The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 1 - Chapter 42

Chapter 42:

Wild Rabbit Traps and Monsters

AFTER A LONG BREAK, I finally calmed down. That team was really awful, trying to steal a tent from a child. They’d looked like veteran adventurers, too. 

But…looking back on it, they had a slightly different aura from the others. Appearances can be deceiving, I guess…

Now that I had recovered from my ordeal, it was time to go set up my rabbit traps.

The book said that wild rabbits were most active in the morning but didn’t move much during midday or nighttime. So I wouldn’t get my results until early tomorrow. I’d made four traps last night. Now I put them into my bag and hauled them to the forest.

I looked into Sora’s bag. It was sleeping comfortably. Seeing my pal relax always made me feel warm and fuzzy.

Once I was deep enough into the woods, I searched for auras nearby. There didn’t seem to be any people around, so I let Sora out. The slime began stretching and exercising in my arms. It had been moving like this often recently, so I figured it enjoyed that. If I didn’t carry Sora carefully, I’d drop it.

Cradling my slime friend, I looked for traces of wild rabbits around the bases of trees and holes in the ground. After an hour of searching, I was able to find a small animal den. I looked around and saw footprints and scrapes on the tree bark. When I examined the footprints, I was certain that they were from rabbits, so I set a trap nearby. I found another trail, too, and I put a trap there. After setting them all, I continued on my way to the dump.

I was off to find materials to make field mouse traps. When I was almost there, Sora surprised me by jumping out of my arms. It bounced away in the opposite direction from the dump.

“Sora?”

As I chased after Sora, I felt for nearby auras again and sensed something faint a short distance away. There didn’t seem to be anything else around, and Sora was heading straight for it. Did it feel something? I wondered as I followed.

“Huh?!”

Sora had led me to a huge animal lying on the ground, its fur covered in blood. At first I thought it was dead, but then I noticed its chest heaving up and down. When I approached, it noticed me and bared its fangs—pretty terrifying. Still, it looked like it was in pain. And though I’d thought it was an animal, I could feel magic coming from it. That meant it was a monster, right? Its magic was just so weakened that I hadn’t noticed till I was up close.

Sora wasn’t intimidated, though—it wasted no time enveloping the injured monster’s whole body.

Wait…huh?! I stammered madly, “Sora! This is, um, uh, no! Phew, okay! How can you fit around something that big?”

The injured monster looked more than two meters long, so I couldn’t believe that Sora actually fit around it. Still, now the monster was entirely inside of the slime! Honestly, there was probably nothing I could do, but panicking out loud always made me feel a little better anyway.

The monster seemed surprised by Sora’s actions, too, but it calmed down pretty quick. The pain had probably faded, so…had it realized that it was being healed? Or had it given up, thinking that it was about to be slime food, like I once had?

A sizzling noise came from Sora. I didn’t know if he was healing or eating the monster. Either way, I could only wait. Did Sora like fatal wounds or something…? I’d rather not think about it, thank you very much.

I had literally no idea how to explain this to anyone, so I stayed vigilant for anybody approaching—not that I could run away if someone came. Still, what was this monster?

After a while, Sora bounced up high and landed at my feet.

“Are you done?”

“Pu, pu pu!”

The slime’s sounds were getting a little more melodic these days, though they were still weak. I looked at the monster after Sora released it…and froze up.

From my reading, I knew this was probably an adandara. If you ran into these monsters in the woods, it meant certain death. The adandara got up and stretched. Can I escape this? I stepped back, and it shot a glare at me. 

Urk, what do I do? Sora!

The adandara growled and padded closer. I screwed my eyes up tight out of sheer terror. It sniffed me carefully then…rubbed its cheek against my head?

“Huh?” I opened my eyes. It kept rubbing its face on me, purring all the while. Did it think I was the one who had saved it? Or that I’d ordered Sora to do it? Was that why it hadn’t attacked me? Either way, it seemed I’d live to see another day.

Thank goodness! My hips buckled from relief, and I sat down on the spot. Sora bounced over and stretched up and down gleefully. 

“Thanks, Sora!”