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「It’s an egg.」
「It’s an egg alright ~」
「It’s… an egg?」
「It’s definitely an egg.」
「It can’t be anything but an egg.」

Anyways, we were baffled. The thing in front of us is unmistakably an egg. But its size is abnormal. There are two big eggs, black and white, probably as big as a wheel of a 4-ton truck. If we hug our knees, someone as small as me or Urania could probably fit in snugly.

「I’m just asking, but are monsters born from eggs?」
「You can say that they both are and aren’t born from eggs.」
「Why’s that?」
「A part of it is because we still don’t understand the monster’s cycle of life, but…」

Starting with that, Grimhart begins to explain.

As mentioned earlier, a certain amount of Mana is needed to give birth to a monster, but the resulting type of monster is influenced by the place, environment, and the concentration of Mana.

If it’s in the forest areas, it would result in wolf or bear-types like Growleu and Marguhlus, but on old battlefields and graveyards, undead-types like ghouls or wraiths would mostly spring forth.

These kinds of monsters are fundamentally created on the spot. According to a certain adventurer who saw it, it seems like a Magic core just comes nowhere, collects Mana and forms into the shape of a Goblin.

However, there were also sightings of monsters hatching from eggs. According to the adventurer who witnessed it, 「When I entered a room in the Dungeon, the ceiling and the walls were tightly packed with a ton of black eggs. Then all of a sudden they just started cracking open, and all at once the damn ugly Goblins started to burst out」 or so.

Both of them were talking specifically about Goblins. No one knows what differed in both cases. There are some theories like maybe there’s a difference in strength or something, or maybe there are certain regions that gave birth to eggs. In the end, it’s still a mystery.

「And so?」
「There’s probably no doubt that these are a Monster’s egg. At the very least, it’s impossible for any normal animal or Magic Beast to have an egg this huge. If it’s a Dragon-class beast, then the size would still make sense, but I’ve never heard of any rumors about Dragons living on this mountain. Well, I have absolutely no clue on what kind of monster it is, though.」
「Well, that’s normal……Huh?」
「What’s wrong?」

While listening to Grimhart, I approached the eggs to examine it. I didn’t notice from the front, but there’s a huge hole on the other side of the eggs. Both of them are already empty and all that’s left are just the eggshells.

「There’s nothing inside. It looks like they’ve already hatched.」
「That may be what’s causing the problem.」
「Do newborn monsters have that much strength?」
「A monster’s strength is usually decided the moment it is born. There are also monsters that grow, but those are exceptions. Generally, they already have the strength to fight the moment they’re born.」

In that case, there’s a high chance that whatever caused the commotion was the newborn here. Still, there are eggshells left, but there aren’t any traces of the monsters moving. If it was something that can fly, then it would make sense, but that would make them practically impossible for us to find.

「For now, we have no choice but to bring these eggshells home and try following the footsteps, right?」
「Yeah. Gray! … isn’t here. Lysha, can you do it?」
「Leave it to me! Rather, I’m almost done checking.」

By the way, the person in charge of investigating is Gray for “Grim” and Bia for “Fyne”, but if anything ever happens to the two of them, just in case, it seems that Lysha and Audrey also knows how to do the investigating.

In these kinds of things, you can really see why they’re C-Rank adventurers. They’ve already taken a certain member’s absence or unexpected situations into consideration. However, having Lysha take Gray’s place feels a bit problematic, but it’s a lot better than having the relatively clumsy Arisa or Grimhart, who basically answers anything with guts, to do the job.

Following Lysha’s lead, we go deeper into the mountain road. This mountain doesn’t really have any proper road, though. While traveling along what could be barely called an animal trail, we cut through what I can only think of as randomly growing thickets.

And after a while, we finally arrived at a somewhat familiar-looking place.

At this time I finally noticed that these four footprints were those of the four bandits that were about to assault me from before.