Meanwhile, in the Skyte region, on the field trip campgrounds before the forest along the barrier, the Stewart family had started their morning as early as ever.
“Myah!”
Emma turned around when she heard the cat’s voice coming from the forest. “Oh, General Kongming! Welcome back!”
The cat trotted along and rubbed up against Emma. “Mrowr!”
“Hee hee, did you get a lot of hunting done?”
“Myaaaah!” Kongming purred and meowed in satisfaction.
“Shhh! Kongming, keep it down! Everyone’s gonna hear you!” William, who came rushing out of the forest after Kongming, warned her in a panic. Even if all the students should still be sound asleep this early in the morning, hearing a cat in a place like this was still extremely suspicious.
“Hmm? You sure we can’t just cover it up saying they heard a monster instead of a cat?” George said, flicking monster blood off his katana and sheathing it as he came out of the forest after Kongming and William.
“Meow!”
“Kongming’s saying, ‘Don’t you dare lump me in with those things,’ George!”
“Huh? Aw, I’m sorry, Kongming...” Kongming only meowed once and looked away with a pout, so George apologized. He scratched behind her ears to try and cheer her up. “Don’t be mad at me...”
“Nyah!”
“She says a little more to the right.”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah, yeah...”
“Myah!”
“She says you only need one ‘yeah.’”
“Well, sorry!”
“Keep your voice down, George. You really are going to wake everyone up. These are a bunch of nobles who aren’t used to sleeping like this, after all,” Melsa said as she poked her head out from the carriage. “Hmm? I don’t see Leonard and Arven anywhere...” Her expression grew cold.
“E-Er, so, about that, mother... They might have gotten a little carried away with their hunting...”
“A little?”
“Well, the area near the barrier is smaller than in Pallas, but a lot of the monsters in this forest seem to move in packs...”
Melsa sighed in exasperation and began massaging her temples.
“So they have to move them away before anyone finds them.” After hunting a monster, there were many things that had to be done with the body, so they couldn’t just leave them out.
They were in the tent closest to the forest, so they were secretly sneaking out to hunt monsters while they could. They were able to go at a time where the Skyte hunters on their watch wouldn’t notice them, way early in the morning when everyone was supposed to be asleep.
“With a forest full of monsters, who in their right mind wouldn’t want to go hunting?!” Leonard asked on the first day of the field trip, his eyes glimmering with excitement as he gripped his trusty sledgehammer.
“So true!” George said, with his newly acquired katana from the Eastern Empire, in unison with Arven who had his bow in hand.
It would be no exaggeration to say this was the whole reason they’d wanted to participate in the field trip. Monsters weren’t endangered species or wild animals. They were just monsters. Normally, they could hunt as much as they wanted in other domains and nobody would bat an eye. However, some hunters on the border would get a little defensive of their “territory,” and that was a huge pain. Melsa didn’t want to deal with it, and the Stewart men wanted to hunt, so they came to a compromise that they could go hunting as long as nobody caught them.
However, there were far more monsters in the Skyte forest than they’d expected, and they’d gotten so into the hunt that they didn’t realize just how many they’d hunted. If they left the monsters lying around, the brothers wouldn’t be able to make any excuses for themselves if the Skyte hunters found the corpses. There were also some monsters that had to be handled properly afterward or they could be dangerous, some monsters that could be used for materials, and some monsters that were just too tasty to leave behind... It was far more work to clean up after a hunt than the actual hunt. Even if they could enjoy the food there, they wouldn’t be able to process the hides and the bones and the like, so they had to call a carriage to the campgrounds and send the materials back to the Stewart manor. But with all the hunting they’d inadvertently done, one or two carriages hadn’t been enough to handle it, and the Skyte hunters and citizens’ stares certainly made them feel awkward.
“I’m glad William got to go on his first hunt since Kongming was here, but...that just made it so we hunted even more monsters...” While Kongming was better-behaved than the mischievous little Guan, she still had been hiding in the carriage all afternoon and was using the vast herds of monsters in the forest to let off some steam.
“All I could really do was set traps, though... I was terrible at actually fighting.” William drooped his shoulders. It would be impossible for him to move like his brother did.
“Myah!”
Kongming had come along with them on the field trip, declaring herself Emma’s guardian. While the other three cats had insisted they wanted to come along as well, it would have been too difficult for them to hide three giant cats. However, no matter how much they’d tried to persuade her, Kongming had not relented.
“Myah myah myah!” Kongming had brought the field trip paperwork to the family and placed her paw on the last line for emphasis.
“Let’s see... Families who own trained hunting dogs may bring one along.”
“Hunting dogs?”
“Myah myah!”
“She says she’s a hunting cat!”
Kongming had proudly meowed and Emma had translated as always.
“Oooh! Yeah, that makes sense!”
The whole family seemed to be completely fine with the fact that the cat had been able to read the paper in the first place. Since the maids had all been on vacation and thus unable to interject on the matter, Kongming had been allowed to attend.
“Well, let’s get started, then. We’ve got some field dressing to get to, don’t we? We won’t be able to finish by breakfast if we don’t hop to it.” Melsa sighed, rolled up her sleeves, and gave her children instructions. She was sure her husband and brother-in-law would be back soon with plenty of monsters to deal with.