124

After finishing off the goblins that had sprung up around the base ruins, I looked around to see if there was anything else.

What I found was a human skeleton that still had some meat clinging to it.

(They got eaten again… aren’t the hunters’ standards dropping a bit lately?)

Still, if someone had recently died here, that meant there had to be some kind of item left behind.

So I searched a bit more carefully and found a backpack that seemed to belong to the corpse from earlier, who looked to be male based on the clothing.

Unfortunately, there was nothing impressive—just a fire-starting magic tool and some rations.

I should have realized beforehand that “this was about what you would expect from a beginner hunter who lost to goblins.”

While I was checking if there was anything else just in case, I confirmed that the spot where I had once found the hunters’ gear was now completely empty.

Maybe some newbie, tempted by relics, had come solo all the way out here and then been gang-beaten to death by goblins.

If things had already been mostly looted by the time he arrived, then the fact that his sad end came after a completely wasted trip was a pretty harsh story.

Anyway, given all that, I should have been done here already… and yet I was still wandering around the base ruins like this.

Why?

In a word, because there was a strange smell.

Sweet, maybe? In any case, that oddly cloying smell was bothering me, and I was roaming around trying to pinpoint its source.

There was one more thing—it was the certainty that “something is here” that kept me pinned to this spot.

(…Was it hiding and watching me? My sound-based detection was not picking it up, and the smell was useless thanks to this scent. It even felt like my senses were being precisely suppressed… was that just my imagination?)

It was entirely possible it was just a coincidence.

I had been drifting around the base ruins to see how the other side would move, but there had been no approach from them at all.

The idea that the smell was actually a poison and they were just waiting for me to collapse was plausible enough that it was starting to creep me out a little, but it seemed the other side ran out of patience first.

I heard a faint sound—at least enough to tell that it was footsteps.

The problem was that it clearly was not human, and also did not seem to be an animal.

In that case, there was only one answer.

(A monster… and an insect-type at that.)

Judging from the weight, I guessed it was about human-sized, so there was no need to run, but if I chose to fight, it would be a dangerous opponent I could not afford to underestimate.

Anyone who knew how insects had evolved in nature would inevitably be shocked by their diversity.

Now imagine those insects made into monsters—larger, tougher—of course I had to be cautious.

“Insect-type monsters,” the Empire had once said, “have many weaknesses, but in exchange they were overwhelmingly strong in certain environments or conditions.”

And not just insects—living things always settled in environments suited to them.

I set down my pack and reorganized its contents so I could easily grab my potion bottles, then unhooked the sword and shield attached to it and equipped them.

Even if it barely retained its original form, this had once been a military base.

With so many obstacles, this terrain was by no means a good place for me to fight.

(I would at least grant it the advantage of the terrain. If this was a good opponent to test this gear on, that much disadvantage was acceptable.)

I waited in silence.

Since the opponent was an insect, there was no point trying to play mind games.

My only options were to steadily flip over each card in its hand and figure it out as I went, or to flip the whole board by brute force.

And then the enemy, unable to restrain its instincts, moved.

It was a sound like the air being torn—something almost impossible to see lunged at me from behind.

I easily knocked it aside with my shield and caught a glimpse of the attacker out of the corner of my eye.

(…A stinger? No, a tail!)

It was thin and long like a thread, extending toward me from a single point.

I turned in that direction and managed to briefly catch sight of something as it slipped out of my line of sight.

“That shape… a mantis?”

The distinctive silhouette made me say it out loud, but if that was the case, then what had that previous attack been?

I was thinking, “A new species, or maybe…” when a certain possibility crossed my mind.

“This clearly went beyond the Genetically Enhanced Soldier Project framework… if anything, it would fall under the Chimera Project, right?”

Once I had seen it even once, I was not about to lose track.

I raised my shield, inched closer, and readied myself for the next attack.

“Hey, can you hear me? If you can, say something—anything.”

I called out, allowing for one particular possibility—what I got in return was another strike from that tail-like thing, once again from behind.

I used my shield to bat it away and reclassified my opponent as a simple monster.

Now I could fight without holding back, though there was also a strong sense of disappointment.

There was a chance I had just seen my biggest cause for concern resolve itself in the most unexpected way, so there was no helping that feeling.

(So, it seemed to be a monster that was not in my knowledge at all… a new species, or did I just not know about it?)

“Probably the latter,” I said with a self-deprecating chuckle at my own lack of knowledge, and took a step forward.

In that instant, something lunged toward my ankle—I stopped it on reflex with my saber, but could not land a counter and it slipped away behind a pile of rubble.

It had been a strike with a scythe-like limb; if my reaction had been any slower, who knew what would have happened?

(It was faster than I expected. And even when I blocked it with this, I did not cut through it.)

My opponent was extremely hard.

On top of that, its speed and power were more than adequate, making it a perfect training partner for a fully armed me.

It seemed to favor hiding and ambushing, but it was clearly not the kind of enemy that relied mainly on tricks like poison or webs the way Spider-Man-type monsters did.

In that case, there were any number of ways to force it into a straightforward fight.

(First, I would close the distance in one go!)

No matter how good it was at hiding, if I charged straight at it, I could catch it before it hid.

That long, needle-like tail it could extend freely was easy enough to deal with—the sound gave away its position completely, and my shield could handle it just fine.

Like an idiot repeating the same move, I knocked aside three more attacks from behind with my shield and thundered forward at a run to close the gap.

And then, up ahead, I grinned and said, “Found you.”

In simple terms, it was “an insect that crossed a wasp with a mantis.”

A monster shaped roughly like that—wasp abdomen with mantis scythes and head—though the details differed from any insect I remembered, was once again trying to hide behind a collapsed structure when I spotted it.

It was on the far side of a single wall.

In that case, there was only one thing to do.

I took a short running start, jumped—and with a flying kick, smashed through the wall and leapt in front of my target as I swung my saber.

Unfortunately, I was just out of range to land a direct hit on its body, but I did manage to knock off the arm bearing the scythe and throw it off balance.

As if in retaliation, it thrust its abdomen forward and fired the stinger at its tip straight at me.

It was an attack so quiet it was almost eerie, but my tower shield met it with a ringing clang of metal on metal and stopped it cold.

“I see… so that was what you looked like.”

I finally got a full frontal view of it, and it matched my first impression exactly.

Which meant there was a high probability that the stinger on its wasp abdomen was poisonous.

There was another point I had to watch out for, but actually dealing with it would not be that hard.

As I stood there, composed and ready, my target spread its arms wide in an attempt to make itself look bigger and took on a threatening stance.

Did this little bug really think it could beat me, the crystallization of Imperial technology?

Oh, but swarms were a hard no.

Those things tried to pour into every hole in your body and tear you apart from the inside, so I really did not ever want to deal with them again.