Shadow Knock.
Of all things, the knocking sound I had heard that morning crossed my mind.
The inn employee’s knock had been extremely calm and polite.
Grenda’s knock, on the other hand, was at the exact opposite extreme from politeness.
Grenda slowly raised both hands with her palms turned upward.
“Slimes, you see, are creatures you can think of as tiny cores inside large water pouches. The core is the main body.”
I took Grenda’s words exactly and put them into my mouth.
“The core is the main body.”
Grenda folded her fingers in order, from her pinky to her index finger.
Using Grenda’s movement as a signal, Shadow Knock manifested.
Each Poison Slime had a shadow cast on the ground, and the Poison Slimes’ shadows suddenly changed shape.
From the round shadows unique to slimes, into sharp protrusions like thorns.
The shadow thorns shot up from the ground and pierced through the Poison Slimes’ bodies.
From inside the Poison Slimes’ bodies came the sound of something hard breaking.
CRACK.
It was the kind of sound that might come when one carelessly stepped on thin ice in winter.
Grenda shrugged and spoke as if showing off.
“That is the sound of their cores breaking.”
A skill that materialized the opponent’s shadow, transformed it into the desired shape, and then “knocked” on the opponent’s back as it was.
That was the true nature of Shadow Knock.
Every Poison Slime pierced by its shadow lost its round form and gently flowed down like an egg yolk pierced by a fork, spreading wetly across the ground.
Grenda relaxed her posture and playfully nudged my shoulder with hers in a friendly manner.
“Now you understand, yes? You only need to relax and follow behind me.”
For an instant, I found myself thinking that the performance Grenda had shown was cool.
Displaying leisure while annihilating many enemies in a single moment.
The mercilessness of stabbing an enemy in the back and its brutal power.
Come to think of it, Nadan never boasted about himself, but thinking back now, perhaps Nadan had been the ace of the Alhen Region too.
Just as Grenda was called the ace of Volter Mountain.
Unshaken by Grenda’s playful closeness, I aimed an arrow toward the front and released the string.
TWANG—!
The arrow obediently flew along the imaginary trajectory drawn in my vision and burrowed beneath a mushroom-shaped rock.
From the shadow beneath the mushroom cap, where our gazes could not reach, came the sound of a core breaking.
CRACK!
There was one Poison Slime that had not been hit by Shadow Knock, so I dealt with it personally.
Grenda rounded her mouth and pretended to clap.
“Oh~ You noticed very well that I missed one. Excellent skill.”
Her tone sounded as if a kindergarten teacher were praising a child.
I had shot the arrow to appeal to her that I was not some fragile egg she needed to protect with all her might, but it seemed that in Grenda’s eyes, it had looked like a cute trick.
Remembering that when Grenda used Shadow Knock, for an instant, she had overlapped with the image of Nadan first showing me Stabilizer, I spoke.
“There must be a condition for becoming an ace that says one must possess an attractive skill.”
“Oh my, how kind of you to say. Usually, people say it is unsettling.”
“This may be a shameless question, but what must I do to learn Shadow Knock?”
“Hehehe. Are you trying to steal someone else’s trade secret?”
“If it is a persimmon I cannot eat anyway, I might as well poke it once.”
If she readily passed it down like Nadan, that would be good. If not, then that was that.
I had decided not to be reserved anymore when it came to learning skills.
This was also something I had decided right after visiting the hidden exploration point in the Alhen Region.
If I was going to continue visiting hidden exploration points, I had realized I needed to steadily increase the means to protect myself.
Shadow Knock would certainly keep helping me in the future.
Grenda expressed regret toward my expectation.
“What I said about trade secrets was a joke. It would be an honor if a dimension traveler used my skill. But this skill can only be acquired by achieving a specific condition.”
“A condition-achievement type skill... So it was the type that cannot be transmitted directly.”
“Yes. You can obtain it only by subjugating a set number of demons called Shadow Vampires.”
“Aha. Since there are no demons now, it was a condition that cannot be achieved in the first place.”
The last war against demons had happened ten years ago.
The demons had retreated to the demon realm, and as far as I knew, there were no demons remaining on the Ravos Continent.
At the very least, Nadan had said I would no longer be able to see demons.
‘Thinking about it the other way, that means Ms. Grenda participated in the war ten years ago and massacred Shadow Vampires......’
I could not even dare imagine what hardships Grenda had gone through, or what wounds had made her grow.
Each time she survived again and again in war, she must have ripened as a person.
The mature tolerance and experienced atmosphere she carried had not appeared for no reason.
Grenda slightly opened her narrow eyes and spoke in a playful tone.
“Hehe. If the demons start another war, perhaps you will have a chance to learn it.”
Thanks to her slightly opening her eyes, I saw Grenda’s pupils for the first time.
Deep violet pupils.
They gleamed like dense amethysts, and when I looked at them, I felt as if I might be sucked in.
Those deep, deep eyes disappeared inside her narrowed eyelids again when Grenda smiled with her eyes.
I treated Grenda’s words as a joke.
“Haha, if that is what it takes, I would rather not learn it.”
“Now then, let us leave the jokes at that and start cleaning up. You received Venom Sword from the owner, yes? Please absorb the poison from the Poison Slimes’ corpses.”
“Because if we bury the Poison Slimes as they are, they will contaminate the area with poison?”
“That is right.”
I took out Venom Sword and extended it toward the place where the Poison Slimes had died in a heap.
At the top of Venom Sword’s hilt, there was a button the size of a shirt button. When I pressed it with my thumb, a cheerful sound rang out.
Click!
A black hole the size of a tennis ball appeared at the end of the hilt, and as air flowed into the hole, the suction grew stronger and stronger.
Black liquid seeped out from each Poison Slime remnant and was sucked into the subspace created by Venom Sword like dust before a vacuum cleaner.
While Venom Sword absorbed the poison, a series of phrases flowed into my head.
-Venom Sword poison storage: 10 percent.
-Recombining absorbed poison to strengthen it into a more powerful poison.
-Current poison potency: level 40.
After the absorption of poison ended, I created Venom Sword’s blade as a test.
Length, sixty centimeters.
Form, longsword.
Black poison flowed out from the subspace in the hilt and formed the shape of a blade. The poison soon hardened firmly and boasted a smooth surface and hard strength, as if it had gone through tempering.
The poison’s potency was enough to instantly kill monsters below level 40.
Once the work of absorbing poison was finished, Grenda chose one of the Poison Slime remnants and lit a fire.
Black smoke generated by burning the remnant rose high.
Then, without giving the remaining remnants even a glance, Grenda crossed the area thick with slime remains.
“Good work. Since the monsters delayed us, I will increase our speed.”
I hurriedly followed Grenda together with Luna and asked.
“Are we leaving the remains without burying them?”
“Monster subjugation on Volter Mountain uses a thorough division-of-labor system. It is divided into hunters, hazardous materials disposal teams, and cleanup crews.”
The smoke she had sent up by choosing and burning one remnant was a beacon.
They said base camps were installed throughout the monster-infested areas, and hazardous materials disposal teams and cleanup crews waited at each base camp.
A beacon raised by a hunter was the signal to deploy.
Ordinarily, the hazardous materials disposal team removed the poison, and the cleanup crews buried the monsters.
In the case of the monsters we had hunted, we had absorbed the poison, so there was no need for the hazardous materials disposal team to step in.
As we moved, I proposed the route I wanted to take to Grenda.
“I would like to continue the discussion about the route I mentioned before departure. Once we finish today’s purification work, I would like to head straight to the eastern or western village.”
“I was just about to tell you the specific route. I told you before we departed that I had already planned the route, yes? Today, we are scheduled to pass through the water source and head to the eastern village.”
“Can I assume lodging has been prepared in advance?”
“Of course. If everything proceeds as planned, you will be able to soak in the Eastern Volter Mountain Hot Spring tonight. That inn is also owned by the owner, so you do not need to worry about lodging fees.”
As it turned out, the four largest luxury inns located to the east, west, south, and north all belonged to Larsson.
And not just the luxury inns.
Through Grenda, I learned that the land Larsson’s family had possessed for generations was enormous to begin with.
He was the kind of person commonly called a local notable.
From the moment he casually offered me a large reward and a special suite, I had expected him to be no ordinary rich man. But as it turned out, he was a wealthy man beyond what I had imagined.
Now I understood how he had been able to readily offer one hundred gold coins as four days’ compensation regardless of the request’s difficulty.
When we departed the village, we had been at 300 meters above sea level, but at some point, we were passing 700 meters above sea level.
We did encounter monsters several times along the way, but they were only(?) level 30 to 50, and only one or two appeared at a time, so Grenda handled them easily every time we encountered them.
As if proving with her own body that it was not difficult at all, Grenda, far from growing tense, asked me about the culture of our world as if we had come out for a stroll.
“There are no skills in your world, are there, Mr. Seong-jin?”
“At the very least, people do not have levels attached to them or skill windows like here. Instead, we do create similar results with knowledge and hand techniques acquired through effort.”
“How were things for you, Mr. Seong-jin? If you were chosen as a dimension traveler, you must not have been someone in an ordinary position.”
“Hahaha, I am only being treated as a dimension traveler here. In my hometown, I was an ordinary person. For example, my position back home was like one of the countless people living in the village south of Volter Mountain.”
“An ordinary person cannot easily deal with a Poison Slime only a few days after crossing over.”
“I told you the truth, yet you do not believe me. It really is true.”
As we moved while chatting, we arrived at our destination.
The place where the first purification work would be performed was inside a cave located 700 meters above sea level.
The purification work ended smoothly without any particular incidents.
I placed Venom Sword’s hilt against the water source and pressed the button, sucking in the poison contained in the contaminated water source.
There was so much poison that the poison storage amount reached its limit in an instant.
-Venom Sword poison storage: 98 percent.
-Recombining absorbed poison to strengthen it into a more powerful poison.
-Current poison potency: level 60.
Grenda said that starting tomorrow, she would teach me how to use a sword against monsters in order to consume the poison.
She said that although Shadow Knock was her main technique now, before she made Shadow Knock her main technique, swordsmanship had been her specialty.
After the first purification work ended, when we arrived at the eastern village as planned, it was after sunset.
Through the employees of the luxury inn who had been contacted in advance and were waiting for us, we were provided with a special suite.
Luna and I would stay in the same guest room, while Grenda would stay alone in a separately prepared room.
Before leaving the room to obtain today’s Hot Spring Experience Event reward, I repeatedly urged Luna, who was in the form of a black cat, to bathe.
“Are you really not going in? If you keep trying, you might get used to it.”
But the only answer I received was a sly yawn.
“Mwa~.”
***
After Jo Seong-jin left, Luna, left alone, prowled through every corner of the special suite.
Just as cats usually stayed wary of places they had visited for the first time and inspected every corner thoroughly.
While observing the special suite’s structure and splendid furniture with half-lidded, indifferent eyes.
She discovered a notice attached to the wall inside the entrance.
Written on the very last line of the notice was.
[This eastern hot spring is mixed bathing. Impure conduct is prohibited, so please keep this in mind when using it.]
The scenes she had witnessed all day while quietly following behind Jo Seong-jin came to mind.
Jo Seong-jin and Grenda walking side by side, chatting nonstop.
The moment she compared that to herself, who had made Jo Seong-jin bored because she spoke so little.
A surge of emotion rose.
Luna weighed her own constitution against the situation of Jo Seong-jin and Grenda being alone together, then finally let out a deep sigh.
“Nyaaang~.”
Not long afterward, Luna left the guest room, and the form Luna wore as she stepped outside was clearly human.