Taeyon, who was about to say something, took a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh.
“No, forget it. Let’s end this conversation here.”
“Did I say something wrong…?”
Kaniel asked in a dejected voice.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Taeyon answered like a sigh. He didn’t like the attitude of stepping back and cheering from the sidelines if a Tuner appeared. Kaniel was the first and only Tuner Taeyon had ever met in his life, yet he was already thinking about stepping back.
But what could he say here? Since he still had no intention of revealing that Kaniel was his Tuner, he had no way to navigate this situation other than ending the conversation as it was.
Kaniel, who had been watching Taeyon for a moment, understood that he truly had no intention of continuing the conversation.
Kaniel hesitated for a moment, then carefully tried holding Taeyon’s hand. Though his hand flinched, fortunately he didn’t shake it off.
He didn’t seem angry.
Then let’s try bringing up a different topic for now.
“Taeyon, about that monster. Don’t you think there might be a reason it’s holding onto that exact spot? Like it likes that location…”
“Monsters don’t have hearts.”
“But it’s a special individual.”
“…Right. Let’s say it has a heart.”
On the Floating Island, it was common knowledge that monsters had hearts, preferences, could sulk, get angry, or feel happiness.
Of course, he knew that surface monsters were different, but when he saw behavior so different from other surface monsters like that, he couldn’t help but think ‘what if.’
“Then there might be something in that location.”
“Location…”
“Yes, there were broken eggs there yesterday.”
“Those rotten eggs?”
Kaniel nodded.
“I’ve been thinking, and I think that snake monster might be guarding the eggs.”
“Guarding… the eggs?”
“Yes. What if those rotten eggs were actually laid by that snake monster? It would be strange to be so obsessed with eggs that were just leftovers from eating.”
“That’s ridiculous…”
“Maybe it’s instinctively guarding the eggs it laid.”
Monsters don’t reproduce. That was common knowledge not only on the surface but also on the Floating Island. Monsters appeared suddenly in random locations. Kaniel’s job as a Monster Tamer was to tame such naturally occurring monsters and send them to appropriate places like farms or stables.
However, for Kaniel, who had come down to the surface and had his common knowledge about monsters shattered, the common knowledge that ‘monsters don’t reproduce’ was also just a possibility that could be broken.
“Can’t we try just once?”
Taeyon didn’t believe this theory at all. He was an expert on monsters and demonic beasts in a different direction from Kaniel. What Taeyon knew was information biased toward hurting and killing them, but even so, he wasn’t ignorant of basic information.
Monsters ate animals, but could live without eating. If there were creatures nearby they would be active, but when there was nothing, they could endure for years without any movement, like hibernating.
They weren’t normal creatures but monsters.
“What? Please…”
However, if Kaniel wanted it, Taeyon couldn’t refuse.
Especially not when holding hands like this.
Taeyon looked down at Kaniel’s hand, which was calming his tense nerves even at this moment, then slowly met Kaniel’s eyes again.
“Alright.”
* * *
When Taeyon rushed at it, the snake monster reacted sensitively. It crouched then suddenly extended its head, baring its fangs as if to bite his shoulder. Taeyon skillfully dodged it while swinging his scabbard to push the snake monster’s nape to the side.
The snake monster, which had nearly smashed its head into the ground, attacked in excitement. The coil it had been curled in the whole time unraveled and it fiercely rushed after Taeyon’s playful movements.
Making it move this much was easy. No matter how much the snake monster tried to stay in its spot, it couldn’t just endure when hands and feet were thrust right in front of its nose. The problem was that no matter how much it rushed to wrap its body around the enemy, if it got about 10 meters away from its ‘original spot,’ it would frantically return.
So Taeyon had to deal with the snake monster without letting it get hurt while trying not to get too far from the place where the snake monster had been holding out.
It wasn’t very difficult, but it was somewhat frustrating.
“Ugh…”
Meanwhile, Kaniel, who had circled around the pond, stealthily ran to where the rotten eggs had been. Perhaps because the snake monster had moved around, the rotten eggs were half-buried in the dirt.
Kaniel hurriedly dug up the dirt. He’d claimed that the snake monster was probably the one who laid the eggs, but now that the eggs were right in front of him, they were too small.
As if they’d been laid by a real snake that was just slightly larger.
While thinking it was strange, he quickly moved the rotten eggs into the basket. As he moved them one by one, there were 27 of them. While moving the last egg, something caught on his fingertip, so Kaniel looked inside the hole and let out a small scream unconsciously, startled.
“Wah…!”
It goes without saying that the snake monster noticed that Kaniel had come to its spot and was doing something suspicious.
Kaniel urgently looked back and forth between the inside of the hole and the snake monster, then closed his eyes tightly and put the snake corpse, which had only bones and skin left, into the basket.
KYAAAAK—!
The snake monster, which made a threatening sound, started crawling toward Kaniel regardless of Taeyon pushing it.
The plan went awry.
Originally, Kaniel was supposed to leave the spot secretly. Since it had come to this, there was no choice but to move up the next plan.
Taeyon ran to Kaniel faster than the snake monster.
“Come on, hurry!”
“Yes!”
Kaniel quickly climbed onto Taeyon’s back.
“Hold on tight.”
“Yes!”
The snake monster, full of hostility, rushed at them as if shooting its body out. However, Taeyon jumped up lightly, then stepped on the snake monster’s head and jumped up another level.
“Ah, damn.”
The belated lament meant he’d momentarily forgotten the point about not hurting the snake monster.
It had happened because he prioritized getting away from the spot, startled by Kaniel’s crisis situation. Taeyon glanced back to check the situation.
The snake that had its head stepped on smashed its jaw into the ground as it was, then raised its body up.
“It’s following us!”
“Right.”
“I think it worked. Right?”
Taeyon started running fast again while answering, “Yeah.” Though it was unbelievable, he couldn’t deny the fact that it had succeeded.
He’d thought the snake monster would return to its spot. Because it had been obsessed with that spot the whole time. But seeing it desperately crawling after them now, it seemed Kaniel’s idea was right.
That snake monster had been guarding the rotten eggs this whole time, and was obsessed with the rotten eggs, not the spot. It was hard to believe, but it was happening right before his eyes.
“But it wasn’t just the eggs, Taeyon.”
“Then?”
“There was an almost dried-out snake corpse there. I put that in the basket too.”
“I want to say it’s ridiculous, but I can’t say that at this point.”
It was a situation where common knowledge he’d thought was ridiculous had been shattered until now. He didn’t know if the eggs in the basket were really eggs laid by the snake monster, but anyway, the snake monster was chasing the eggs right now, wasn’t it?
“When we return to Oblyad Castle, I want to research it!”
“Alright. I’ll help you.”
“Will you catch monsters for me?”
“Got it.”
“Ah, that’s so great.”
Kaniel hugged Taeyon tightly while on his back and rubbed his cheek against him. Taeyon, who had hesitated for a moment, soon relaxed his tension.
Taeyon’s face, running while maintaining a certain distance from the snake monster, was softened incomparably to usual, but Kaniel, who was on his back, couldn’t know.
* * *
When Taeyon reached a place far enough that he thought it would do, he tried to receive Kaniel’s basket and put it on the ground.
“No, over there. Please put it over there.”
Where Kaniel pointed was a damp place below a rock. Truly a place snakes would like. Taeyon put the basket under the rock as Kaniel instructed without complaint. Then he ran about a hundred meters again to create distance.
The snake monster, which had been desperately crawling the whole time, discovered the basket, coiled around it protectively in the center, and crouched while glaring at Taeyon with fearsome eyes.
Though its eyes were full of hostility as if it would attack at any moment, its body didn’t actually move.
“It really won’t return to the cabin now.”
“It won’t. Now we can receive our travel luggage from Effolin, right?”
“Right, I suppose…”
The sound of Kaniel’s laughter, as if happy to have achieved their goal, brushed past his ear. That was fortunate for Taeyon too.
However, Taeyon found it hard to smile.
He felt as if the definition of monsters he’d known had been distorted. Until now, Taeyon had never left any monster or demonic beast he spotted alive. Because he’d learned that chasing them to the end and taking their lives was for the sake of Oblyad.
Yet, even if unwillingly, he’d left a demonic beast and monster alive, and glimpsed emotions in something he’d thought of only as a monster, not a creature.
That was by no means a positive change.
Monsters had to be just monsters.
