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(Yesss! Now I’m just like everyone else! Normal life—HURRAY! Hehehe!!

Ahhh, what a wonderfully satisfying bit of mowing that was! Isn’t being sensible just the best?! Ordinary people are the best!! Ahahaha!)

“Ah! Ahahahahaha!”
“Mfuu!”
“Uhee! Uhehehehehe!”
“Ha, ahaha! Ahahahahahaaaa!”

(Huh?! Crap! Did I… get too carried away with excitement?! Wait—wasn’t I just acting like some dangerous lunatic there?! Me?!!)

I’d mowed down quite a bit of the thicket. I didn’t think even five minutes had passed, but… I had already cleared six or seven square meters. Oof—if I had kept going, I could have turned this place into a bald hill!! For now, there was still enough thicket left around me to serve as a decent windbreak.

(Phew, that was close…)

But just as I was feeling relieved in the clearing I made, I heard rustling—something crawling in from all around. But I had known about it since the moment I came here. Demonic Beasts. A small insect-type Demonic Beast known as Brown Crawlers.

As the name suggested, they were brown caterpillar Demonic Beasts. I couldn’t see them yet, but I could tell that about three of them—each about the size of a small puppy—were squirming toward me. Their Threat Level was 0.2. Even a child could handle them in a one-on-one fight.

But the three of them were approaching me from three different directions, forming a triangle to surround me. I stopped my spell and used my bush knife to quickly cut a branch off a nearby tree. I stripped away the leaves and twigs, shaping it into a stick about as thick as a pair of cooking chopsticks. Then I wedged my bush knife into the tree trunk and left it there. Stick in hand, I moved toward the center as the three caterpillars closed in.

One after another, they emerged from gaps in the bush into my freshly cleared little plaza. They looked round and kind of tasty—like little chocolate corones. Of course, I wasn’t gonna eat them, though!!

They made squeaky noises as they inched closer. When they were about three meters away, they stopped, raised their heads, and blasted white stuff at me!!

It was the Brown Crawler’s silk.

Sticky silk meant to entangle prey. Once caught, the victim got wrapped up like a cocoon, unable to move an inch, until they weakened and stopped moving—at which point the crawlers would feast on them.

But I slipped past the silk streams coming at me from three sides. And then, in the middle of that web of threads flying around, I raised my stick high like the conductor of an orchestra and started spinning it, winding the silk around it.

Round and round and round—just like making cotton candy!

It felt… nostalgic, somehow.

When I was a little brat, there was a huge supermarket nearby with a game corner on the second floor.
They had a cotton candy machine there. I used to make cotton candy every time we went. I must’ve been three or four years old then. I couldn’t even remember who used to take me anymore…

I keep turning the stick, winding up the silk. I was winding it tight, so it was not fluffy like cotton candy. It was already bigger than both my fists put together. But the crawlers kept on spewing silk.

By the way, these guys were larvae—when they grew up, they became moth-type Demonic Beasts called Green Moths, with a Threat Level of 0.6.

The name might sound like something you would tie to a piece of driftwood, but their attacks were nasty—they dropped scales from the air. And no, the scales didn’t have the effect of a sleeping powder—it was more like a paralytic toxin. Their muscle-relaxing effect could stop your respiratory muscles and kill you if you inhaled too much of them. They were especially nasty if they attacked from upwind.

Oh, and about this “threat level” thing I kept mentioning—

It was a measure set by the Village Guard to indicate how strong a Demonic Beast was. A Threat Level of 1 meant that it was about equal to one 1st-ranked person. A Threat Level 2 meant two 1sts, Threat Level 3 means three 1sts, and so on.

Of course, there were differences in strength even among 1sts—some were frontliners, some were supports—so it wasn’t just an average benchmark.

That was why you could still lose to a Threat Level 3 beast even with three people or win with the same number. If you wanted to be sure, you would always take an extra person.

Anyway, the silk I spun up was now about the size of a basketball. The crawlers finally stopped spitting. It looked like they were finally out of ammo.

They made silk by synthesizing it from their body fluids and then spewing it out. They didn’t have a special silk sack or anything like that. Meaning—right now, they had just poured every last drop of their bodily fluids into me. Yep, I had squeezed them dry down to the very last drop!¹　

The now-defenseless crawlers wiggled and hesitated, looking lost. They were actually kind of cute. But! They had given me all they got, and I had no more use for them! I lightly kicked all of them over the little hill.

I held back so as not to kill them, so the three of them were flying through the air before turning into glimmers of light and vanishing.

In a few days, they would replenish their fluids. And since the village bought this silk, it was one of the ways for local kids to make money. The best time to harvest was now, when crawlers hatched from eggs after hibernation. That’s why I didn’t kill them—just chased them off. I would probably run into them again once or twice during this trial.

(Heh heh heh—come whenever you like, little guys! Come and provide me with your white stuff. Once you’ve stocked up on plenty of it, I’ll be here to squeeze you dry again! Fufun ♪)²　

Anyway, I ended up spending extra time when I was supposed to be setting up camp. So I quickly began to set up my tent. There was still a lot to do!

***

…ZZZ… ZZZ…
“Mmm… mmhh… I’m sorry, Corin… forgive me, Coriiiin…”
…ZZZ… ZZZ…
“It’s okay, Coriiin… it’s not like that at all…”
…ZZZ… ZZZ…
“Ah… So big… Nnff.”
…ZZZ… ZZZ…
“Ah—ah—sorry… I’m sorry, Coriiiin… forgive meee… ahhh…”
…ZZZ… ZZZ…