Ch.132Reminiscence

“I guess this means I’ve finished everything I needed to do for now. Shall we continue our conversation from before?”

Frider van Faelrun folded the completed report and tucked it into her bag before taking a sip from her water pouch.

I urged her on with an expectant expression.

Long carriage journeys are terribly boring. All you do is sit in a rattling carriage all day, watching the scenery pass by to kill time.

Sightseeing is fine for a day or two, but once you pass the fourth day, your patience starts to wear thin.

I too had been feeling like I might suffocate from boredom for a while now. To the point where I was wishing, “If only someone would attack us…” just for some excitement.

In such a situation, what could be more thrilling than a battle story? It’s like watching a martial arts broadcast. Nothing better to pass the time.

I leaned back against the carriage and took out a cigarette.

No one would complain if I smoked here, not Frider or Millia.

Besides, Millia was asleep, so it shouldn’t matter, right?

The smoke I exhaled was pulled out behind me, trailing a long tail beyond the carriage.

Like exhaust fumes from a car’s tailpipe.

“Where did I leave off last time…?”

“Wasn’t it the part where monsters came pouring out from the right path?”

“Ah, right. I’ll continue from there.”

Frider nodded and began her story.

I leisurely burned my tobacco while listening attentively to her tale.

“Until then, there hadn’t been any real problems. The monsters that appeared were just imps and centipede-snails, but since the passage was narrow, they couldn’t properly attack us.”

Indeed, with a ceiling so low my sword could reach it, flying around would have been meaningless.

They must have been swatted away like flies.

And the centipede-snails, with their size, would have had trouble maneuvering in such a narrow passage.

“Then… we came upon a new room. That’s where things went wrong.”

Frider’s voice lowered.

As if the mere memory was exasperating.

“It was quite a spacious room. Large enough for monsters to move freely. Inside, there were broken beds scattered about.”

“Beds?”

“Yes. Only the frames remained, but they were definitely beds. A few were intact enough to be certain.”

Having talked for a while, Frider seemed to feel constricted and paused to tug slightly at her collar.

Her lace tie loosened, revealing her neat collarbone.

“Beds that were uniformly small, too short for humans. At first, I thought they might be dwarf beds. But soon enough, the monster that appeared gave us the answer.”

Finally, the main point.

In her report, she had written about engaging with a “Cursed Mother.”

Impressive that she won. That must have been quite a troublesome monster.

Frider continued her tale of valor in a calm tone.

======[Frider’s Party]======

“There aren’t any monsters here…?”

Millia muttered in confusion as she entered the room.

Given the dark mana flowing through, it wouldn’t have been strange for dozens of monsters to appear, but the interior was completely empty.

“Isn’t that a good thing? If we’d met those creatures here, it would have been troublesome. Thanks to them coming out to the narrow corridor, we defeated them easily.”

“That’s true, but…”

Millia still couldn’t hide her uneasiness.

She wasn’t trying to contradict Demian. They had indeed benefited from the corridor.

While imps were just small fry, the centipede-snails were somewhat tricky monsters.

If they had been in a spacious area where they could freely swing their arms and tails, they wouldn’t have been defeated so easily.

After hesitating briefly, Millia finally nodded and suppressed her anxiety.

Frider, on the other hand, shook her head.

‘The girl is right. The absence of monsters in a place like this… is definitely strange.’

Frider had also been feeling the same unease as Millia.

It was dangerous to think optimistically like Demian.

Monsters have intelligence too.

Not human-level, but certainly higher than ordinary animals.

The fact that they left this room, which was advantageous to them, and came out to the corridor to attack… meant there must have been a reason they had to do so.

‘…The dark mana concentration is very thick. With this much, stronger monsters should have been summoned, but where did they go?’

Frider kept scanning the surroundings with sharp eyes.

She missed Haschal’s presence.

With her detection abilities, they could have easily known if monsters were hiding nearby.

And even if the monsters that appeared were too difficult for the three of them to handle, she would have stepped in, so there would have been nothing to worry about.

‘…There’s no point in missing someone who’s not here. I’ll have to manage somehow…’

Just as all three had reached about the middle of the room.

– THUD!

A sudden heavy noise and vibration. The source was behind them.

When the three quickly turned around, they saw massive iron bars descending to block the entrance of the room.

Demian swiftly swung his greatsword, but it bounced off the bars.

If it had been ordinary iron, it would have bent immediately, but surprisingly, the bars remained intact without a single bend.

Demian clicked his tongue and readjusted his stance.

“The door…!”

“A trap… are they trying to trap us here…!”

“No, they’re preventing us from escaping. Demian, Millia, prepare for battle.”

Frider took out her saw and moved closer to her companions while giving orders.

Her gaze was fixed on one corner of the room where massive dark mana was gathering.

It was a sign of a monster appearing.

And judging by the amount of mana, it would undoubtedly be quite powerful.

Demian gripped his greatsword with both hands, and Millia aimed her bow in the direction Frider was looking.

The dark mana concentrated at a single point suddenly burst forth.

A black storm extended vertically, forming a swirling pillar.

“WAAAAAAAAAH!”

A chilling cry emerged from within the vortex.

A woman’s voice crudely imitating a child’s cry.

A bizarrely overlapping sound, as if her vocal cords had been shattered.

Frider’s expression hardened.

A monster that made the sound of a fetus crying. Her reaction came from already knowing its identity.

‘Of all times…!’

Cold sweat trickled down her neck. Her right hand gripping the saw trembled with tension.

If the enemy was what she thought, it would be not just difficult but dangerous.

Finally, the enemy emerged, cutting through the pillar of dark mana.

“Ugh…!”

Millia let out a soft groan at the sight of the monster.

Frider didn’t reproach her. Even to her, it was a grotesque creature that would naturally elicit such a response.

A massive body reaching 8 meters. From a distance, one might mistake it for a deer.

From closer, one might wonder why a deer was wearing a dress.

From that distance, one might even mistake it for having a cute appearance.

But face to face, its appearance was as far from cute as heaven is from earth.

A hybrid monster, the “Cursed Mother.”

One of the monsters whose external features clearly indicated the use of humans as materials.

A woman’s nose and mouth, grabbed and pulled forward to resemble a deer’s head.

The face, with its protruding muzzle like an animal’s, still clearly retained human features.

Behind the reddish, glossy lips were half-rotten teeth scattered sparsely, and with each exhale, a sour smell emanated from within.

Curly hair hung down like a mane, covering its face and extending all the way to its tail.

The antlers rising through the hair were made not of bone but of flesh.

Antlers formed by connecting dozens of fetal arms and fingers.

The fingers protruding from the surface wriggled disgustingly.

Its thick, long neck had gills, and its skin was mottled with black fungi and tumors.

As if it had fought with someone before, old weapons were embedded in various parts of its body, oozing yellowish fluid.

The upper body stood upright like a human, while the connected lower body was horizontally elongated like a beast.

The two pairs of arms attached to the upper body were as thin as if only bone and skin remained, and they were several times longer than a human’s, befitting its size.

The eyeballs embedded in the backs of its hands glared at Frider and Demian.

It held four types of weapons in its clenched fists.

Would “weapons” be the right term? Two were definitely weapons, but… the purpose of the other two was hard to determine by appearance alone.

A sword, an axe, a toy with a bell, and… a flesh doll resembling a little girl.

‘They’re all children’s toys. All four of them.’

Frider’s gaze turned toward the bell and the doll.

Those were far more dangerous than the sword and axe.

The Cursed Mother slowly approached them, its flesh undulating with each step.

Three pairs of breasts extended from its chest to its abdomen, and below them, skin that had melted and stretched covered its entire lower body like the skirt of a dress.

From its lower abdomen, three or four shapes resembling fetal faces repeatedly bulged and receded, as if about to break through the skin.

These were the reason this monster was named “Mother.”

“What on earth is that…? A human…?”

“How could that be human in that state? It’s just a monster. …And a very dangerous one at that.”

Frider raised her saw.