Chapter 87 - Investigation after Predation (1/2)

Ch. 87: Investigation after Predation

At a glance, it looked similar to Shayna.

A palm sized girl with shoulder length flaxen hair, a white dress, and a pair of transparent wings on its back.

But the definitive difference was that everything was covered in blood, and its somewhat cute looking face made it seem even stranger.

“What the hell…”

The girl’s head rose at Loren’s voice.

The girl who had been biting into the dead elf’s body stared at Loren’s face, and as Loren started wondering if he should fake a smile, the girl opened its bloody mouth wide and suddenly pounced towards Loren.

Unintentionally, without thinking, Loren moved his body backwards and knocked the small girl down with his hand.

With the full strength of Loren’s arm, which allowed him to swing around his great sword skillfully, there was no way a being the size of a palm would stand a chance.

A small dense sound and the feeling of something small hitting his hand.

The thing that jumped towards Loren was slammed onto the ground face first, splattered something red around it, and stopped moving.

“That’s…a fairy.”

Feuille pointed at it with a trembling voice.

“But why…This hasn’t happened before…”

As Feuille muttered, confused at what he was seeing, but Loren didn’t know what was happening either.

As he bent down to pick up the fairy that he had knocked down, thinking that they needed more information, he realized that the body of the elf boy, which the fairy had been eating, was still twitching.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…”

As if waiting for Loren to say that, lumps started forming all over the boy’s body.

Loren immediately understood what was happening and shouted to Lapis and Feuille.

“Get back! There’s more of them inside!”

What showed up from the body, ripping through skin and clothes, were small beings the size of a palm.

There all looked different and had different hairstyles, some looking like girls while some looked like boys, but all of them wore simple clothing, and were blackish red, as if they had been bathing in blood.

Although the question of how all of them were inside the poor elf boy’s body occurred in his mind, Loren had a bigger problem to take care of.

As if they were tired of the taste of elf, the small beings flapped their wings and started attacking Loren, who was the nearest.

If it were a normal monster, Loren wouldn’t have hesitated to drive it back with his great sword.

But the innumerable amount of fairies flying at him were too small to use his sword against.

He could’ve killed a few of them using the atmospheric turbulence created by the blade and mass of the sword, but there was way too many of them.

He considered dropping his great sword and batting them down with his hands, but it didn’t seem like he could do that in time, and the time that he spent thinking shortened the time for retaliation even further.

By the time he thought it was bad, the fairies with open mouths and bloodshot eyes were almost at his face.

Bracing himself for a few places being torn off and eaten, Loren raised his arm and gritted his teeth, but the pain he had expected didn’t follow, and instead, all he felt was a few light impacts on his arm.

During battle, closing your eyes was the same as suicide.

Because Loren had been taught that, he was able to keep his eyes open, and from across his arm, he could see things dropping to the floor, and when he lowered his arm, the sight of the fairies dropping to the ground like bugs being hit with repellant.

‘Onii-san, please praise Shayna.’

Hearing Shayna’s voice filled with joy from being able to take care of the situation, Loren had a good idea of what happened.

It seemed that Shayna, seeing that it was impossible to stop the fairies physically, strengthened the energy drain she had been using as insect repellant, and took the lives of the fairies.

Being so small, fairies had a smaller life force than humans.

Shayna seemed to have acted off the calculation that although there were many of them, the energy drain would do its job, and as she had expected, the power had protected Loren’s body from them.

(Thanks, you saved me there.)

Even if he got attacked, he didn’t think that he would become like the elf boy, but he knew that he would’ve been quite injured.

Which is why he thanked Shayna in his mind, then started investigating the dead fairies around him.

But as if Shayna couldn’t adjust her strength at the sudden attack, the fairies on the ground were all shriveled up like mummies.

Picking up one of them, Loren started examining its wrinkled body.

“Fairies aren’t a race to do such bloody things…but why did these?”

“No idea. The only thing I know for sure is that things that don’t do this are doing it.”

“So why no one’s in the village…It can’t be…”

After saying so, Feuille looked towards the village, terrified at what he had just imagined.

They had caused quite a ruckus, but there was no sign of anyone coming out of the village to see what was going on.

“In any case, it doesn’t look like they’ll become undead.”

After examining the dead fairy, Loren handed it to Lapis, who was walking towards him.

Although handing over a dead body was quite an abnormal thing to do, Lapis took the body, not seeming to care, took off its clothes and started examining it front and back.

“No signs of drugs…parasites, and magic. Other than the fact that it’s shriveled up, it looks normal.”

“You just took of its clothes without a second thought, didn’t you?”

“It was a boy.”

“I didn’t ask you that.”

Unhappy that Loren’s attitude towards her turned cold, she threw the body behind her back.

It arced across the trees, and as soon as it landed, they could hear something fighting, and realizing that something was fighting over it, Feuille went pale.

“For the time being, I’ll put a spell of protection over Feuille.”

Lapis put her hands on Feuille’s shoulder as he stood in place, frozen.