The next day.
“Be careful!” [Miyabi]
Miyabi sent me off, and I headed to the northern gate of the town. I watched the hustle and bustle along the way as I walked, and when I neared the gate, I braced myself.
It’s a gate, so naturally, the guards would stop me, but I was able to quickly deal with them by showing proof that I was an E Rank adventurer.
Now it’s time to gather some medicinal herbs near an area the smash boar is known to frequent.
My equipment for today is a bow and a knife. I have a spear in my Item Box too, but I’m not planning to use it. Great swords and spears are effective against smash boars, but in order to make it look like I just came across it, I can’t bring weapons that are effective against the smash boar. That would be just too coincidental. The bow is also listed as my main weapon owing to the time when I first registered at the adventurers, so if can’t come too prepared, or they’ll be suspicious of me.
I gathered herbs for a while, but… I couldn’t find the smash boar.
It’s not really guaranteed to find a monster just because you know where it’s frequently sighted. Monsters aren’t herbs, after all; they do walk. Still… I feel like it’s a first for me to have so much trouble finding a monster. Actually, there aren’t any other monsters around either. It seems Miyabi-san really wasn’t kidding. There really are few monsters around here.
I started going around to areas other than those teeming with herbs to look for the smash boar while completing my herb collection job, but in the end, I still couldn’t find the smash boar, but now my quota has been met.
But then again it’s not like I have to find the smash boar today, since I still have another day before I meet up with the employees, so… But on second thought, since it’s difficult to get permission to pass the northern gate, I’ll probably be able to sell as much herbs as I have, so it shouldn’t hurt to gather more than my quota.
While I was thinking that to myself, a faint voice reached my ears.
“—uaAAA” [???]
Is that a person’s voice? Seems a bit far, though. Hmm… Maybe I’m just hearing things.
“——Save me—” [???]
…I heard it again! I’m not just imagining it. Someone was clearly asking for help just now!
I readied my bow, hid my aura, and walked toward the direction of the voice, where I found two adventurers being chased by a monster that seemed to be a smash boar.
I think calling it a pig would be more apt for its appearance, honestly. It might have some fangs, but they’re small and they’re not sharp. The only thing it really has going for it is that it’s really big, about as big as a cow.
Wait! This isn’t the time to be thinking about that!
I nocked an arrow and timed it with the movement of the boar. The arrow flew through the gaps between the trees and toward the smash boar.
The smash boar was charging through the helpless slender trees when my arrow landed right in its right eye, causing it to let out a painful cry that resounded throughout the area.
When the two adventurers heard that, they stopped and turned around.
What are they doing!? Keep running!
“Keep running!” [Ryouma]
I told them, but when they saw me, they became flustered. I tried calling out to them again, but the smash boar had already noticed me and was looking at me with its left eye.
This is going quite differently than what I expected, but… yeah. Let’s do it.
I unequipped my bow and put it on my back, then I reinforced my body with ki and glared at the boar.
The smash boar had a body like that of a pig’s, but it also had two small dull fangs growing from its lower jaw that extended toward the sides of its face. Its fangs aren’t venomous, but they do pack a punch when rammed into someone, so I still need to watch out for it.
But what I really need to look out for is its constitution. It might resemble a boar, but it’s about 1.5 times bigger than the cows I’m familiar with, so it’s clear as day that it’s covered in a thick armor of meat. Countless scars could be seen all over it – those two adventurers probably tried to hurt it – but those are probably all superficial. I doubt they managed to leave any internal damage to it with those shallow wounds.
Attacks against its body seem like they wouldn’t amount to much… In that case, I’ll go for its head where there’s not as much meat!
“GUOoOOOOO!” [Smash Boara]
The smash boar bellowed out a cry and charged toward me, but the trees seemed to have hindered its movements, as it was easy to see despite moving so much.
I dodged to the right, and the smash boar kept going and crashed into a tree. After mowing down the tree, the smash boar turned around and started charging toward me again.
This time I dodged to the left, but unlike before, when we passed each other, I hit its right temple with a ki-reinforced palm strike.
“PIGIi!?” [Smash Boar]
It was quieter compared to before, but the smash boar definitely stopped moving and cried out in pain.
Looks like that was effective. I can tell from that last attack too. The head definitely doesn’t have as much meat to it.
Alright! One more time!
The smash boar shook its head, then it tried to strike me with its fangs, but I took a step back, causing it to miss. I used that opening, to throw a kick toward its left temple.
“PI, GIi…” [Smash Boar]
The attack this time was a lot more effective, as the smash boar’s right foreleg gave way and the boar fell to its knees.
I attacked again. This time I gave it a nice uppercut to the jaws, grabbed its fangs, then drove my right elbow into its head.
“!” [Smash Boar]
A dull sound resounded as I clearly felt the feeling of crushing a bone. At the sam etime, the smash boar’s legs shook and then it fainted.
Did I kill it just like that? …Huh. It seems it really is dead.
“U-Umm!” [???]
“Thank you for rescuing us!” [???]
“Oh, you’re welcome. You’re not hurt, are you?” [Ryouma]
After confirming that the smash boar was dead, the two adventurers walked up to me. I didn’t notice it before because of the distance and their armor, but apparently, one of them was a woman.
“If not for you, we would’ve…” [Male Adventurer]
“One of our friends is wounded. We can’t thank you enough for saving us, but we need to go help him.” [Female Adventurer]
If they have a wounded friend, then maybe I should go too.
“If you don’t mind, I can come along too. I can use healing magic.” [Ryouma]
“Really!” [Male Adventurer]
“Thank you so much! Please come with us!” [Female Adventurer]
“Ah, but we can’t just leave this smash boar here without anyone watching it…” [Ryouma]
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name…” [Male Adventurer]
“Oh, excuse me. I am Ryouma Takebayashi.” [Ryouma]
“Ryouma-kun, then. Ryouma-kun, you stay here. We’ll bring our party member here.” [Male Adventurer]
“There are some bad adventurers around these parts, so do be careful.” [Female Adventurer]
The two of them left after saying that.
Bad adventurers? This is a flag, isn’t it?
I’m sure some real bad ones are gonna come around any moment now.
I braced myself for the inevitable, but I couldn’t sense anyone nearby.
Hmm… Anyway, let’s go drain this thing’s blood first.
I had the bloody slime deal with the smash boar’s blood, then I took out my heal slime.
Huh? Done already? The bloody slime sure works fast.
I waited for a while after that, but in the end, no bad adventurers showed up, and the two adventurers from before came back carrying a wounded female swordsman.
Tl Note: Changed the theme again. Still minimal, but with a warmer white and some margins. By the way, the theme you guys keep saying is broken was actually the ‘new’ theme last time. It barely had any CSS, so it looked ‘broken’. The new theme is Susty by Jack Lenox.
A dark mode has now been installed. Due to the way the caching works, you might get pages that are cached as dark mode or normal mode, so you’ll just have to turn it back off or on. Fortunately, the button is placed right underneath the title, so it shouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience.
Also, for those suggesting to make dark theme default, there are more bright-theme users than you think. They’re just quiet, but the moment I make the default theme dark, they’ll come out of the woodworks like a swarm of angry bees. I know since I’ve already tried it twice.
Also, a sort of old change, but I didn’t mention it, but we changed to disqus for the comments, so the server doesn’t need to manage it anymore and we can free up resources. It works perfectly well with the themes as long as you set your theme before scrolling all the way down, which is going to be the case for pretty much everyone.
So in conclusion, the site lag has been fixed and you shouldn’t get much resource limit warnings anymore. You’ll still get them at certain times when the site is doing some self care, but not as much as before. Not even close. Dark mode has been implemented. There are margins now and the white is now warmer. There are still some things that need to be readded like chatango (probably just gonna switch to discord) and the logo, but the site is basically back to shape.
Now, we can focus on translating. This is the second regular release this week. Two more to go.