The matchmaking party seems to have ended in success.
It gave birth to several couples and a few people apart from those couples also immigrated to this village.
Therefore, they can slowly take their time to get to know each other and eventually create a new family.
As I was thinking about them while sleeping in the small hut we were assigned to, I felt a furious vibration and jumped to my feet by reflex.
“Tet! Something is coming! Get ready immediately!”
“Yes~nanodesu!”
I jumped to my feet with my staff in my hand, then followed by Tet me.
Although the other adventurers continued the reclamation project, their perception as adventurers had not grown dull, and each of them quickly rushed out of their respective houses.
“Chise-san! What’s going on!?”
Gash-san asked me, as I was at the very front, and I shook my head in response.
“I have no idea. Lead the non-combatants to a safe place!”
“Understood! We’ll guide them to the mayor’s basement!”
“Please do so! —<<Fly>>!”
I requested Gash-san and the adventurers to guide the people to take refuge, then I flew up high with flying magic, staring towards the forest.
As I gathered mana to my eyes and looked through the night forest, I discovered countless strange lights inside the forest.
“Those are, monsters… At this rate, the village that everyone made would be…”
Looking at the monsters’ appearance running on the surface, there was no time.
“Tet! Make a wall surrounding the village immediately!”
“Yes~nanodesu!”
Following my instructions, Tet manipulated the earth between the village and the forest, creating a compressed earth wall roughly five meters tall.
The adventurers and immigrant applicants who were taking refuge were surprised by the large-scale magic surrounding the small reclaimed village.
Tet and I got on the tall earth wall and confronted the monsters approaching from the north.
“We’re doing this. —<<Wind Cutter>>!”
I fired countless wind blades at the monsters that appeared from the forest and sliced through the monster’s bodies.
While I cleanly swept away over 30 monsters with my magic, the monsters that wove their way through in the meantime headed towards the wall surrounding the village.
“Well then, We’ll do it~desu!”
Tet jumped off the top of the wall, then cut down the approaching monsters one by one with her sword.
Tet’s mana was wrapped around the black magic sword and easily sliced through the monsters. The monsters that bit Tet’s body were blocked by the defense of Tet’s [Body Strengthening], then easily swung off with her physical strength.
“Chise-Jouchan! We’ll also help out!”
“Chise-Jouchan, you’re too far up! Come back!”
It seems like the adventurers have finished guiding the non-combatants to the mayor resident’s basement and gathering one by one, but even so, they merrily cut down the monsters without minding, bathed in blood.
“Tet is fine. Do whatever you can.”
“Ahh, I’ll do that. I don’t have the courage to jump down there.”
The monster’s strengths were equivalent to D or E-rank monsters.
However, they seem to appear endlessly from the forest and continue to attack Tet one after another without being afraid of Tet.
On the contrary, they seem to be running away from something running along the village walls.
“Well then, prevent the monsters from intruding from atop the wall. Ensure you don’t accidentally fall off of it.”
“Understood. Rather if I had to say, we can only endure for about five minutes with so many monsters coming!”
If you had that amount of time, you could scale the wall and escape with your own power after jumping down.
As expected, how fitting for C-rank veteran adventurers despite the fact they were about to settle down in the reclaimed village. 1
“Well then, I’m heading deep into the forest.”
“Hey, are you going by yourself!?”
The leader of the adventurer reclamation party tried to stop me.
However, I shook my head in response.
“There’s the chance that it gets worse and worse if we don’t remove the cause. Also, I’ll be checking the situation by air, so can anyone follow me?”
Having been told that, the adventurers were silent.
After being shown advanced magic like flying magic, everyone was silent.
“Well then, I’ll be going. Tet, protect everyone for me!”
“Yes~nanodesu!”
Tet brandished her magic sword and grinned at me. However, she was covered in sticky blood, so I think she’d want a bath once this was over.
Thus, when I headed towards the night forest alone, I saw many trees collapsed and a hole in the mountain.
“What’s… that? —<<Light>>!”
I stopped above the hole mid-air and launched light magic in order to illuminate the area.
Then, the contents of the huge hole in the middle of the forest were revealed.
“A monster. Is that… a dragon?”
The creature, possessing a slender green body, lifted its snake-like neck up and swallowed the monsters that were unable to get away in time, whole.
Also, it did not just possess one head, but four, and those four pairs of eyes stared at me as I launched the light magic.
“A dragon with many heads—a hydra?”
I saw it in the monster field guild in Daryl. A hydra possesses high-recovery abilities, and it seems like the more heads, the more troublesome it becomes.
Three heads are comparable to C to B- ranks and a four-headed hydra is B ranked.
“If it was a C-rank, three-headed hydra, the adventurers of the reclaimed village could probably defeat it in a group, and they might be able to defeat a four-headed one if they made a few sacrifices. However—”
The companions that I have been living together for close to a month would possibly be sacrificed.
That thought flashed through my head and the one moment I thought over it, the four-headed hydra extended its neck and aimed at me to swallow me whole.
“Tsk! —<<Wind Cutter>>!”
While slipping past the head of the attacking hydra, I released a wind blade at its head and neck.
Reflecting back to when I confronted the ogre, I made the best use of my experience of the blade that sliced through like thin skin and infused a somewhat larger amount of mana this time, but I could only cut a few centimeters deep into the skin.
“““—Kyaaaaaaaaah!”””
In addition to having a hardness due to body strengthening that matches its reputation as a powerful monster, the part of the body that was cut and sliced up began to foam up and regenerated immediately as a part of its monster special characteristic.
“How troublesome, however, its body strength is the same as an ogre’s, I think? It’ll be over with this! —<<Hard Shot!>>!” 2
I took out four Magic Crystals from my magic bag and launched them at the same speed as when I defeated the ogre.
The super-hardened crystal substances pierced the hydra’s heads, penetrated them, and the heads feebly fell.
“Phew, this subjugation should be over… or I guess not.”
The hydra’s heads fell to the ground, causing the ground to tremor, but the wound began to foam up and the wound regenerated once again.
“Normally, it’s over when the brain is destroyed though… ahh, it can regenerate as long as it has one head left I see.”
A small fifth head was still growing, hidden at the base of the defeated hydra’s neck.
“Well then, you’re not getting away this time!”
I release the [Magic Crystals] to destroy all five heads of the hydra that have regenerated again.
However, probably learning from my last attack, the largest head of the five hydra heads intercepted all of the Magic Crystals.
Then, although the head was torn to shreds, it was repaired by the regenerative power of a hydra.
“Honestly, this is an impossibly hard game! Gotta destroy the five heads at the same time—woah there!” 3
A violent water current hydra breath was fired at me, and I slipped past and avoided it.
If it had been a fire or poison breath, it might have caused a forest fire or pollution, so the water current breath was a blessing in disguise.
However, even if the water current breath is repeatedly fired at the ground, the forest will be ruined.
How do I go about… defeating a hydra alone? How can I defeat it!?”
Fortunately, the hydra’s main body is slow and heavy, so it’s easy to escape.
However, there is no magic at my disposal that is powerful enough to destroy all five heads of the hydra at once.
Then, if you completely destroy the body connected to the head of the hydra, it’s practically the same as having lost all your heads.
“Well now, let’s do this!”
I used my flying magic to raise my altitude to almost directly above the hydra’s torso.
I was so high that the hydra could not reach, even if they stretched out their five necks.
There, I took out a large amount of Magic Crystals that I had stored in my magic bag.
Using my mana as a simulation, I drew out mana from the Magic Crystals I took out.
A huge amount of mana was accumulated by me, and the load caused the Magic Crystals to shatter one after another.
“1,000 Mana that I have saved up in 100 Magic Crystals! Everything took 100,000 mana with creation magic! —<<Creation>> Guillotine!”
A huge execution blade consisting of 100,000 mana, created in order to cut the hydra’s body in two, floated in the air.
“Drop!”
Then, using the rest of my mana to set the path of the drop, I increased the acceleration due to the adding weight with darkness magic.
“““—Kyaaaaaaaaah!”””
As it looked up at the top of its head, the hydra tried to drag its sluggish body to escape, but the guillotine blade approaching from above fell at the base where the body and head were connected.
“It’s still alive, isn’t it? How tenacious, however, the mana that is visible has decreased?”
Most likely, the head of the hydra controls the regeneration, and the mana is supplied by the magic gem in the body.
As a result of being bisected, each of the panicked heads were trying to escape by crawling.
However, the heads are connected to each other by a piece of flesh on the body at the base, and the heads are dragging each other down, making it impossible to escape.
“Well then, I don’t have much mana left. Let’s take them down quickly.”
A majority of the creation of Guillotine’s mana was paid with Magic Crystals, but I still used a portion of my own mana.
With only a small amount of mana left, I took out a mana potion I made myself from my magic bag and drank it to recover my mana.
“These restore more mana than the ones made with Creation. As I thought, the ones made with creation magic are inefficient.”
A bottle could restore about 500 mana.
It’s enough for an ordinary magician, but for me, I’m not satisfied with a potion that recovers 10 percent.
Even so, the fact that it mitigated the rapid consumption of my mana calmed me down mentally.
Thus, I was considering how to destroy the hydra’s head, which was as big as my body.
“I do have spare Magic Crystals, to be safe—<<Hard Shot>>!”
This time, I shot the hardened Magic Crystals at high speeds at the hydra’s heads that couldn’t run away and completely destroyed its heads, silencing it.
“Phew, for the time being, I’ll put up a barrier and wait until the morning.”
As one would expect, I was tired.
A five-headed hydra was an A-rank. Nah, it was an undeveloped five-headed hydra, so more like A- probably.
Even so, I felt fatigued after defeating a monster that would become a threat to humankind. I rested after putting up a barrier to protect myself in this place filled with the hydra’s blood’s smell.
Thus, as I drank my second mana potion, I leaned my back against a nearby tree and passed the night wrapped in my hooded mantle.