Chapter 51
The forest clearing had progressed in an unexpected way.
I never expected Shuri to carry away all those stumps.
What could it possibly be using them for?
I look at the hole Shuri keeps going in and out of.
Even I could get inside.
I peek inside out of curiosity... I'd probably fall in.
It should be nothing more than a hole, but I feel a chill for some reason. Is it just my imagination?
...
Core and the others brought back prey again today.
They're butchering it, but there are so many.
It'd be a lot of trouble if I couldn't use magic.
The hides go to the goblin children.
I go to butcher the last one, but it's gone.
?
There should have been one more left.
There's a trail from where it was, as if it had been dragged... It leads to Shuri's hole.
Are ants carnivorous?
When I look into the hole, the baby ants come out covered in blood.
...This is too surreal.
I quietly avert my gaze.
The ground is uneven where the stumps used to be.
Now, what should I do next?
The baby ants keep pouring out of the hole and start burrowing into the soil.
??
I watch to see what they're doing, and the baby ants move through the soil.
??
I keep watching.
So ants can till soil too. Amazing.
Thanks.
They've tilled the soil, but what should I do now?
In Japan, planting vegetables is the norm, but there's nothing here.
Come to think of it, I haven't seen any tuber vegetables around here.
Well, speaking of things underground... where's Shuri-san?
"Are there any vegetables that grow in the ground somewhere?"
Potatoes, sweet potatoes, and daikon come to mind.
Seeds would work, or the vegetables themselves.
If you trace vegetables back to their origins, they were selectively bred from wild plants.
I'm sure there must be some somewhere in the forest.
Shuri tilts its head slightly... So it really can't?
Shuri calmly takes a baby ant and heads out.
Huh? Is a baby spider coming along too?
Don't push yourself.
...
Karen came back.
Karen hadn't come back for three days, so I was worried... or at least, I had been.
Karen seems to have grown while I wasn't looking.
But this growth is bizarre!
How did Karen get to be about three times as big?
Three days ago, Karen was still only the size of a small bird.
This is definitely the biggest growth spurt yet, even surpassing Boss-san.
Boss-san grows a little every day and is now the same size as Core.
I'm getting scared thinking about how big Karen will get.
The baby spider has been growing in secret too.
Could Shuri grow too?
That worries me.
Karen came back as a round-bodied creature with wings—【Mysterious Creature?】.
A ball of yarn with wings growing out of it—some kind of mysterious... What is it?
Even though it has wings, it doesn't use them to fly; it just floats softly.
What are those wings even for?
For now, I sense a curse, so... "Purification."
Its black, murky body became a beautiful, deep azure.
So, what is this little one?
I have a new companion of an unidentified species: "Fluffy."