Chapter 129: The Bear Slays the Black Tiger

Chapter 129:
The Bear Slays the Black Tiger

 

I REALLY DID HAVE to give up. I’d wanted the black pelt pristine, but it looked like I had to resign myself to damaging it a little.

The black tiger was agile, and it had a high aptitude for perceiving magic. It wouldn’t let me use the Cordless Bungee Strike a second time, and it could now effortlessly dodge my wind magic like some kinda anime zodiac knight or something—this same-attack-won’t-work-twice stuff was not what I wanted to deal with right now. It was a tiger for crying out loud.

I pulled a sword from my bear storage.

“Dodge this,” I muttered.

The black tiger zigzagged forward and came at me with its sharp fangs. I should’ve dodged, but I didn’t think—I blocked instead, and the force of it sent me sliding onto the ground until it was straddling me. It snapped at me with its huge jaws. I kept on blocking. It bit down on the blade with awful, little clicking noises.

I bent my legs and kicked up at the tiger’s abdomen with all of my strength. It flew high into the air, spun around and—whoosh!—the cat landed on its feet.

I transferred the sword into my left hand. Had to keep the right hand ready for spellcasting.

The black tiger slowly circled me. Inspecting. This thing hadn’t mistaken me for an actual bear, had it? It had to know by now that I wouldn’t taste any good, right?

I guess we’d agree to disagree; it closed the distance between us little by little.

The black tiger wasn’t landing any fatal blows on me either. Maybe it was getting pissy about it, because I’d heard a low growl rising from its bloody mouth for a while now. It bared its teeth, looking livid.

If I hadn’t had my game-breaking bear gear, it’d have been terrifying. With my bear gear and magic, I felt safe, but I could imagine panicking otherwise. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t have been out here to begin with.

The moment the black tiger circled around to my back, it sprung. I hadn’t turned around because that would have invited one of the usual attacks. When I turned, its huge maw was trying to chomp through me.

I stabbed at the black tiger’s mouth with the sword I held in my white bear puppet on my left hand. The black tiger bit the sword. The moment I pushed the sword forward, it snapped in half.

Crap. It was just a normal iron sword against a black tiger’s fangs, after all.

The black tiger assailed me with its razor fangs. I immediately shielded myself with the white bear puppet. The black tiger bit right down.

Ow, ow, ow…ow? Oh. It didn’t hurt.

The black tiger drooled as it gnawed on the white bear puppet, but it didn’t hurt. Gotta love game-breaking gear.

I forced my white bear puppet down the tiger’s throat as it bit me, gathered magic, and launched flame magic into its mouth.

The flame singed the black tiger’s throat, lungs, and internal organs—that tiger must’ve been burning bright, but it was all worth it. “Sometimes you have to lose the battle to win the war,” after all. Not that I’d…really lost any battles. Or been injured. So…more like “Didn’t lose the battle and won the war?” Sure.

The black tiger’s jaw loosened, and it leaned over onto me as it collapsed. It wasn’t heavy, but it felt heavy. I moved the black tiger to the side. It thumped onto the ground.

Neat.

“Yuna!” I heard someone call my name. I looked where the voice was coming from: Shia was rushing over, looking worried. “Yuna, are you okay?”

“It’s over. Finally.” I’d held back, but that thing had been difficult. Now I had the black pelt, though. I’d have Fina harvest it when I got back.

“I simply cannot believe it,” said Cattleya. “You defeated that black tiger by yourself?”

Shia, Cattleya, Maricks, Timol, Garan, and the others joined me. Kumayuru and Kumakyu, who had been their guards, came last. Looked like they’d protected everyone, just like I asked.

“Thanks for doing your job, guys.” I gently stroked Kumayuru and Kumakyu’s necks.

Everyone else was looking at the dead black tiger on the ground in disbelief.

“Is it really dead?”

“I can’t believe it.”

“We’re not done yet, everyone.”

There were wolves everywhere I looked—not just one or two of them either. We were surrounded by more than a hundred. I’d heard wolf howls multiple times while battling the black tiger. They’d probably been calling for friends. I thought the wolves would scram when I defeated the black tiger, but even more had gathered.

“Yuna, the wolves…” Shia gazed at them anxiously. The wolves emerged from the shadows of the trees, one by one…

“There are so many,” said Cattleya.

“Kumayuru, Kumakyu, take care of everyone for a little longer.”

“Yuna?”

“I have a bit more work to do.”

“In that case,” said Maricks, “let us help. We can slay wolves.”

“You’ll get in the way.”

“W-we wouldn’t…”

“If you get in the way, I’ll have Kumayuru and Kumakyu pin you down.” At that, my bears crooned and headed toward Maricks. “If he makes a move, just sit on him or something.”

And I ran off to face the wolf pack on my own.

 

Slaying the wolves was a lopsided fight—in my favor, obviously. Landing attacks felt nice. When I fired magic, it hit my mark. As I attacked, the numbers of wolves steadily decreased. I slew the wolves in less time than it had taken to defeat the black tiger.

“And that’s that. No more monsters. You can come over now, if you want.”

Maricks was looking at me quietly like he wanted to say something.

“What is it?”

“Y-you saved us. Thank you,” Maricks choked on his words.

“Yes, you did,” said Cattleya. “Thank you very much, Yuna. Thanks to you, we’re saved.”

“Yuna, thank you very much,” said Shia.

“Um, thanks,” said Timol finally.

Garan looked around in disbelief. “Um, thank you. Gewn and Geld are safe thanks to you.”

“Well, it was my job to protect these kids.” I looked them over. Yep, they were fine.

Maricks seemed like he wanted to say something, as per usual, but he kept is mouth firmly shut. He was probably feeling some complex emotions after being saved by me given he’d been convinced I wasn’t a real adventurer. He’d even made fun of me. Constantly!

Well, let this be a learning experience—you can’t judge a book (bear?) by its cover.

 

I put the black tiger and wolves away into my bear storage and prepped for the journey back. Well, I called it prep, but we were just cleaning up the goblins Maricks and the others had killed. We made sure to pull off the mana gems as proof of their slaying, too. Shia and the other students were the ones removing the gems, so they could get a little experience.

Also, I may or may not have told them that I was tired and just wanted to watch.

 

We were going to head back to the village when Garan came over.

“Um, may I request something?” he asked me with some difficulty. “There’s a silkworm nest near here. Could we check on it? The nest is very important to the village. Please.” Garan bowed deeply.

It was fine, since there were no monsters around, but I couldn’t blame him for being anxious after cleaning up a hundred-odd monsters. “It’s fine by me, but can you ask the students too? Like I said before, I came here to guard them.”

Garan and the others looked at the students, but Maricks was too broody to talk. Shia asked me in Maricks’s place, “Yuna, there’s nothing dangerous around, right?”

“There isn’t. You know I’d protect you if there were.”

Shia smiled. “I know. Let’s go.”

Cattleya and Timol agreed. Finally, Maricks answered with a demure, “All right.”

With that, we headed for the silkworm nest.

 

Since I didn’t need to hide them anymore, I rode on Kumayuru. Shia and Cattleya seemed jealous. “What, do you guys wanna ride Kumakyu?”

“Really?”

“May we?”

The two of them happily mounted Kumakyu. Maricks and Timol also watched jealously, but, unfortunately, we were already at capacity.

 

We got to the silkworm nest with guidance from Garan’s group. It seemed this world’s silkworms were monsters. Their signals showed up nice and strong on my detection skill.

Then something unexpected appeared right in front of my very eyes: meter-long silkworms wriggling along the ground.

“Thank goodness. They’re safe.” Garan’s group approached them happily. The silkworms were munching away on leaves as though nothing had happened.

I looked around, but I didn’t see any damage; they hadn’t been attacked. The black tiger either hadn’t stopped here or wasn’t crazy about eating bugs. Anyway, the silkworms were unscathed.

And nauseating.

I couldn’t deal with insect-type monsters, in the game or in real life. Being a shut-in raised in the city, it wasn’t like I’d seen bugs too often, so…not a fan. And these bugs were human-sized and moving around. Argh, it was almost traumatizing.

Really took me back. See, while I’d been playing the game, there’d been a secret event. It had been called “Let’s Exterminate Cockroaches.”

When the event started up, it turned the game into a living hell. I logged out the moment I saw ’em and still had nightmares for days. Imagine human-sized cockroaches scurrying around. The apex of terror. The event got canceled right away and they distributed items to apologize.

There were some gamers who’d praised the staff for making them look surprisingly realistic, but you just can’t make things like that look real! It’s immoral! Irresponsible! And more importantly, it gave me goosebumps.

Nope. I knew my limit now, and my limit was bugs.

Of course, silkworms moved slower than cockroaches and they didn’t attack me, so they wouldn’t give me nightmares, but still. Too big. No thanks.

I looked away from the silkworms and took in the cocoons. They were big too. The silkworms were chonkers, so the cocoons were ginormous too. Hooray. I’d solved a mystery that I did not want to solve.

Once we confirmed the silkworms were safe, we returned to the village.