Why did the radical nobles want to meet with me?

The question in my mind came out as words.

“Why do they want to meet me?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know that part either.”

“I see.”

Meeting with radical nobles…

This wasn’t something I could decide on my own.

“I should discuss this with my family first.”

“Yes, understood. And this is just my personal opinion…”

“Opinion?”

“Yes. Personally, I hope the king candidate won’t meet with the nobles.”

The same person who said they wanted to meet me was now saying I shouldn’t.

Naturally, I had to ask why.

“How come?”

“…Though I don’t know their true intentions, I know enough about their treachery.”

“Ah…”

Had Mino observed something concerning?

It was an opinion I couldn’t easily ignore.

“Yes. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Thank you. We weren’t given any personal time, so we’ll be going now.”

“Yes.”

After saying goodbye to Mino and the other radical beast-kin, we stood silently for a while.

Their heads must be spinning from everything that just happened.

Even Gaeul was rolling her eyes around with a blank expression.

“Encia, Argo…”

“Gyeoul, too much has happened today. Why don’t you set aside your worries and rest?”

“Yeah boss! Rest up!”

“Ah.”

Encia and Argo were right.

We’d been tense all day.

I nodded and looked around at the children.

“Everyone worked hard today, should we play now?”

“Yeah. Let’s do that. We all know there’s worry, but let’s not mention it today.”

Saebyeok patted the children’s shoulders, saying they’d worked hard.

Though we had a lot to think about, we decided to play without worry for a while.

“What should we play?! If no one has ideas, can Levinas suggest something?!”

“Yeah. What does Levinas want to play?”

“Levinas wants to play by digging!”

“Digging…!”

Bom’s eyes lit up at Levinas’s suggestion.

Snakes did live in burrows after all.

Liking to dig…

“Let’s completely destroy the pretty flower bed!”

Ah.

She liked it because it seemed naughty.

But this time even Levinas enjoyed the mischief.

We decided to connect the existing burrow to a new one we’d dig.

Pababak-!

Bom stood next to Levinas who was digging at incredible speed.

Though not as fast as Levinas, Bom was quite good at digging too.

“Kind snake is doing well.”

“Yeah. I’ve done this before.”

I sat down near the children as they dug together.

I planned to maintain my weapons while next to them.

Swish swish-

I wiped the bow with a dry cloth.

That was all I knew about maintenance.

Encia usually handled everything else.

I wiped the quiver too and checked the magic arrows for any changes.

The fire arrows and ice arrows were all fine.

As I examined the arrows, Bom seemed interested and came over, pausing her digging.

“Gyeoul, why aren’t there poison arrows?”

“Poison arrows…?”

“Yeah. There’s lightning arrows and everything else, but no poison arrows.”

“Um… I never thought of poison arrows.”

Come to think of it, poison arrows were more basic than magic arrows.

Just as I was seriously considering adding some, Bom plopped down in front of me.

“Want me to make poison arrows?”

“You can?”

“Yeah. I can make poison.”

“Hmm…?”

Could she produce poison because she was a snake?

As I tilted my head, Bom pulled out a small bottle.

Opening her mouth wide, she pressed her fangs against the bottle opening.

Purple liquid started dripping from her fangs.

“Huh?”

Could poison actually come from her fangs?

My tail perked up at seeing Bom’s ability for the first time.

After filling the small bottle, Bom held it out to me.

She explained I just needed to dip regular arrows in it.

“But wouldn’t poison be dangerous if used wrong?”

“It’s fine. This only affects monsters.”

“Only monsters?”

“Yeah. I mixed it so it won’t harm any of my friends.”

Mixing poison inside her body.

Bom’s abilities were amazing too.

While I was staring at the purple poison in the bottle with fascination, Gaeul came running over from digging with Levinas.

“Shuin! Ant!”

“Ant? You’re giving me an ant?”

“No, Shuin ant!”

“Me ant…?”

What did Gaeul mean by ‘Shuin ant’?

Curious, I looked at Gaeul’s cupped hands.

The ‘Shuin ant’ she mentioned seemed to be in there.

When my and Bom’s eyes met hers, Gaeul puffed out her chest with an “ahem” and opened her hands.

Inside was an ant as big as Gaeul’s fingernail.

“Wow, that’s a huge ant.”

“Heuk…!”

Gaeul’s tail wagged rapidly after showing us the giant ant.

I’d wondered what ‘Shuin ant’ meant – seemed she was talking about a queen ant.

“This ant must be the queen of the ant world.”

“Shuin!”

Was she that happy about catching the ant?

It was nice seeing Gaeul’s pure joy over the ant.

“Gaeul, you need to treat the ant queen carefully, okay?”

“Heuk…!”

Don’t hurt small creatures.

That was the lesson I’d learned from Saebyeok.

Gaeul seemed to know this too, gently petting the small but large queen ant.

“Pretty.”

She softly stroked the ant’s abdomen with her fingertip.

Surprisingly, the ant stayed still under Gaeul’s petting…

Chomp-!

The queen ant bit Gaeul’s palm with its pincers.

Thump-

It mustn’t have hurt much since Gaeul just maintained her blank expression.

**

After playing with the children, we planned to visit a dungeon in the afternoon.

It was to test the effectiveness of Bom’s poison.

I’d planned to quickly solo a Level 2 dungeon, but since the children wanted to come too, we decided on Level 3.

This was possible because we had Saebyeok’s incredible strength.

Which monster dungeon should we go to?

We were checking the dungeon list at the guild information desk.

Looking at the list, Gaeul’s eyes lit up and she pointed to one.

“Shuin!”

“Yes?”

“Ant! Ant!”

Gaeul was pointing at the Red Ant Dungeon.

It was a dungeon with giant fire ants.

Being an ant lover, Gaeul couldn’t help but be interested.

“Gaeul, these ants can’t be friends. We have to kill them – is that okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Let’s go there then.”

Red Ants.

Though their carapace was hard, it wasn’t impenetrable to arrows.

The Red Ants themselves were weak, but it was a Level 3 dungeon because of their overwhelming numbers.

They posed no threat to us with Saebyeok.

We notified the information desk about entering the dungeon.

It was about a twenty minute walk, so we strolled there leisurely.

At the Red Ant Dungeon.

Before entering, we filled out some simple paperwork.

“So today’s team is Gyeoul’s team?”

“Yes.”

After getting quick entry permission, we stretched at the dungeon entrance.

We stretched our arms and legs, grabbed our weapons, and entered the dungeon.

Woong-!

Along with the sensation of crossing worlds, we found ourselves in wild nature.

Upon entering, I first amplified my senses.

Rustle rustle-

For me who could hear even tiny insect sounds, hearing large ants was quite easy.

I could detect many ants gathered far from the safe zone portal.

“Time to try Bom’s poison.”

“Yeah. My poison is amazing.”

Maybe because we had experience defeating an orc horde?

Even Bom didn’t seem very scared.

We maintained formation as we approached the Red Ants.

“King, monster over there…!”

“Yeah. But ants don’t have ears so you can talk loud.”

“Really?!”

The Red Ants didn’t react to Levinas’s loud voice.

Finding it fascinating that they couldn’t hear, Levinas started singing.

“Snake is~ Snake is~”

Bom’s eyes went wide at the hummed song.

“Snake?”

“Yeah! Levinas is making a song, but only got this far!”

“Wow, just hearing the start is so good.”

So she was really making that song.

As my tail swayed gently, Gaeul ran toward the Red Ants.

“Gaeul?”

Was she going to lure the monsters?

Monster luring was Gaeul’s specialty.

I decided to watch from behind for now.

“Ahem!”

Approaching dozens of Red Ants, Gaeul thrust out her chest and palm.

On her palm was the queen ant she’d found this morning.

‘No way…’

Did she think she could make the ants submit using the queen ant?

Because it was such an amazing ant?

Though it was a strategy Gaeul had thought hard about, unfortunately it didn’t work on monster ants.

Rustle rustle-

Pabak-

Dozens of Red Ants charged at Gaeul at once.

Gaeul’s ears and tail fur stood straight up as she’d been confidently expecting them to submit.

“Shuiiik!”

Pitter patter-

Gaeul nimbly darted between the Red Ants with mysterious movements.

While doing so, she carefully protected the queen ant on her palm.

Though startled, she didn’t lead the monsters toward us.

Whether in the swamp dungeon or fighting pterosaur monsters in the other world.

Gaeul was really good at dodging monster attacks.

Even with the Red Ant swarm chasing her, I wasn’t worried about danger.

Our Gaeul had dodged attacks faster than bullets after all.

However, I wasn’t planning to just watch.

“Gaeul’s luring the monsters, let’s help.”

“Yeah.”

Saebyeok raised her fists while I nocked an arrow.

It was a special arrow coated in Bom’s poison.

Swoosh-!

The poison-coated arrow flew toward a Red Ant.

To test the poison’s effectiveness, I aimed for the body rather than the head.

Thwack-!

The arrow struck precisely in the Red Ant’s side.

At the same time, the Red Ant froze in place as if turned to stone.

Bom’s neurotoxin that paralyzed opponents.

Its power exceeded my expectations.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep