Chapter 15
Vitoria Costa.
She was one of the ponytailed women on the work crew, a Brazilian woman of mixed heritage.
Her sun-bronzed skin, dark brown hair, and red eyes made a striking impression.
Her thighs, in particular, looked every bit as muscular as mine, even by male standards.
She had the air of a wild black panther, both firm and soft.
"That boar is our prey."
Vito curled the corner of her mouth, looking intrigued by my words.
「Look at this guy.」
Her eyes seemed to say she genuinely hadn't expected me to talk back at a time like this.
"Esse não é o tipo de bicho que você consegue pegar.
(That's not the kind of animal you can catch.)"
"Didn't you see me knock down those logs? I've got plenty of firepower."
"Se você não travar de medo e cair sentado no chão, já vai ser muito. Não subestime um animal selvagem.
(You'll be lucky if you don't freeze up and collapse to the ground. Don't underestimate a wild animal.)"
I couldn't help chuckling as I thought of someone whose legs had given out from fear.
She was probably resting at camp right now. The assistant manager.
I wanted to feed some meat to the assistant manager, who'd been feeling down.
"Mr. Woojin, what is she saying?"
Ah, she hadn't noticed because of the translation magic.
To them, it probably sounded like we were speaking Portuguese right now.
I thought for a moment, then said,
"She asked if you were scared."
"Out of nowhere?"
Did she think I couldn't do it even though she knew I was a wizard?
That didn't make much sense to me.
At first, it was true that I'd run away because my attacks hadn't worked.
But Kim Woojin, who'd been given a third life, was different.
After seeing something that terrifying at sea, would I be scared of some wild animal?
This was my chance to show Vito that Korean men weren't girly.
Challenge accepted.
"Na Coreia, todo homem é soldado, de um jeito ou de outro.
(Every man in Korea is a soldier, one way or another.)"
"A soldier?"
Vitoria seemed intrigued, apparently surprised.
"Eu posso não ser caçador como você. Mas não vou cair de joelhos de medo diante de um animal.
(I may not be a hunter like you, but I won't fall to my knees in fear before an animal.)"
"Hmm~."
Her gaze traveled from my face to my fingertips, then back to my eyes.
"Então me mostra que você não é só boca.
(Then show me you're not all talk.)"
"If I show you, what's in it for me?"
"Eu uso a minha.(I'll use my mouth, too.)"
She'll use her mouth? What did that mean?
No way!?
If I caught the boar, she'd give me oral?
You're dead, boar!
"You have to keep your promise, sis."
"Don't get your hopes up. I've never lost one of these bets."
"Then this'll be your first loss."
The raft situation had gone to hell, and we needed to find a place to settle down.
I'd planned to stop by the shelter beneath the rock overhang today to scout it out, and catch the boar if it was there.
I had a feeling that something even better might happen along with it.
"Manager, I'll make sure you get plenty of meat today."
"Meat?"
At the sudden mention of meat, the manager swallowed hungrily.
"This way."
* * *
I strode ahead confidently, and Vito followed behind us.
The manager seemed to have guessed where I was going.
"Do you think the boar will be there this time?"
There were signs that it had been escaping the heat at the shelter beneath the rock overhang.
"Since Vito followed its tracks all the way here, it's probably resting there."
"I'm a little worried… Will we be okay?"
"Probably."
If Assistant Manager Kang Seoyoon were here, she would've hated hearing me say "probably," right?
She would've scolded me and told me to be more definite.
But Manager Han Jia was smiling instead.
"Why are you smiling?"
"You said probably, Woojin… But whenever you get motivated and take the lead, it seems like things work out 100% of the time."
That's a little embarrassing.
The manager thought too highly of me.
"The tracks definitely lead this way."
Vito was following the animal tracks, checking them with her own eyes.
Meanwhile, I could naturally pick up things like that through detection magic.
Swoosh…
The sound of a waterfall grew closer.
When we reached the shelter beneath the rock overhang, Vito drew in a startled breath.
"…So a place like this was here."
"It's one of the shelters we've scouted. There's a rock overhang over there…"
"Wait, get down. It's there."
Vito grabbed me as I started to step out of the bushes.
I saw a black shadow rise in the corner.
It was about the size of a small bear.
I'd seen plenty of wild boars, both large and small, when I was in the military, but even I'd never seen one that huge.
"If it spots us, we're done. Be careful."
"Looks like it's got piglets. It was a sow."
Just as the manager said, around three tiny piglets were gathered at its feet.
"There are piglets. It'll probably be aggressive to protect them."
"Any ideas?"
"We need to lure it toward the trees, not out into the open. Avoid facing it head-on as much as possible."
"What about attacking it from here?"
At my suggestion, both of them looked at me.
Why?
Had they never seen me do it properly?
I circulated my mana and summoned the Glyph of Wind.
Whoooosh…!
There was no point in hiding anymore. A fierce wind swept through the bushes, and the boar noticed us.
"Damn! It saw us."
"Get behind me."
I stood up and walked forward.
At my fingertips, I wielded the wind───
"Brrrrrr!"
Time for a history lesson, boar.
Want me to tell you what happens to beasts that bare their tusks at humans?
"Mr. Woojin…! It's dangerous!"
I sent a Wind Cutter at the charging boar.
Whoosh!!
Thud!!
"Squeee!"
The boar let out a dying squeal, toppled onto its side, and rolled over.
That must've been a tremendous impact.
Wind Cutter was one of my most lethal spells. If I concentrated its power, it could break a log in just three strikes.
And I'd just fired about seven of them at once.
"Squeal! Squeee!"
The boar writhed in agony like crazy.
'Load the next attack.'
I gathered mana and raised the output of the Glyph of Wind all at once.
'Now!!'
The wind blades split into dozens of smaller ones and slammed into the fallen boar.
The tremendous impact made its huge body buck and shake as if it were dancing.
"Squeal! Squeal!"
The situation was over.
The boar soon went limp.
As expected, overwhelming firepower was always the right answer.
Literally, my log training had made me stronger.
After watching for a moment, Manager Han Jia's face lit up.
"It's down! Woojin took it down! Woojin actually took down a boar!"
"I was hoping to split it cleanly in half, but I couldn't."
"Pfft, what a boast~."
I really had meant to split it in half, but its hide was too thick for that.
"Squeee! Oink!"
That's when it happened.
The piglets, seeing their mother die, showed their hostility and prepared to charge at us next.
"Huh? You're picking a fight?"
Want me to send you after your mother, too?
As I charged up Wind Cutter, the manager grabbed my arm and shook her head.
"Killing the piglets, too, is too cruel."
Is that so?
The moment I lowered my arm, Vito brought her knife down on a piglet.
Slash!!
"Ah…"
At the sight of the slaughter unfolding before her, Han Jia shrank her shoulders as if frightened.
"Now that their mother is dead, they won't last long even if we let them go."
She nodded.
"She says that since their mother is dead, they won't last long even if we let them go. So we have to kill them."
"I see…?"
Han Jia still looked close to tears, as if she felt sorry for the piglets.
I understood how she felt.
"Can't be helped, right? We have to survive, too──."
"Don't feel sorry for them. On our ranch, if we found a wild boar, we killed the piglets, too."
Vito said, wiping the blood from her knife.
"Your family had a ranch, Vito?"
"A sheep ranch. I was the owner's daughter."
No wonder she didn't seem like an ordinary fitness model.
While we were getting by with our herbivore build—gathering fruit and creating water—she'd already been hunting animals.
For soft, still-civilized modern people like us, it was a pretty hard way to stomach.
Everyone wanted to eat meat, but not everyone could slaughter an animal.
"We can at least put the dead piglets' meat to good use."
"She says we should eat the piglets, too."
"I'm not sure about eating the piglets…"
"But once you see them roasting, you'll be saying, 'That beef plate just melts in your mouth,' right?"
My manager burst out laughing at my thoughtless joke.
"Seriously, you can make such a vulgar joke at a time like this?"
"I'm not joking. Piglet meat is more tender and less gamey, so it'll melt in your mouth."
Maybe she imagined the meat sizzling as it cooked, because the manager swallowed.
Grrrgle.
And on top of that, her stomach growled.
"……Uh."
Maybe she was embarrassed, because Han Jia hid behind me.
The cutest middle-aged woman in the world.
No matter how kind someone was, they couldn't stop their stomach from growling.
Vito dragged the piglet over and tossed it down beside its mother.
"Você não correu.(You didn't run away.)"
"Courage comes from the firepower you have."
"Impressive. Is that some kind of motto from your unit?"
It wasn't a motto, but the Korean military did love its firepower.
"Não foi ruim.(Not bad.)"
"Then now…"
Reward time?
Vito stroked the sow's body as if it were a treasure, then turned to me.
"Homem que prova coragem também carrega peso.
(A man who proves his courage also has to carry heavy things.)"
Apparently, it wasn't over yet.
At a glance, the huge boar looked like it weighed well over 120 kilograms. She wanted us to move it?
My breath caught in my throat.
"I'll help!"
"Manager, stay out of it. You might get hurt if you lift it awkwardly."
It couldn't be helped.
I dragged the boar along with Vito to the spot she wanted, practically hauling it the whole way.
Luckily, it wasn't even ten meters away.
"I'll hang it from a tree."
"This?"
"You're strong, so you can do it. Help me."
Vito took out a rope and tied the boar's hind legs together.
I wondered if hanging the whole thing would be too much, but soon enough I saw how she planned to do it.
Vito looped the rope over a low tree with a Y-shaped fork, lifting only the hind legs and rump.
Its head and front legs still rested on the ground, so it was only half-hung.
"That's enough."
"Are you going to butcher it? How long will it take?"
"Two hours."
Two hours?
She could butcher the whole thing in just two hours?
Vito took out the large machete she usually used, along with an outdoor knife from her belongings, and got ready.
Just watching from the side, even a novice could tell her skill was incredible.
She made only the cuts she needed, opened the belly in an instant, removed the organs, and then easily stripped off the hide.
Thirty minutes to get this far.
Legs, shoulders, long strips of meat from the back, and slabs with ribs attached.
Large chunks of meat, ready to cook, started piling up in no time.
"Do they teach you this sort of thing on Brazilian ranches?"
All I could do was marvel at her skill.
"I started slaughtering sheep with my father when I was eight."
…That's early childhood training I couldn't even imagine in Korea.
Vito quickly finished the first round of butchering and wiped away her sweat. It seemed like hard work even for her.
"I'll cool you off."
Beside her, I used the Glyph of Wind to make a fan.
"Thanks."
Manager Han Jia didn't seem to want to watch the butchering up close, so she was lingering near the water.
"Oh, Woojin. Are you done?"
"Looks like there's one last trimming step."
"Sorry I couldn't help. Even the smell of blood makes me feel like throwing up…"
"It's okay. I'm not used to it either."
If she'd asked me to do the butchering, it would've taken me four times as long.
And the result would've been a disaster.
I was glad we had Vito, who knew her way around butchering.
Honestly, she was a valuable person to have around.
I hoped she'd live with us at the shelter.
Of course, I didn't mean I wanted to exclude Manager Han Jia because she wasn't useful or anything.
I wanted to be with her.
Maybe she sensed how I felt, because the manager smiled beside me, looking reassured.
"Thank you, Woojin."
I'm not doing this just because of some moral sense that helping the weak is right.
I think it's true that we have to act with our own interests in mind, too.
But that isn't everything we are.
Being with someone whose heart is in sync with yours, someone you love, may not offer any practical benefit, but it can become a reason to keep living.
Manager Han Jia had acknowledged me several times in ways I never received at work.
It felt pretty good.
Her husband would be furious if he knew, but I liked that Manager Han Jia and I had become "colleagues who do naughty things" together.
It gave me a sense of guilt.
I knew we shouldn't cross the line, but it felt good to receive this kind of attention from a beautiful married woman.
"Finished."
A little while later, Vito called us over.
Just as she'd promised, Vito finished butchering the boar in exactly two hours.
After removing the inedible bones, damaged organs, and the like, and reducing it all to pure meat…
We had roughly forty kilograms of meat.
"Wow~. It looks exactly like the stuff you see at a butcher shop. Amazing~."
Even to modern people like us, who were used to seeing only the finished product and skipping the butchering process, it looked familiar.
After she finished butchering, Vito stuck her machete, smeared with fat and blood, into a tree and wiped away her sweat.
"There's this much meat, but it won't keep long. We need to take it back and eat it right away."
"I figured."
If we could save some and eat it little by little, our food situation would improve a lot.
"What did Ms. Vitoria say?"
"Oh, she said it won't keep long, so we need to take it back and eat it right away."
Maybe if the weather were dry and cool…
What would happen if we left meat out in a subtropical climate?
I didn't even want to imagine it.
Getting food poisoning on the island would make our chances of survival plummet.
"Still, if we slice it thin and salt it, it'll last a day."
"Really?"
"The salt draws the water out through osmosis, leaving microbes without water to live in. That makes it harder for bacteria to multiply."
So we'd only buy ourselves a day.
Warm weather could be a drawback, too.
"There's a surprising amount of salt among the plane supplies, enough to cure it.
We can call all the other survivors and have a meat feast with the rest."
If it was going to rot anyway, it was better off in people's stomachs.
That was the simplest solution.
"Sounds good."
Vito said with a smile,
"Thanks to you, we're going to feast on meat today. Thanks, brave Korean."
We wrapped the portions of meat carefully in cloth and packed them into bags.
The manager stepped forward, saying she could carry more.
"If you put any more in, you'll end up marching under the weight."
The woman already had something heavy hanging from her chest. She shouldn't overdo it.
When I forcibly took some of the meat from her, the manager pretended to give in, twisting her waist bashfully.
"It's reassuring to have a man around."
Han Jia naturally massaged my forearm, saying I was working hard.
When she reacted this well, there was no way I could refuse to carry the load.
But before we left…
"Vito."
"Hm?"
Vito realized what I was hoping for and gave a quiet laugh.
"Come here. I'll make you feel good."