Ch.35Chimera Hunt (3)

Dealing with each of the magical beasts individually wasn’t difficult. Even without fully opening my eyes, I could still somewhat “see” things.

Especially with creatures that had such simple thought patterns. I could clearly sense the instinct of how and where to move to kill them.

I increased the resolution of my eyes. The attacks I had sensed through formless intuition now materialized as visual information.

A translucent blue trajectory. That was the path the magical beast would take when it lunged forward.

I extended my blade with precise timing toward that blue line. Unable to overcome the inertia of its own charge, the beast had its neck pierced.

It was more like repetitive work than fighting or hunting.

After taking down about thirty beasts that rushed at Noiro, the remaining creatures were now directing their hostility toward me instead.

“But what can beasts do without their handlers?”

I calmly continued my work. Not all the humans here must have died without resistance against these beasts. Let’s assume they managed to take down about twenty while fighting back.

I’ve taken down thirty. Demedes brought 120 beasts, so there should be about seventy left.

I assess my body’s condition. The backlash from my previous eye-opening still lingers, but against magical beasts lacking proper intelligence, it’s an insignificant level of injury.

“It’s ready!”

A welcome voice reached my ears.

Phsst! First came the sound of air being sliced.

Then followed the explosive noise mixed with the rupturing of flesh.

I could see the head of a distant magical beast bursting apart. The arrow Noiro shot was an expensive and deadly item with explosion magic enchanted on its arrowhead.

“We can figure out exactly what magic circle this is after we pulverize these beast bastards!”

I threw out a joke to help ease the tension.

“Ho, so you won’t be collecting the fur, sir?”

***

A question about not collecting fur. Noiro gave a bitter smile behind his gas mask.

Hunting beasts with minimal damage and harvesting their byproducts was a hunter’s behavior. Ortes was asking him, “Will you act as a hunter now?”

It would be a lie to say he didn’t want to answer yes. But that wasn’t the model answer.

The model answer was:

“Ha. Let’s think about that after we kill them all!”

A declaration that ‘I will focus on my duties as a director of Hydra Company.’ Noiro thought he saw the smile on Ortes’s lips deepen slightly.

“Good. Let’s deal with those things first.”

Whirrrrr-

Four drones controlled by Noiro pointed their gun barrels from the sky toward the ground.

Then they fired.

Ortes sprinted through the rain of bullets. Noiro felt strange. It was clearly a battlefield with machine gun fire from above.

Yet he didn’t think for a moment that Ortes would be hit by a stray bullet.

***

It didn’t take long to defeat all the magical beasts. Though it was a bit annoying having to dodge or deflect bullets because that old man was firing without thinking about the consequences.

“Phew. It’s my first time catching so many beasts in half a day, not even a full one.”

“Indeed. You’ll be updating your record later.”

Noiro’s body twitched. As someone who pursued hunting honors, he must have enjoyed the prospect of earning even greater glory.

“Now, let me see those photos—”

Suddenly, the crystal in my pocket resonated.

Bipedal creatures with appearances that could hardly be considered primates. An old man in a robe at their center.

The blood of the strange creatures and the magic circle drawn in this place converged to a single point in the air, compressing.

The undulating gathered liquid was refined into a piece of dense blood. And after the old man drank that blood, his body split into five parts, and this plain was also torn into five pieces.

Through the shattered space, light from another dimension arrived. The vision ended as the indescribable color of that light seeped into the plain.

It was a warning from Phoibos’s sacred relic.

I hastily looked around.

“Huh? What’s wrong?”

“It seems this isn’t over.”

Hearing my words, Noiro started reconnaissance with his drones without questioning. The hunters’ association members must have appreciated how well he listened to his subordinates.

“…Oh no.”

I heard Noiro’s voice tinged with dismay. He manipulated his proxy gauntlet to display a holographic image.

The scene in the display wasn’t in natural colors. A blue background with yellow and red objects dotted throughout.

“Is that a thermal camera?”

“Yes. Look over there.”

Quite a number of something was writhing and approaching us. It was difficult to distinguish their appearance through the thermal camera, but it was clear they weren’t ordinary life forms.

“This looks like twenty… no, about thirty?”

Thirty?

Demedes and all the beast handlers he took with him totaled thirty-one.

I turned my gaze toward the direction the thermal camera was pointing. I peered beyond the veil of magic they were wearing.

Glimpses of bizarre creatures that looked like various species cut up and stitched together.

“They’re using concealment magic.”

“So our opponent is a magician. Have those who drew this magic circle come themselves?”

“No. It’s humans we know.”

I stabbed my high-frequency blade into the ground. I turned the blade that had smoothly cut through the earth horizontally and flicked it upward. The mud and bodily fluids that flew off with that elastic force drenched the approaching enemies.

“Strictly speaking, they’re not human.”

As the concealment magic-covered face became soaked in reddish, murky color, its outline was revealed. An ordinary person would have difficulty identifying someone with a face covered in mud and blood, but here stood a hunter.

Noiro, a hunter who had honed his discerning eye over many years, recognized its identity.

“Demedes…!”

***

Even Noiro barely recognized him by the jawline. The eyes densely embedded all over his face, moving sluggishly, created an eerie atmosphere as they stirred the mud.

Seven eyeballs fixed on Ortes and Noiro. No trace of intelligence could be found in those gazes.

This was the end of one who had been a pillar of terror looming over Etna City.

“That appearance… is it a chimera, a synthetic magical beast? A magician who can manipulate life so freely as to turn humans into chimeras in just a few days. Could it be from Green Wood…!”

A situation where they might have to fight a magician from the Ten Towers? Noiro’s nerves were on edge. This might be the most dangerous of all his hunts so far.

Excitement, fear, and anticipation swirled together. Just as he was about to draw his bowstring, feeding on that mass of emotions, Ortes’s words cooled his mind.

“No. Former Director Demedes was originally a chimera.”

Not just cooling it, but freezing it solid.

“From the beginning?”

“Yes. Why did they specifically feed humans to the magical beasts? They could have given them ordinary meat or feed. In fact, it was a disguise to hide their true identity.”

Chimeras were the collective term for synthetic magical beasts created by combining various magical creatures.

Among such chimeras, those made using intelligent beings like humans were special. These beings, possessing both the robustness of magical beasts and the cunning of intelligent beings, were called Nous Chimeras.

However, Nous Chimeras had a fatal weakness. If the completion level was even slightly deficient during creation, the beast’s wildness would overwhelm the intelligence, gradually causing cognitive regression.

To revive the deteriorating intelligence, they had to consume the brains of other intelligent beings.

Noiro realized why Demedes and his group were so knowledgeable about hunting humans. They were all man-eating magical beasts.

Even he, who had been Demedes’s rival, hadn’t known this information. It must have been a secret the beast handlers desperately tried to hide.

Yet Ortes was reciting such secrets as if they were nothing, with complete composure.

‘Just who is this man?’

How much, and how far, could he see?

Noiro reflected on his own past actions with astonishment.

Fortunately, he had few facts he couldn’t proudly share with others.

***

‘I shouldn’t freeze up just because I mistakenly thought we’re facing the Ten Towers.’

I wondered if I should be so casual about revealing the director’s secret, but Demedes was already certain to be dismissed from his position as director.

Given his current state, Demedes didn’t have much time left. They couldn’t keep a dead person in the director’s seat.

In fact, he was already dead as an intelligent being.

As the species classification “synthetic magical beast” suggests, chimeras are originally artificial life forms.

Dangerous artificial life forms typically have devices implanted to control their minds.

Perhaps in Etna City, he was lucky enough to kill the magician who created him and gain freedom, but now that control device has been seized or compromised, and his sense of self has vanished.

The independent self known as “Director Demedes” has collapsed, and what remains is merely a chimera with the individual name Demedes.

I focus on the lines faintly visible to my eyes. The lines entangled in the chimeras’ bodies extended somewhere into this bizarre rocky plain.

Lines of mana that would reach whoever had taken control of the chimeras. Probably connected to the robed old man the crystal had shown me.

“Director Noiro.”

Somehow there’s no answer. Is he tense facing the chimera group?

“I’ll keep one alive. Please prepare for capture.”

As a hunter, he should have equipment for capturing prey, right?