Chapter 8: It Ain’t Like Dirt Is Tasty

Chapter 8:
It Ain’t Like Dirt Is Tasty

 

A FEW DAYS AFTER MY ARM was restored, Filia and I left for the Hihi Forest. A vast expanse of red earth and sky stretched out for as far as the eye could see. This was the wilderness, the real wilderness, and I was getting pumped! This kind of scenery really gave you a sense of adventure. After taking in the sights for a while, a loud cry brought me back to reality.

“Gorroooo!”

Oho, and then the monsters finally descended. I’d been waiting for this.

I threw a fist at one of the monsters in front of us, whose bodies looked like big lumps of dirt. In a matter of minutes, every one of the earth-like monsters had breathed their last.

“Phew…” It was lunchtime already, so it was the perfect time for monsters to show up for a good punch. “Filia, let’s eat.”

But Filia, who normally always got excited when mealtime came around, had a kind of gloomy look on her face today. I guess the reason was obvious.

“We really have to eat this?!” She wrinkled her nose at the piles of dead earthy monsters.

“We don’t got any other food.” I used to go looking high and low for monsters to hunt back home, so I was happy that the food came to us.

“They don’t look tasty at all,” Filia grumbled, but we didn’t have much of a choice.

As Filia gave me a sidelong glance, hesitating, I took a bite. I continued gobbling it down in silence.

Watching cautiously, Filia approached me. “C-could it actually be tasty, despite how it looks?”

“You’ve heard about dirt, right? Well, it’s dirtish.”

The first thing I’d noticed was the crunchy roughness, this sandy kinda mouthfeel. There was a cacophony of chattering noises inside my head as I ate, enough to vibrate my head. What followed after was a faint metallic taste on my tongue. Yep, it wasn’t much different from just ingesting plain iron and dirt.

“Wh-what dirt tastes like? That’s…”

“Yeah, it’s nasty, to say the least. Like, super incredibly nasty.” I was positive this wasn’t something humans were meant to ingest. And I’d chowed down on lots of stuff in the forest before, but never dirt. It’s just not food for eating, you know? However, if we didn’t nourish ourselves at all, how were we gonna keep up our strength?

Slowly, reluctantly, Filia brought a bite to her mouth.

“Blech! Blech! Yuri, it’s nasty! It’s really nasty!”

“Think of it as mouth training.”

“Ugh, I wanna train with Slime Jelly…”

We continued on our way without further incident. Real boring. I wanted a really strong monster to pop up!

 

***

 

On the second day, we came upon a small, peaceful village.

“Mama, look, strangers.”

“Oh my, you’re right. Must be adventurers. How unusual.”

Apparently, because this village sat smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, it wasn’t exactly a convenient stop for travelers. Hardly anyone visited. I felt a little uncomfortable since the villagers stared at us with curious looks, but I got used to it soon enough. Then a thought popped into my brilliant mind: Could this be a chance for me to spread the good word about the splendor of muscle?

I took action as soon as the idea popped into my mind. The villagers were curious, gathering around Filia and I, and I began my muscle class. I busted off my clothes and unleashed my muscles—and then proceeded to show off my well-developed bod to the crowd.

“These”—wiggle wiggle—“are pectoral muscles. No one who trains their muscles is a bad person. Muscles hold the world together!”

“Eww, super gross!”

“He looks like a monster!”

“Eeeeek!”

“What a bizarre thing to show children!”

Tragically, my muscle class was so unpopular that the village chief came out to see what the fuss was about.

“Yuri,” Filia whispered, “please shut up now.”

Huh? Had I done something wrong?

“My, my! Travelers, what is going on here?” The village chief stepped forward. He was an elderly man with a hunch, so his already short stature appeared even shorter, but I found his hoarse voice calming.

“I’m very sorry,” said Filia, bowing. “My companion has done something a bit, ah, unusual, but I swear he didn’t mean any harm by it.”

I followed Filia’s lead and bowed. I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong at all, but this situation—that is to say, this incredible spectacle of children running around and bawling their eyes out while their parents desperately struggled to soothe their agonized cries—was, admittedly, a pandemonium of my own creation.

It was unfortunate that my love of muscles had been misunderstood. Truly regrettable.

“I suppose it’s a cultural gap, then. I will overlook it,” said the village chief.

That’s what you’d expect of a real leader, a broad-minded fellow. We then made a deal with the village chief: In exchange for handing over some materials we’d harvested from A-Rank monsters, he gave us real people food—to Filia’s obvious relief.

“Well, now that we’ve wrapped up here, how about we head to the elf village?” I asked.

“Yes, let’s.”

“Hold on a minute!” As we were about to leave, a young man called out and stopped us in our tracks. He must’ve been—what, seventeen? Eighteen? His hair stood up on end, and he was breathing heavily through his noise, like he was really excited about something.

“What do you want?” I asked.

The young guy grinned. “You guys must be really strong to make it out this far! Have a match with me?”

“Fool! Enough!” the village chief snapped.

The village chief tried to stop him, but the young man wouldn’t listen. Seemed like this was the chief’s grandson, and he yearned to be an adventurer, but the chief wanted to keep the kid out of harm’s way.

“You worry about me way too much, Gramps! I’m strong! I’m the only one in the village who can hunt a toutou all by himself!”

I didn’t know what a toutou was, but if this guy was the strongest person in the village, then he had to be tough. Lower B-Rank monsters ran rampant around this area, after all. Mostly, though, I couldn’t refuse a challenge to fight.

“I’ll do it.”

Filia groaned. “I’ll leave this to you, but getting carried away and killing him or something is absolutely forbidden, you hear me?!”

C’mon, there was no way I’d do something like that! Didn’t she trust me?

The young man and I went to a clearing where we turned to face each other. I checked out his stance to appraise the kid.

Yeah, we were looking at lower-middle, rank-wise. Sure, he was strong, but only when it came to ordinary people.

“All right, then,” sighed the chief, “I’ll toss a coin. The moment it hits the ground, the battle will start. Taking the opponent’s life is prohibited. You hear that? Prohibited! Prohibited, okay? All right, please be very careful…”

The old man looked at me with wide, imploring eyes brimming with anxiety. Jeez, first Filia and now the old guy? Did nobody trust me? I mean, I’d heard him! He said it three times! As an intellectual muscle man, I was the most active listener I knew.

“Hey dude, you’d better pay attention!” The kid brimmed with at least as much enthusiasm as his grandpa had anxiety. “I mean, with all the muscle ya got on ya, you’re probably just a big slowpoke, aren’t ya? Being that overly muscular and gigantic is just stupid lame. I bet you’re just doin’ magic!”

“I am a magician.”

“Whoa, really? Ah, dude, sorry.”

“Yep. I’m a master of muscle magic.” I flexed.

When I did so, the young man started shaking. What was this? Was he so deeply moved by my radical bod?

“M-muscle magic? Come on man, don’t mess with me! Ain’t no way I could ever be scared of a super lame muscle- bound meathead like you!”

“I see,” I said with a solemn nod. “Now it is time. I shall allow you to experience the sublime awesomeness of muscle.”

The old man tossed the coin up in the air over his head, and it landed down on the ground. I stepped forward and threw a punch.

“Eh?” With that dumbfounded sound, the kid flew back. I didn’t even need to punch him directly. The pressure from my fist going through the air was powerful enough to deal with him.

I closed the distance between us and raised my flat hand over the young man’s neck where he lay collapsed. “You still wanna do this?”

At the sight of my readied strike, the kid broke out in a cold sweat over his entire face. “Y-you got me…”

“That’s enough!” the village chief cried. “The winner is Yuri!”

He just sounded relieved that his grandson hadn’t beefed it.

“That is the power of muscle magic—and, by extremely logical extension, muscles. Wonderful, isn’t it?” I grabbed the kid by the arm and pulled him back up, but he looked unconvinced.

“How in the world can you move so fast?”

“Because I’ve trained,” I explained.

“Because you’ve trained? Pfft. I don’t get it. What, are all you adventurers freaks or something?”

“Nothing like that at all. You just need to be agile enough to be able to create an afterimage of yourself. With enough training, even you can do it.”

At that, the young man let out a soft chuckle. “I guess…I guess I’m gonna keep on livin’ here in this village. I don’t think I’d get anywhere even if I became an adventurer.”

Really? Had he had a change of heart, somehow? Well, I wasn’t going to meddle in other people’s life choices. As his elder, I decided to just give him a bit of advice. “I see. That’s certainly a valid path, but remember to work on your muscles, ya know? They’re the source of everything.”

We left the village a little later that evening.

“I’m so glad that you two came,” said the village chief, politely bowing to us.

“Nah, it wasn’t that big a deal.” In fact, all I’d done was fight.

He glanced a Filia. “If I may, I assume you’re heading for the Hihi Forest?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly right.”

“Ah. Then please, listen carefully: They say that one of the Sinmarch, ‘Crazy Face’ Misery Mosery, has recently murdered another elf in a town near here. Please be cautious.”

Misery Mosery—the mastermind behind the Elf Hunting incidents, huh? Hmm. What if he sniffed out the location of Filia’s home village? Maybe we needed to hurry up.

“I understand,” I said. “Thank you for the warning.”

We proceeded with all speed toward our destination, the Hihi Forest—and extra carefully, at that.

 

***

 

“From what they say, we should hit the woods any minute now.”

“Yeah. H-hey, that’s it! Over there!”

About five days after leaving the city of Mussen Morgeth, we finally caught sight of the forest. Right as we did, though, I got this faint sense of discomfort, like something was out of place. The forest…was it shaking?

The rhythmic sway of the trees was so different from how something just fluttered in the wind…and there was this odd sound too, a kind of “doon doon doooon” sound coming from the direction of the forest. I turned to Filia to ask her opinion.

“Hey, Filia…”

“Doon doon doooon! Doon doon doooon!” she sang. “What is it, Yuri? We’re almost there, aren’t we?”

Filia kept singing. Just singing merrily, and the smile on her face that couldn’t get any broader. I couldn’t help but stare.

At that, Filia lowered her voice, as if she had noticed something. “Um,” she said, “is there a monster nearby?”

Wait, did she think that was why I was looking at her?

“Hey, Filia. Is there somethin’ kind of weird about this forest?” I asked.

“Weird? I don’t think so…”

“I see…” Was I the weird one?

The sound grew louder and louder the closer we got to the forest, and the movement of the trees became too obvious to ignore.

 

***

 

Finally, we entered the forest—and found it dancing. It sang, too. On top of that, it glittered and shone. The tree trunks twisted and turned with the rhythm, as some loud, deep sound from somewhere unseen harmonized with it, and everything glowed as if hung with strands of lighting.

Could you really call this a forest? These plants were awfully, uh, assertive.

“Ah, it’s always so lovely when the forest is lively,” said Filia wistfully, her whole face lighting up as she gazed around.

I guess the difference in our values was getting in the way again. Well, seeing as the forest seemed to soothe Filia’s nerves, so I guess it all worked out?

“Doon doon doooon!”

“Filia, don’t forget why we came here, okay? You know, to get your abilities back?” I reminded her.

She just kept on singing, and not even well, to be honest. Honestly, she was kinda awful. You’d expect Filia to be pretty good at that kind of thing, but nope.

“Ha?!” She gasped. “T-to say something so humiliating… Oh, I’ll make you pay sooner or later, you!”

Oh, right, Telepathy.

Filia puffed out her cheeks angrily and gave me a glare. I mean, she could glare at me all she wanted, but it lacked any real bite considering how far she had to crane her neck to look up at me.

We pushed deeper into the annoying forest as it sang. All the songs all over the place had to be a real pain for the elves, with their great hearing and all—overwhelming, and probably risky if you wanted to hear an intruder.

Around then, I sensed an enemy approaching and called out to Filia. “It’s—”

“—coming from the right, I know.” Filia was combat-ready before I finished. As soon as the gigantic toad-like monster popped out, she sliced it up with wind magic.

“Good job noticing that one.”

“It was thanks to the Doon Trees,” said Filia. “They change their sound when creatures are close by. We elves can recognize the sound, and we use it to hunt.”

I listened more carefully to the singing but couldn’t hear what she was talking about. The elves probably developed that sense from infancy or something, so it wasn’t something I could just learn overnight. And now it made sense why the elves lived here: If they were the only ones who could gather such information from the local sounds, they had a distinct advantage in this territory.

“All right,” I said, “I’m countin’ on you.”

“Leave it to me.”

Sure thing. I’d rely on her—I did rely on her—but I made sure not to get lazy about it.

A few minutes passed before we encountered another monster.

“Something’s coming. From the left.”

“Got it.”

I lagged a moment behind Filia, but I still sensed it. When the monster approached, we saw this red-haired beast, this sorta cross between a horse and a boar.

“Bring it.” I extended my arm, flattened my palm, and gestured with my fingers to try to provoke the monster. The monster rushed me, just as planned.

“Groarrr!”

“Predictable.” I lined up my fist with the monster’s head and countered its rush. The monster promptly exploded. “Phew. It’s honestly nice that I don’t have to go easy on these things.”

“Phew? That’s what you have to say for yourself? The forest is in an uproar right now because of all the noise you’re making, Yuri! Don’t you hear the cries of the forest?”

Not really? I mean, there was the “doon doon doooon” sound that had gone all “mmm mm,” I think? Maybe? Ugh, how did this stuff even work?

“Sorry about that. We any closer to your village?”

“I don’t know. This path isn’t familiar, so it’s probably a little while longer yet,” Filia mumbled.

Just like Filia had said, in the end, the day ended without the faintest whiff of any elf village. Surely this was the right forest, at least—I’d never heard of anything like Doon Trees before. Tomorrow was definitely our day. At least Filia had gotten used to camping out in the open.

I eyed our surroundings for now; we needed to stay vigilant.

“I want to sleep today,” I said. “Can you keep an eye on the perimeter for an hour?”

Going without sleep for five days wasn’t really a problem for me. However, we had reason to fear those Sinmarch guys were nearby, and I couldn’t say for sure I wouldn’t need every little edge I could get if one of ’em showed.

“Sure. That’s a small price to pay for all you’ve done for me.”

I was grateful that Filia so happily agreed, and I climbed up a tree.

Come to think of it, the trees had stopped dancing and shouting a while after the sun went down. I guess they slept or something. Whatever the reason, at least they wouldn’t be bothering my Zs.

“Are you really going to sleep in a tree?”

“Yeah. I can’t help being less alert when I sleep. But if I’m up here, I maintain a sense of danger, even if it’s just a little bit.”

(Also, there are fewer aerial monsters than ground-dwelling beasties.)

She sighed. “Well, good night.”

“Yeah, ’night.” I closed my eyes…

Hmm. When had I suddenly stopped being worried about Filia? Up until recently, I’d been hyper-wary all the time, at least in the back of my mind. Maybe it was time to stop being so ridiculous about that.

I thought about that for a few moments before closing my eyes fully and falling asleep.