Day 69
After having what I could call a good night’s rest, I received a rude awakening in the form of a cat slapping my face.
What I saw before me was a big tubby cat with darker feathers and a more elegant appearance. A single black horn grew out of Maou’s head and its wings were much bigger than before. What was a kitten just a day ago, was now a fully grown cat.
Took the expression “They group up so fast” way too literally for my liking. It was now a Twilight Hell Cat. How it evolved? According to Maou, he went on a grind fest last night, killing several fanged and horned bunnies before returning.
That said, I did not appreciate Maou littering my floor with corpses. I gave it a stern warning, then ate up the rabbits as breakfast. Unfortunately, [World Eater] started acting up and I was starting to get hungry. I’d have to find something big enough to satisfy me later.
On a side note, I acquired the title [Successful Parent] since Maou managed to evolve. This title gave me the ability to see the level of satisfaction of any kids I had. Maou’s was at a resounding 100% which I found to be odd since I was mostly avoiding him.
First thing I did was pay Ulva a visit in the dungeons. She wasn’t looking all too well. Probably the result of hiding out in a dungeon for too long. I wasn’t too pleased with her current state so I planned to teleport her to a different place soon.
For now, she had to endure.
Also, she had gotten a bit stronger now. Sure, her growth rate wasn’t as great as mine, but it was something. Given a month or two, I was certain she’d become a B rank. Arisu too had been learning how to utilise her skills efficiently through fighting with Grimm.
She was also starting to act cutesier like Ulva did. In the end, I was right. Ulva was rubbing off on Arisu.
Later, I checked on the rat men. After a day of ploughing, they had completely annihilated the once beautiful plain. Apparently, there were tons of ores hidden in the ground and so those were taken to the storage house.
These ores varied between Sporons, adamantite and orichalum. There were a few elemental stones in there, but I had no use for them at the moment. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t get Mithril, but apparently that could only be found in the Fairy Plains. Its variant name was Pixie Dust apparently.
Also, on a side note. Adamantite wasn’t so easy to find in the West. They were usually in the mountains towards the north, so us finding this whole stash was plain luck. I now understood why humans were so adamant on harvesting resources from Larm. It was a bundle of treasure sitting down and minding its own business.
The kobold leader and Dulk told me that with their blacksmiths they could turn the orichalum and adamantite into some good metal for any use we had. The main issue was the sporon ore of which we derive sporonite. The only people known to be able to use it were the elves and dwarves, so finding so much in the west was unprecedented.
Since we had no idea how exactly to use it for now, it would remain there for a while. Maybe if I raised my [Crafting] skill to a high enough level I’d be able to do so. Even Sylphie was at a loss and she had the blessing of a god of crafts.
After seeing the kind of goods we were getting, I asked Reiman to spare some men to find locations were we’d find good ore. Reiman got about 20 rat men on the job immediately.
During this, Kara asked to see me. It pertained to her sister’s health. She was up and looked better than when I last saw her. First, she bowed to me, but I didn’t see the need for such gestures. I hit the nail right on the hammer almost immediately.
I was very curious as to what happened in the East. One wouldn’t be wrong for thinking Krull was responsible for that. However, contrary to what I was thinking, the culprit was someone none of us expected.
The story goes like this.
Kara’s older brother, Karon, returned from a training session in the Demise Mountains after receiving word that his father faced a loss. He rushed home immediately only to see that his older sister was about to be killed and the younger one was kidnapped.
The details were a bit fuzzy, but the deal he was presented was either to kill all ogres or to kill just his sister. According to her, he chose to wipe out the soldiers in a heartbeat, saving his sister instead. One thing I didn’t understand was why that was even a situation in the first place.
Who in their right mind forces their son to choose between his family and an army of ogres he’d been raised around? I knew Krull wasn’t a really good guy, but he definitely had lots of screws loose.
Anyway, Karon vowed revenge against the beast who caused all these misfortunes (A.K.A me) and then search for his little sister – who was also under my care. Out of nowhere, I was being painted as the bad guy for quite literally being forced to fight.
For some reason, I was getting the feeling that Diane always intended for me to carry a large target on my back when she had me lead the West.
Anyway, Karon set out on a journey to the North to get the help of the tyrant of the North. He was planning to launch a surprise attack on the West with the trolls and orcs. What he most likely didn’t plan on was the fact that I had stolen the orcs and kobolds, had the south on my side and could summon a literal army of C-B ranks at any time I so pleased.
His plan was going to fail hardly, but there was a chance of it succeeding since the North of Larm had several B-rank monsters and a few A ranks. It would take 100 B ranks to take on one A rank, but it wasn’t like I knew how many A ranks the North had at their disposable.
Then there was the tyrant of the North. Third strongest after Minerva and Goliath, clearly not as weak as Krull was. I couldn’t underestimate his power since I myself hadn’t met him yet.
Kara was startled, clearly not expecting that we had to fight against the very forest we were trying to protect. And she felt like apologising to me for the fact that her older brother was coming to antagonise me without checking for actual facts.
I on the other hand didn’t really see this as much of a problem. Reiman and I had been talking and we already had a failsafe for in case the tyrant of the North decided to not help us. We even planned for the case he chose to antagonise us.
Anyhow, I guess it was time I paid a visit to the final tyrant of Larm.
DAILY ACHIEVEMENTS
[Hinotori collected 25x [Large Sporon Ore]]
[Hinotori collected 50x [Small Adamantite Ore]]
[Hinotori collected 50x [Large Orichalum Ore]]
[Hinotori collected several [Elemental Stones]]
FAMILIA
[The child Maou evolved into a Twilight Hell Cat]
[Several goblins evolved into hob-goblins]
[Some timber wolves evolved into Crimson Hounds]
Day 70
The day started out with me waking up to see three fanged bunny corpses on my bed. I glared at Maou, but it would seem he wasn’t the cause this time. The culprit was Kawaii trying to act like a cat. I felt a bit thrown off by that and scolded her, but she didn’t seem to be listening.
I went to check on Ulva first thing. She was happy to see me, but was still a bit down. Fortunately, I was here to liberate her from that problem. We were leaving the West on a trip to the North. This time, it was a secret trip so no one else would know that we were gone.
Grimm begged me to let him tag along, so I allowed. He and Ulva had grown a bit close. Also, Arisu came along as well. Turns out she could sniff out ores, so while I would be roaming the North in search of the tyrant, Sora, she would be out searching for locations we could turn into mines.
Maou also managed to sort of tag along. Well, I didn’t want another incident with the little guy causing random discord in the mesh hall. Apparently, there was a large food fight between Zana, Kara, Kawaii and Sylphie and this little guy admitted to being the cause.
I was basically doing this to save the guys from themselves. With no sort of hesitation, [Gods’ Wisdom] created a portal that led to the skies above the North. We had no real idea where Sora lived, so we might as well just start from the top.
Using [Gravity], I slowed down Ulva, Grimm and Arisu’s descent while Maou and I simply flew down. We landed on a portion of the mountain. We were about 1.5 kilometres above the ground now. This mountain was about 3~4 kilometres, so we might be seeing the tyrant of the North at the very top, but to avoid any problems, we’d just carry-on on foot.
Well, I say to avoid any problems, but before we even moved, a wyvern attacked us. I reflexively shot a powerful blast of lightning, killing the wyvern easily. Grimm gave me a look like he was scared of me, whereas the others simply shrugged.
I was expecting Ulva to say something like ‘That was scary’, but she said “Aww, I wanted to try fighting it once”. Arisu agreed with her and I was starting to get a bad feeling. At least it was good that Ulva was interested in getting stronger, right?
We travelled the mountain a bit, and eventually we stumbled across a weird creature. It looked like a hedgehog, but shiny with a sort of sticky material escaping its body. The monster – Astagide – jumped up and fled upon seeing us. It scaled the wall using its sticky spikes as some sort of legs, running with insane speed. I normally would have hunted it down, but we all paused due to what we found it eating.
There was a human corpse there. He had some pieces of armour on him. Grimm turned his head away and tried to cover his nose, the scent of blood was starting to drive him mad. I moved us to a new location, relatively far away from the corpse.
When Grimm settled down, he explained that the armour looked like the general armour of a soldier from a tiny nation. The Sundane Kingdom, which was about a month’s trip from there to the North. According to him, there was no way they should have been able to appear on the North so soon. At least two more weeks were required till we saw anyone from this particular kingdom.
I thought it was possible because of teleportation, but spatial magic users were very rare. And those that did exist were unable to teleport an entire army. Even sending groups of 5 was like hell to them. It also wouldn’t make sense for them to send 5 soldiers per day to survive in the mountains.
We got a bad feeling about this, so I left the others in Grimm’s care and went back to try to see if the human still had a soul. I ate it, receiving an instant level up and permanent rise in stats, as well as his memories.
From what I saw, the sundane kingdom had allied themselves with a powerful group. The group provided teleportation rings that could carry about 50 soldiers at a time to the mountain and they’d been building a fortress around. Though, development merely just begun and it was more like a camp at the moment.
The soldier didn’t have any more details than that. This was merely the result of rumours, but he knew the group to be called The Sub-Circle.
I instinctively thought back to Ulva and the fact that they kidnapped her. I hadn’t given much thought to the organisation originally, but if they were acting up and directly invading Larm, I had more than enough reason to want to crush them.
I returned to the others after sending out a few shadows to keep a close eye on the humans for now. Reiman’s rats were also informed of the secret group of humans here, so they could make sure to avoid them.
We spent the night in a cave that used to be filled with mountain goblins. I say used to, because Ulva and Arisu cleared them out and I burnt all the blood. Maou and Ulva had developed a weird affinity for each other today.
DAILY ACHIEVEMENTS
[Tori went up 1 level]
[Sylphie produced 1 Orichalum Sword]
[Note from Sylphie: Orichalum is really hard… it will take forever to actually make something out of these]
FAMILIA
[The captain Taiku evolved into a Kuri]
