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「Sh!」

Together with Urania’s quick exhale, the short sword she’s pushed out splendidly sank completely into the Growleu’s neck. Naturally, the Growleu didn’t go down without a fight and was about to slash Urania with its claws, but I won’t let that happen.

「I ask, obstruct the fangs of evil! “Wall”!」

As its name suggests, “Wall” is a Magic that creates walls. Not only does the wall physically exist, its strength changes by the amount of Magic Power loaded into it. And since my Magic Power is practically inexhaustible, far from the wall being destroyed just by some wolf’s claws, it’s the claws that ended up breaking.

And same as my other Magic, I can control the size of the wall to some extent. The one I made just now is a small wall floating in midair. The location itself is fixed on where it was created, so no matter how much impact it takes, it won’t move an inch. I made it sync with the Growleu’s claw attack, and once the Growleu turns defenseless after hitting it, I made the wall disappear. By doing it this way, I can protect Urania without hindering her movements.

With the Growleu faltering after breaking its claws, Urania swiftly went on its back while using the stabbed dagger to cut its neck. Receiving a fatal wound in a blink of an eye, the Growleu’s large body trembled only once before it collapsed.

「Nice, we did it!」
「Nn! Nice assist!」

Urania and I exchanged a high five. It was our first battle, but we tried fighting a Growleu with Urania as the attacker and me as support. As one may expect from a D Rank Adventurer, without faltering, Urania plunged herself directly in front of the huge wolf.

And even though it should’ve been easy for her to dodge the Growleu’s claws if she wanted to, she deliberately stood her ground. As though she’s testing me, asking me 「Now, what will you do?」. As a result, it seems like I’ve managed to pass Urania’s test. Well, from now on I’d like her to stop doing that sort of dangerous things, so I think I’ll need to have a word with her after this.

「Hey? Just the right ear’s fine for the Growleu’s proof of subjugation, right?」
「Nn, that’s right. But if there’s still some storage space, it’s better to bring it whole.」
「Well that’s true.」

The proof of subjugation is something brought back in case you’ve subjugated a monster designated by the guild. Generally, it’s the right ear and the Magic Core. Bringing those back will allow you to get the subjugation reward even without taking a request. The monsters designated for subjugation like the Goblins, Growleus, and the like seem to be mostly the type monsters that have their strength rise sharply when they swarm together. Among them are also monsters like Wyverns, Cockatrices, and such that are too dangerous just by themselves, but basically at times that monsters like these appear, it seems that a Compulsory Request is issued.

Goblins, Growleu, and the likes grow stronger when they swarm. And when the swarm grows to a certain extent, one of them will evolve into a higher species, and the swarm grows even stronger. Since repeating that process can end up powering them up endlessly, there’s a need to strike them down while they’re still weak. Hence the subjugation designation.

But of course, there’s only a few Mages that can use Storage. And even for those Storage users, keeping all the corpses of a swarm of Gobins or Growleus is pretty difficult. That’s why as the proof of their subjugation, the guild recommends bringing only the right ear and the Magic Core that all monsters necessarily have. Not bringing back the Magic Core itself is fine, but it generally sells for a high price so it’s better to bring it back. And it seems that the reason for it being the right ear is that it’s the easiest way to distinguish the monster.

If I remember, everyone from “Grim March” also brought back the frozen Goblins’ right ears. Still, I felt a little sorry when the knife they used to cut off the ears cracked due to my “Freeze”. We managed to take it somehow when I cancelled “Freeze” on just the right ears, but I don’t feel like I’ll ever forget the look on everybody’s faces that time.

「We’ve already collected the Ria fruit and Mufla Grass, and we got some souvenirs too. Shall we stop here and go home for today?」
「Let’s. We should make it before evening now. A full-blown exploration after proper preparations might be nice too.」
「Still, needing to prepare food for the trip is pretty troublesome. Well, we’ll probably manage somehow.」

Yup, I’m a bit hungry too and we’ve already acquired the requested items, it should be fine to stop here. From tomorrow on, let’s start preparing for an all-out dungeon exploration while taking on different kind of requests. From how today went, I feel like the monsters won’t pose any problems until we reach at least the middle layer.

「Hm?」
「Gazes?」
「That’s right. But, it feels different from the ones earlier.」
「Nn, might be better to stay on guard.」

Urania and I felt an unpleasant gaze at roughly the same time. Though the gazes we’ve been showered earlier this morning may have been vulgar, they weren’t any hint of hostility and malice. If I had to say, they were gazes of interest and curiosity. However, this one’s clearly full of hatred. The people who would point that kind of gaze at us…… It’s probably only them, huh. But resenting us because of that is completely unjustified, you know?

「What should we do?」
「If they’re just staring at us, then just ignoring them is fine. Let’s just stay on guard and if anything happens, we turn the tables on them.」
「Nn, understood.」

Well, let’s hurry and head back to Motsi City. I expect that they probably aren’t stupid enough to start something in the middle of the town and it doesn’t matter much anyway since the idiots don’t even realize that we’ve noticed them. More importantly, I’m hungry. I wonder what the “Grey Cat’s Inn” has for dinner tonight? Even now I’m really looking forward to it.