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It turned into a not-so-epic game of tag between me, who wanted a head-on fight, and the bug, which wanted nothing to do with a frontal clash.

Just when I was all fired up, thinking “All right, the real fight starts now that I’ve seen your whole body!” it turned tail and ran at full speed.

I could not help thinking, “So what was that intimidating pose of yours supposed to be?” but I was practically near the top of the natural food chain here.

Man, being strong really was a crime, I thought, remembering how something else had run away from me just like this before.

Caught completely off guard, I shouted, “Don’t run!” and gave chase, but every time I closed in, that stupidly long, string-like tail with the stinger would lash out, forcing me to stop and block it and keeping me from forcing it into close combat.

To make things worse, despite being just a bug, it made excellent use of the terrain.

Plainly put, my body size was working against me.

Even in ruins, this had once been a military base, so there were still a fair number of structures, with plenty of spots I simply could not squeeze through.

It used those cleverly, pulling away from me every time.

However, once a spot had been used once, I “expanded” it enough that I could pass through as well.

It could not reuse the same routes, and the distance between us steadily shrank, which made me grin; at last, I knocked aside the tail’s attack from behind with my tower shield without stopping and leapt with my saber raised.

With a blow that landed the instant I touched down, one of the bug’s legs ended up noticeably shorter when it failed to dodge in time.

Going straight into a follow-up, I stepped forward as if canceling my landing motion and swung my shield like a punch, but my strike met its counterattack square on, so I switched to defense.

I blocked the scythe strike and, as I knocked it upward, I brought my saber up in a rising cut.

As I pressed the attack, driving forward and forward, the now familiar tail with its stinger came lunging in from behind.

So I answered with my own tail.

Instead of stupidly knocking away just the tip, I smacked down the string-like thin part and pinned it to the ground.

Even then, it tried to correct its course and come flying at me, so I found myself wondering if this stinger was some kind of wired autonomous weapon.

Remembering a scene from a robot anime where wired and wireless weapons zipped around trading blows, I lopped off its scythe-bearing arm.

While I was at it, I tried to finally deal with that annoying tail and sever it with a series of follow-up strikes, but it felt like rubber and I could not cut through.

(I see… that trajectory came from its elasticity. Of course it would be like this.)

I analyzed my opponent as accurately as I could and steadily inflicted damage.

My saber swung again and again, but because it was made of a material that could withstand my strength, its stability was incredible and I could clash with not even a single chip in the blade.

With my sword or my shield, I knocked aside the last remaining scythe, and handled the occasional tail strike the same way.

This time I took one of its legs as well, to make sure it could not escape.

Carefully, without inflicting any fatal wounds, I kept the practice dummy in front of me from breaking as I guided the fight exactly the way I wanted.

Once I judged I had gained enough experience, I knocked aside its damaged scythe with my shield and, at the same time, brought my sword down.

Its final arm spun through the air—and the mantis-wannabe tried to flee on its three remaining legs.

I took one big step forward and cut off its head.

In the end, it all felt a bit anticlimactic.

Its coloring made it look like it might be poisonous, but if it did not sting me, it did not matter.

Even if it had managed to sting me, it would have been meaningless against me, stocked up with potions as I was.

There was even a chance poison simply did not work on me at all, so it had never had any real chance of winning.

“Good experience,” I said, satisfied, and checked the state of my surroundings.

I felt like I might have gone a bit overboard with the demolition, but… well, it was not as if that caused any particular problem, so fine.

“And after a bug, I ran into yet another bug…”

Tilting my head, I wondered if some set of conditions for a mass outbreak had been met.

With that many magic insects, you would expect some sort of warning sign, but nothing came to mind.

(Well, I did not come to this area that often. At most I took out goblins…)

That was when I remembered.

Insects were one of goblins’ main food sources.

And how many goblins had I culled?

“I wonder… was that my fault?” I thought for a second, but there was no way such a dramatic shift would happen in just a month or two.

Of course, it was possible I had been one of the causes, but I doubted that alone would trigger something like that.

More likely, the conditions had already been almost completely met, and the drop in goblin numbers had been the final factor that let their numbers explode like that.

In other words, I had only given the last little push, which meant I was innocent.

If anything, the fact that this had happened not far from a town meant it would not be an exaggeration to say the real blame lay with the authorities for neglecting regional management.

Having won my acquittal, I raised both arms high.

Case closed.

That said, not even the Empire’s wisdom had fully clarified the conditions under which monsters appeared.

Patterns had been identified to some extent, but they were far too flimsy to serve as a solid basis.

Because science could not explain it, the Empire had enforced strict policies toward monsters—ironically, that very land was now a monster paradise.

With no meaningful results to show for it, I finished my investigation and left the former military base, now little more than wreckage and rubble.

The fact that I ran into another insect-type monster almost immediately afterward made it harder and harder to believe this was just a coincidence.

“Should I be looking into this?”

Muttering that, I walked past a horned grasshopper whose head had been cut off, leaving it motionless.

For now, as planned, I gave the magic insect swarm a wide berth and headed toward the town that served as the Kingdom of Canaan’s southern development frontline base.

Come to think of it, I wondered if that mercenary had managed to escape safely.

The next day, as I made a wide detour through the forest, I had an additional encounter with an insect-type monster.

It was mid-sized, so the fight ended quickly, but I was starting to worry that their numbers might be increasing on the eastern side of the forest.

While I was thinking about that and heading north, I also ran into a standard animal-type monster.

It was a monkey-type I had never seen before; when it looked down at me from a tree and laughed “gehya-gehya,” I knocked it down with a stone and then cut it cleanly in two.

My first throw made it move, and the second landed perfectly where it came down.

Even if it was a fluke, a win was still a win.

Incidentally, monster meat was generally bad, so if you were going to eat it, you had to process it thoroughly and put real effort into cooking.

Some monsters simply could not be made edible no matter what you did, so you had to be careful.

Remembering a note about monsters in a cookbook I had read recently, I buried the corpse and set off running again.

One thing and another later, I arrived safely to the west of my destination.

From here, the question was how to target the supply shipments… but first I needed to find a place that could serve as a bed.

Near the border between the former Imperial territory and the Kingdom of Canaan, it would not be surprising to find similar abandoned bases.

The sky was unfortunately overcast today, so I needed to look for somewhere with a roof.