Chapter 75 - Kidnappers

Day 27

I was currently at Sunalla's river taking a little bath. Why would a bird be bathing? You can ask Ulva that. She said she wanted to bath and that I should join her. I didn't want to, but she forced me and so I joined. In order to not get my feathers wet, I transformed into my human form. It felt kind of weird, but nostalgic at the same time.

Sunalla wasn't around at the moment. That is, her and all the nymphs. Apparently there was some water lizard trouble they were handling somewhere. I was surprised that they would all need to leave the lake to handle the issue and I didn't expect it to take over three days to do so, especially right after helping us fight the East. Then again, they didn't really do much.

"Big sis, look at Kawaii."

She rose the slime up from the water and it was jiggling. This creature was weird. Somehow this thing managed to evolve into something called a Sentient Acidic Slime, meaning it could think now. That made it very dangerous, especially considering the abilities the slimes had. If it managed to consume a lot, it had potential to become unbelievably strong.

The slime shot out water like some kind of water hose. When I looked up its skills, I found out that it had developed the skill [Water Shot] from just being in water. Feeling a bit jealous, I sunk into the water and swallowed as much as I could into my mouth, then shot it out. I didn't get any skill. Ulva just looked at me, a bit confused.

After that, I sunk into the water because I felt a bit embarrassed.

Ulva came to pat me on the head.

"It doesn't matter if big sis is not the same as Kawaii."

I couldn't respond to her. The slime floated to me started rubbing itself on me. I was kind of scared at first, but that fear was quickly replaced with warmth which was then quickly replaced with anger. Anger at the fact that some idiot was peeping on me.

This idiot had been following me since the day begun and I had decided to ignore him at first. But it got a bit irritating and I asked him why. He said he was doing it for my safety. I let the issue slide since that was his argument, but when we got to the bath, I ordered for him to not look at us while we bathe. So he was just standing behind a tree.

However, I could tell that he was looking. [Predator Instinct], [Heat Sense] and [Perception] could tell me all that I needed to know. I told Ulva to wait for me and jumped out of the water to go to the retard's side.

When he noticed me he gulped. It was none other than the leader of the Stamp village, Nukeme. His eyes showed fear at my sight, but then he quickly scanned my body. I actually didn't have a problem with that, I only cared for Ulva.

'You disgusting pedophilic perverted green idiot. Didn't I tell you not to look while we bathe?'

He started laughing and his mouth was watering. His long tongue came out and was waggling about like crazy. His eyes moved about their sockets in a disgustingly quick manner.

"M-My Lady… Y-You see, while I was dutifully doing what you said, my Money senses told me that I would get a reward from watching you. And oh, what a reward in deed!"

He said something disgusting. I cracked my knuckles and added a bit of lightning magic to it.

'Hehe, a reward, eh? How about a [Lightning Jab]!'

I punched, the lightning crackling all over his body and sending him flying some distance away into the forest. I was actually stunned by how much power magic gave me. My normal strength stat wouldn't have been enough to send him flying that far, even though I was stronger than him.

I was impressed with it and decided to focus more on magic than on physical stats, since magic would make up for those. The only problem would be my mana capacity, which admittedly wasn't a lot. Still, I used less mana than the average creature so I guess in a sense, it was a lot?

Ah whatever, I just went back to wash Ulva. I even tried using [Water Magic] and [Fire Magic] together, heating the water. I created hot water!

'HAHAHA! I shall revolutionize this world with my hot water!'

"Hmmm, I missed warm water."

Ulva said.

'Damn it.'

***

Nukeme had just been up to his normal daily activities – bullying the goblins, stealing food from other races, licking poison and so on – when his Money senses tingled. They told him to go and look for his mistress and that he should watch her the whole day.

His senses have never been wrong, so he listened to them. He monitored her without break, and when she was going to take a bath, she ordered him not to look. He obeyed that just fine. He could have disobeyed since well, he didn't believe a bird was stronger than himself, but he just decided to obey. When his senses told him to look, without hesitation, he looked. The sight that beheld him was magnificent.

Two naked beauties, ripe for the the taking. One a dark haired beauty, close to maturity, and the other, a beautiful blonde child with red tips and a red cowlick on her head. Their bodies were smooth and untouched. This was more than a reward to him. Yet again, his senses failed him not.

Unfortunately, his new master sensed this. She came to him and the goblin couldn't control himself. He was willing to perform misdeeds to her body right there and then, but when she summoned lightning magic, he realized that she was no joke. She delivered a punch to his cheek that sent him flying some distance away and he ended up crashing into a tree.

Then he started to think, if she could use lightning magic, why didn't she use it on the ogre tyrant? But then, the fact that she managed to name all of them meant that she was powerful. Something wasn't adding up. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that there was a different air about the mistress. She was bolder, more refined than he had assumed she would be.

Things weren't adding up and he wanted to get to the bottom of it.

He got up and when he did so, he noticed five men jumping out of a portal. Quickly, he went to hide behind a tree so they wouldn't see him. He peeped on them and listened to their conversation.

"We only have 10 minutes till the armor's stealth function wears off. Split up and search for the target. First person to find the target light the signal and the others will follow."

The men dressed in black gear run in five different directions. Nukeme looked and noticed that one of them was running in the direction of his mistress. He finally realized that this was what his money senses were telling him.

He couldn't let anything happen to his mistress, so he ran like hell after the man. With his speed, he managed to catch up to the man after jumping and swinging from branch to branch. The person froze after looking at the two girls. Nukeme in a rage threw his poisoned dagger into the person's head, killing them in that instant.

He dropped on the ground and turned the person's body around. He wanted to check for any good tools he could take, but their armor was weird. It was practically just clothes. Just black with a cloak on their bodies and a face mask.

"Ah… what the hell?"

He was confused, but then his Money senses told him to jump, so using [Acrobatics], he managed to barely miss a kick to the face. When he looked, a man wearing the same armor as the dead person was there. He had a rough face with a scar going across his left eye.

"Damned hob-goblin bastard."

"Did he accidentally trigger the signal on Dan's uniform?"

"Looks like it."

"No wait. Look at those two girls."

All the men looked up and saw the sight of two little girls taking a bath in the middle of larm. The sight was so unbelievable they would have assumed that the girls weren't their targets, were it not for the fact that they had been shown a portrait of the black haired girl.

"Who's the other girl?"

"It don't matter! Get em'!"

Their leader ordered, but Nukeme jumped in their way.

"Kekekekekekekekekekekeke! I wonder what reward I'll get this time!"

He cackled maniacally and it caused the men to hesitate. Their leader on the other hand jumped right into the fight. He pulled out two curved blades out of nowhere and Nukeme was a bit unprepared. He stumbled back after blocking one hit. Luckily he tripped and the second slash missed.

Quickly, he jumped from the ground almost as if the fall had been planned. The leader was relentless with his attacks however, sending a kick flying into Nukeme's guts.

The others however cleared their heads and moved towards the lake. Weirdly enough, the blonde girl from earlier wasn't sitting there anymore.

"Uggghhh!"

One of the men screamed as he fell to the ground. The others looked and noticed that rocks were jutting out of the side of his head. Looking at the direction in which the attacks came from, they saw a naked blonde girl with her hands stretched out in front of them.

Her hair was wild and messy, reaching down below her back. Her eyes were a fierce vermillion and lips were turned upside down in a scary scowl one would see on a noble woman.

'Who are you?'

A voice resonated in their heads and they were all scared. This girl wasn't normal.

***

I wished I could have just returned to having a normal bath, but then I sensed some weirdos popping up all around me. I left Ulva in the bath by herself and went to attend to the men. Since my [Stealth] skill was always active, it had gone really high up in level. So the men didn't even notice me as I watched them.

I decided that I would knock them out and ask them questions, so I tried out my earth magic.

[You have killed a human]

[You have received 6,000 experience points]

'Ah… that was too strong! Too strong!'

The men looked at their fallen comrade.

'Damn it! I can't pretend as if I didn't know I was so strong. Or is it that they are too weak?'

The men all looked at me and I was feeling a bit anxious. My body tightened up and I decided to just ask questions.

'Who are you?'

They looked at each other, and I don't know when my telepathy became strong enough for me to read others' minds but it was now.

'Charlie, you go take the girl. Mike and I will distract this thing.'

They nodded and the guy named Charlie ran for Ulva. With [Shadow Manipulation], I used his own shadow to grab his legs and trip him, whereas using [Fire Magic] to blow the two who ran at me away. I easily tied them up with my [Black Threads Creation] skill then decided to move to the other guy Nukeme was fighting.

The hob-goblin was handling himself surprisingly well although it was obvious that he was at a disadvantage.

The person he was fighting grabbed him by the neck and flung him at a tree. With a superfluous burst of speed, the man was already at the hob-goblins side, cutting new wounds into the hob-goblins body at a tremendous pace. He took out an item from nowhere. It was a little black ball with a rope coming out from it.

'A bomb? Isn't that a bit excessive?'

I sighed and used [Light Shot] to blast the man away, since it was my fastest magic or attack skill. The man struggled to stand up, but I wasn't interested in the whole, shounen protagonist bull. I whipped him away using [Lightning Bolt] then moved to Nukeme. For Nukeme I dropped a renosue potion so he could recover from his injuries.

I made sure to lower my magic power so that none of my attacks would be lethal. The others were squirming about on the ground and their leader was out right unconscious.

'Nukeme. Explain.'

"R-Right away."

<<Alert! Mana particles swarming! Portal being created>>

'What?!'

I could feel it. The weird swarm of mana particles in an area. When I looked there, I saw some guy holding Ulva in his hands. She was unconscious and the slime was trying to melt the guy's head from the looks of things. He was about a foot away from the portal when I noticed.

'No!'

I shot a light beam at the figure's head and only his mask fell down, but he kept running, meaning the mask had some kind of defensive property that saved him.

I flew towards them, as fast as I could. I activated [Sprint], [Throttle] and even [Fire Force], breaking up the ground and creating a sort of Boom. I stretched out my hand, trying to grab her. I even shot light magic to try to kill him, but he just fell right through the portal.

It was still open. If only I could make it. Just a few inches and I would make it.

The portal closed and I flew through blue mist. I flapped my wings hard to prevent crashing into trees, but the break to abrupt. It caused a few of those tree to break up, but that didn't matter to me at the moment.

'Ulva! Ulva! No! No! No! Damn it! No!'

I was desperately punching the ground at this moment.

[Evolver] forcefully calmed me down as it normally did. I tried to think up solutions to the problem.

'Can I open up a portal to where they went?'

<<Notice: You don't know where they went>>

'Can't you tell using some sort of magic portal map?'

<<Notice: No such thing exists>>

'Damn it! You should know everything happening in the world right?'

<<Notice: The skill [God's Voice] is an encyclopedia of recorded knowledge. All current happenings in the world are unknown>>

'Argh! That wasn't your description! You were supposed to know everything! Aren't you an agent of the Ancient goddess?'

<<Notice: The skill [God's Voice] is not an agent of the Ancient Goddess, but its knowledge>>

'Is that so? Then isn't that agent always watching everything? You should know, shouldn't you?'

<<Notice: The Agent of the Ancient Goddess does not exist anymore>>

'Ah… What the hell are you even talking about? Damn it… why am I taking my anger out on a skill?'

I calmed down and looked up. A single tear drop run down my cheek.

'No… I won't cry… Tch… I-I didn't even know her much. Argh, damn it! Damn it all!'