A Little Experience

The roaring sound of a waterfall flowed on.

The river water was clear, and they could see fish swimming in it.

And yet… behind Kikori and the others, even though the river definitely ended at the Transfer Gate they had just passed through, the river continued flowing as if there were no problem at all.

Where did that water flow? If a fish crossed that Transfer Gate, “where” would it go?

The strangeness of the laws possessed by something called a dungeon was unchanged, but…

“Is this… the wyverns’ home?”

“Probably. Doesn’t it look like a place those lizards would like?”

Indeed, it was rich in nature, and there would likely be plenty of things that could serve as food.

But… no, precisely because of that, there was one thing Kikori did not understand.

(Why did those things… burn the fairy forest so thoroughly?)

If this was the wyverns’ home, then they had enough intelligence to know they should not recklessly burn nature.

And yet, why had they needed to come burn the fairy forest?

It probably was not a food problem.

He knew fairies liked nuts and berries because he had eaten all sorts of things from them back then.

By contrast, he could not imagine wyverns plucking nuts and berries to eat them.

Then they had not invaded the fairy forest because their food problem had become pressing.

It was impossible to think of it as anything other than them coming simply to burn the fairy forest down.

But why was that?

He did not know. Not knowing was an extremely unpleasant thing.

“Kikori. What are you spacing out for?”

“Orphe.”

“What?”

“The wyverns… were they on bad terms with the fairies?”

“We barely had anything to do with them. We only found out back then that they had even come ‘next door.’”

“Right…”

“But why?”

“I don’t understand why the wyverns did that to the forest. They don’t seem like the type to burn trees because they get in the way of searching for prey.”

That was right. Around them too, there were places where trees grew just like in the fairy forest.

If wyverns only had enough intelligence to burn trees because they got in the way, then it would not have been strange for burned remains to be scattered here and there, and yet they were not.

Orphe looked around as if she had only just realized it after being told that.

“Ah… In other words, it’s that. They were picking a fight with us.”

“That’s the conclusion we end up with after all, huh.”

“All right. Let’s burn this whole place down.”

“No, I think that’s a bad idea.”

While holding back Orphe, who looked as if she might unleash magic at any moment, Kikori thought of words to persuade her.

“If you do that and they all come at us at once, we won’t win.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

“Well, that would be…”

Kikori looked over the scenery visible from where they stood, then stated it clearly.

“…Guerrilla warfare. I’ve got a little experience with it.”