I jumped as I heard a rustling off in the distance, followed by some sort of snapping sound. “H-Hey, did you hear that? Are you sure we’re okay out here?” I asked.
“It was just the sounds of the woods, my liege. There’s no need for you to be quite this frightened,” Gon commented, sounding a little exasperated.
“Can you really blame me?! You’re the ones who keep threatening my life!” I fired back as I carefully surveyed my surroundings.
《Heh heh heh!》 Dora-chan chuckled. 《Okay, but seriously, you’re being even jumpier than usual this time! C’mon, you’ve got us here with you. What could go wrong?》
《Sui’ll protect you, Master!》
“Oh, Sui, you’re the only one who’s always nice to me! Thank youuu! I’m counting on you!” I said as I hugged the slime, who was currently riding on Fel’s back along with me.
“You never cease to impress, in a very particular way,” Fel commented with a fed up sigh.
Excuse me? Rude!
“I hardly think we threatened you,” Gon said, awkwardly scratching his cheek with a claw.
I’d ended up going out on the hunt alongside my familiars this time. I’d been planning on waiting somewhere while they went out and ran wild at first. Between dealing with the nerve-racking experience of sitting around on my own, or following them and confronting ultra-dangerous monsters face-to-face, I had decided that quietly waiting around with only my anxiety to keep me company was the lesser of two evils by at least a slight margin. I’d known that Fel’s and Gon’s barriers would keep me safe, after all.
When I had proposed that plan, however, Fel and Gon had asked me if I was really sure about it. I asked them why I wouldn’t be, and they went on to present a laundry list of reasons—“The monsters in this vicinity tend to be carnivorous,” “They’re hardly the smartest, but they tend to be quite ferocious,” “We will raise barriers, of course, and you will not be eaten, even in the worst of cases,” “But—and please don’t take offense, my liege—they’re likely to see you as easy prey and gather up en masse to attempt to devour you,” and “Though we will ensure they cannot touch you, we cannot prevent them from warring with one another once they have clustered in your vicinity.” And that was just part of their extended explanation.
Excuse me, what? That’s terrifying! I could practically feel the color draining from my face.
“We have learned to expect your cowardice. The question seemed worth raising, considering,” Fel said, his voice sounding small and far off in the distance from the isolated panic-realm I’d sequestered my mind in. “You will not be harmed, though. Our barriers will see to that.”
“True, true! Our barriers won’t be broken easily. Come what may, at the bare minimum, you won’t be made a meal of!” Gon added.
“Changed my mind! I’ll go! Take me along!” I frantically shouted.
Sure, the barriers would have kept me physically safe. I wouldn’t have died or anything. Having to watch a bunch of monsters eat one another around me, though? That sounded like a scene straight out of hell, and I wanted no part of it!
I happen to like being able to sleep at night! That’s a big ol’ “no thank-you” to that sort of trauma from me!
I was a little dejected to think that as far as Fel and Gon were concerned, nothing I went through mattered in the slightest as long as I was technically alive and uneaten by the end of it. Still, for the sake of my own mental stability, I decided to follow along with them after all. The five of us struck out into the dark, dense woodland.
《Sui doesn’t see any monsters yet,》 Sui grumbled. It sounded a little bored.
《Are you two sure the monsters in these woods are raring for a fight?》 Dora-chan asked Fel and Gon.
“What’s the problem if they aren’t? If no monsters turn up, then I’d say it’s our lucky day! In fact, if we keep walking for a while longer and nothing happens at all, why don’t we just write this trip off and head home? Feels like a good plan to me!” I said. I couldn’t help but indulge in a little wishful thinking and imagine not encountering any bloodthirsty beasties at all.
“Hmph! I think not. Moreover, they have already arrived, albeit only trifling weaklings,” Fel said.
“So they have! Small ones that hunt in packs, it seems. A scant few of their number have come to observe us,” Gon added.
I jumped with shock, then quickly glanced around the area. Sui and Dora-chan looked around as well, though they seemed more excited than alarmed. A moment later, I heard the rustling of leaves as a group of little somethings popped their way out of the foliage.
《Oooh, what’re those? Lizards?》 Sui asked.
The monsters were quite small, and there were three of them in total. I was shocked—not by their size, but rather, their appearance.
“Huh? Dinosaurs? Wait, but how?”
They were a trio of little bipedal dinosaurs. I couldn’t see them as anything else. That was pretty shocking, sure, but their size made it sort of hard to be scared of them. For better or for worse, I’d seen tons of monsters in this world that were way scarier than a few little dinos. They’d have to be a lot bigger and a lot more vicious to make me run away in fright.
Weird, though. I feel like I’ve seen dinosaurs just like them somewhere before... Were they in a book, maybe? Or on a nature show on TV?
I couldn’t quite remember, but one way or another, compared to the enormous horrors this world usually threw at me, this didn’t feel like such a big deal. They looked like dinosaurs, yeah, but they only came up to about my waist, and the way they were cocking their heads from one side to the other as they looked at us struck me as more funny than menacing. If anything, they were actually a little cute. Sui must have thought so too, because the slime had hopped out of my arms and was heading right toward them.
《Hi, lizards! Let’s be friends!》 Sui said, reaching toward the dinos with a tentacle. It was a really heartwarming scene, and I found myself smiling...
“Beware. Even the small ones are predators,” Fel commented offhandedly.
Chomp!
...and then the next thing I knew, one of the little dinos had bitten Sui’s tentacle. The other two took that as their sign to attack and leaped forward, biting into the slime’s bulbous body.
“Agggh, no! Suiii!”