NOVEL NEXT Chapter 39
Chapter 39 – The Wizard Checks the Hydra Battleground
After eating breakfast, I went back to check where we had fought the hydra.
Cruz, Luka, Vi-Vi, and Femm were with me.
After we arrived, I checked for any traces of magic.
There really weren’t any left.
「Can you feel anything, Vi-Vi?」
「Nothing at all.」
「Right…」
I guess since neither Vi-Vi nor I could sense anything, that meant there was nothing left.
Either that, or there was a far better magician here than we could sense.
Luka was searching around and whispered,
「There’s no traces of any magic beasts around here either.」
Since she was a student of magic beasts, she was an expert in finding any trace of them.
「Maybe because of the poison?」
「There’s not that much poison left. The smell certainly is strong though.」
「I see. Can you feel something, Cruz?」
「Just a bad feeling.」
Nothing concrete, but an important sign.
Femm, who was smelling the scents around the battleground, said,
『It seems like something was here afterwards.』
「Oh, you can smell it?」
『Yes.』
A magic wolf’s nose is excellent. It can sense scents that no human could understand.
「So, do you know what it was doing here?」
『It was here, then here, then here, then it went back.』
Femm jumped around while explaining.
I had no idea where or what the smell was, but it was important information.
「Thanks, Femm.」
「Ruff」
「These three places were one, the place the hydra was dissected, two, the place it fell, and where was three?」
「The place where Cruz was eating the hell out of the nasty thing.」
「I see. So it just checked where there were remains, then.」
Then I asked Femm,
「Femm, do you know where whatever came here went?」
『Yes, I’ll show you.』
「Thanks.」
Femm walked slowly. It was sniffing out the scent, so it took its time.
Cruz, Luka, and Vi-Vi followed behind so that they weren’t in the way.
After about an hour, we came to an opening. Someone had cut down the trees.
There were about 10 hydras and basilisks. They were all huge.
The hydras and the basilisks were the same large ones that I had encountered before.
Each was from three to five times bigger than a normal one.
「This must be some kind of massive monster farm or something.」
「Yeah, they opened up this area for it…some place.」
「Why don’t they run away? They seem to be quite tame.」
It wasn’t against the law to have magic monsters as pets. However, you had to notify the local guild within a month of beginning to keep one.
「However, it’s hard to keep quiet the fact that you’re keeping this big of hydras and basilisks out her.」
「Well, even though they’re big, a simple notice to the guild and they’re still legal. Just in case, you should send a notice that you’re keeping Femm too, right?」
Luka said to me as she IS a manager of a guild.
「Sure, I’ll do it later.」
「Good.」
「Ruff?」
Femm had a confused face as it had no idea what was happening.
Cruz was looking out, thinking, and said again.
「Yeah…I have a baaaaaaaaaaad feeling about this.」
「A bad feeling?」
「Yes. When I saw the hydra the first time, the same feeling. That’s why I chased it.」
No way to talk trash about a hero’s intuition.
I didn’t know what it all meant, but I knew this was going to take a turn for the worse.
Vi-Vi ran up to me after looking around while we were talking.
「Al, look here.」
「What is it?」
「A magic circle.」
It was concealed very well, this magic circle.
It was quite a large one, so large that it surrounded this monster corral.
「So this is why none of the monsters are getting away!」
「You don’t know that until you read it all!」Vi-Vi said.
「Even so, since it’s so huge, it’s hard to find as magic circles go.」
「And really hard to analyze too!」
There was no way to analyze it without walking and analyzing the whole thing. You couldn’t find its purpose by just looking at one part.
「This sucks…but we have to look at it.」
「Right, Al!」
We began looking over the whole circle together. As we walked slowly, we checked each part of it.
It was hard to analyze as it was concealed…VERY hard to analyze.
「Al. This is the part that makes the animals bigger.」
「You’re right.」
Since Vi-Vi had written a lot of enlargement circles recently, she was quick to notice.
She was able to find that out just by looking at a fourth of the circle.
「However, I can’t figure out what some of this is…look here.」
「Yeah, it’s not clear. And Vi-Vi, did you find anything that contains the monsters?」
「No…」
It seems that the person that created this beast corral was no expert in magic circles.
The magic circle had no part that kept the magic monsters inside the circle.
As we kept looking, Luka came up to us.
「We can’t let these things get bigger, right? Just one of these huge basilisks could kill off a whole town.」
「If all of these things have the same regenerative force as that hydra, the whole country is in jeopardy.」
「This is one hell of a situation.」
Yesterday’s hydra had unbelievable regeneration. It also had meat that hurt the bodies of the wolves and Cruz.
Someone had raised these beasts with more status irregularities than just large size.
「Luka, for now, let’s erase this magic circle. You’re good at that, right?」
「Not really, but I can try.」
She quickly destroyed the circle…she was very good at that, at least.
「I guess you are good at it.」
「No, not really. Instead of that, we need to kill all of these beasts here, and quick.」
「Yeah.」
I was a little sad to kill them all, but each one of them could ravage a whole town.
Too dangerous.
「I’ll take care of this.」
Cruz grabbed her sword.
「Don’t let down your guard. I’ll back you up.」
「Sure. Thanks.」
Cruz ran out to the basilisk right in front of her.
Just in that instant, lighting fell right at Cruz. Cruz’ quick agility helped her to easily dodge it.
「You did well to avoid that.」
One demon stood up from behind all the beasts.
His age was close to mine. He had a black robe.
「I was wondering how I would get all of you here…but since you’ve come on your own, you’ve saved me the trouble…」
「AH, NOW I’VE GOT A REALLY BAD FEELING!」
Cruz shouted as she interrupted the demon’s speech.