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Ailet furrowed her brow and countered.
“But that’s impossible. As I said, to imitate us… they need our physical data through blood or bodily fluids. But we haven’t encountered a Doppelganger on our way here, let alone lost any blood or fluids to one, have we?”
Kelly nodded.
“…Certainly, that’s true.”
No matter how much we thought about it, there was no clear answer. Judging by the footprints, a Doppelganger definitely exists.
And it’s wandering this Demon Territory alone, wearing the guise of one of us.
At that moment, Chel clapped her hands together to draw everyone’s attention.
“Let’s not get too grim. A Doppelganger is only a threat when it manages to replace someone and infiltrate the group. Their individual combat power isn’t usually that high, though it varies slightly depending on who they’re imitating.”
“That… is true.”
“So, what we need to do is be careful so that none of us get swapped out. If we just stick to that, a Doppelganger—or even a Doppelganger’s grandfather—can’t touch us.”
“…We’ll have to move in groups of at least two, then.”
“Right. From now on, we move in pairs at minimum. Other than that, we proceed as planned.”
“…Mhm. That seems like the best way.”
“Okay. Then Kelly, I’ll look after Ailet. You take Elizabeth.”
I scratched my head and asked.
“What about me?”
“Orabeoni, you’re the type who would crawl back out of hell even if you were dropped there alone. So, you’re the bait.”
“Meaning if I move alone, it might attack me to try and take my place?”
“Exactly.”
“Hmm… feels like I’m being treated a bit harshly here. But fine. Let’s go with that.”
The ninth day.
Thanks to the Twin-Horned Wolf’s scouting and the party’s combat prowess, we had already covered 200 kilometers. Before us lay the Rubian River, which bisects the Demon Territory into east and west.
I smacked my lips as I looked at the vast river in the distance.
“It’s wide.”
Kelly nodded her head.
“Being a riverbank, there are a terrifying number of monsters gathered here. It’s crawling with them. Detouring is out of the question… and if we try to push straight through, the river blocks our path. Should we clear them all out and then launch a boat?”
“There will be plenty of monsters beneath the river as well. A boat would be smashed the moment it hits the water. Do you have the confidence to fight and win against aquatic monsters while in the river?”
“Ugh… probably not.”
“Do we really need to fight in the water? We can just fight on it.”
Ailet’s brow twitched.
“The boat is broken; how are we supposed to fight on the water?”
“You just step on the water and stand there.”
“……”
“……”
“Huh? You can’t do that? I can move just like I do on land. Ah, since it’s running water, maybe I’d be a bit slower.”
“……”
“……”
“What about reinforcing the boat’s material?”
“Anything that floats on water is just looking for a place to die.”
The group ignored my words and continued their meeting among themselves.
Wait. Was I just passed over? Why? Did I say something weird?
Chel pointed toward the sky.
“How about flying?”
“It’s the best method we have, but… the river is 500 meters wide here. While flying, we’ll attract the attention of every monster in the vicinity. Let’s keep that as a last resort.”
“Hold on.”
When I requested the floor, Ailet gave me a look of blatant distaste.
Wow. I guess we’ve really gotten close enough for her to show her true feelings, huh?
“Oh, what kind of absurd idea are you going to pitch now… are you going to suggest we step on the air and run across this time?”
“No, Ailet. How can a mage say something so ignorant? How could a human step on air?”
Ailet pounded her chest at my words.
“Oh, the injustice. The injustice! To be called ignorant by the person who suggested we stand on water…! This is the most unfair thing in the world…!”
“Anyway, let’s dig a hole.”
“What?”
“A tunnel. An underground tunnel. Like the DMZ tunnels. Red flavor. Like Kim’s spicy stir-fried pork.”
“…Please provide a slightly more detailed explanation.”
“I mean, we dig a tunnel under the river to cross. If we dig about a kilometer, I think we can safely reach the other side… what do you think? Normally it would be a crazy idea… but we have four mages here, don’t we?”
Chel let out an “Oh…” of admiration.
“Wait? That might actually work. Everyone here can use ‘Dig’… and it shouldn’t take that much time.”
“…As expected of Orabeoni. That’s a brilliant idea.”
At that, Ailet, the dedicated objector, faithfully carried out her role today as well.
“W-wait a minute. Monsters aren’t brainless. If they find the tunnel, they’ll definitely react. Some will even pick up on the mana fluctuations from the ‘Dig’ spell.”
“Then we just make sure they don’t find it.”
“And how exactly do we do that?”
“How? We just hunt down every monster that might react.”
Chel nodded.
“So, you’re saying we clear out the area around the tunnel entrance beforehand to create a vacuum zone?”
“Exactly. If we secure the area around the entrance, there’s no way we’ll be caught after that. Once we dig a hundred meters underground, what trick could they possibly use to notice us?”
After falling into deep thought, Ailet finally expressed her begrudging agreement.
“Mmm. It… it seems okay. The monsters around here aren’t that strong anyway…”
At that, Kelly gripped her halberd and sprang up from her seat.
“Alright! It’s decided! I was feeling pretty stiff from all the sneaking around… I could use a good warm-up.”
And so, we began to sweep the area of monsters.
“Paga-chu!”
A white, roughly fifty-centimeter-tall creature that looked like a cat de-formed with zero effort in three seconds. It had stubby limbs, a red ruby on its forehead, and eyes, nose, and mouth drawn on its face with a marker like an emoticon. This cute yet bizarre stuffed-doll-like being floated into the air at Elizabeth’s shout.
It was the Carbuncle that Elizabeth had named “Paga-chu”.1
I swear, you’re going to get sued one of these days.
Ping!
As a beam of light shot from the doll’s forehead, a strange, jelly-like monster—somewhere between a slime and an alien organism—froze mid-air while lunging toward the Carbuncle.
In that instant, a “naked lion” (meaning a lion without armor, not in a weird way) that had been hiding in the ruins of a collapsed shop lunged out like lightning. It swung “New Moon,” the halberd borrowed from Kelly, in a thunderous arc.
Thwack!!!
“Kee-kwee!!!”
With a bizarre scream, the jelly monster was instantly turned into crushed pudding. The lion stood guard, trampling the remains into the dirt…
Chel, who had finished clearing her side of monsters first, clicked her tongue while watching the scene.
“Hey. Eli-kid. Did you really have to name the Carbuncle that? Paga-chu? Seriously?”
Ah, so it wasn’t just me thinking that.
At Chel’s reprimand, Elizabeth pouted and grumbled.
“Whatever. Do you know how much my pets have contributed over the last few days? Are we really doing this? Picking fights over names?”
“…Ugh.”
Chel fell unusually silent, seemingly having nothing to counter that with.
“Elizabeth. Was it impossible to summon Leo with his armor? The difference in combat power between having the armor and not is too great.”
“It’s too much for now. Maybe if I only summoned Leo, but summoning Paga-chu or Snoopy at the same time makes the armor too taxing. Well, it might be possible once my rapport with Leo increases more. Or if my skill as a Tamer improves.”
“I see… I suppose that’s true.”
Anyway, regardless of the lion… it was the newly appeared Carbuncle that drew the group’s attention.
A magic-type long-range support monster, it was an 8-star rank, just like the Twin-Horned Wolf.
Of course, while it was a “magic-type,” it didn’t use Circle Magic; rather, it used the Carbuncle’s unique innate abilities. Its main repertoire consisted of Light-attribute attacks, debuffs, and minor mental-interference skills, among a few other small utilities.
Its personality, contrary to its cute stuffed-toy appearance, was unexpectedly that of a ferocious battle-maniac. It was extremely wary of strangers; Chel and Kelly had tried to pet it once and were startled back by its violent reaction.
However, it seemed that once you bonded with it, it became surprisingly clingy. In fact, when it was first summoned, it stuck to Elizabeth’s back and refused to let go.
I took a short break while watching the Carbuncle and the lion resume the monster cleanup. Since I had personally hunted more monsters than Chel, Kelly, and Ailet combined, no one was going to complain about me taking a breather.
Grrrr….
The lion moved forward, low to the ground, carefully scouting the surroundings. In contrast, the Carbuncle moved boldly, floating slightly off the ground.
A brown-furred monster that looked like a wildcat scaled up ten times lunged savagely as soon as it spotted the Carbuncle flying toward it, but—
Whoosh!
“Kya-ang!!”
…Its end was no different from the jelly monster earlier.
An unidentified light with the combined effects of the spells Silence and Paralyze fired from the Carbuncle’s forehead. The wildcat stiffened mid-air and tumbled to the ground.
Due to the short duration, the beast quickly broke free of the paralysis and roared ferociously… but by then, the lion was already looming over it with the halberd raised high.
Crunch!
The monster collapsed, split in half with a single blow. The bizarre duo of the lion and the Carbuncle had surprisingly perfect chemistry.
The lion finished it off by taking its head to be sure, then began to move stealthily again with the Carbuncle, maintaining a lookout.
“They’re good.”
I nodded, watching the stable hunting rhythm of the two.
“They’re doing well. How many monsters have we taken down so far?”
“About thirty rank-6 or higher. You took down half of them, Orabeoni.”
“How many more do we need?”
“Since we decided to clear a two-kilometer radius… I think a hundred should do it.”
“Seventy more to go, then…”
As Chel and I were discussing the task ahead, Kelly, who had been slaughtering monsters until the very end, approached us with her “Moon-render” slung over her shoulder.
“Looks like your side is finished too.”
“Ah, it was great. But I’m still a long way off compared to you, Orabeoni.”
“It’s only a few monsters’ difference…”
Just then, Kelly, who had been smiling shyly at me, suddenly made a strange expression.
“Orabeoni. There’s blood on your cheek…”
“Oh? Ah, I must have gotten grazed while fighting that tusked monster earlier. It was a pretty sturdy one.”
“Oh dear, if you leave it like this and it gets infected, what will we do…?”
“Don’t worry about a Priest… Woah!”
Lick.
I was laughing at Kelly’s unnecessary concern when I was startled by her suddenly licking the blood running down my cheek.
“Uh, that…”
“Wait a moment, Orabeoni. Just a little more…”
Lick. Lick…
She had often signaled her affection for me, but this was the first time she’d expressed it so aggressively. I was beyond flustered.
“Hey! What are you doing! Especially you, Kelly unnie! Why are you performing lewd acts in broad daylight, and in the middle of a Demon Territory of all places?”
“What do you mean lewd? It’s just skinship.”
“Who in the world does skinship like that!?”
Thankfully pushed out of the spotlight by the loud bickering of the two, I wiped my cheek with a sigh. Judging by the amount of blood, it seemed like a fairly deep cut, but surprisingly, the bleeding had already stopped.
“Hmm… Merina Elves really do have some strange tricks.”
Two days later.
Having finished the cleanup, we began to use “Dig” to excavate the tunnel.
With the four of them firing off “Dig” in turns, we were making progress at a rate of nearly 100 meters per hour.
“Be careful. If water pours in from above, we’re all dead!”
And so, as we carefully and deeply dug the tunnel…
“Kelly. Chel. Ailet. Elizabeth.”
A voice—so familiar it was jarring—suddenly came from behind us, causing us to freeze in our tracks.
From the darkness of the path we had just traveled, someone approached with wet, squelching footsteps.
As the light of the Mana Orbs revealed the figure, every member of the group gasped simultaneously.
“Uh…?”
“Gasp…!”
“Hic…!”
“What…?”
And I let out a hollow laugh, half-stunned and half-exasperated.
“I mean, seriously. Why the hell am I standing over there?”
“…Kelly. Chel. That guy is a fake. He’s a Doppelganger. Come over to this side.”
That bastard… he just shows up out of nowhere and what the hell is he talking about?
TL/N: a play on Pikachu and 'paga', a slangy way of saying 'idiot' ↩️
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