“Sara.”
This time, Sara knew exactly what the exhausted Elm wanted from her.
“Yeeep. I’ll go over there and act as bait.”
Sara walked away from the group and stood by herself in the meadow, and horned rabbits swarmed her immediately.
Wham! Wham, wham!
“Sara!” Ann cried as the horned rabbits rammed her with incredible strength and were knocked back with that exact same force.
“Horned rabbits are monsters. Dangerous ones that are difficult for rookies to hunt,” Haruto explained.
“What...? But they’re so cute...”
“Flame bats are cute too, but they’re also monsters, aren’t they?”
Sara thought it probably varied from person to person if you thought flame bats were cute or not.
“Listen, in this world, no matter how cute they are, monsters are fundamentally creatures that cause harm to humans. You can give one affection, but it will never show affection in return. They’re not pets, they’re creatures to be hunted.”
Even the wolves tried to eat Sara whenever they thought they stood a chance. No matter how cute they were or how attached to her they might seem to be, they only had a truce with Sara because of her barrier.
“Even in the capital, when there’s an outbreak of a bunch of these, the knights will be sent out to hunt them. People get hurt when that happens.”
Sara exchanged a quiet glance with Allen. They were both remembering the knights who had come back to Rosa from the eastern meadow after getting done in by horned rabbits.
“With your current abilities, you probably couldn’t even scratch one with your fists or with a sword. Ahem.”
Elm cleared his throat at the end, probably remembering how Ann had been fine picking one up from behind just a second ago, even if that one had been weakened.
Ann deflated again, and Elm cleared his throat once more, asking her, “By the way, you were just holding one. Are you okay? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”
Sara gasped as well, hurriedly taking a potion out of the pouch on her waist. She’d forgotten, since no one in this group ever got themselves hurt, but she was an apothecary, and she made potions to heal people who were hurt, not just because it was fun.
“Nelly taught me to always use physical strengthening when I touch monsters, so I’m okay.”
Ann was putting what Nelly had taught her two years ago into practice. Sara looked up at the sky and sent that thought to the faraway Nelly. She’d put it in a letter to her later too. Nelly was sure to be happy about that.
“She said I’m an Invited like Sara, so I shouldn’t have to worry about my mana running out, and it would be good training to always have physical strengthening active if I could manage it.”
“So are you still using it now?” Sara asked excitedly, putting the potion away. She herself had hardly ever used physical strengthening for anything other than running.
“Yes. But lately I’ve been consciously switching it on and off so that I can make sure I can use it in an emergency.”
“I see.”
As far as physical strengthening was concerned, Ann seemed to be way ahead of Sara already, since she was specialized in protecting herself with her barrier.
“So, Ann...” Elm cleared his throat again and continued, “Did you see how the horned rabbits attacked Sara earlier?”
“Yes.”
Sara herself hadn’t seen much of anything. All she had was the impression that some large grey objects were crashing into her with incredible strength.
“Do you think you could take one down?”
Ann looked down for a second before raising her head once more. “Yes.”
“Even if they’re cute?”
It was a harsh question to ask a child who had just embraced one in delight at how soft it was, but Ann looked Elm in the eyes and nodded her head.
“Yes. I understand that they’re monsters.”
“Then...” Elm indicated the meadow. “Can you try?”
“Yes.”
“With a sword, or your hands?”
“A sword.”
Wait a second! Sara thought to herself as Ann stood on her own in the place Elm had indicated, sword in hand. Sure, she was training with a sword, but like she’d just remembered, horned rabbits were dangerous creatures who could injure even knights.
It was dangerous, so she wanted to stop her. She wanted to stop her, but what should she do?
Sara looked to Allen without thinking. He lifted the corners of his lips a bit and shook his head. He was saying she shouldn’t stop her. Allen and Kuntz had trained with her, so they would know more about her capabilities than Sara.
Sara reminded herself that Allen had been sending horned rabbits flying even before obtaining his hunting license. Ann wouldn’t be fending off an endless wave of them like Allen had back then. She was just facing off against one enemy in a meadow without too many monsters around. Sara told herself that it was okay, resisting the urge to extend her barrier out to protect Ann.
“They swarm around immediately when Sara stands out there, but...”
At Elm’s words, Sara glanced up at the sky. Naturally, there weren’t any wyverns there. There were just normal birds flying around.
She looked back down at Ann and saw her body tensing. There was a horned rabbit nearby...apparently. Sara couldn’t sense it at all.
“Hah!”
Sara couldn’t even tell what Ann had done. It just looked like she’d lowered her hips and held her sword out in front of her. But before she knew it, there was a horned rabbit impaled on the end of her blade, and she was already pulling her sword out of it.
Ann swung her sword to flick the blood off of it and turned to Elm. “Should I butcher it too?”
“No, leave that to the professionals. Store it right away, or the scent of blood will draw more of them.”
“Okay.”
Ann dutifully stuffed the large horned rabbit into her storage pouch. Then she jogged over to Sara and hugged her tight.
“That was scary... Ugh!”
Ann shivered, her body underlining the words that had inadvertently come from her lips. Sara gave her a pat on the back. She didn’t know if she wanted to comfort her or calm her down, but she felt a bit relieved for some reason at Ann’s trembling. She found herself wanting Ann to struggle a bit with the idea of taking a life, instead of being instantly okay with it.
“They’re monsters, they’re monsters. They’re not rabbits. They are rabbits, but they’re not rabbits,” Ann muttered to herself.
Sara continued gently patting her back, thinking back to how it had been for her the first time. She had had a slightly different reaction than Ann, she thought. For Sara, other than the mountain wolves, monsters had been things Nelly hunted for food. And after she became able to use her barrier, many monsters had self-destructed against her, but she didn’t have to see their blood like Ann did when using a sword. She’d killed monsters actively as well, but it had never been bloody and she’d gotten the chance to get used to it little by little. In that sense, maybe killing your first monster with a sword was an incredibly difficult thing to do.
“Good job, Ann,” Elm said.
Ann rubbed her eyes and said, “Thanks!” in response. Her voice was loud, but it was trembling a bit.
“Tell me how you beat it.”
Apparently just killing it wasn’t the end. There was a review session as well. The road to being a Hunter was a harsh one.
“When they attacked Sara, I noticed that they used their back legs to jump high up to attack. They don’t go for the legs, but attack the torso.”
Sara hadn’t even noticed that herself.
“Their sharp teeth might be dangerous too, but the horns are the biggest danger. I thought about how to dodge their first strike and counterattack and decided to use their momentum against them if they’re going to jump at me. So I kept my sword low and then just lifted it up when the horned rabbit jumped.”
Sara could only be impressed.
“Hmm. So you could see how they moved.”
“Yes.”