Considering how big the monsters were, I found it very hard to believe that there were all that many of them out there. They’d already escaped extinction thanks to Gon deciding to spare them once, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if they ended up getting wiped out anyway just so he could feel satisfied after a hunting trip.
“There is no cause for concern. There are still more of them,” Fel said.
“Quite! I sense younger ones in the vicinity as well,” Gon noted.
“Well, good. But you still only get one each, okay?” I insisted. Gon and Fel somewhat begrudgingly agreed.
I put the dragon turtle that Dora-chan and Sui had taken down into my Item Box, and then we headed off toward the prey that Fel had located for himself. Spotting our next enormous target did not take long.
“That’s another big one, all right,” I marveled. It was a little smaller than the first dragon turtle we’d come across, but ginormous was ginormous no matter how you sliced it. Just like that first turtle, it had apparently sensed that Fel and Gon were way too dangerous to take on and had already withdrawn into its shell.
“My turn has come!”
A trio of booms rang out, followed by the crackling of electricity, as three lightning bolts struck the turtle’s shell one after another.
“Holy—” I yelped. Between the flash of light and the booming roar, it felt like I’d just been flashbanged. I clamped my eyes shut, covered my ears with my hands, and curled up in a ball on the ground to brace myself for the next impact.
“What are you doing? It is already over,” Fel grunted.
I timidly opened up my eyes...and saw that the dragon turtle’s shell had been split clean in half.
“You broke a shell that was that hard wide open with only a couple hits?” I muttered, dumbstruck by what I was seeing.
Fel smirked proudly. “This is but a taste of my true capabilities,” he boasted.
Oh. Good for you...
《Tch! I hate to admit it, but you’re really something else, Fel,》 Dora-chan said.
《Wooo! You’re amazing, Uncle Fel!》 Sui added.
“It is a given, really,” Fel replied. I could tell that he was eating their praise right up.
“And that makes it my turn now!”
Oh, right! That was so crazy, I almost forgot that Gon was still planning on hunting one. I’d had more than enough hunting for a good long time after the first two, and part of me wished he’d be willing to just call it a day after all...but in the end, I stored Fel’s dragon turtle in my Item Box and followed along as Gon sought out his own prey.
“I’ll be claiming that one, I believe,” Gon said, gesturing toward our third hill of the day. This one looked about as big as Fel’s had been. “And with that, the hunt is on!”
Gon’s size began to shift. He grew larger and larger until he finally reached his true size. He grabbed onto the dragon turtle with his razor-sharp claws and took off, pulling it up, up, up into the air.
“Whoa, hold on! What does he think he’s doing?” I said. He’d flown up so high that I could barely see him. He was nothing more than a tiny speck in the wide-open sky...and then, suddenly, two specks. “Huh?”
As best as I could tell, Gon had just dropped something.
“Wait. What did...? Oh—”
BOOOOOOOOOM!
“Aaaugh!”
《Whoa!》
《Yiiikes!》
A burst of wind nearly strong enough to knock me off my feet slammed into us, followed a moment later by a cloud of dust so thick I couldn’t see a thing through it. Since I was still riding on Fel’s back, I clung to his fur for dear life, with Dora-chan and Sui hanging on right next to me.
Eventually, the wind died down. Fel made his way deeper into the cloud of dust, coming to a stop in front of a massive indentation in the ground. “Tch! Choose your methods with more discretion, old one. That was barbaric,” he said.
A moment later, Gon—once again in his smaller form—appeared from within the still lingering dust cloud. “You hardly have a right to criticize, Fel!” he said. “And besides, this is a tried-and-true method of dealing with hard-shelled foes.”
I could feel my expression spasming as I peered into the crater. As the dust settled, the form of the fallen dragon turtle gradually came to view, its legs splayed out motionlessly and its shell shattered into an uncountable number of tiny pieces. I was...speechless. Just speechless.
“Hey...Gon?” I finally said.
“Yes, my liege?”
“What the hell was that?! You call that hunting?!”
《Woo, nice one! I can’t believe I didn’t think of dropping ours! Now that’s how dragons go hunting! I wanna try it too!》 Dora-chan exclaimed.
《Uncle Gon, you’re amazing!》 Sui said.
“Hah hah! Aren’t I just?”
“Oh, yeah! Super amazing! What an innovative hunting style...not! Stop celebrating, guys!”
“Hmph! I wholeheartedly agree. I, after all, was far more impressive.”
“That is not the point! That was just...just way too much...” Way to make me feel sorry for a dragon turtle, Gon! “We are never, ever coming back here again!”
“What? Why not?”
“Yes, why? We can’t hunt any more dragon turtles unless we return here, my liege!”
《Yeah, what they said! We finally found something to hunt that’s actually a challenge! Sui and I were working so well together!》
《Sui wants to try beating one of them on Sui’s own next time!》
“Shut up, you four! Never again! We are never hunting dragon turtles ever again!”
“I fail to understand your reasoning.”
“Indeed! Dragon turtles are delicious. Why ever not?”
Oh, for the—we already got three! That should be enough to last us forever! I just saw you jab one with spears before nearly decapitating it, blast another three times with lightning, then blow another into a billion pieces with a multikilometer drop! You expect me to watch all that again?!
“Nope! My foot is down! No more dragon turtles!”
Forgive me, dragon turtles! I am so, so sorry! I know that every time Gon’s turned up, he’s put your species at risk of extinction, but I swear I’m never letting him or the others come here again! You can enjoy the rest of your lives in peace and quiet!
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ugggh, I’m exhausted,” I groaned as I stepped back into the house I’d rented.
“Exhausted? From what? You did nothing at all.”
“Which is exhausting sometimes, thank you very much!” I snapped at Fel. Sitting back and watching you four go to town on whatever poor creature you decide to hunt is really mentally tiring. Not that I’d expect you to understand that!
《We gotta hit that place up again sometime, right?》 Dora-chan said.
《Yeah!》 Sui agreed. 《Sui’s gonna beat one up alone next time!》
《Same!》
“No! I already told you guys, we are not going back there again!”
《Booo,》 Dora-chan and Sui griped in unison.
“If you’re concerned about the dragon turtles’ extinction, my liege, then there’s no need for you to worry,” Gon chimed in. “There were considerably more of them around than there were the last time I visited their territory, after all.”
“Gon speaks the truth. I sensed reasonably ample quantities of them remaining.”
“That’s not the problem! I mean, okay, that’s part of the problem, but the bigger issue’s that I can’t stand watching you guys one-sidedly slaughter them like that! Don’t you feel bad for the dragon turtles at all?”
《Hey, if it’s one-sided, that’s just ’cause of how awesome we are. Right, Sui?》 Dora-chan said with a very smug grin.
《Yeah! Sui’s super strong!》 Sui proudly agreed.
“Indeed. We cannot help the fact that we are far mightier than our foes,” Fel said with a nod.
“Such is the fate of the strong, I’m afraid. Frankly, Fel and I in particular would be very hard-pressed to find anything capable of fighting on even footing with us. Such foes are so rare that they might as well not even exist,” Gon noted.
He had a point. Dora-chan and Sui were ridiculously powerful, but they still couldn’t hold a candle to Fel and Gon. There was just no matching a fenrir and an ancient dragon. I was painfully aware of that fact, but it didn’t make their hunts any less unsettling.
“That said, my liege, have our hunts not always been one-sided?” Gon added.
“You’re not wrong, but this was sort of different. It wasn’t like the dragon turtles were itching for a fight, were they? They knew they stood no chance against you and went into full-defense mode,” I said. Every single one of the turtles we’d encountered had already withdrawn fully into their shells by the time we found them. “But you guys just went ahead and brutalized them anyway! Of course I feel sorry for them.”
《I mean, that’s hunting for you. The strong eat the weak—pretty sure we’ve made that clear by now! You just get all emotional and overthink stuff for the weirdest reasons. You gotta work on that!》 Dora-chan said, flapping up next to my face and grinding his little fist into my cheek as he lectured me.
“Indeed. Dora has the right of it.”
“I quite agree!”
Of course the two of you would be with him on this. Also... “Would you cut that out?! Leave my cheek alone!” You may be tiny, but you’re way too strong for this, Dora-chan!
《Heh heh heh! My bad, my bad,》 Dora-chan said.
✦ ✦ ✦
