The Strongest Wizard Becomes a Countryside Guardsman After Taking an Arrow to the Knee

Chapter 13 – Back at Magic Boar Swamp

I made the magically-bound Vi-Vi walk in front of me as we headed towards the poison swamp.

My knee hurt again so I rode on top of the now regular-sized Femm. Millet rode behind me.

「Femm is so cute.」

It seems that Millet really took a liking to Femm. Every chance she got she rubbed her face or hands into Femm’s soft fur.

「Woof.」

It seemed that Femm was proud of it as well.

Vi-Vi, on the other hand, was frightened of Femm. Seems that she still had trauma from being bitten.

「It’s looking at me with such fearsome eyes…evil. If it had the chance, it would eat me…」

We walked a little more and arrived at the swamp where the large boar had lived.

Since the boar was no more…the swamp was much shallower.

However, you could sense there was still a lot of poison left in the swamp. A disgusting smell lingered.

Millet and I got down from Femm and covered our noses.

「Wow, it stinks.」

「Yeah, it smells horrible.」

「You killed a boar that breathed out poison that smelled this disgusting?」

「Yep.」

「You really are great, Mr. Al.」

She was still complimenting me…and it was still embarrassing.

「…Awoooo.」

Femm looked at me with sorrowful eyes as its smelling sense was so keen and yet it couldn’t suppress the smell.

Femm pushed its snout into my belly trying to avoid the smell.

I thought it was kind of cheap acting like a dog instead of using spirit speech.

「Oh well.」

「Ruff! Ruff!」

I covered Femm’s nose with my other hand. Femm seemed happy.

As Vi-Vi watched all this, she proudly said,

「Pretty stinky, huh!? Most magic boars don’t even have poison. I searched all over though, and I found one boar that had poison! Then I just put it in the magic circle and…」

「Yeah, you don’t have to explain…」

「Grrrr!」

Vi-Vi screeched strangely at me after I stopped her pointless story.

I already knew from questioning her the day before that once she starts talking about magic, she doesn’t shut up. It was fun at first, but now it was getting very annoying.

Especially with all this stink around.

Millet happily shouted,

「Hey, Mister Al! There’s a big shrimp over there!」

「I think that’s a crawfish! It’s really big!」

The crawfish was the size of a small dog. Its pincers were the size of a human hand.

As I looked around, I saw a sparrow the size of a medium-sized dog as well.

「Is this because of the magic circle?」

「Heh heh heh. You noticed! The magic that I poured into the boar also affected the animals around it. And the way this happened was…」

「If this is the effect of the magic circle, then we can’t just leave it. Hurry up and destroy it.」

After having her explanation of how she made the magic circle interrupted, Vi-Vi put on a sour face.

「Hmph! The circle’s under all that mud. There’s no way I can destroy it.」

「Then scoop out all the mud!」

「…that’s impossible!」

「Well, you can’t destroy the circle without it, right? You’re the one that created it, so take responsibility and get rid of it!」

「Are you saying that a Sub-Boss of the Demon Lord has to scoop out mud? What a disrespectful…」

「GRrrrrr, Ruff!」

「Ah, okay…I’ll do it.」

She was complaining, but a growl from Femm put her to work.

She began taking small scoop out of the mud with a bucket.

「Why must I have to do…」

「Hey…isn’t this kind of sad making her do this?」

Millet said after seeing Vi-Vi tear up a bit at her difficult task.

「You’re too kind, Millet.」

「Wha?」

Millet blushed.

I know Vi-Vi was paying for her mistake.

However, I wasn’t going to make Vi-Vi do all this work. It smelled like hell and I didn’t want to stick around.

「Vi-Vi. You don’t have to scoop it all up with a bucket.」

「Then how will I…」

「A magician uses magic.」

I swept up all the mud in a wind-magic vortex, and using gravity magic, kept it suspended.

「Whoaaaaa…」

Millet said with an astounded voice.

「While the mud’s in the air, kill the circle!」

「I understand!」

Vi-Vi said in an obedient response.

「If you do anything weird, I’m going to dump all this mud on your head, Vi-Vi!」

「Okay, already!」

I watched Vi-Vi very closely. I made sure she wasn’t strengthening or trying to hide the magic circle.

Vi-Vi simply erased it obediently.

「It’s…it’s finished.」

Vi-Vi scurried back from under the floating mud to where I was.

Seeing her return, I slowly lowered the mud back to where it was.

「You don’t have to hurry back like that…I’m not going to just drop it.」

「But among magic creatures…only the Demon Lord can use gravity magic.」

「Now that you mention it…he did use that against me.」

He used it when the hero jumped forward and was caught in a trap. The Demon Lord used gravity magic against the hero.

The hero floated in the air and was hit over and over, unable to move.

「Also, even if you weren’t going to dump that mud on me, since you were using two different magics at once…if you didn’t control it right it could explode. If that happened, you wouldn’t even need to dump it on me…I was scared!」

「I can handle two magics at once. I can go up to four if I have to.」

「What?! No way!」

「I’m not lying.」

Vi-Vi seemed to swallow slowly in amazement.

「Even if that were so! Using two magics at once, and one of them gravity! A devil can only use one time for a minute or so and then it disappears!」

「Mine doesn’t disappear so easy. I can use my magic for over an hour.」

Again, Vi-Vi’s eyes opened wide. Then she whispered to herself,

「These low-lifes are scaaaary…」

We were on the way home. Millet was mumbling to herself about the big crawfish she was lugging back home.

Femm had the giant sparrow in its mouth after I shot it down with magic.

「Magic really is something.」

「Well, it depends on the amount. You can do a lot with it.」

「This huge crawfish looks delicious.」

I wonder if it is. Since it was in a poison swamp, you couldn’t eat it without carefully washing all the mud off it.

And even if you did, you may not be able to eat it as it was steeped in poison.

「Ah!」

「What?」

「Yeah, if we use that magic circle on the cows in our town, we could get a lot of meat out of it, right?!」

「Yeah…I wonder, though. Cows are just cows.」

Magical boars aren’t just boars…they’re magical beasts.

I wondered if it would work of you put a normal cow in a magic circle.

「But the crawfish isn’t magic, it’s just a crawfish, right? And the sparrow too.」

「Now that you mention it, you’re right.」

So I looked at Vi-Vi.

「Of course that would be easy for me. I mean, from the beginning that magic circle was…」

Vi-Vi proudly began to blab on again. This time I just listened quietly.

I am a wizard. I had interest in unknown magic.

And…well…I was bored.