Chapter Eleven: Dressing Up the Panda
The next day, deciding we had some spare time, we took the portal over to Siltvelt. Kou and Lazy Pig stayed back to watch over the carriage. I wasn’t 100% confident in that combination but figured Kou would probably handle things well.
When we got to Siltvelt, we went to the tavern where we had met that panda before.
The filolial egg hadn’t hatched yet, but I could tell it wouldn’t be long.
We went inside and saw the panda there, who waved over Father.
“Hey! Been a while. How ya doin’?”
“You know, the same. How about you, Lars?”
“We’re just sittin’ here waitin’ for the scent of war to kick up, but there’s been no word, so we’re startin’ to get bored out of our minds,” the panda replied. “If ya wanna go out huntin’ or something, we were thinkin’ about headin’ to Zeltoble.”
“War . . .” As soon as Father heard the word, he appeared to space out.
He was right to be concerned. Considering how Melromarc had treated Father, if Siltvelt found out, there’d be war in no time.
“Ya see, there’s been rumors around about how Melromarc has been mistreatin’ the Shield Hero. It’s startin’ to get the people riled up for a fight. Stay safe out there.”
“We’ll be careful,” Father said. “Now that Keel can transform, as long as we have her, we’ll be safe.”
“A little puppy might not be enough. Just saying.”
Keel growled at the panda. “What are you saying?! That I can’t be trusted?”
“Settle down now,” Father said. “Anyway, that’s why we came over to see you, Lars.”
“You wanna hire me or something?” The panda chuckled. “Don’t get on your high horse just because I did ya a favor one time. I’m pretty busy.”
“But you’re just sitting there playing cards,” Father said.
“S-shut up! I’m too busy to help ya out again.”
“Okay, well, since you mentioned it, do you want to go hunting with us? That’s the real reason we came to visit you, anyhow.”
“You say that now . . .” The panda trailed off.
“We’ll be sure to make it worth your while. Look, we made you something. Motoyasu?”
“Of course!” I took out the clothes that Father had asked me to prepare for the panda. It was pretty similar to the maid outfit I had designed for Keel.
As soon as the panda saw the outfit, she spat out her drink.
“Idiot! What . . . what the hell kinda outfit is that?”
“Isn’t this what you wanted? It’s just what we made for Keel.”
The panda’s entourage started speaking up.
“That’s what the lady’s gonna go for? Not sure if it fits her personality . . .”
“Don’t overthink it,” Father told the panda. “It’s just like Keel’s, and it’ll look great on you.”
“I’m not wearing this outfit ’cause I want to!” barked Keel. “I’m only wearing it ’cause you asked me to!”
Even in her dog form, Keel was wearing the maid outfit. It was about time that we considered making a version with magic thread.
“Didn’t I tell you before I wasn’t interested in that girly outfit? Are you deaf?”
“You did, and I told you it’ll look good, so Motoyasu went ahead and made it. I mean, you’re already cute, so it’s a natural fit.”
Father took the outfit from me and handed it over to the panda.
“It’s . . . that’s . . . it’s not my type!” the panda protested.
She looked like she was blushing, or was it just my imagination?
“I think once you have this on, all you’ll need is a ribbon on your head, and voila. However, a hat wouldn’t be bad either. Keel looks great in his maid outfit even in therianthrope form, and I think the same would go for you.”
“Why don’t you ever listen to me?! If ya don’t shut up about this nonsense, I’m gonna get pissed!”
“No need to get upset,” Father said. “Okay then, well, how about just a plain old bandana on your head like this?” Father wrapped the bandana around her head. The panda didn’t resist and appeared to have resigned herself to Father’s fashion whims.
“Great, and now we add a ribbon,” Father said. “We can put a big one right on your waist here for a nice accent.” She was starting to look like a pirate with a friendly, big-sisterly disposition.
I had to say, it looked great. It was fashionable too.
“Why are you doing this to me?” the panda groaned, glancing down at herself with a bored expression. “What’s so fun about dressin’ me up like this, anyhow?”
“I wanted to see if it was as cute as I was picturing it,” Father said. “I mean, it’s fun to dress up like this. You’re really pretty in your demi-human form, so try it out.”
“P-pretty! I’m not pretty!”
But when Father held up a mirror, the panda stopped.
“Huh? That’s me?”
“That’s you all right. Cute as can be! I can tell you’re caring for your hair now, like I mentioned before. It’s looking really fluffy!”
“That . . . that doesn’t look like me at all.”
Just then, a bunch of the panda’s mercenaries came over and one of them grabbed Father by the collar.
“Hey, you. Just whaddaya think you’re doing?! If you keep messing with us, we’ll kick your butts and send you flying!”
“Yeah, leave her alone!”
The panda shouted at her mercenaries to calm down.
“You tryin’ to turn her into some sorta lewd pig? She’s started to pay attention to the way she walks, taking care of her fur, stuff like that! She ain’t nothing like she used to be!”
“A lewd pig? Jeez, no need to turn into Motoyasu.”
Huh? Did I do something? Oh right. I ought to clarify the matter so no one gets confused.
“Please do not be mistaken of our intentions,” I declared.
“What’re you talking about?”
“That panda is not a pig, I say!”
“That’s right!” Yuki chimed in. “She’s a panda, black and white! And white is the most noble of colors!”
Father stared at us blankly and sighed.
“Motoyasu, please shut up and don’t say anything. Yuki, you’re fine.”
“Yes, Father!”
Father turned back to the panda and her mercenaries.
“L-look, we just want you to leave us alone!” one of them shouted. “You keep trying to take the lady and make her dress up and look at herself in the mirror and stuff! We’re mercenaries!”
“That’s right,” the panda agreed. “I don’t need clothes like that anyway! I don’t even know how you got me into this ridiculous outfit—”
“But, my lady, you’re . . . you’re a goddess now! You can never go back!” called another one of her subordinates, giving a big thumbs-up.
“What?” Father glanced over at them.
“You’re perfect in that outfit!” another one shouted, giving the thumbs-up.
“Perfect!” A rousing chorus of mercenaries agreed.
What was going on? Everyone seemed to be changing their minds all of a sudden.
One of the mercenaries even had tears in his eyes. “My lady . . . to think that you were this charming, this beautiful!” He turned to Father. “Unbelievable! You’re a guiding light for us. Thank you, sir. Thank you!”
“Hang on!” shouted the panda.
Father smiled. “My pleasure. Her beauty is all-natural. In her original demi-human form and her therianthrope form alike, she’s as lovely as they come.”
“Y-you really think so?” gasped the mercenary. “You’re our guiding light—no, our hero! Don’t stop now! Make our lady a more luscious, more alluring woman! We pledge to be her loyal pets! But please, don’t stop now!”
“I’ve had enough of all of you!” bellowed the panda, storming after her mercenaries and Father alike with a series of powerful punches. Of course, her punches didn’t hurt Father.
The panda finally relented and sighed. “What on earth is even happening?”
“You just have that natural charm,” Father said, smiling. “I’ll help you. It’ll be the Lars Improvement Plan!”
“Whatever.” Now the panda just looked bored. She scratched her head. “Let’s just get going.”
Father and the panda took a moment to organize their parties and calm everyone down.
“So where to?” the panda asked. “How about the same monsters that always make us money?”
Father thought about it. “Motoyasu, where do you think would be good?”
“I recommend going after the dragons that live deep in the mountains,” I declared.
“Dragons!” exclaimed the panda. “Just what kind of insane hunting trip are you trying to take us on? Are you trying to get us killed?”
Personally, I wasn’t aware of any dragons strong enough to kill us. At Father’s current level of strength, even a dragon capable of beating an adventurer at level 100 would be a piece of cake for us.
“Before we go, I’d like to check on my bioplants,” I said. I had gone ahead and planted some before the wave of destruction.
“Oh right. If we do it right, we can solve food supply issues, right?”
“Precisely. To be on the safe side, I planted them away from any human settlements, so I think we should go check on it while we have the time.”
“Okay, so we’ll go hunting after we check on the bioplants. Lars, do you want to come too?”
“I guess so,” the panda said, crossing her arms. “You guys are plain nuts.”
With that, our team and the panda and her mercenaries went over to the field where I had started growing bioplants. I had picked a stretch of wilderness that even demi-humans from Siltvelt wouldn’t wander into and planted them there. Just a few weeks later, there was already a dense forest growing on the plot of land. The seeds had already ripened tremendously, and now an immense, fantastic forest had grown, bringing with it an abundant harvest and monstrous, terrifying creatures.
From afar, I could see vicious humanoid-like flowers present deep in the forest. I think it was what was known as PlantRiwe.
“Hey, this is just what everyone was freaking out about lately!” the panda exclaimed. “What the hell did you guys do? Somethin’ about a rapid expansion of plants way out this way—so it was you?”
Father frowned. “I didn’t know it was going to turn into this.” He turned to me. “Motoyasu, what do we do now?”
“This is no problem at all,” I said. “We came at just the right time to do some logging, I say. I, Motoyasu Kitamura, can handle it myself!”
It had certainly been the right decision to not grow it in Melromarc, where the land was fertile to begin with. Even in the Siltvelt wasteland, it had grown this fast. Fortunately, I had been careful to choose an area that was known as restricted, uninhabited territory.
And if anyone dared to come near, they’d receive their just reward, I say! Plus, the plot was too narrow for there to be any real risk of malignant variant plants getting out.
Now I had to take out the monstrous plants to get the useful seeds at their core. There appeared to be flowers as big as trees wandering around.
I remembered that Filo-tan and Big Sis and Father had told me about their adventures with bioplants, but they didn’t say anything about them looking like this. The kind of plants they grow into must depend on the environment.
“Let’s get started, Yuki!” I called and leapt onto her back. As we rode out to the forest, I could see that the PlantRiwe was like a giant pea plant. There were other monsters as well.
But the PlantRiwe was our core concern. I would have to destroy it first.
It was like a giant tree that grew nasty, sharp-toothed flowers. They whipped long tendrils armed with gnashing teeth in our direction.
“Too easy!” Yuki cried, somersaulting out of the way and on to one of the long vines. She scrambled up the vine toward the PlantRiwe.
I pointed my spear at the sharp-toothed flowers. “Gungnir!”
A loud crack and tear sounded, and I saw that while I had blown all of the flowers away, the vines were still moving.
That was troublesome. Maybe I had to find some specific part in the plant that was controlling them. Since Father had used bioplants in the first go-around, he must have fought them at least once. How did he take care of them?
If it meant destroying the plants altogether, that would be easy. I could just burn the whole wasteland to the ground. But we needed to harvest the seeds from these plants, and I couldn’t destroy them altogether. Even if I did, they might just regenerate.
“Motoyasu!” Father called. “Try a strong herbicide!”
Father and the others had also come closer to the forest of bioplants. Father took out a bottle from his shield and tossed it to me.
“I would’ve never expected studying herbs to come in handy now,” Father said to himself.
It was a good idea. They were plants, after all.
“Impressive,” the panda shouted, “but I’m gonna show you what I’m capable of!” For some reason, the panda was treating it like a competition.
She crossed her arms and concentrated.
“As the source of your power, I command you! You monstrous plants, listen and understand reason! Protect us fools! Spite Bamboo Spike!”
The panda pressed her hands to the earth and massive poles of bamboo blasted out of the ground, skewering nearby monsters.
“No way! You are cool!” Keel barked excitedly. “I’m gonna fight too!”
“Keel, wait!” Father cried. “It’s dangerous here—don’t go far from me!”
Sakura yawned, drawing her short sword. “I’m in.” She danced with her sword like a whirlwind, slicing through any monsters that approached. But she was sure to never stay separated from Father for more than a few seconds.
As always, Sakura was doing a flawless job protecting Father, I say!
I was starting to get a good idea of just how far the bioplants had spread their roots. I just had to apply the herbicide and let it do its trick.
“Keel, Sakura, take this herbicide and spread it all over this area,” Father called, pointing.
“Got it, Big Bro!”
Keel leapt on to Sakura’s back, took the herbicide, and rode around scattering it. Meanwhile, I used my spear to shoot the herbicide all over.
The plant let out a ghastly shriek.
The damage seemed to be racking up. But even though parts of the PlantRiwe had started to wither, other vines and flowers were quickly regenerating.
“This plant appears to have developed herbicide resistance,” I called. “I’m not sure if it will be enough!”
“What the hell kind of plant is this!”
The panda had returned back to the rest of her mercenaries to protect them, beating down any of the approaching monsters or vines. I must say, she had some strong arms.
“Motoyasu!” Father called. “You said this was originally wasteland, right? I’m guessing the bioplants need to dig their roots deep into the earth. The real heart of the plant is down—deep underground! Can you get there?”
“Leave it to me!” I declared.
That sort of wisdom went far beyond any simple knowledge of the game, I say. Father’s guess was likely spot on.
I targeted several of the surrounding roots and attacked with Aiming Lancer. Clumps of dirt and chunks of bioplant exploded into the air. I supposed it may have been smarter to determine where exactly the heart of the bioplant was before attacking.
In the meantime, our attacks were finally starting to slow the bioplant down. I just had to aim underground and launch a final attack.
“Just one thing left to do, I say!”
I plunged my spear into the earth and attacked.
“Fissure Strike!”
The ground shook and rumbled, swelled up, and shot up earth and roots like a volcano. In the game, Fissure Strike was typically used to fire magma out of the ground, but you could also use it to force out anything that was deep underground. A massive budding sprout shot out of the earth, exposing what appeared to be the core of the bioplant.
“Brionac X!” I cried, aiming my lance at the large root and instantly disintegrating it.
Almost immediately, the rest of the bioplant started to wither away.
Then tiny sparkling seeds appeared to rain down from the area where I had shot the large sprout. So a single bioplant seed had multiplied into many.
“Quickly, get the seeds! Don’t let them sprout!”
We ran around picking up the fist-sized seeds before breathing a sigh of relief.
The panda came over to us with a bunch of seeds in one massive palm. “Now that was something.”
Father nodded. “For us, it’s really not too out of the ordinary.”
“So you’re always up to weird stuff like this?”
“More or less. Don’t worry about it too much.”
“Is making me wear those weird clothes another one of your little adventures?” The panda looked at Father. “You said you come from Melromarc, right? They say that the Shield Hero was over there . . .” She trailed off.
“Uhh . . .” Father muttered. Had she guessed who we really were? Since we did go hunting together, I supposed she would be able to figure it out from his sturdiness.
“That’s right!” Keel barked. “Big Bro is the—”
“Keel, that’s enough,” Father said.
“I’m a soldier too, ya know. I don’t like getting into dangerous situations that I don’t have to. I guess it was an experience though.”
The panda’s mercenaries nodded in agreement. They were a stoic bunch, like Ren’s companions.
“Well, we did it,” Father said, adding the bioplant seeds to his shield. We were really stocking up our inventory nowadays. “We need to modify these seeds somehow,” Father muttered to himself. Father picked up his shield and used an ability. It must’ve been a power that would improve the plants that the seeds would produce.
In the meantime, I took the rest of the seeds and stored them in my spear. So these seeds would produce PlantRiwe, huh? Since we had gotten them from that plant-type monster, they seemed to have a power-up effect as well.
Regardless, I’d leave it to Father to figure out exactly what to do with the seeds. They were no different from drop items from monsters, so we could just add them to our weapons and take them out later. Father confirmed this by taking some of the seeds back out of his shield. I didn’t really understand why that mattered, but whatever, I say.
“So what are you gonna do now?” the panda asked.
“Well, we took care of this, so we could go monster hunting with you guys now,” Father said. “Or we could go to a store somewhere.”
“Either is fine with me.” The panda appeared to have gotten used to Father and wasn’t on guard as much.
Father turned to me. “Lars and I are going to head out then, Motoyasu,” he said.
“Understood! We’ll meet up again when the time comes!”
Father nodded. “Let’s go then.”
Taking the panda by the arm, Father led the way, followed by Keel and Sakura.
Yuki and I went to explain to the bureaucrat who administered the wasteland what had happened. I thought about trying to learn some plant modification abilities myself, so I would be able to make something out of the bioplants without Father’s help, but it sounded like a real pain, so I decided against it.
And at that moment, the egg in my breast pocket suddenly hatched. I heard a chirp and quickly withdrew it.
It was a navy-blue filolial, I say! A female, if I wasn’t mistaken.
Which meant that, unfortunately, it wasn’t Filo-tan.
What should I name her?
She sure was a cheerful little chick. Hmm, what to name her? I decided to let Father choose her name later.
I passed her over to Yuki. “Yuki, please go ahead and get her some food and level her up.”
“At once, Motoyasu!”
“Let’s race to the nearest mountain, I say!”
“It would be my pleasure! My heart is racing with excitement!”
Yuki seemed to really love racing. With that, we spent the rest of the day hard at work leveling up the new chick.
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