Chapter 16: Destruction
[Edited by ArchmageNaoki and Arthur300000]
[Generic Deathbricks sneaking in line]
I wake up next morning and find myself still in my sister’s embrace. Her warmth, her scent, her softness, the sound of her heartbeat and how she patted my hair made me fall back to sleep in no time. Well, I want to sleep like this for the whole day, but my lower part is waking me up ruthlessly. I really want to stay in my sister’s embrace forever, but reality is too cruel. I hugged her a bit tighter and took in a lungful of air then stood up with a bit of effort.
Strange, it's only been five days I’ve lived in this new world, yet I’m already familiar with my new body. Right now I could finish most of my morning businesses without paying too much attention. I changed from my rabbit pajamas to a white one piece which I wore on my first day with my new family. I still have another one that I haven't tried yet, but it’s not appropriate to wear inside a forest. It’s a very long red gown so I might be stuck to branches and roots in a critical moment. The cooking and crafting team already woke up before us long ago, maybe because we already killed all the monster around this area that last night was so peaceful.
The crafting team finished extracting all the traps and sensors around our camp while we’re having a slice of bread with some unknown seasoned minced meat on top as breakfast. It’s the sweetest tasting meat I’ve ever had. I can sense that the meat was seasoned with salt, pepper, fennel, coriander and chili. However, I don’t know what kind of bread it is. It’s a hard white bread. I hesitate a bit before trying it because of its raw look, but as expected of our Spartan chef Vicky, I wasn't disappointed with its taste.
I thank Vicky for the wonderful meal, but she also thanks us for the ingredients she acquired yesterday. She showed her storage device to me, it’s an advanced model with a high capacity and came with an ingredient preserving function. If I remember correctly, just her storage device alone costs more than 5000 credits. Maybe because she’s in a non-combat oriented program the ability to carry more things around is more important to her.
While my sword is still in pristine condition, my sister has to ask Marcus to maintain her axes as the blades are full of dents and chips. Well, she used them to block monster attacks a lot, so it was inevitable. My sister was going to pay Marcus with some monster cores, but he politely refused. Yesterday, I also asked the crafting team about an energy tuning device to my energy to the recently acquired staff, but it seems that the equipment is too big to carry around.
While we waited for Marcus to finish his job my brother called us to a secluded corner of the camp. He looked haggard and had dark circles under his eyes. Yesterday, he borrowed some equipment from the crafting team to work on the cybernetic eye that I picked up. So he worked on it the entire night huh?.
“I found the bandit’s hideout location, want to check it out?” My brother asks for our consensus. Well, it could be our fortune or our death waiting there. However, there is one glaring problem here with both choices.
“Either way I want you to get some rest first.” I told him with a serious tone. Well, I don’t want this guy to pass out in a critical moment and expose the whole team to danger.
“.... I-I will, here’s the data I collected. Just wake me up in one hour, I don’t want to miss this chance.” After I had stared him down, he relented.
The good thing is he has done some splendid homework. Actually, everything is in there. A detailed map, the planned route, expected resistance, traps and expected local monsters, etc. After we studied his report and discussed it together, we agreed to take this chance. The hideout may have been discovered by another security sweep or has relocated because their ‘friends’ have gone missing. However, we don't have anything better to do anyway. The problem is we must keep this information a secret. If the other team, especially Mr. Professional Adventurer knew of this, then he'll send an entire team of professional adventurers to steal our prey.
The hideout is about 6 hours from here in the direction where we came. It’s just about a two-hour walk from where we encountered the bandits yesterday. However, to make it look like we're just leaving to hunt monsters, we couldn’t use the path that we took yesterday. So our new route is curving back but not overlapping with our previous path. We informed the non-combat team about the location where we slew those Batyotes yesterday and our new planned route for today.
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Around 1 hour later we wake my brother up. He looks better but still has dark circles under his eyes. We left our camp at 8:56 AM according to my gun’s display. Well, I play with my gun a lot, and I can also see the energy capacity of each monster core. Following is the approximate energy per core that I found after loading them into my gun.
Small Light Blue core ……. 0.300 kJuiz
Small Green core ………... 0.500 kJuiz
Small Dark red core …….... 1.000 kJuiz
Small Black core …………. 1.500 kJuiz
Surprisingly, right now my full energy capacity is 9.182 kJuiz. Is it increased about 2% after only one day of exercise? Oi! If this keeps going for three years, won’t I become bald like Saitama!?
The reason we got only small monster cores yesterday is because my brother planned to do so. The medium sized monster core has a lot more energy inside than the small core. However, the device that can use medium sized cores has to be a lot bigger like cars for example. So the price of medium cores is not much higher than the small ones. Thus, yesterday plan’s is quite good if we are looking to make money efficiently. The route we took yesterday passes only the small monsters habitat, and by small monsters I mean not bigger than human size. There was only monster larger than a person is the one I found yesterday, the man-eating plant. However, today we don’t have the luxuries only to target small monsters like that.
The bigger monsters we encountered today have sizes varying from bears to elephants, and they're quite intimidating. Well, just imagine having a three-headed six armed grizzly bear running at you, you would be spooked out right? But after I fought a few of them I found out that they were easy prey. Due to their big bodies, they are slower thus easier to shoot at them. Disappointingly, I only encountered monsters that gave medium-sized green core and below.
The cooking and crafting team today is even more ecstatic. Well, that's understandable, because bigger monsters equal more materials for them. However, my Wakizashi doesn’t do well against these big monsters. It got bent to the point that it’s difficult to sheath and unsheath after I failed to cut elephant sized hamsters neck apart. Well, who would have known that its spine was so hard? My white one piece dress was also dyed crimson red because I didn’t want to let go of my Wakizashi and tried to dislodge it from the hamster’s bone. So the blood from its neck was splattered on me. The good news is that I don't have to care about my period anymore because I'm already soaking wet with blood all over my body until my sister dragged me to wash my body immediately after we finished sweeping the monsters around the next camp site.
While my brother dozed off to the land of dreams, we enjoyed a bountiful feast from Chef Vicky. Marcus happily agreed to repair my Wakizashi, and he doesn’t accept any payment again. He'll go bankrupt in no time if he starts a business I concluded. Vicky also helped me pack something for my brother to eat along the way, well, with her skill even an on-the-go meal looked delicious. I also asked for one of those taco wrapped things for myself. I ate a lot these days, but it’s ok, right? I exercise a lot too…
Where do the bread and wraps come from? I regretted asking the same question to Vicky. She showed me the process of making the taco wrapping from those spaghetti monsters corpses... Well, delicious food is justice, and I shouldn’t waste them so I will try my best to forget that.
We woke my brother up at 1:14 PM and it took about 3 hours to reach our destination. The traps placements are according to what my brother described. I told my teammate to wait while I scouted the area because they are not too “Silent” when they are sneaking around. They showed disagreeing faces, but I reassure them I’m just scouting. I found four men that were patrolling around the hideouts entrance, so I silently dispose of them. One by one. The last one noticed me, but I killed him before he could finish his first word. “Wh-” Is all he said before I cut his head off in half through his mouth. After I had hidden their corpses, I called my teammates over. The hideout looks like a cave with an old steel door on the front. It seems the bandits are not inside their hideout as I listened for noises behind the door but heard nothing.
“The lock is too sophisticated. I can’t pick it.” My brother shakes his head after he tried something on the door for a few minutes. Oh, so that is what he’s trying to do? For Pete's sake, isn't that what your muscles are for? To everyone's surprise, I kicked the door open and walked in.