Chapter 30: Chapter 30: Year 1, Day 9 (Part 2): The Hunt Begins

The hunter unit was finished, but I didn’t immediately see them when I went outside. It wasn’t until I went over to the location of the Sparring Field, which was basically just a rectangular field with a wooden fence around it, that I saw most of our remaining demons training with small, wooden bows against practice targets made out of straw.

That was when I realized something that I made the mistake of not considering before.

Our original, settling unit only had thirty demons in it.

The hunter unit had a size of thirty-five.

When we got our second unit of population, there were probably around fifteen demons in that wave who came through the portal. That took us up to forty-five demons around the camp. Now, thirty-five of those forty-five demons were converted from regular townspeople into hunters. There were only ten demons left outside of the hunter unit, and that included Thad, Sara, and Enna.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Part of me, for whatever reason, expected an entirely new host of demons to still pop up out of nowhere to become the hunters. Instead, I recognized everybody there as the demons who I was working with and getting to know over the last few days.

One of them, the green man who dragged me into a dance with his partner during our celebration, walked up to me from among the rest in the hunter unit. “Morning, Clay! Not too cloudy today. Good day for hunting, yeah?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Mizg, right?”

“That’s right! Well, my full name is Mizgarochial, but you said something about French pastries when I told you that and called me Mizg instead.”

“Right. Anyways, have you ever hunted before? Have you ever used a bow before?”

“Not a day in my life, but here… something feels natural about it. I guess the game is making it so that we know what to do even if we’ve never been trained in it.”

“That’s good.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. I was worried. I didn’t want to risk any of them getting hurt.

Apparently, my concern was obvious. “Don’t worry about us. We’ve got this! All we have to do is go out there and hunt some beasts, right? But uh… if I can ask for a favor, I have to admit I’d prefer it if you don’t send us to the southeast where those crabs were. Maybe north instead?”

“I planned on that anyways. Don’t worry.”

“Phew. Good. I’m a dancer, not a giant crab slayer.”

“And now you’re a hunter.”

“Somebody’s gotta do it!”

A few moments of awkward silence passed, mainly thanks to me not having any idea what to say. Well, there was plenty that I wanted to say, but it was difficult to put any of it into words. The only thing I managed to ask probably wasn’t the best for the situation, either. “Aren’t you worried?”

Mizg laughed a little before looking over at the others. “You bet I am. I don’t want to die when I finally feel free from that suffocating place I’ve spent my entire life. But look at it this way. I used to spend all my money on drugs and women. That was the only way I could make life in Hell tolerable. I don’t need to do that here. And thanks to you pissing off Lucy, I don’t have to worry about going back there if I die here! Honestly, I’d rather die and have my soul wiped out than go back there.”

“I’ll do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen—that you don’t die and never have to go back there, either.”

“I know. I trust you. But still. Best case scenario, I live. Worst case scenario, I die but don’t have to go back to Hell. It’s a win-win as far as I’m concerned.”

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“You dying will never be anything close to being a win.”

Mizg leaned back and pointed a couple of finger guns at me. “It is if you’ve wanted to die for decades, heyyyyy.”

I had a feeling more of Earth’s culture was influenced by Hell than I was aware of. “I’ll do my best to keep you alive. I promise. And in return, you do your best to stay alive.”

“Alright, alright. I guess I can do that if it’s a request from you.”

“Thank you. Now then.” I stepped away from him and cleared my throat to grab the rest of the hunter unit’s attention. “No pressure but, thanks to my stubbornness, our survival counts on all of you. I wish I could be the one fixing this problem, but I’m not allowed that redemption. Instead, it’s all of you I have to rely on. Your mission is to get out there and find creatures for us to hunt. Do that and we’ll secure new allies who will get us more population units. We can still win this and put Lucy in his place for thinking we’d be screwed without him. So, if you want to make that asshole even more red than he already is, let’s prove that we’re still in this.”

The demons cheered at what I considered to be a pretty mediocre speech. But if they enjoyed it, that was all that mattered.

“Let’s get started.”

I opened up the settlement menu and chose to separate the hunter unit from the settlement’s garrison. That placed them on the world map on the same tile as the settlement, so they didn’t actually move yet.

Now, using the [Track] special action would use up an entire day according to the description, so I figured it would be best to move them first.

Moving them to that tile would make use of all their movement points, and then I would have them use [Track] to search for creatures. It would also get them moved away from the lava lake so that they wouldn’t waste any of that adjacent tile search on it. I doubted that they would be able to find any huntable creatures in a lava lake. Even if they could, I doubted either the demons or volcano hounds would be able to hunt in a lake of lava.

Regardless, I entered the order to move. The demons of the hunter unit waved their goodbyes to the rest of us.

“I’ll try to find something that tastes good for everybody,” Mizg said. “But if I don’t return, you better make sure my dance moves live on. You hear that?”

I couldn’t help but to smile and sigh. “I’m really not the person to ask to remember your dance legacy, but I’ll do my best.”

“Heh. Good enough! Catch you later, Clay.”

“We’ll see each other again.”

Mizg nodded and walked off to join the rest of the hunters on their journey north.

I desperately hoped I was anxious for nothing.

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