Chapter 046 (1/2)

Volume 1

The Simple Job of Only Perishing to the Hero Volume 1 Chapter 45

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「……It’s, quiet.」

A few hours after entering the forest.

Within the quiet stirring of the trees, Sharon muttered those few words.

「……It sure is.」

After a bit of silence, Luuty answered her like that.

It simply sounded like the details of their conversation was that it looked like a normal forest without any Ogres.

And in fact, Sharon’s muttering had that sort of meaning, but Luuty’s answer to her was different.

It had a meaning that Ogres lived quietly in forests.

It showed that Ogres demonstrated that they possessed aspects as folk that live in forests.

In fact, in cases where Goblins lived in the forest, they would pointlessly raise flirtatious voices, and pointlessly clear away trees.

They would bite into the forest, and even cause fires.

With that way of doing things, they could be called sworn enemies to the Sylphid whom many of them lived together with the forest.

However, what about Ogres.

There were no cut open paths, and looking at the appearance of it, there wasn’t any sort of difference from a normal forest.

If one excluded the fact that they preyed upon mankind, they could be said to be creatures that are able to coexist with the forest.

However, that was also a source of bitterness for Luuty who was a Sylphid.

She disliked the fact that Ogres shared something in common with the Sylphids.

She disliked and couldn’t stand the fact that she possessed more of a favorable impression of the Ogres that moved as if weaving through the forest than the Humans that cut through the forest and created paths.

Due to reasoning as a Human, she suppressed her instinctive emotions as a Sylphid.

It was because of that that Luuty made a short response.

「……Are you alright?」

Luuty trembled a bit at Shion’s words.

She thought that he might have seen through what was inside her heart, but then immediately changed her mind thinking that there was no way he could have.

She made herself consent to the idea that her moment of discord had probably made her look like her condition had gone bad.

「It would be better, to not push yourself.」

「Yes, I am fine.」

In response to Nino’s words who had followed up after Shion, Luuty lightly shook her head and answered like that.

Reorganizing herself with her pride as an educator, Luuty returned to her usual style.

Due to this, she hadn’t noticed the out of place feeling that she probably would have had if she were her usual self.

That the words that Shion and Nino said just now were not questions about Luuty’s health, but about her heart.

That she herself had asked herself if it was alright to be an ally of Humans, was something she hadn’t noticed.

「Still, just how should we search for them. Even if we blindly search for them like this……」

Sharon nodded at Kain’s words.

The forest was deep, and if they just walked about like this, they wouldn’t know if they found traces of the Ogres.

Thieves and bandits would also hide in places like forests and mountains, and they would even do so after making their own traces hard to find.

In fact, the Jiol Great Forest that is said to be a natural stronghold and conceals the country of the Jiol Forest Kingdom is said to continuously bewilder uninvited guests.

Even if it didn’t go that far this time, searching for Ogres that were lurking within a forest is difficult for amateurs.

「I have a way.」

That is why Shion said that.

Shion did not have the time to spend several days on an Ogre search like this.

He needed to quickly defeat them, and turn it into a direction of being a 「trivial situation」.

Unlike Luuty who stubbornly would not break her status as a chaperon, Shion did not have the time to wait for Kain and Sharon to notice.

「It seems that cases missing persons have already appeared, but if they were turned into Ogre food in the current situation, then that limits who the victims are quite considerably.」

「Could it be, were they lumberjacks!?」

Shion nodded at Kain who shouted that.

That’s right. The fact that the Ogres haven’t attacked the town means that there is a possibility that the Ogres have not yet noticed the town which would have been a feeding ground for them.

And then, with the fact that cases of missing persons had appeared in this situation, one could hypothesize that they were people who entered the Ogres’ range of action.

In this situation, the range would be the forest, but when speaking of Humans that would expressly go into such a place, the first ones that came to mind were lumberjacks.

With a town being this close to the forest, one could imagine that forestry would be popular to a certain extent. Furthermore, when that forestry was turned into an impossible situation due to Ogres, one could understand how they got into a situation where they had a cornered mentality to the point that they made an appeal for aid.

「Then that means that they might appear in the place that the lumberjack people did their job.」

「That’s right.」