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The fireball exploded while keeping me, who was rescued by the caterpillar, safe from damage. It gradually spread through the swarm and continued burning them to the ground. But that also posed danger to me who was nearby them.

“Hot! It friggin burns! Hey, caterpillar! Keep running! Our hair is gonna catch on fire!”

Just like the insects, human hair also burned really well. Especially my soft, thin, and straight hair. Cortina constantly screams “hot” when she sees me. Wait, that’s probably a different kind of hot.

Either way, we were almost grilled by the explosion, but somehow managed to come out safe. This was thanks to Maxwell’s fine control of magic power… I hoped it was. Though I felt like it was thanks to this caterpillar’s efforts.

At any rate, our target, the caterpillar was safe. I gave a relieved sigh while caught onto its legs. However, there was a workaholic around that didn’t give a crap about me and immediately got to work.

“Hmm…?”

Ignoring the burning Ghast Hornets on the ground, he made his way to the caterpillar, grabbed its jaw and inspected the spinnerets. It looked as if he was about to crush the poor caterpillar’s jaw.

“Its body is quite bigger than I imagined, but the spinnerets itself are thin. I’d like to see it actually made a thread to see for myself.”

He was evaluating the goods like nothing, but he’s holding a friggin Huge Crawler. It was on the smaller side, yes, but it was still about 7 meters long. It was squirming and trying to get away, but Aste’s strength didn’t allow it.

“Oh well. Let’s just take this one alone.”
“How?”

A 7-meter caterpillar wasn’t something you could just store away. If it had long limbs, maybe I could’ve restricted it with my threads, but this caterpillar had no such things.

“Hmm…?”

Aste let go of it and started pondering while holding his chin. The caterpillar, however, didn’t try to run after being freed, and simply hung its head. He couldn’t understand the meaning of that gesture and muttered in a rarely confused voice.

“Huh?”
“Could this be… It is submitting to Sir Aste?”
“Submitting? An Insect?”
“It is because it is an insect, or should I say because its intellect is low, that it is submitting to the stronger individual. Moreover, we are its lifesavers.”
“So this insect feels gratitude?”
“Indeed.”

I asked Maxwell in doubt, but it seemed that he was confident in his guess. To prove his point, the caterpillar was currently prostrated before Aste and wasn’t moving a bit.

“That Elf was the one that burned them, you know? Oh well… Don’t move.”

With those words, Aste bit on his finger and dipped the blood in his water pouch, and then sprinkled it on the caterpillar. Following that, he drew some kind of magic circle on its forehead, and the water started evaporating.

It seemed that the water wasn’t evaporating due to heat, the caterpillar didn’t seem to be in any pain.

“Huh, what is he doing?”
“Perhaps he is forming the contract of submission. It looked like a magic circle carved on the items used with slaves.”

Maxwell and I observed his action from the distance. He seemed to be doing some kind of a ritual, but I had no knowledge of such magic. Getting rolled up in was scary so I took more distance.

“Oh? So there are magic that even you don’t know, huh, Maxwell?”
“Submission magic is forbidden, after all. If it was allowed to spread, even criminals would start using it.”
“Oh, right, I didn’t think of that.”

Before long, Aste returned to us acting as if nothing happened. The caterpillar followed closely behind.

“I kept you waiting. Sorry, but let’s return back to the hut for a moment. I’d like to bring this fellow to Maleva.”
“To that mountain? I don’t mind… But would that be safe?”

That mountain was full of fierce animals. The Huge Crawlers were a threat due to their size, but they weren’t so fast on their feet as I’ve already seen. He formed a contract with it already, so it’d be a waste if it gets attacked by wild animals and dies.

“You don’t need to worry about that. I have another room underground.”
“You mean… Other basements?”
“Yeah. I usually drop large luggage over there.”

It was the same digging magic Cortina used in the hot spring town. If you stopped the technique, the ground would return to normal, but if you applied hardening magic while it was still in effect, it would maintain its shape.

If you repeated this process and widened the space more and more, you could make a basement quite easily.

But the problem was, making a basement that could hold a caterpillar this size would need quite a lot of magic power. The consumption had to be quite severe…

“Could it be that your magic power amount rivals Maxwell?”
“Well, I have some confidence in that regard. And in hand-to-hand combat.”
“Why aren’t you working as an Adventurer? Seems like a waste…”
“I’ve already grown tired of that.”

While muttering that heroic response, he activated the Portal Gate. I passed through that gate with an annoyed expression.