Chapter 1483 December 15th: Slashes That Come Faster Than You Can See Them

Before we were even able to notice it, the dawn was already upon us, and the date switched from 14th to 5th of December…… The current time is 3:27 am!

I know that someone said that the distances in ShanFro are shorter than those in the real world, but why is it that we did not reach that plateau yet!?

「No, I guess that the cause is not the distance here……」

While hitting a roundhouse kick on the face of the sheep-like monster that jumped at us, I then hit it again, this time with a bullet. And while we are at it, what is the deal with Karoshis UQ? He is fighting with a different weapon than his Mystic Sword. I mean, there is no need to bust your full firepower here, but still……

「You little, this doesn’t mean that you can become a scapegoat……!!」

「Nuh!」

Urdim-san’s stiff arm blows off three sheep monsters at once. If this dynamite violence Oak plays an active role in the party, the reward resources for us will be scrapped to a minimum, but no one complains about the success of Urdim-san’s tactics for now.

The road to the plateau, where the Blade Dragon is said to swell, is not a maze or a bad road. But…… the monster encounter rate is unusually high for this area. The effect of the Carved Wounds is not even all that helpful, and the number of party members should also obe irrelevant here. That is, monsters with levels below my level avoid fighting with me, and monsters with strength above my level will try to approach still. So the small fries should still be affected by it, but……

「But this encounter rate! What is this fucking inflated encounter rate!?」

「Oi,oi,oi! Yashiro Bird! Don’t try to burn the wool! Just blow them all away for now!」

「Aren’t you getting tired of all that wool!? Collecting it is just a hassle! Burning them all is way faster and more efficient!」

「You moron! And what about new clothes and armor!? Things like that can still have their uses! Just use your brain for once! And sheer that wool!」

Dead or bald, so either way those sheep here will lose their life or identity…… And there is a horde of sheep stampeding towards here right now, wanting either to die or to go bald. The one leading the horde is a figure that is massive and its body resembles a bull. I can say it’s a dangerous monster that is not cute at all, even though it has wool as well. And that sheer number of them is dangerous as well. Even if allies collide with each other, it is dangerous to resume our rush forward immediately when faced with something like that.

Well, because Survival was crying “Wool! I only need your wool!” like an idiot he managed to get himself cornered, and started to burn them in panic. And of course, the burning monsters would bump into their brethren and spread the fire even further as a result.

「Deepslaughter.」

「Yeesss~?」

「Burn them all. With FIRE.」

「Okay! I’m sorry, Survival-kun. “Gehenna Blaze”!!!」

「GWAH!!! My Yarn-Knit Ruthia-tan Sweater!!! Noooooo!!!」

「Confirmation: Incineration Completed.」

Well, since we can’t get the wool we desire, we might as well get ourselves some Ghengis Khan. It doesn’t have the taste of salt and pepper for convenience’s sake, so I cut the grilled stampede sheep meat like a tissue that has the texture of fresh meat into pieces to restore my hunger gauge at the very least.

「Is this the end……?」

「Measurement: Total number of battles: sixty eight. I referred to the information collected by the Conquest Dolls’ and found that they behave differently from the usual ecology of the “Stampeding Sheep.”」

「So like what? Originally they couldn’t flock together like that?」

「Negation: The original behavior of the “Stampeding Sheep” tends to make heavy use of mass assaults commanded by individual leaders.」

……… No, isn’t the original movement more dangerous than this one? This time, its the randomness effect that all the individuals rushed at us and caused such a huge threat, but it was a runaway that was far from a coordinated action. Anyways, it’s because allies collide with each other and self-destruct…… I thought it was really stupid, but isn’t that actually a very rare happening?

「Did you see an individual that looked like a leader?」

「As far as I can see, there were only similar individuals in this flock……」

A flock without a leader? Aside from fish and insects, I think that most beasts have bosses that guide them……」

「Since a while ago, we have only ever encountered strange individuals like that, huh?」

「That’s right, Karoshis-san. A flock of lions with only females in it, or a rhino with a full-blown wound in its side from the very beginning……」

「……… But this, this has to be the weirdest occurence so far.」

「Somehow, you think that they have lost their original purpose and just run away……?」

A sheep without a flock leader. A flock of female-only lions that look exhausted, and a rhino that has been injured all over its body……… Hmm, I think it’s almost certain now.

「Oh! Hey, guys! Take a look at this!」

No matter where you look, it’s just the same, burned flesh and boiled guts. But then we take a look at the place Survival pointed towards, one where the sheep somehow managed to avoid getting burned for some reason.

It was a “crack”, so to speak. Even though the monster rush slowed us down, I wondered if we were on the right path approaching the plateau? The amount of greenery started to increase, and there was a crack of about two meters carved on the ground that could barely be called a meadow at this point.

But will such a pinpoint crack or crevasse occur in the plains in the first place? And above all, this crack is terribly too clean-cut and beautiful……

「Someone slashed the ground during their previous battle with the sheep, perhaps?」

There was no reply, and none of us, including Urdim-san, had any idea what could have caused this…… But neither of that sheep had such a slashing attack up their sleeve.

「…… It’s amazing, the cross section is actually slippery. It seems that it’s not just a mere slash.」

「Maybe this is just a feeling that there is a lot of pressure in the slashing itself. It seems that it was squeezed and hardened while tearing through the ground……」

「If you were to receive a blow like that, even the armor of a tank would have been torn to shreds with little to no effort.」

I tried thrusting my arm, but the depth was such that the arm of “Sanraku” could reach the bottom of it without actually falling into the hole. Besides, I draw a semicircle in there and it gets even deeper and deeper…… Also, the middle of the straight line seems to be the deepest part.

「Sanraku’s arm is cracked!? Is that what you would call a “hardcore fisting”!?」

「Alright, Deepslaughter! Turn around thirty times and squeal!」

Other than the grinning smile on my face after witnessing Deepslaughter doing ten triple axels in a row, I start to guess anything at all from the shape of that crack that appeared just now.

「This crack just now…… I’m sure it was cut with something extremely sharp, but it was not like it was something I managed to do……」

I then grab Aradval with my other hand and swing my arm from back to front as if I was trying to scratch the ground.

「…… Wouldn’t it be something like that!?」

「Well, I can’t really imagine a dragon being able to hold a genuine sword. Then, does the protrusion come out from the arm towards the elbow? Is that it?」

「No, maybe it’s because it can also switch to bipedal walking? A movement like that is impossible with quadrupedal walking.」

「No, and what about the possibility that the leg itself was in the shape of a blade and kicked the ground like that? With this hypothesis, only one leg is an entire blade.」

Perhaps I was finally reaching the point where I went crazy, because its utterly crazy to seriously discuss a dragon like that. It was also then that Deepslaughter finally finished her thirty spins and said those words to me while having trouble with standing on her feet:

「Woof!」

「Now get on the ground!」

「Woof! Woof!」

Don’t you even try to shake your ass like that! You want to get disciplined that badly!?