Chapter 127

Hurry, run! Leave this to me!

Are you insane!? You’ll die if you do that! Everyone, run away from that monster together!

Don’t worry! I’ll only draw its attention for a moment! I’m not going to die here! I promised to pair up with you when I got back! Go on ahead!

No! Nooooo!

* * *

Magma Hog.

They were boar-like Mystics clad in armor like plate mail, creatures known for taking baths in lava the way ordinary boars enjoyed a mud soak.

That hard armor had become a little harder and thicker every time they bathed in magma, and at some point it would gain tank-grade defense.

It had been my second day at the hunting ground.

While wandering around I had stumbled onto a Magma Hog colony and was focusing on hunting those bastards.

Miyu had passed me a Mystic compendium that said the components making up their armor were packed with rare metals, gold included.

Why wasn’t I looking for essences and only collecting shells?

Well….

‘Because there weren’t any strong ones here…’

At first I had been a little hopeful.

Toxic gas overflowed, the puddles all had acid-like properties.

Volcanoes erupted at the slightest provocation and volcanic ash covered the sky, and the passing Mystics looked like creatures that could snap up goblins as a quick snack at a glance.

Since the environment in the Violet Hunting Ground had become harsher and the level had risen, I had thought it would be full of monsters worth hunting.

But even so, perhaps because it was still the second-lowest tier of hunting ground, there weren’t any creatures strong enough to meet my standards.

So I had agonized.

‘Is it because I’m judging by the Outer God standard? Am I being greedy? Should I lower my threshold for “strong” a bit?’

In fact Miyu had given me that exact advice.

Even lower-grade essences are fineee. Just gather as many different kinds as you can, and I’ll try to combine them well.

It was true that stronger monsters tended to yield higher-grade essences, which could make more powerful modules, but when modularized they might be unsuitable for humans or even become poisonous.

In that case, an essence from a lower-grade Mystic that carried a useful ability would be far more valuable.

Put in game terms, whether a drop was “Rare” or “Common” mattered less than what secondary stats it carried.

But….

‘Still — good is good.’

I ignored Miyu’s advice and had been blindly hunting only the strong ones. What did I know about the structure or attributes of essences in the first place?

Which one would carry a useful ability — I would rather not bother figuring that out; a casual flick of my finger could just sweep them away before I even checked.

I wasn’t some Mystic researcher, and I hadn’t wanted to waste the vacation I’d taken to come here by just observing monsters.

I couldn’t extract and analyze essences here anyway. It was also true that essences from stronger monsters were more likely to be better.

‘I could get the common essences in the city anyway. There was also a limit to how much I could carry out of a hunting ground by myself.’

With that in mind I had deliberately roamed the dangerous zones these past two days hunting for the strongest creatures I could find. But the yields hadn’t been impressive.

‘Unlike last time, there wasn’t much dropping here…’

I had felt the same on the Violet Hunting Ground last time — even though it was a hunting ground, the drop rates were atrocious. I carved off every monster’s head I saw, but nothing useful dropped.

I had thought about giving up and moving on to the Blue Hunting Ground, but that wouldn’t be profitable. I had raided the Magma Hog colony to at least cut my losses a little.

Who knew what their essences were like, but I’d heard those shells were rare.

“Kweeeek! Kuuuiiik!”

I cut every Magma Hog in sight in half. I neatly peeled off the shells and kept them, dumping the meat into magma or acidic lakes.

I felt a pang of conscience, like poachers cutting only elephant tusks and leaving the carcass, but those bastards had tried to kill me when I rested, so I let myself call it even.

‘Besides, the meat was inedible…’

The flesh was too tough and never cooked properly no matter how I roasted it. Maybe because it was a volcanic area with sulfur, the meat had a rancid, fart-like tang. Even the worst preserved rations tasted better than that.

And even if I forced myself to eat it, I couldn’t finish that much. What choice did I have but to throw it away.

‘This should be enough.’

After spending a few hours wiping out about two colonies, a small mountain composed solely of Magma Hog shells had formed beside me.

So hunting Magma Hogs ended there.

I could have gathered more, but the repetitive work had gotten monotonous, and besides, I couldn’t carry any more even if I caught them.

I was still wondering how I would move all of this.

‘Hmm. How am I going to take this back?’

Hunting and peeling the shells had been easy enough, but there was too much to fit into the portable carrier I had brought.

A truck would have been perfect, but there was no way such a thing existed here. I was thinking I’d have to drag them on the blanket included in the package, which wouldn’t look very classy… when suddenly.

‘What the hell is that now?’

A male Magma Hog that had been frantically running away from me suddenly broke away from its group and turned back toward me.

I wondered what the hell that thing was thinking, when the group it had belonged to abruptly stopped running and began howling in our direction.

Then the male boar cried out roughly, as if in protest.

I didn’t know much about the animal world, but if I let my imagination run wild…

‘Is it saying, “I’ll hold it off, so you all run away!”?’

Well now, what a noble boar.

That sort of pattern had become rather cliché these days, but since I personally still liked such developments, my heart was swayed.

“I’ll let you live, so go back.”

To show I no longer intended to hunt them, I waved my hand loosely and turned my back. At once, the creature snorted and began charging straight at me.

Damn, it couldn’t understand a word.

Just before its steel-like tusks reached me, I grabbed hold of them and lifted it into the air, flinging it to the other side.

It crashed to the ground back-first, knocked out and unable to rise for a while. Leaving it be, I began gathering up the Magma Hog shells again.

Then, a few minutes later—

“Kuuuiiiik!”

The beast regained its senses with a squeal and tried to attack me again.

‘Annoying. Should I just kill it?’

The thought crossed my mind, but I didn’t want to go back on my earlier decision to let it live.

I simply bound its body with silk and hurled it out of sight, then went back to sorting my spoils.

But a few minutes later—

“…You’re back again.”

The thing had somehow survived as a flying pig and returned, still not giving up on charging at me.

Three chances were too many.

I was about to slice it apart with the silk of the Cloud Spider when suddenly a thought struck me.

‘Could it be…?’

I held back the silk and tossed the beast a fragment of its kin’s shell. As expected, it clamped the piece in its mouth and glared at me as if to say, “Hand over the rest too!”

Its eyes even welled with tears.

‘Damn it, that’s making me soft.’

After a moment of hesitation, I decided to hand it all over. Saying it wasn’t a waste would be a lie, but I didn’t feel like lugging them away after seeing it act like that.

I had only collected them to offset the loss of failing to get any usable essences or drop items, not because I actually needed the shells.

‘Well, can’t be helped. Let’s just move on.’

That marked the end of the Violet Hunting Ground.

For now, I would return to the city, dispose of the materials I’d gathered, then head back into the Blue Hunting Ground. Next time, I’d make sure to choose hunting targets that lacked intelligence or belonged to hideous races.

I hoped the next ground would finally have something with a decent essence. As I prepared to summon the Groundskeeper for my return—

Rustle, rustle.

The male Magma Hog that had retrieved its kin’s shell fragments approached me cautiously.

Then it circled around me a couple of times at a set distance before leaving the shells behind and starting to walk away somewhere.

I tilted my head, not understanding its meaning, and the beast repeated the same actions again.

‘Don’t tell me… it wants me to follow?’

But why?

It couldn’t possibly have grown friendly with me after I slaughtered its kin.

Still, I couldn’t pass up such an amusing situation. Bracing for the possibility of a boar-laid trap, I decided to follow it.

It led me to a rock cairn some distance away from the colony. Gigantic basalt stones jutted out here and there, and the boar dug at the ground beneath one, shoving with its snout until—

The black stone tilted and rolled away, revealing what lay hidden beneath.

‘This is…!’

Buried underneath were human bones.

The skull and other bones were metallic, as if the person had been equipped with an Alloy Skeleton combat module.

There were also torn clothes, a broken Socket HUB, and mechanical prosthetic arms and legs that seemed to have belonged to the owner.

‘Could this have been the one who planted those mines?’

The existence of another Transmigrator.

I hadn’t found any trace yesterday despite searching all day, yet here it was.

‘Did the boars make this?’

Most likely.

The remains were too crudely piled to have been arranged by humans, and many bones were badly broken.

Magma Hogs were said to gnaw on ore to harden their shells, so perhaps they had only kept the pieces too tough to chew and stored them here.

Maybe the boars had mistaken me for someone avenging this Transmigrator they had eaten.

And as a gesture of reconciliation, they revealed this spot to me.

A ridiculous misunderstanding.

But it worked out well for me.

‘I’d better take this.’

If I brought back these remains for analysis, I might find clues about their original owner.

As I examined them, another thought struck me.

‘Wait. This one’s still intact?’

When I shook out the broken Socket HUB, relatively undamaged modules tumbled out. I’d have to check their performance back in the city, but they might be usable by me or my crew.

‘Worth a lot more than boar shells.’

Well, money wasn’t what I lacked, and what I needed was essences rather than combat modules, but still — it was something.

And not only that.

‘…This, this is huge!’

A key.

Though it looked nothing like one, more like dozens of saw blades bound together, I knew exactly what it was for.

Of course — an item for the main scenario.

A special key meant to open a very important door in the Omega Investment episode.

‘First the Liberator, now this? What the hell is going on? What kind of place is this “hunting ground,” anyway?’

I racked my brain but lacked the information for a clear answer. What purpose did the creator of this world have in designing the “hunting ground” as a bonus stage?

‘For now, I’ll return to the city, hand over these remains for analysis, then use the remaining ticket to head into the next stage — the Blue Hunting Ground.’

Organizing my immediate tasks, I began collecting the remains one by one from the cairn. That was when I realized something new.

‘Wait… this isn’t just one body.’

Several bodies in one place.

What did that mean?

‘Could it be…’

The enemies I would have to face this time might not be just one or two.

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