Death March — Fixed

“Tek here, hiking is nice, isn’t it? When you’re surrounded by nature, smelling the scents of trees and other plants, you tend to forget about the unpleasant affairs of life.”

After I finish taking taking care of the horses, I begin compounding deodorants behind the wagon--I want to get rid of the intense smell from the goat leather and wool.

While I was compounding, Liza came over to ask if the meal would be fine without soup, since there isn’t enough firewood; it’s still cold, but the black bread would be too hard without the soup.

I look over at the Light Hot Plate that is sitting beside me on the ground, which I’ve been using to heat the water for some of the compounding recipes--which isn’t absolutely needed, it just helps speed up the process.

Since I don’t really need it, I decided that we should use it for cooking; after heating the soup with this, the soup then could be boiled over the fire--cutting down on the amount of firewood required.

I’ll have Arisa supply the Magic Power for the hotplate, since neither Liza nor Lulu seem to have much talent when it comes to Magecraft.

Still, I didn’t think that gathering firewood and leaves for fuel would be this hard, I should have bought some while I was still in Seryuu City.

***

Even from my position situated behind the wagon, and a distance away, could smell the surprisingly nice aroma from the soup; but that wasn’t enough to draw me away from my work.

The finished deodorant is in the form of a white powder, which I quickly placed in a small pouch that I had specifically bought for that purpose. It seems that it was used by sprinkling it over the source of the smell.

I take out the goat leather and wool from storage, before pouring the white powder over them and putting them into a large sack and putting them back.

Liza comes to tell me that the meal is ready, exactly right after I’ve finished my business; it’s possible that she saw what I did, but as my companion and slave, I should trust her--and she didn’t say anything about it; so I pretended that nothing had happened, and followed her.

Now then, since the meal is ready, I should call Pochi and Tama back.

I call to them in loud voice.

Let’s buy a whistle when we get to a town.

I do have some whistles in my storage, but they aren’t exactly normal--it’d be disastrous if I blow one and make a massive Monster or Angel appear, so I won’t risk it; though it could also be interesting if they follow my commands, since I am so far away from a city that I shouldn’t be spotted easily.

“I got prey.” Pochi’s proud voice brings be back from my fanciful daydreams of riding on the back of Godzilla while being surrounded by a bunch of beautiful Angel girls.

Pochi is presenting a rabbit to me, holding it out with both hands. The rabbit’s ears are rather short, and according to the Heads-Up-Display, it’s called a ‘Short-eared Rabbit’.

She is covered with grass and mud from the top of her head all the way to her feet, but she is smiling incredibly happily.

I tell her that she did well, while stroking her head.

Since I can’t let her have lunch when this dirty, I go to the wagon and grab a bucket, filling it with water from the Hell Water Jug; she carefully washes her hands, arms, and face with the slightly chilly water.

 

I’ve made it a policy, from the time when we were in the labyrinth, that we wash at least our hands before meals.

When she’s clean, I quickly step back as she shakes her head roughly, to remove the water that got in her hair; her ears flap around, as she acts like a dog who got out of the bath.

This is a habit of hers, whether just washing a little, or after a bath, she does this.

 

“Is this Prey?”

 

It seems that Tama’s back, her voice comes from behind me.

I wonder what Tama caught?

Is is a bird?

“Meat! -- ?” Pochi tilts her head, puzzled, midway through her words.

When I turn back, the thing that Tama is holding is a rat that’s around eighty centimeters long--at least that’s what I thought--the Heads-Up-Display says that it’s a Ratman.

The Ratman seems to be unconscious, but at least he’s still alive.

 

“Tama, please let that one go.”

 

While looking a bit sad, Tama says, “Prey. No good?”

She approaches slowly, tilting her head.

I almost involuntarily allow it, but--let’s not eat sentient creatures.

Since she probably won’t understand the concept straight away, I should teach her gradually.

 

“You’ll hurt your stomach, so, no.”

 

“Aye.” Tama nods, still looking a little upset, begins to spin on the spot--when she has built up enough force, she throws the Ratman across the meadow.

Hmm, that’s a little too rough, no matter how you look at it.

Checking it, I see that the Ratman’s HP has decreased by a little, but it seems to still be alive.

Since we treated him too roughly, I decided to go over and make sure to check if he has any external wounds--before that, I warn Tama against doing things like that.

The Ratman doesn’t seem to have any injuries.

According to the Heads-Up-Display, he doesn’t have any Skills, and he is only two years old. As expected of rats, they grow up quickly. He’s grasping something that looks like a ball of mud in his hand, but, since I have no interest in what it is, I leave it alone.

Since he only seems to have fainted, I carefully lay him on the grass in the meadow a short distance from our camp; as remuneration for the trouble, I put several fruits on the ground next to him.

On the other hand, Liza has already dismantled and drained the rabbit that Pochi caught, and she’s in the middle of grilling it now.

By the way, we’re using a dead tree, which Tama found on the other side of the boulder, as fuel.

 

“My stomach is hungry.” Arisa imitates Pochi, surprisingly accurately.

 

“Copycat is bad.” Pochi protests.

 

“Cat is bad?” Tama tilts her head.

“No.” Pochi denies, shaking her head and hugging Tama.

“Good. Meat!” Tama stroke’s Pochi’s hair.

 

I admit, this is cute.

Since the Ratman doesn’t seem that he will wake up for a while, we decided to begin our meal.

Liza holds the biggest piece of meat out to me, and I pass it to Pochi, because she’s the MVP this time. The second biggest is given to Tama, since even though she didn’t get any good prey, she played an active role in securing the firewood needed to cook the meal.

The meat of the rabbit is surprisingly good--I always expected wild animal to taste worse than meat bought from the shops, but while it tasted much stronger, it wasn’t too bad.

It could also because Liza seems like a she is a good chef.

I hear a quiet scuttling sound, and my radar shows that the Ratman has woken up and run away, and when I check later, I see that he has also taken the fruits as well.

***

I decide to have some tea with Liza and Lulu after the meal.

Lulu pours the tea.

She was taught in a Royal Court, even if it was just a small country, so she knows how to make good tea.

It was truly delicious.

When I praise her, she acts humble--but I can see her face is blushing deep red and her whole face is smiling.

Arisa wanted to stay, but she decided to oversee Tama and Pochi, who are going exploring around the boulders--she told me quietly that it was to make sure that no more sentient rats were harmed during our lunch break.

While spending time with Liza and Lulu, two beautiful girls, one of which was kneeling while filling my teacup, I decided to check something on the map. Looking at the map, I find that the only Ratman around here is the child captured by Tama earlier.

I wonder if he got lost.

From the map, I see that there’s a hidden village a dozen kilometers south-east of here, so he seems to be a lost child from there. Fortunately, my guess seems to be accurate, as I see that he is running in the direction of the village and the only dangerous animals are foxes--so he’s probably going to be okay even if we leave him alone.

Since I was only searching for Monsters earlier, I had missed the Ratman.

There might be thieves too, so I make an adjustment to the search parameters.

Yep--there are thieves. They are quite a distance away, and the highway are separated from the highway by a mountain, so we probably won’t encounter them anytime soon.

When I narrowed them even further, red dots begin to rapidly appear on the screen, but when I look around, I see nothing. Normally insects or small animals won’t show up, since I made it disabled by default.

When I face toward the nearby red dot, something is running through the underbrush, escaping.

Is it a small animal, looking for leftovers?

If this was a game, then, animals which likely won’t be enemies would be excluded from the start.

This is troublesome.

I guess I should exclude anything level one, which doesn’t have poison--they wouldn’t hurt, even if they were to bite us.

Alright, I’ve excluded anything without poison or Special Abilities.

Hmm, the red dots still aren’t decreasing?

No wait, when I take a closer look, they seem to be insects; mosquito-like insects are flying around us. Furthermore, they have ‘Race Characteristic: Blood-Sucking’.

Of course, mosquitoes do suck blood, don’t they?

Let’s put aside this setting when we go through mountains or thickets, and exclude anything beside creatures with poison in normal situations.

I’ll decide what to do if it is a creature that I see for the first time, using a reading from the Heads-Up-Display, and if they’re level one, then eliminating them will be trivial anyway.

***

Just as I’m about to finish with the adjustments, I heard Arisa call to me from on top of the nearby boulder.

 

“Is there anything?”

 

“Maybe, so--please join me on top of this rock?”

 

Pochi comes back from around the boulder with Tama--apparently, Arisa had the two of them help her up, using their increased strength.

 

“Arisa is unfair.”

“Pochi also wants to go up.”

 

Arisa seems to have tried to help them up, but it’s impossible for her to pull them up with her strength, and the leverage that she had available.

Since the two look so eager to go up, I quickly help them up in turn, grabbing them by the waist and raising them easily--they are surprisingly light. I have to force myself to look away as I do this--because from this position, it is very easy to look up their skirts.

Because I can’t find any ledges or cracks to use to pull myself up, I quickly walk around to a part of the rock where I’m out of sight of Liza and Lulu, and jump up.

“You can see it from here,” Arisa points in a direction.

When I follow the direction of her finger, I see a lot of collapsed boulders--what does Arisa want me to see?

 

“What am I looking at?”

 

“Look properly.” Arisa sounds excited.

 

Oh, I see, I finally understand what Arisa wants to show me.

 

“Are those the stones that line the path to Japanese shrines? Torii or something?”

 

“Yep!” Arisa speaks quickly--she had told me that she had been fascinated by Japan and their culture since she was young--“I can only guess, because they have collapsed, but it looks like they were three Torii lined up. Maybe there was some kind of shrine here.”

Quickly checking the remains of the stones, then I tell Arisa the information that the Heads-Up-Display.

I had thought that they were just traces from an old civilization, but--“It’s a broken Travel Gate.”

It’s a well-known gimmick for shortcuts when you’re traveling in a game.

These ones seem to have been broken since ancient times, so I don’t know how to--let alone if I can--repair them.

Hearing my words, Arisa enthusiastically asks me if I can fix it; but I tell her that I can’t now, maybe if I had several years to study them.

While it is an attractive idea to have shortcuts like the ones in games, but I’d like to refrain from jumping into an unknown location--at least until I am much stronger and have some way to return, such as teleportation Magic.

It seems that whatever the boulders are made from has properties similar to Magic Catalysts made from crushed Monster Cores, the Heads-Up-Display reads as ‘Stone/??? Composite’. They even react when I pour in some Magic Power.

However, I quickly stop, since I don’t want to end up trapped inside stone--or even sent back to Earth, if it either malfunctioned or worked--so I’ll stop acting rashly.

***

Right after we depart, Tama and Pochi go straight to sleep; it was almost as soon as the wagon starts moving that they immediately went to sleep; probably because, not only had they run around a lot, they were also full.

Strangely, Arisa seems to have been more tired than she seemed, she leaned back against the backboard, and closed her eyes; she didn’t sleep, but she was silent as she rested--Lulu sat beside her as Arisa clutched her hand and lent against her shoulder.

“Master, could you possibly teach me how to drive the wagon?” Liza pokes her head over the top of the backboard.

“Alright, you can sit here.” I move to the side and make space for her to sit beside me.

It’d be helpful to have other people who could drive the wagon, so let’s teach it to the others later.

 

“Do you want to try it too, Lulu?”

 

“Yes, I’d like too.” Lulu answered quickly from behind me.

 

We both ignore Arisa’s slightly annoyed noise as her warm pillow, Lulu, moved away from her. I stop the wagon for a moment, allowing Lulu and Liza to sit on either side of me.

Trying to focus with two cute girls sitting on either side of me, their bodies warm as they were pressed against me because of the small bench, they also smelled good--Liza had a slightly strange scent, but still, I liked it.

I also ignore Arisa’s face peeking over the backboard with a little smirk.

 

“Ahem, first, this is how you use the reins.” I gave the reins to Liza first.

 

“Hold the reins a bit loosely, but be careful not to make it too loose.”

 

I teach the two of them the same way that Yosaga taught me.

The two only make minor errors, which is normal for people who are tense, but they successfully learn to drive.

Liza’s driving is, though a bit rough, enough for a passing mark--she even managed to learn it several hours faster than I did, and she’s already at the level where she can replace me with the driving.

 

>>Skill: Education Acquired.

 

Lulu’s driving is, although a little worse than Liza’s, good enough to drive on a flat plain. It’ll be fine if she gets more practice, and relaxes a little bit more--the horses seem to be able to sense how tense she is.

While Liza, Lulu and I stay on the driver’s seat, and I watch over her, Lulu drives the wagon along the highway which is running between some hills.