LEGEND

Chapter 167

「Oh, this is quite unusual. Set isn’t with you today?」

At the main gate of Gilm, Rei nodded at the familiar face of Ranga as he took his guild card out of the Misty Ring and handed it over.

「Yeah. He was kinda sleepy, he should still be sleeping at the stables of the inn.」

Technically, the Griffons had almost no need for sleep. However, that didn’t mean that they couldn’t. In the end, it wasn’t a necessity to sleep, but the act of sleeping itself was still plenty enjoyable. Especially since Set wasn’t a natural-born monster but a Griffon born from the Magic Beast Art, he enjoyed his sleep.

「Is that so. So, you are with those three today?」

「Yes. But we’re not doing a request together but a request that I issued.」

「That you issued?」

「It’s a request to strip the materials from the monsters I killed. Since there are so many of them, doing them by myself would be difficult, so I posted a request in the Guild. Because of the large quantity, doing it in the city would be dangerous. Because of that, we are going to do it somewhere a bit further from here.」

「…You sure that’s a good idea? If you stray too far from the city, monsters will be attracted by the smell of blood.」

Ranga asked him in worry, but Rei gave a smile.

「These guys are D ranked adventures, so any monsters around this city wouldn’t be a problem. Plus I’m also going with them.」

Rei replied as he received his Guild Card back.

(I thought I’d leave everything to them when I issued the request, but after thinking about it, I decided it would be a good chance to learn how to strip off monsters that aren’t included in my beginner’s book. Fortunately, Scola seems to know how to strip materials from most monsters.)

He nodded at himself in his mind while looking at the other three, who were having their Guild Cards checked by other guards.

「Is that so. Well, be careful then. …Oh right, I almost forgot to say this. You were a great help with the yesterday’s matter.」

Rei tilted his head due to suddenly being told that.

「Yesterday’s matter?」

「Yes. Talking about the Azoth Firm. Even we were told many unreasonable things until now. We’re delighted that we don’t have to go through that anymore.」

Rei wondered why he knew about it, but it was the knight order that did the investigation. He judged that it wasn’t so surprising that Ranga, being the guard captain, was aware of that information.

「It was partly just the course of events that led to it, so don’t worry too much about it. Rather, are we free to go?」

「Yes, no problems here. Then, take care. It would be dangerous to let down your guard, even if it’s you we’re talking about.」

After being told so by Ranga, Rei left the city along with Culotte and the others who also finished their procedures.

He saw a caravan headed towards Gilm, but seeing as they were likely involved with the Azoth Firm’s weapon trade, they were going to be in for quite a surprise. Rei smiled while thinking of that.

「So, we’ve left the city but how far are we supposed to go exactly?」

「Hmm, well, at the very least, any place where people entering the city won’t see the blood would do…」

Rei glanced towards the woods located beside the highway.

When it came to forests, since they were full of trees, monsters were bound to live there. However, taking into account that it was close to the city, there should only be low-rank monsters there. Rei judged that to be the case and headed towards the woods while still taking out his Death Scythe just in case.

「Inside those woods it is. Even if anything is attracted by the smell of blood, they would just be low-rank monsters or wild animals, and they can clean up all the monster parts that we don’t need if we just leave them there. No well, I still plan to clean things up as much as I can.」

「True, even without extra weapons and armour we can still somehow deal with the nearby monsters. Arogan, your magic sword has the highest offensive power among us, so I’ll be expecting good work from you if push comes to shove.」

「Hmph. I think my magic sword is too good for those small fries. But, fine.」

Arogan showed a confident smile as he lightly tapped at the scabbard of his magic sword hanging from his side. However, even that smile of his hardened with Culotte’s following line.

「Well, with Rei being here, no nearby monsters can be our opponents anyway.」

「…Culotte. Why are you saying things that will crush your comrade’s spirit like that…」

「Eh? Did I say something strange?」

「No, it’s fine. That’s how Culotte is.」

They walked into the woods for about ten minutes while continuing their silly chatter. Rei’s group discovered a water source that was narrow, but still wide enough to be called a river, and decided to do their work there.

「It’s not that cold now since it’s still noon, but the evenings this season tend to be quite cold. Let’s try to finish it as soon as we can.」

「That’s true. When it’s cold, having a burning hot soup and drinking it as it cools down feels great. Let’s do our best today for a tasty evening meal. Rei, Take out the monsters.」

「Right. Then, we’ll start with this for now. The magic stone has already been removed so I’ll be leaving the rest to you.」

Saying that, Rei took out the Ogre corpse from the Misty Ring. Its head was severed starting from its right shoulder, and the blood was also fully drained.

Seeing that, Scola gave a small nod.

「Wow, this is big even for an Ogre. We don’t have to worry about draining its blood, this looks like it will be an easy job. Arogan, deal with its skin. Culotte, you take its right ear, which is the proof of subjugation, and the skull, which fetches a high price. …Also, don’t forget the tendons in its legs, they can also be sold at a high price. It’s sad, but that’s all the materials we can get from this one. What do we do with its flesh? Just saying, if you plan to sell a C rank monster’s flesh, it canl be sold at a considerably high price.」

Rei looked with admiration at Aragon’s skill, as he quickly removed its skin, and Culotte, who was dealing with its head, following Scola’s instruction. However, Scola’s question brought back his attention.

「Y-Yes. Sorry, but can you cut it up into sizable chunks. After all, I’ve got a monster with me. I’ll use it as food for him.」

「Ah, you mean Set. There have been various rumours about him in the city.」

It seemed that even they had heard rumours about Rei and Set after all, given that they were also working as adventurers in Gilm.

Scola spoke while skinning the Ogre’s right arm with a knife after he finished giving instructions.

Rei nodded as he observed the three, making mental notes about the proper way of removing skin, what materials could be sold and other things.

「He’s got a big body, after all. The amount of food he needs is correspondingly large.」

「…That’s true.」

After Scola nodded, they barely talked any more and merely concentrated on removing the skin, and thus the surroundings got wrapped in silence.

Meanwhile, since the blood drifting around was bound to cause some sort of effect, Rei had been acting vigilantly towards the surroundings. However, perhaps it should be expected from their skill, he still couldn’t hide his surprise when he witnessed that gigantic Ogre being taken apart in less than 30 minutes.

Afterwards, they dug an appropriately deep hole and threw everything unusable, mainly internal organs and bones, into it before moving on to the next one.

「Next is…this one, it’s not a high ranked monster, but there’s a lot of them.」

While saying that, he took out the Water Monkeys from the Misty Ring.

Seeing the monsters appearing one after another without stop, all the members of Eternal Power were dumbfounded. In the end, Scola came to his senses first.

「Um, sorry. I didn’t expect this amount. …Give me a minute. These are Water Monkeys, right? First would be its fur that has water resistance. Its right ear is the proof of subjugation. These are the only valuable things I guess.」

When Scola told him that, Rei knit his brows.

「My book said that their eyes would also be sold as materials though?」

「Eh? Wait a minute. Uhh… Their eyeballs aren’t of any use from what I know. Can you show me your book for a bit, Rei? Ah, Culotte and Argon deal with the blood draining for now.」

「Sure. Setting aside the eyes, for now, I’ll cut off all of their right ears. …Hey, Rei. What about their Magic Stones?」

Rei gave Culotte a small nod as he retrieved the book from the Misty Ring.

「Unlike the Ogre, I haven’t collected the Magic Stones from them, so I entrust that to you.」

「Got it. …Even so, what a crazy number of them. Did you really defeat all of these, Rei?」

While leaking a little mutter, she proceeded to hang the Water Monkeys by their ankles on the rope the prepared in advance. Arogan as well, despite the number of monsters making him tedious, hanged them upside down on the nearby trees and slit their throats to drain blood.

「Good grief. Usually, you wouldn’t carry so many monster corpses around, not to mention that they’d even rot. This is why the Item Box holders are so…」

Culotte and Arogan. These two had some similar aspects to each other.

As Rei thought so, he opened the book in hand and showed the page that depicted Water Monkeys to Scola.

「Look, it clearly says that eyeballs can also be sold.」

「…Hmm, you are right. But the book I have didn’t say anything about eyeballs. I think the one who wrote either this or my book has made a transcribing error.」

Scola muttered with a sigh.

In this other world of Elgin, where the printing technology hadn’t been invented, books were mainly manuscripts. With that being the case, it was no surprise for the writers of those manuscripts to make mistakes.

「…What should we do?」

「Well, Let’s take them in any case. There’s a lot of them, after all. It would be quite a loss if we didn’t take them but later it turned out that they were actually sellable.」

「Okay, got it. Do you have a container to store them?」

「Yeah.」

After all, Rei had the Misty Ring - a magic item that could be said to be a cheat item in a way. Taking into account that it could even store the corpses of defeated monsters, he had quite a lot of consumables prepared to be used for stripping materials. Especially now that he had already known about the number of defeated monsters in the Dungeon, he didn’t make any mistakes with his preparations.

He took out containers for the eyes one after another and gathered them on the ground.

「Then, let’s pick up the pace. Eyeballs need a certain level of delicate approach, so I’ll take over that job. I’ll also deal with their right ears that serve as proofs of subjugation. Culotte you deal with skinning and Arogan you cut up its flesh and collect the Magic Stones.」

Following his instructions, they proceeded to strip materials off the Water Monkey corpses that were already drained of blood. You could almost call it machine-like precision. It was honestly an order of magnitude better than what Rei, who felt that he had become skilled at stripping materials in his own way lately, was capable of.

Meanwhile, Rei continued storing all the eyeballs, skins and Magic Stones that they obtained inside the Misty Ring one after another. Naturally, the useless internal organs were thrown into a hole similar to the Ogre’s.

While their individual heights didn’t even reach up to the Ogre’s knees, their numbers easily surpassed 50. Because of that, by the time they finished stripping materials from every single Water Money, almost two hours had already passed.

「…It’s donee!」

After being done with stripping the materials from the final Water Monkey, Culotte shouted without thinking.

It couldn’t be helped since they’ve been stripping materials from the same type of monster all this time. She washed her hands and rinsed the attached blood in the nearby river.

「Good work. Let’s take a little rest for now. Here, drink this.」

Saying that, Rei and took out the meat and vegetable soup from the Misty Ring, put it onto plates and distributed it to everyone.

Even Aragon who wasn’t on such good terms with Rei accepted it without a single complaint. Perhaps it was proof that he also wanted to take a break. After they washed all the blood off their hands in the river, they proceeded to eat the soup.

「But still. Aragon said it earlier, but item boxes sure are a great thing.」

Culotte muttered while eating the soup. She looked towards Rei’s right hand where the Misty Ring was.

「Indeed. It’s so enviable that you don’t have to worry about monster corpses rotting and stuff. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about being attacked by other monsters while stripping the materials from them.」

「I admit that it’s a handy tool, but because of that it also causes too much trouble since people tend to aim for it.」

Bolton’s face appeared in Rei’s mind.

By the time Bolton was arrested, the date had already changed over. In other words, that meant that the 『Flame of Condemnation』 that Rei use on him would take effect starting from tonight.

(…Now, will you be able to bear the pain of being burned from the inside for the sins you have committed, I wonder? Well, you won’t be able to die from that pain no matter what, so you have no choice but to endure it.)

「Rei, you are showing a sinister smile, you know.」

While remembering the miserable end of Bolton, who reaped what he sowed, he suddenly heard Culotte’s voice.

Realizing that he smiled without noting it, Rei tried to dodge the matter and started tidying up the empty plates.

「Now, next would be Harpies. There are quite a few of them too, but not to the level of Water Monkeys so you can rest easy.」

He shrewdly took out the monsters he had defeated outside the Dungeon, starting the material stripping once again.