Chapter 70
Seeing the parent and child trembling in each other’s arms, Murder Garsh grinned eerily. Its doglike face with human features made its expression easy to read. Blood dripped from its fangs, its mouth stained red from devouring the horse.
The parent and child huddled in the carriage were too terrified to even scream.
No knight came to their aid. The adventurers watched, holding their breath.
Amid this, Allen took an iron ball out of Storage. Perhaps someone had seen him use his Storage Skill, but he didn’t care.
Perhaps to frighten them even more, Murder Garsh slowly reached toward the parent and child with its grotesque foreleg, which looked like a human arm.
(Die, you bastard!!)
Allen threw the iron ball he was gripping at Murder Garsh with all his strength. It flew straight toward the monster and struck one of its eyes as if being sucked into it.
The iron ball sank into its eyeball. It seemed to have crushed one of Murder Garsh’s eyes.
'Awoooooooh!!!'
Murder Garsh let out an eerie cry.
"Hey! Over here!! Come get me! I’ll kill you!!!"
He threw a second iron ball with all his strength. But Murder Garsh’s attention was already on Allen, so it easily knocked the ball away with its foreleg.
"B-Boy, what are you doing?!"
"Run! Now!!!"
He heard the knights and adventurers shouting from behind him. Allen paid no attention to their voices or warnings.
Allen did everything he could to draw Murder Garsh’s attention. As he did, he moved in an arc around the carriage, heading to the side opposite the town. With the White Dragon Mountains at his back, he continued taunting it.
"What’s wrong?! Aren’t you coming?! You mutt!!!"
He threw another iron ball, but Murder Garsh easily knocked it away. He’d blinded one eye, but it seemed difficult to inflict any further damage.
Just as he was about to throw another iron ball, Murder Garsh, which had only been turning its face toward Allen until then, slowly rose.
'Awooooooh!!!'
After letting out a single howl, it slowly stood upright on its hind legs. Standing on two legs, Murder Garsh reached a height of six or seven meters. It tossed aside the half-eaten horse it held in one hand.
THUUUUUD!!!
Then it planted its forelegs on the ground and turned its entire body toward Allen.
"Come on!!!"
At Allen’s shout, Murder Garsh started walking, then broke into a run, steadily picking up speed.
(Good, I got the monster to target me.)
"I’m leading Murder Garsh toward the White Dragon Mountains!"
He shouted to the knights and adventurers, then took off running at full speed. He brought out his magic tome and checked whether his Magic had recovered. It hadn’t; his Magic was still at zero.
(Not yet?! It should’ve recovered by now!)
Even as he thought that, he sprinted as fast as he could. Murder Garsh was right on his heels.
"Whoa!"
Murder Garsh seemed to be faster. It caught up to Allen, whose Agility was around 600, and reached for him with its foreleg. Allen narrowly dodged it, but apparently lost his balance and tumbled to the ground.
Allen hurriedly regained his footing. He quickly brought Murder Garsh, which had momentarily disappeared from his field of vision, back into view.
He thought it would immediately follow up with another attack, but Murder Garsh only grinned and didn’t attack. Apparently, it was enjoying the sight of Allen tumbling. The fact that it grinned instead of showing anger at having lost an eye made it all the more unsettling.
(So this is what it means when enemies sometimes “grin” and skip a turn without doing anything.)
Back when Allen had been Kenichi in his previous life, he’d played turn-based games where he and the enemy took turns attacking. He’d seen situations like this one, where the enemy would forgo its attack during its turn and “grin” or do something else instead. At the time, he’d only thought he was lucky the enemy hadn’t attacked.
Now that a monster was doing the same thing to him in real life, he understood why such situations existed. It seemed Murder Garsh was playing with him.
(Well, I still think I’m lucky! All right, my Magic’s recovered!!)
Allen checked the status screen in his magic tome. At last, his Magic was fully restored.
(My Agility isn’t high enough. Should I boost it with Bird Summons? No, I need Defense, too. Maybe Insect Summons.)
Blessings granted by Summons
Bird type: Agility and Intelligence increase
Insect type: Defense and Agility increase
Allen slowly backed away. His body trembled, and his face twisted in fear. He desperately put on an act of despair to lull Murder Garsh into letting its guard down.
'Awooo! Awooooh!!'
Apparently, Allen’s appearance was very amusing to Murder Garsh. Its human-faced, doglike face twisted with delight.
(What a nasty bastard. Maybe I should keep quiet about this thing around Mash. Dad has the worst taste in names.)
The monster Mash had been named after wasn’t one anyone should name a person after. If Teresia had another child, he hoped it would be a girl so she could choose the name.
While pretending to be frightened, Allen used his magic tome to completely change the composition of his Summon cards.
If he kept Magic Stones in Storage, he could generate and combine cards just by thinking about it, without having to use his hands.
He’d been holding twenty Plant E cards to increase his maximum Magic, but he changed them all into Insect E Summons. His magic tome flipped through its pages at a furious pace, repeatedly deleting and generating cards. He also changed all his Beast E and Beast F Summons, which he’d been using to increase his Attack, into Insect E Summons.
The number of each card after changing the composition
・36 Insect E cards
・4 Bird E cards
Since Murder Garsh seemed fast, he changed all his cards to ones that increased Agility. He also had no idea how strong Murder Garsh’s Attack was. He couldn’t afford to let it catch him.
Allen continued backing away, slowly retreating while facing Murder Garsh. When he saw that it wasn’t rushing him, he let his guard down, then suddenly started running again.
A rumble came from behind him. The noise was immense. He desperately gauged the distance between himself and Murder Garsh by the sound of its pounding footsteps.
(Just a little farther. I have to get it farther from town.)
Of course, he needed to draw Murder Garsh away from town, but if possible, he wanted to defeat it, too. He was still only a few hundred meters from the carriage. The knights and adventurers had grown very small, but he could still see them. He wanted to summon his creatures somewhere farther away.
Their desperate game of tag continued as they raced more than a kilometer from town, to an area where trees grew here and there. They ran another few hundred meters, until Allen and Murder Garsh were completely out of sight of the town.
(All right, Ageha and the others—put it to sleep.)
Allen summoned three Insect E Summons behind him. Since Murder Garsh was a B-rank monster, it took three Insect E Summons for their special ability, Powder, to work.
Yellow powder from the Insect E Summons rained down on Murder Garsh’s face.
Murder Garsh stopped moving, so Allen stopped and turned around to check whether the effect had worked.
'Awooooooh!!!'
But Murder Garsh let out a cry and swept all three Insect E Summons aside with its humanlike foreleg. All three immediately vanished into glowing bubbles.
(What?! It didn’t work! Is it resistant? Or did it just happen not to work?)
The debuff effects of Insect-type Summons’ special abilities weren’t guaranteed to work every time. From a single attempt, he couldn’t tell whether it had simply failed by chance or whether it wouldn’t work at all.
(Crap, it’s chasing me again.)
With the Insect E Summons gone, the desperate game of tag resumed. Allen generated replacements for the Summons that had disappeared and kept running for his life.
Three hours later, Allen was hiding in the shadow of a tree.
(Damn, I finally shook it off. But the powder doesn’t work at all—or rather, none of the debuffs work.)
Allen took a cloak out of Storage and put it on over his footman’s uniform.
He’d tried the special abilities of his Insect G-, F-, and E-rank Summons over and over, but not one of them had worked. Since the debuffs didn’t work, he’d given up on defeating it and decided to run. He didn’t think he could beat it without debuffs.
(Well, that should do it. Time to head back to town. Damn! I’ve used up a lot of Magic Stones.)
He was grumbling about how many Magic Stones he’d used when—
Creak, creak!
Without warning, the tree Allen had been leaning against, which was over five meters tall, began to sway. A strong, beastlike stench stung his nostrils.
"Wha?!"
Allen jumped and looked behind him. There was Murder Garsh, grinning. With its humanlike hand, it had uprooted the tree as easily as pulling up a weed.
Allen hurriedly fled, while Murder Garsh chased after him with a grin. Their desperate game of tag began again.
Three days passed.
A boy dressed all in black and wearing a cloak appeared at the town’s north gate.
(I did it! I finally made it back!)
"Hey there, young master!"
"Good morn..."
Allen returned to town for the first time in three days. His mostly black clothes were caked with mud from the desperate game of tag that had gone on for three days.
Allen couldn’t finish his usual greeting to the gate guard. He lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground.
"Huh? Y-Young master, are you all right?!"
The guard rushed over as soon as Allen lost consciousness after being spoken to. He checked on Allen and found that he seemed to be alive. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing softly. Allen fell asleep as if his strings had been cut.
After three days, Allen was finally able to sleep. This was his first encounter with Murder Garsh.