Chapter 18 (1/2)

18

Having run towards the place I had heard the voices from what I saw there was chaos.

Eh? What is this?

Did my eyes go bad, maybe.

I did discover the children being unharmed.

For now it seems like their injuries are on the level of small scratches.

The problem is ..

The monster that is currently in front of me.

If I had to say whether the wolf-types we had been looking for were here, then well, yeah, they were.

They were being held captive as the inferiors though.

There was a monster that resembled an animal I had seen in a book in the past.

But, if I recall correctly, that book was t.i.tled ‘Animals of the Sea’ wasn’t it?

No matter how you think about it, for that to be here in a forest was weird.

Eehto, if my memory hasn’t gone bad that is called an ‘Octopus’ I think.

The size is completely skewed though.

Right now in front of me the Octopus-type monster was grasping the wolf-type monsters with I don’t know whether arms or legs or what, and whirling them around.

The size of the Octopus-type monster was around 2 metres, and while that was big just how much strenght must it have had in those arms, maybe legs, that it could swing around 8 wolf-type monsters at the same time?

One, one was fatter.

In the book it was written that the part that looked like the head was the torso, and that the mouth and eyes are the place from where around the arm-like appendages begin to spread out from, but how about this guy?

In the end it is but a monster that resembles an octopus after all.

And normally something like that wouldn’t be in a forest to begin with.

As I observed it in that manner, our eyes met.

Eh?

It has eyes on the part that I thought was the torso!

It’s nothing but a mock-octopus, then.

For now now I got to rescue the children first.

I called out to the children who were looking at the mock-octopus with in blank amazement/overcome with suprise.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?”

Because a voice suddenly called out to it the child I talked to made a suprised expression.

But seeing me it clinged to me with teary eyes.

“S-sc-scary~! Save us.”

Because of the fear it’s voice was trembling.

In order to calm it down I was clapping them on the back while holding them.

“It alright. First of all let us get away from here. Right now that monster is busy swinging around those wolf-types, so let’s escape together.”

As long as there were children here I couldn’t very well go and fight.

As one might expect, but facing off against that number while protecting the children would be putting them into danger.

Just as we were trying to escape, the mock-octopos took notice of us and threw a wolf-type monster at us that it was swinging around.

What’s more, with quite some control and speed it flew straight over here.

Since I was holding onto the children tightly I couldn’t draw my sword.

In order to at least make sure that the children wouldn’t be harmed I covered them with my body and readied for the coming impact.

.. Are?

That impact isn’t coming.

As I was turning around wondering about that I could see the figure of the monster that should have been thrown over here lying on the ground riddled with arrows throughout it’s body.

What is the meaning of this?

Wondering that a person that shouldn’t have been here appeared.

“Ririina, are you alright?”

The one who inquired so of me was .. Chris-sama.

Astonished I asked him.

“Wh-why has Chris-sama come to a place like this?”

“Ririina, let’s leave that matter for letter, okay. Right now we must protect the safety of those children. It seems that the rest have arrived as well.”

Upon those words appeared Thoma and the others.

“Ririina! Are you alright!? To rush off alone .. huh, who’s that?”

Thoma surveyed Chris-sama cautiously.

Oh, right, Thoma doesn’t know of the past Chris-sama, so even now he wouldn’t know.

But this wasn’t the place for that.

“Thoma, I apologize for going first alone. Still, let’s not talk about that right now but later. More importantly, can I leave it to you to get these children safely back to the village?”

I patted the children on their backs to calm them down and entrusted them to our comrades.