53 - course other than

Rohlf and his colleagues' proposal was really a bit of a non sequitur.

First, Thor approaches the river.

Yuril waits behind him.

So far, so good.

The difference was the position of Mu and Sora.

They are still standing in the rear, but now they are standing separately on the left and right.

In their hands, they were holding some stones that they had picked up.

"Let's get started."

Thor glanced at Yuril as he called over his shoulder.

The silver-haired beauty, who was five steps ahead of the others, shook her head gracefully.　

From the friendly conversation of the trio, it seemed to Thor that they were not the type of people who would tell a bad lie.

However, it was clear that they were approaching him with an agenda.

He had asked Yuril in advance to help him in case of an emergency.

As soon as I stepped on the shore with a thump, the surface of the water swelled and a reddish-black mass came out one after another.

Thor's sword strikes sharply at the first one, and the frog is knocked down and hits its companion, which serves as a stopper.

Thor slams down another one that jumps over and slips out of the way.

Then, a blast of sleep-inducing cold air envelops the monsters as if to replace them.

The onlookers cheered as the red poison frogs stopped moving at once.

"Wow, magic is really amazing!

"It's nice, a magician ......."

"Let's make the fifth one a magician for sure, brother!"

As Thor tries to close the distance again to the sleeping frogs, a dorsal fin protruding from the waves leaps out of the corner of his eye.

Just when it seemed that he would be interrupted as before, something crossed in the air.

It was a stone thrown by Mu.

It flew in a parabolic line to the surface of the water, far away from the fish and frogs.

Just before a small column of water was about to rise, the stone was hit by a body of water that flew in from the side at a furious pace and blew it away.

At the same time, the monster, which has finished shooting water bullets, dances into the water.

But the fish leaps into the air again, blood-red water dripping from its scales.

The water projectiles from its pointed mouth are aimed at the stone that Sola had thrown after it.

The fish repeatedly jumped up and hit the stones thrown by both of them alternately to the left and to the right.

This was the method proposed by Rorolf and the others.

In fact, blood-spewing fish have a habit of attacking anything that moves on the surface of the water, and if they know it, they can easily distract it.

It seems that they help the red-poisoned frogs in order to intercept the prey that the frogs have dragged into the water, and they continue to shoot water bullets at any target that they can catch themselves.

Thor slices the motionless frogs with his blade of maximum sharpness.

The audience was again excited by the sight of the monsters being cut in two with a single slice.

But just as he is about to kill the fourth red poison frog, the fish's movement suddenly changes.

Its body suddenly twists in mid-air.

The reason for throwing stones from two directions was to prevent the blood-spewing fish from narrowing its target by making it change its direction frequently.

But children have a habit of forgetting themselves when they are having too much fun.

Moe was so absorbed in the game that he inadvertently threw the stones in rapid succession.

After shooting down the first stone, the fish noticed another one flying nearby and turned his body in the air to fire a series of water bombs.

The second shot shattered the stone, and the last shot went toward the child.

"--Sora!

"Match me!"

"Ice, slide!"

Thor's call is met with a surge of magical power as their voices overlap.

The mass of water, suddenly slowing down, misses Mu by a fraction of a second and lands on the riverbank.

The child, who was splashed by the spray up close, turns over with a startled look on his face.

At the same time, a great change was taking place in the river.

Thor, who had witnessed Mu's situation, turned his eyes back to the front and stopped moving involuntarily.

The surface of the water in front of him also stopped moving.

It was as if it was the only place cut off from the flow of time. Even the movement of the waves and the splashing of the water had stopped, as if frozen.

No, it was actually frozen.

What held the reddish-black surface of the river was the ice that covered the surface layer of the river.

Thor's brain recognizes, with a delay of a breath, that this is the effect of the ice sheet that Yuril has released.

The original "ice sheet" is a magical technique that only lightly freezes the ground and makes one's footing unstable.

However, Yuril's technique froze the entire surface of the river with such force that it blew away such recognition.

Then, a blood-spattered fish that had been soaring in the sky falls.

The monster slams into the ice and rolls over with a silly sound.

The fish glides across the frozen water and somehow comes right in front of Thor.

The fish is launched to the shore with such force that it hits the last frog, which had been asleep.

Thor mercilessly swung his blade down on the face of the fish as it woke up and started to squeal.

He also inserted the tip of his sword into the gills of the fish, which was gaping at the mouth, and pierced through to the other side of the fish.

Having finished off all the monsters, Thor exhaled a small breath and turned his attention back to the surface of the river.

The ice had already broken into pieces and was being swallowed up by the current as if nothing had happened.

When he turns around, he sees the silver-haired beauty with her usual smile on her mouth.

Ulille notices Thor's gaze and closes one of her eyes cutely, tilting her head.

"Did I overdo it?"

"Yes, a little bit. No, thank you. Thank you very much.

Then a bunch of disgusting men came running up to us, yelling.

"Oh!　I've never seen anything like that!"

"What the hell was that?　Did the river freeze over?"

"Wow, that's amazing!　Mr. Yuril, that's really awesome!"

The three men surrounding the woman, who was beaming with embarrassment, praised her.

"No, I'm really surprised. I thought that ice magic was much more subdued."

I was surprised, too. I was surprised, too.

"Hey, I think I can handle this, bro."

What's wrong with it?

"What do you mean, you see--"

Then, perhaps realizing that it was Thor who had joined the conversation, the three of them stopped talking and turned around at once.

"You told me it was easy, but you didn't say it was dangerous.

"Yeah?　Around here, that's not dangerous at all.

"Hey!"

The second son's response angered the eldest son, Roloff.

He suddenly punched him in the side.

I'm sorry. I didn't explain myself well enough. It's my fault for scaring the boy. I hope you can forgive me."

As the leader of the trio, he must understand the pain and responsibility of party members being injured.

The leader of the trio, Moe, who had been apologized to, seemed to be amused by the water, hugging Thor and rubbing his wet hair with a giggle.

Thor, who felt a little uneasy about this very frank attitude, voiced a question that he had been feeling for some time.

"......Is there a reason why you tested us?"

"Yeah, I just wanted to make sure. A beautiful girl who uses mysterious magic. And she's got a little kid with her. She really is as they say.

"Oh, I'm a beautiful girl?　I'm so embarrassed.

"No, at first I thought you were the pretty one."

"Yeah, I heard she was really pretty too, so I thought she was a little different."

"Ugh, I'll do my best to live up to your expectations."

"No, no!　You're still pretty enough. You can flaunt your chest."

"Can we get back to that now?"

At Thor's call, Roloff hurriedly returned to his serious face.

Then he quietly asked a question.

"Isn't that what they used to call you, the mud fisherman?"

Thor raised his eyebrows a little at the name, which he had missed a month or so ago.

"Yeah, that's right. That's my nickname."

The men exchanged a flurry of glances at the easily acknowledged response.

Then they suddenly clashed their fists against each other and shouted with delight.

The three men suddenly bowed deeply to Thor and the others, who were surprised at what had happened.

"Please, help us!　We could really use your mud-slinging skills."