Aiming for a Cozy Life in a Dangerous Forest in Another World! - Chapter 12
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- Chapter 12 - Let's Think About a Way to Carry Things Back
Chapter 12: Let’s Think About a Way to Carry Things Back
Two hours had passed since I had entered the depths of the forest.
My achievements so far: I successfully hunted three Fangrabbits. Not bad at all.
…Come to think of it, they were rabbits, so was it appropriate to use the counter for birds? Or should I use the one for animals since they were magical beasts?
TL Note: Counters are a Japanese thing, you can ignore this paragraph.
Kaito and Pola were back in the cave working on extracting salt, so I was alone.
Of course, I couldn’t butcher them myself, so I broke off the Fangrabbits’ fangs, roughly sliced open their chests, and somehow managed to extract the fangs and magic stones.
Kaito had used the fangs like a knife, so I figured I could too.
Kaito said magic stones were valuable, and as was typical in light novels, they were usually used for all sorts of things.
…Still, I wasn’t as hesitant as I thought I would be when removing the magic stones from the Fangrabbits. Blood was gushing out, and if this were my previous life, I would have fainted on the spot…
And even fighting. I was terrified when I saved Kaito and Pola, and again when I was attacked earlier, but I quickly jumped into battle…
I might have gone a little overboard with that Forest Tiger though…
…Was it because of 『Mental Resistance』? Did mental attacks include not only magic but also gruesome scenes and primal fears?
And my 『Mental Resistance』 was level 3. Maybe that was it.
Kaito and Pola were frozen in fear when facing the Forest Tiger, but they didn’t hesitate at all when it came to butchering the Fangrabbit and Forest Tiger.
Was this the difference between someone born in this world and me…?
Or were they just more resilient?
As I thought about this, I extracted the magic stone from the third Fangrabbit and burned the rest of its body using 『Fire Magic』.
Initially, I buried them in holes dug with 『Earth Magic』, but dragging the bodies all the way to the hole was quite a hassle.
I just needed to make sure no predators were attracted to the scent of blood. I imagined a gas burner and quickly incinerated the body at high heat.
♢ ♢ ♢
As I searched for my next prey, I wondered if there was a better way to carry back what I hunted.
Right now, the only way to get the meat was to have Kaito butcher it in the forest, which meant I needed him to come with me.
But Kaito wasn’t ready to fight yet. He would only be able to follow me around until I had taken down my prey. That wasn’t very efficient.
…How to carry back my prey.
My first thought was to use 『Earth Magic』 to create something like a cart. I could load the prey onto it and pull it back to the cave.
However, the way I hunted, my prey always ended up bleeding. Or rather, parts of them would be blown off.
The last Fangrabbit I killed only had its lower jaw left…
I was gradually getting a sense of how much force to use, and I didn’t unleash the same firepower as I did with the Forest Tiger, but my aim and speed control were still rough.
I had heard that animals in the forest could smell blood from kilometers away. And this was another world. There could be magical beasts with an incredible sense of smell.
It was too dangerous to drag a bloody carcass through this forest. And I didn’t want to attract magical beasts to the cave.
How about levitating it?
I could manipulate the lumps of earth I created, so maybe I could do the same with my prey? No, that probably wouldn’t work.
I could manipulate the stone bullets I created with 『Earth Magic』, but all I could do was fire them in a straight line at a constant speed. Maybe it would become easier to control as the level went up, but I couldn’t do it at my current level.
And besides, I didn’t think I could manipulate something that wasn’t created with 『Earth Magic』.
Furthermore, even if I could levitate it, it wouldn’t solve the smell problem.
So I needed a way to conceal the smell and move it freely…
It would be great if I could store it in some kind of alternate dimension…
“An Item Box!”
That’s it! A staple of otherworld stories, the Item Box!
The name varied depending on the story, but in my favorite series, it was called an Item Box. It could store an infinite amount of items, and there was no deterioration over time, an all-powerful storage space…
…But how do you even use an Item Box?
I tried to remember if it was on my status screen, but of course, there was no such thing as an Item Box listed.
As usual, I decided to try brute-forcing it with my imagination.
I imagined a hole opening up in the space before me, something that I could put things in…
♢ ♢ ♢
I tried for about 30 minutes, but nothing happened.
Well, that’s to be expected. I told myself, but I was still a little disappointed.
I decided to head back to the cave, turned around, and that’s when it happened.
A small object jumped out from behind a tree.
A magical beast! I thought, immediately preparing to fire a stone bullet – I had decided it sounded cooler as 『Stone Bullet』, and I chanted it too – when…
“A slime? They even exist in this world!”
It was transparent, shaped like a slightly elongated sphere, jiggling and slowly moving forward. It was so cute.
…Come to think of it, all the creatures I had seen in this world had been rather scary.
They were ridiculously large, or had two heads, or long fangs.
Perhaps as a reaction to that, or perhaps because this little guy was inherently adorable, I was completely captivated by the slime before me.
…Pulling myself together, I used 『Appraisal』 on the slime. It’s possible it wasn’t even a slime after all.
♢ ♢ ♢
『??? Slime』
??????????
♢ ♢ ♢
…Huh?
This was the first time I saw “?” for an 『Appraisal』.
Did it fail? No, I could see the “Slime” part, so the rest of it must have failed to… appraise.
Well, it was definitely some kind of slime.
I continued observing it.
It was still jiggling as it moved, crawling along the base of the tree.
…So cute.
As I stared at the slime in a daze, I muttered,
“…I want to keep it as a pet…”
The ground beneath the slime glowed black, and something like a magic circle appeared.
Startled, I backed away from the slime and watched it closely.
It might attack, so I prepared a 『Stone Bullet』, ready to launch it at any moment.
…But it didn’t attack. The slime simply sat there, motionless.
The magic circle slowly rotated, enveloping the slime in black light.
The black light completely engulfed the slime, and then it was gone.