Chapter Ten: Hallucinations
“Eh? Who the hell are you? If you want to use this road — ”
I was walking down a back alley when some shady character suddenly tried to pick a fight with me. He was probably a Melromarc assassin. Even if he wasn’t, that wouldn’t change the fact that he was some fool trying to get in my way.
“You’re a nuisance, I say! Paralyzing Lance!”
Father and Éclair had asked me to do my best to hold back, so I stabbed the fool in the forehead using a skill that inflicted a status effect. It made a nice, crisp crunching sound, like biting into a lollipop.
“Gah?!”
He must have been paralyzed from head to toe, because his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell over twitching and foaming at the mouth.
Sheesh. Those Church of the Three Heroes fools never learned their lesson. This was what happened when they tried to pick a fight with Father, I say! Hm? I thought I could hear Father trying to refute that in my head. I’m sure it was just my imagination, though!
“Now then! We’re off!”
I only had until tomorrow night! I had to get in as much leveling as possible by then and pick up plenty of souvenirs for Father too! Just like the last time, I headed deep into the mountains to a region where powerful monsters lived. It seemed like this time I ended up in an area with lots of griffin and dinosaur-type monsters, rather than dragons.
“Shooting Star Spear X! Brionac X! Ha! Ha! Ha! So fragile! Too fragile, I say!”
“Chirp!”
All three filolials were shadowboxing, as if to cheer me on. Doing my best to make them strong was priority number one!
All of this sure brought back good memories. It reminded me of leveling Crim, Marine, and Midori. The three of them were the first filolials I’d raised to be angels. I’d been wandering around aimlessly searching for Filo-tan when a monster trainer approached and spoke to me. I responded by mumbling Filo-tan’s name, and the monster trainer offered me a free filolial egg and told me where to find his shop.
Fast-forward a bit and Crim, Marine, and Midori were born. I leveled them up and they all said they wanted to race, so we started street racing on a mountain pass. Father and the others scolded me for doing that, though, so I stopped. But I’ll never forget how it made me feel like the wind!
“Everyone! You’re all going to grow big and strong, I say!”
“Chirp!”
I went on leveling in the mountains with Yuki, Kou, and Sakura by my side. After a while, the monsters began fleeing from us in droves, but I didn’t care! I’d chase them to the ends of the earth and make a bloodbath of them all, I say!
But I was keeping the ecosystem in mind when I hunted too. Completely wiping out the monsters wouldn’t be a good thing. Father had warned me to think more about the ecosystem back in the first world. Still, I needed to get plenty of souvenirs for Father here, and food for the filolials too! It only made sense to go on fighting until I got sleepy.
I continued hunting monsters deep in the mountains for some time. Everything was going as planned, but all of the materials and other stuff I was gathering had started to become unwieldy. I would need to arrange to transport it back on a wagon.
I went on hunting, and before I knew it, the sun had begun to set. I wondered if Father and the others were doing okay. There was no sign of the time loop resetting, so it was probably safe to assume that they hadn’t had any problems. I still couldn’t help but worry about Father. Despite that, I spent the night out in the fields with the filolials. They’d already grown enough that they were starting to look like big, fat dinner rolls. They were level 34 now. That was fair progress, considering we didn’t have to return to Father yet.
“Cheep!”
“Cheep!”
“Cheep! Cheep!”
The three of them looked so cute as they slept. And then, out of the blue, a huge griffin came flying up and landed in front of me.
“I’ve been informed that someone or something has been causing trouble here within my vast territory, so I came to see for myself. To think that — ”
“Brionac X!”
“Gah?!”
The massive griffin was mumbling about something or other, but I paid no heed and put a swift end to him. Without any semblance of grace, the griffin fell over dead right in the middle of his sentence. Griffins were another natural enemy of filolials. I hadn’t known that there were talking griffins, but that was of no concern to me. He sure was a big one. We’d be having a real feast tomorrow!
“You could have woken everyone up, I say!”
I wondered what to do about the corpse. For the time being, I cut the meat up and checked the remaining parts for drop items. Oh? There was some armor that looked useful. I considered equipping it. But I much preferred the idea of gathering up filolial feathers and making a suit of filolial feather armor, I say! I decided to give the griffin armor to Éclair or Father after I returned.
Just past noon on the second day, all three of the filolials had finally reached level 40.
“Gweh?”
“Gweh! Gweh!”
“Gweeeh!”
They’d all gotten rather large and were squawking energetically. Yuki had the refined delicacy of a snowflake, and Kou had the dazzling splendor of a lightning bolt racing across the sky. As for Sakura, she mirrored the soft colors of the cherry blossoms. She was so close! If only her pink had been on a base of white, she would have been Filo-tan! She was Filo-tan with the pink and white swapped.
“Okay, everyone! Let’s get back to Father, I say!”
“Gweh!” they all squawked in unison.
I got us a wagon and loaded it up with the mountain of materials I’d gathered. The filolials pulled the wagon and we headed back out of the mountains.
Just as we’d discussed beforehand, I had the filolials wait outside of the town and headed for the building where we were supposed to meet. It was a restaurant. On the way there, I noticed that something seemed off about the town. I could see black smoke rising from several different locations. I wondered if they were fires. What a dangerous town!
I arrived at the restaurant we had agreed upon.
“Good day, I say!”
I entered the restaurant. There was a pig inside that began talking to me. I had no idea what the pig was saying, but I was assuming that Father and the others had notified them of our plans beforehand. Then a man that worked there came out to meet me.
“Welcome. Judging from that spear, you must be the Spear Hero. This way, please.”
The man wasn’t a demi-human. He was a human. Perhaps the restaurant was meant to look like it was run by humans on the surface. I considered that and several other possibilities as we proceeded to the back of the building. There, a slightly exhausted-looking Father was waiting along with Éclair and the Siltvelt emissaries.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Kitamura. How did things go?” asked Éclair.
“Everything is in order, I say!”
“I see.”
“Things seem like a dangerous mess out there,” I continued.
“Yeah, we’ve been told there have been cases of arson and other disturbances all across the town,” she replied.
“Is this all because of the Church of the Three Heroes?” Father asked.
There was a hint of guilt in his voice.
“I would imagine so. The town’s governor is doing his best to run around and put out the fires, but the town is apparently on the verge of ceasing to function. That’s primarily due to disturbances being caused by groups of thugs claiming to be adventurers.”
“Such a poor excuse for a religion, I say!”
“You’ve sure got that right. Even extremists usually have a limit to how far they’ll take their troublemaking. I lost count of how many times they set fire to the tavern we were staying at before we parted ways with you. They had to close it temporarily for the time being.”
That sounded like a real disaster.
“It’s probably best if they close this restaurant after we leave too,” she continued.
“Yes, we’ve already requested funds for compensation to help make that possible,” said the Siltvelt emissary while nodding.
It was possible that some thugs had tailed me and got wind of the place, after all. Just as the thought crossed my mind, I heard an adventurer outside the restaurant begin shouting the same old “this place stinks” line. Hmph, I guess there was no helping it. I stepped out from the back of the restaurant and made my way toward the entrance.
“What are you going to do, Mr. Kitamura?”
“We’ll be leaving shortly anyway. It’s time they learned the hard way just how foolish they are, I say!”
“S-somebody stop Motoyasu!” shouted Father.
“You’re the only one who can do that, Mr. Iwatani!”
Father and Éclair started quibbling for some reason.
“Motoyasu! Please don’t make this mess any worse than it already is!” Father said.
“Ha! Ha! Ha! You’re too kind, Father! It brings tears to my eyes, I say!”
His compassion was overwhelming. He was the father of an angel, Filo-tan, and his immense compassion was truly fitting of a god!
“But this is different, I say!”
I wasn’t compassionate like Father. This pack of fools wouldn’t think twice about doing things like this if I didn’t make them pay for their actions.
“He won’t stop! Eclair!”
“Mr. Kitamura! Please! Let’s just move on to —”
I left the overly benevolent Father behind and made my way to the front counter. When I got there, a foolish . . . Oh? It was the thug that I’d paralyzed recently with my Paralyzing Lance. He turned pale as soon as he saw me. The look on his face was perfect! I had no doubt he’d been traumatized.
“I guess you haven’t learned your lesson, have you?”
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