Side: Arisa
On the road to town, my steps were light — nothin’ like the usual worn-out slog.
A mountain o’ cargo on my back, and it’s STILL the lightest my feet have ever felt headin’ home.
Puttin’ it plainly: I basically struck a gold vein.
—We’re talkin’ the pelt, tusks, an’ bones of an extermination-difficulty A-rank devil boar.
Sell it to the Adventurers’ Guild: eight hundred gold. Sell direct to the weapon an’ armor shops: a thousand gold, guaranteed.
An’ if that fella’s got palm-top rabbits tamed, there’s even a chance o’ dragon-class materials down the line. Just my ten percent fee alone… I’m gonna be ROLLIN’ in it.
Still, though. Palm-top rabbits…
That big bro has tamed somethin’ truly, deeply outrageous…
—Those things are the worst combat unit in the whole Forest of No Return.
Way back, some frontier king out hawkin’ accidentally trampled a carrot the palm-top rabbits had stored near their burrow… The blood-soaked total war that followed is still fresh in livin’ memory.
Two hundred palm-top rabbits — just two hundred — went to war with an entire nation, an’ the flames spread to every neighboring country. A real mess, they say.
When the great powers came to mediate, every carrot they brought got dismissed with one line: “Anything but a Forest of No Return carrot tastes baaad~.” Ordinary carrots don’t even rate a GLANCE from those things, an’ yet…
Well, whatever it all means — for me, there’s no bigger stroke o’ luck alive!
Light-footed an’ out of breath, I jogged on down the road to town.
“What a MONSTER of a big bro I’ve gone an’ befriended! Thank the gods, I say!”
☆★☆★☆★
The palm-top rabbits caught a bird.
Ostrich-sized, ostrich-shaped, more or less.
The face, though, is more… noble? Dignified? Hawk-ish, let’s say.
The decisive non-ostrich feature is the enormous wings. This is probably the kind that actually flies.
“Seriously though, how did you guys hunt a BIRD?”
The palm-top rabbits are a hunting people, sure, but I’ve yet to see one fly.
“You string a net between the trees~♪”
“Lots and lots of nets~♪”
“Then you chase the birdie~♪”
“And when it hits the net, you gang up and wallop it~♪”
So: set net traps, drive the bird into them.
I’ve thought this for a while, but — they act like idiots, and yet their intelligence is clearly high.
They can work metal, for one.
Anyway, I got started on butchering the ostrich-ish bird.
Removed the innards, broke the meat down cut by cut.
The meat’s texture is sort of duck-like — nicely fatty. Looks SERIOUSLY tasty.
And right then — fox-eared Arisa appeared.
“Yo, big bro! Brought the money from before… wait… eh?”
Her mouth flapped open and shut, eyes spinning, finger pointed at the ostrich-ish bird.
“That’s… that’s a DEATH HAWK, ain’t it?!”
“Death hawk?”
“An S-rank monster that only top-rank adventurers can even bring down! The meat, the talons, the beak… every part of it trades for STUPID money, ya hear me?!”
“Oh, is that so? The palm-top rabbits hunted it, so I really couldn’t tell you.”
“The things ya keep as PETS, I swear… it’s madness, is what it is.”
Arisa said it with an exasperated look… or honestly, while inching away from me slightly.
Come to think of it, a species that casually hunts THAT might be a fairly terrifying species.
“So, what brings you here?”
Arisa held out a small pouch.
“Sale money for the devil boar. Minus my fee… comes to six hundred gold.”
By the way, per Arisa the other day, a town guard’s starting salary is around twenty gold coins.
In Japanese-value terms, one gold coin runs about ten thousand yen.
…That boar sold for a FORTUNE. No wonder she was grinning that day.
“Hold on — six hundred gold coins fit in this little pouch?”
“Ah, that’s orichalcum currency. One plate’s worth a hundred gold… there’s six in there.”
“Orichalcum currency?”
I loosened the pouch string: inside were six small plates, shimmering in rainbow colors.
—Orichalcum, huh… that is PEAK fantasy.
Yeah. I felt a genuine little thrill at that one.
…And in the offering box, it converts to six hundred yen.
Together with the money from Arisa last time, minus the yakiniku sauce order — about seven hundred yen on the balance.
“While you’re here, stay for dinner, Arisa. You can sleep in the storehouse too, if that’s acceptable.”
It was getting on toward evening, and making a girl camp alone in a monster-infested forest didn’t sit right.
“Well now, that’s a mighty kind offer, but… whatcha makin’?”
I nodded. “Ah.”
“Tonight is karaage.”
And so I bowed to the altar and ordered a bottle of cooking oil and a bag of karaage breading mix.