently fainted due to being hit on the head by the thrown pebble, Renya finishes it off by stabbing the vicinity, where he believes to be the head, with his knife for the time being.

“Giant rat, huh? It’s a big catch.”

It was a rat with a length of around 50 cm, once he lifts it with his foot.

“This is a monster, too?” (Renya)

“No, that’s an animal. No magic stone is created in its body.”

The distinction between monsters and animals is the differentiation whether they have a magic stone in their bodies or not.

“By the way, forest octopuses are?” (Renya)

Seen from Renya view, either, be it animals or monsters, was fine with him, but he tries asking going with the flow.

“It’s an animal. It doesn’t possess a magic stone. But even without that, it’s ferocious and attacks even people once in a while.”

While believing that he likely wouldn’t be able to differentiate them by only their outward appearance with him being a person from another world, Renya dropped the body of the giant rat on the ground and began to briskly dismantle it.

At first Renya wanted to eat it since he took the trouble to hunt it, however it’s not necessary to be unreasonable since there are things, they brought from the city, for food.

Since that’s the case, the most efficient utilization method here is to scatter it as bait for the sake of capturing forest octopuses.

The adventurer, who gave him that information, said that goblins would be good, however unfortunately those goblins are in the midst of being over-hunted by money-hungry adventurers.

He considered to even ask them to give him just a corpse, but he hasn’t felt good about them investigating his true motive by asking what he’s planning or what for he wants to use it.

If he had the intention to eat it, he should first behead it and then hang it up upside down to drain the blood, but since according to the information, he heard at the guild, the forest octopuses are lured by smell, he deliberately doesn’t drain the blood. Once he suitably chops it up roughly, the vicinity begins to be enveloped in the smell of blood.

It’s different when it’s only forest octopuses, but there might come other monsters being drawn in by the blood scent, he thought, but believing that it will be probably fine if they get the reward for hunting those at that time, he leaves the smell as it is.

Next Renya takes out a shovel, he got in the city, from his inventory and starts to dig a hole barely at the shore of the waterfront.

Observing Renya, who began to dig a hole, Shion, who somehow felt that today will end with this much work, started to construct a tent in a place slightly away.

If she plants the tent too close, they will loose sleep in case something was in the swamp. Since it’s something unpleasant for people to think about how wet a swamp is, she apparently kept a distance taking those points into account.

The soil at the waterfront was soft. Renya opened a hole, with a depth that a person could get into it up to the hips, without having that much trouble digging it.

He buries a tall jar, he took out from his inventory, in this place.

Returning the dug-out soil to the surroundings of the jar, he covers it up so that only the opening part peeked out. In the jar are scraps of the giant rat’s corpse, which was cut into pieces. He poured in a little bit of the swamp’s water.

The octopus jar, land version, is completed.

Renya completes about 10 sets of the same thing at a distance, where the light likely won’t reach, even if they used fire at the camp-site.

Originally the correct way of octopus jars is to use them by laying them sideways. To begin with, the jar is prepared as place for the octopuses to hide themselves. Because the original idea is to lure the octopuses to hide in there, bait shouldn’t be necessary, but Renya was somehow doing it with half-baked knowledge.

If it fails, it will fail, that’s the carefree approach he took.

“If I don’t catch forest octopuses, I won’t be able to go all out in tomorrow’s hunt.” (Renya)

Renya mutters while he looks up at the sky starting to be dyed red, once he noticed it.

Even if he was able to catch them for argument’s sake, it wouldn’t be that much of hunting spoils. It had a trend to become a deficit with the expenses, which were used on the prepared items, but he tries to not think about that as much as possible.

It’s a life similar to half of it being a bonus.

There’s absolutely no necessity to pursue military gains, results or accomplishments.

I’m sorry for Shion and Rona, with whom I’m associating with, however it will be fine for them to leave me on their own accord, if they get fed up with me.

Though I will regret it a bit too, Renya laughed weakly so that it wasn’t seen by anyone.

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