episode_0075

The road to the swamp was easy.

Just as far as the road to the swamp.

What followed was, as expected, a continuation of the hellish quagmire I had always known.

I haven’t been to hell, but I cautiously assume that hell, too, will definitely have a swamp like this.

Otherwise, the devils are dereliction of duty.

To me, the swamp area is an area that can only be described as a murderous climate.

“I can’t see the demon as much as I thought? Are all the wanderers dead?”

“They must have been too humid because it was summer. I think I will soon fall behind too.”

The humidity in the swamp is so high that it is difficult to breathe.

The moisture coming through the gaps in the armor was making my clothes damp, but Peria, who was wearing white and black clothes that looked thicker than me, like a tailcoat, continued to move forward without breaking a sweat as if nothing had happened.

The humidity is humid, but the scenery is not that good either.

Overall, it looks like old, rotten green paint. In fact, the paint may not rot, but passing through such a dull-colored forest makes me feel very dirty.

“Green is the one. It’s the color of death.”

“What are you talking about again? Don’t you know the green green? These are all important places that help purify the air.”

“How do you know that?”

“Why are wizards just playing around? Everyone is stuck in the magic tower studying such things.”

Peria is lively and positive even in this situation, but I can never be like that.

The ground is like corpses that have rotted and turned into compost, and the legs are sinking, and the dirty moisture turns into vapor and drops that run down the face. It is a place where there is nothing to like.

It is fortunate that there is no magic beast.

But the lack of magic means that even they have given up on this place.

The fact that even the demonic beasts, who live regardless of the environment and deserve to be praised as long as they do not bite people, have given up on living means that this place is no different from hell, with nothing to eat and a barren environment to breathe. So.

Of course, it is difficult to say that they have completely given up on these forests, but this place is so bad that they leave the swamps and live like migratory birds, at least near the summer when the temperature rises extremely high.

As if to prove this, among the bogs in the swamp, there are many dead corpses that have become entangled in the depths and are only half exposed.

‘They were probably the ones who drowned while moving before the rain came and the water filled up.’

Feria and I avoid the places where the corpses of those demon beasts are, and march hard across the rough ground and through the swamp toward the destination that Morsling had mentioned.

And soon we arrived at our destination.

‘This is the worst.’

“Ah! excuse me! There it is. Come quickly, oppa!”

‘It would be great if saying a line like that meant my younger girlfriend urging me and pulling me to a delicious restaurant.’

The hot weather makes me crave illusions, but they are all just my hopes.

The reality is that Peria, who is like a younger sister, is pointing at a colony of blood slimes.

“Those are all blood slimes?”

“I guess so? It’s spectacular to see it like this.”

If you dig a hole with an excavator and pour wine into it, will it have this color?

The sight of huge blood-colored lumps forming a lake was truly the worst.

I couldn’t help but think that wine would be much better because the slimes were attaching themselves to each other and repeating mergers and divisions even in the lake, so it felt like I was seeing the movement of living cells.

“Gross.”

“Why? You touched me just fine earlier.”

“Hey, that was when there was only one. This is too much.”

Just in case, I took out a tool that adventurers often use to measure the length of a hole and measured the depth.

“9 meters neat?”

“It’s really deep. Even if it falls, it will be soft thanks to the slime, but if it falls…”

“You die by having your blood sucked out while still alive.”

Thanks to Translation Magic’s consideration, the dimensions are automatically converted to metric.

Luckily it’s not inches so I can understand it.

A pit deep enough to stand on top of three houses was filled with blood slime.

In terms of width, you can see the edge of the opposite side at a glance, but even this is just barely visible to a spirit bottle with particularly good eyesight, so it is ridiculously large.

Morsling says that slimes don’t try to stick together that much when the humidity is high, so there’s no need to rescue them.

“The bottom of this is completely invisible to the naked eye because of the slime. I’m scared that there might be something else on the floor, so I want to find out.”

“That’s right. It’s covered up so you can’t see it at all. Oppa, try going in.”

“I’m crazy, let’s just go to work.”

Anyway, I decided to resolve the issue quickly.

First, place a backpack and a mat in a place where there is no water nearby, and then take out the work tools on them.

Next, take out the detector Morsling gave you and the lantern containing the fluorescent bug and secure it to a long pole.

“Good. Is this okay?”

“It seems to be responding.”

When you lift the lantern, nearby blood slimes react and slowly emerge from the inside of the pit.

“Let’s go around like this and find an empty part.”

“Then I will follow you with a shovel. Oppa goes first.”

When I walk around the pit holding a lantern, the slime follows me like a stream, which is more fun than I thought.

“This makes me feel like the Pied Piper.”

“What is that?”

“There is such a fairy tale. The story, um… I remember it was a story about a kidnapper who kidnapped children from an entire neighborhood by playing a flute.”

“What is that? I feel bad.”

‘Why is this the only thing that comes to mind?’

It reminded me of a fairy tale, but I can’t remember any of the content from the beginning, only the ending. And that too with a slightly twisted ending.

He continues to lead the slimes around while talking about various things, but the transparent slimes are not as easy to see as expected.

“Hey, hey. I’m going to fall. Walk a little further outside.”

“But I can’t see it very well. It’s all red so I can’t even tell where it’s empty.”

Thanks to this, Peria keeps sticking her head out to look at the slimes inside, and it looks dangerous.

“Hey. It won’t work. Let’s tie it with a rope.”

I was afraid that if I continued like this, I would get into trouble, so I took out a rope and connected it to my body and Peria’s body.

So Peria complained.

“How good is my sense of balance? I’m so worried.”

“Usually, the moment you say something like that, people die because of it.”

“Is it real? Look.”

Peria did a somersault on the spot and stood on her head with one arm.

Then he looked at me with a triumphant expression and said.

“Did you see it? I’m not saying this for nothing. I heard that I won a gold medal with this at our organization’s year-end talent show.”

“I think it’s closer to a trick than a chess game.”

“That’s it. The youngest participant ever to win a gold medal! As a prize, I received a same-day meal voucher at the best restaurant in the capital of the empire.”

“Is it great?”

“Okay then! You have to make a reservation a month in advance to go there, but it’s hard to buy a meal ticket on the same day even if you pay 100 gold coins. I didn’t plan on going alone, so I kept it in my bag.”

‘Did you say you’re the youngest in the organization?’

Since it is an organization that handles information, I thought it would have a very solemn atmosphere, but when I heard it was a talent show coming from Peria’s mouth, it suddenly felt like it didn’t seem like anything.

“It’s just that the old people there are doing well after seeing your entertainment party! Well done! Didn’t you do it? I think they prepared such a nice meal ticket on purpose to give it to you.”

“Oh really, oppa, do you have some kind of suspicious disease? Do you really hate it when people just tell you that you are doing well? I’ll show you one more time, watch carefully.”

After saying that, Peria stood on her head with one arm and then somersaulted in the air again, this time using only the strength of one arm.

‘This is a bit interesting. ‘I can’t believe I jumped that high with just my arms.’

The moment you see Feria doing two laps in the air and think that if it were Hyundai, she would have won a medal as a gymnast –

Whilick-

““Huh?””

A strange whip-like thing comes out from the side of the pit and wraps around Peria’s legs, which were floating in the air.

“Huh? Wow! brother! Pull! Pull!”

Red vines began to break through the slime from inside the pit and tried to drag Peria in.

“Pull! Pull! Pull! help me! What are you doing, oppa!”

“Hey, wait a minute! This thing is so powerful!”

Peria is dragged all the way inside with incredible force.

When I see that, I quickly pull the rope that I had tied between Peria and my body earlier.

However, even though the rope is held tightly with the gauntlet, it is easily pulled in as if nothing is in the way.

Rather, the more difficult she applied, the more strength the rope tied to Peria’s body gained, and the strength of the vines holding her legs began to grow stronger.

“Sleep… Wow! I’m cut off! ship! ship! My stomach explodes! really! Not lying, really!”

If you keep giving it a hard time like this, if your stomach ruptures, you will become Per/Ah, and if your legs are torn, you will become Peri/Ah.

“What the fuck!”

I had no choice but to relax the rope I was holding on to, but thanks to that, Peria completely disappeared inside the lump of slime, and I was also dragged along by the rope.

‘Are we going to be wiped out in a place like this?’

At that time, when I was juggling all kinds of desires and thoughts that could arise in an unexpected and unexpected case –

Piyung-

Squeak-

An arrow flew by and cut my rope.

After kicking my butt, I grab my backpack and lantern and run away.

Then judge the situation.

‘Who is it?’

First, look at the arrow stuck on the floor.

An arrow shaft without any feathers.

Only weak humans wear arrow feathers.

Fairing arrows is human wisdom to increase accuracy, but for elves who have the physical strength to not need it in the first place, arrow feathers are a symbol of weakness, or training wheels on bicycles to teach young children how to shoot arrows. It has no more value.

Thanks to those characteristics, the race of the person who shot it could be immediately determined.

‘Elf’s arrow.’

I measured the distance the arrow flew to see where it had come from.

Since you know that these are elf arrows, you have to look very far into the field.

Even though I widen my view for a while, I can’t see the person who shot the arrow.

Only the broken rope still attached to my body proves that the person who shot the arrow is somewhere far away.

“Where on earth did you shoot it?”

It’s amazing that the elf’s arrows don’t miss, but no matter how much I think about it, I can’t understand its range.

This is a species that can accurately hit our heads even from a distance of over 1km.

Moreover, some elves can snipe from a distance of 2km, so humans never fight over territory with elves, even if they are other races.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t avoid cutting down trees, so it’s common here to occasionally enter elf territory and cut down trees, only to run away after being chased by demonic beasts released by the elves.

It is natural that a race that shoots arrows that can pierce the head with a mediocre shield cannot be found unless they show themselves first.

And in the end, instead of looking for the elf on my side first, I could barely orient my head as the elf was yelling at me.

“Irim~~~!!! Hello!!!”

From so far away that I can’t even tell who it is, a woman speaks at an extremely loud voice.

There was only one elf visible beyond the distant distance, the series of swamps in the middle, and the gap between the tall trees.

Looking at the bow in that hand, I immediately knew that the elf woman who screamed was the one who shot the bow.

But of course the face is unrecognizable.

So I had no choice but to guess, but it wasn’t that difficult.

“There is only one elf who knows my name. Maybe.”

A prosecutor I met while logging in the past.

An elf who made a contract to spare my life the next time I met him in exchange for my hair.

Ayla.

The woman was waving at me.