CH 28

“What!! Is that the Orbazard King?!”

“How is it so big?”

“Was there such a dangerous animal in Tortea’s forests?”

The Orbazard King looked just like Puipui-chan and its friends, but it was bigger than an avaleyu cow — twice the height of a tall man and using its enormous legs to charge at us.

The guild taught that orbazards aren’t magical beasts, but just ordinary animals. However, Orbazard Kings are definitely magical beasts. They don’t use magic very often, but they’re ferocious and can easily hurt people. They’re also seldom seen, though, so researchers are having a hard time understanding them, but it’s said that one appears when you kill too many orbazards or do so without reason.

In other ways, the Orbazard King is similar to the other orbazards. For example, neither is good with water and can’t cross rivers, so if you hunt on the other side of the river, you can always escape just by crossing the river and running back to town. That’s why I wanted to go across the river.

But that noble-boy and his guards went and made a mess on the wrong side of the river. Even if we tried to run back to town, the Orbazard King could run circles around us and everyone in town would be in danger. And so, I started running to get to the other side of the river.

“S– Scary!”

“After that, what happened?”

“… definitely… don’t want to meet it…”

I ran like hell~. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, just like that time when we met Su. I could hear its deep, scary growls coming from behind, but no matter how much I ran, the noises kept getting closer! It was the first time I’d ever ran so hard…

After a lot of running, I finally saw a river, and since it was shallow, I ran right through it to the other side. The river sent water flying around me, making Puipui-chan squeal in fright, but its squeals made me realize I was so scared that I’d forgotten I was carrying Puipui-chan in the first place.

By that point, we’d been running for a long time and our strength was running out, but I looked behind me, I saw that the Orbazard King couldn’t make it across the river and simply stared at us from the other side. Puipui-chan’s eyes were round and cute, but the Orbazard King’s eyes were terrifyingly big. It kicked the ground in frustration while its eyes wandered, trying to find a way to come to our side of the river. It was something, wasn’t it, Ludo-san?

“It was a chilling experience. No matter how you looked at it, there was no way my bow could’ve done anything and it was so agile we would’ve died if we tried close combat.”

We were all afraid, but we had to go back across the river to return to town, right? But the Orbazard King didn’t move and kept staring at us. Then, the nobleman turned to me and said it was angry because I was holding Puipui-chan. ‘Oh, co~me on…’ was my only thought in response.

I’ve held Puipui-chan many times before — this is all because of the terrible things you guys did to the other orbazards! — is what I said, but everyone else had thrown their orbazards away while escaping. One of them told me to throw Puipui-chan away like they’d done, and I went into a panic.

But an orbazard can’t cross a river on its own. If I let Puipui-chan go now, it wouldn’t be able to return to its territory. While I was thinking about what to do, the guards were saying things like “stay away from me” and “keep holding it and be a decoy”. I wanted to knock them over, but the Orbazard King was still standing there, so I told the other five to run to the guild for help while I acted as bait.

“EEHHH?? Sumire, you waited here by yourself?!”

“Stop that~ You’re scaring me~”

“You would’ve been safer with Ludo-san…”

Well, to be honest, it was terrifying, but if the Orbazard King chased all of us back to town, it would be Ludo-san who would get there first anyway. And staying with the guards any longer would’ve probably ended with Puipui-chan being taken away from me by force.

So, with some hesitation, I walked back to the riverbank. As I got closer to the Orbazard King, its growls grew louder and I got even more nervous. When I came to the last inch of dry land, Puipui-chan, who had been curled up and shaking in my arms, raised its head, looked at the Orbazard King, and mewled out a “pui~pui~!”

Then, the Orbazard King came to the edge of its side of the river and extended its long nose towards me. I wanted to run away, but Puipui-chan, wagging its tail, pointed its nose towards the Orbazard King as well. Thinking it was going to use its nose to take Puipui-chan to the other side, I raised my arms to offer Puipui-chan to it.

Puipui-chan brought its nose closer still to the Orbazard King’s and went “puipuipuipui” for a while. Then, to my surprise, the Orbazard King’s growls stopped entirely. As I was wondering what was going on, it slowly backed away from me and Puipui-chan, moving its attention to the others, who hadn’t yet crossed the river.

And so I fearfully crossed the river, but the Orbazard King just stared at me and didn’t attack. When Ludo-san tried to cross the river in the same way, the Orbazard King immediately got angry and tried to attack him. But when I walked up to him with Puipui-chan in my arms, the attacks stopped and the Orbazard King went back to simply staring. So I thought, ‘Maybe it won’t attack us if Puipui-chan is close by?’

“Puipui-chan’s awesome! Too bad it has a stupid name!”

“Did it talk with the Orbazard King?”

“Maybe they were parent and child.”

Marth, let’s leave its name out of this, okay~?

After seeing that, the nobleman and his guards didn’t attack me and Puipui-chan, so we made our way back to the city together. However, the Orbazard King didn’t stop following us. It felt like it was always one step away from trampling us.

The noble-boy was clearly very anxious, tailing me the whole time. He eventually demanded, then forced, that I hand Puipui-chan over to him. When he did that, Puipui-chan started flailing and squeaking again, causing the Orbazard King to go wild and growling, sending shivers up our spines.

He quickly dropped Puipui-chan, who hurried back over to my leg, whimpering. After I picked it up and gave it a tight hug, the Orbazard King calmed down somewhat, huffing quieter and quieter. From there on, the others never tried anything funny, though they had to stay close because they needed me and Puipui-chan to survive.

“Hah, serves them right!”

“Puipui-chan must like you, Sumire-chan~”

“A noble, scared?…”

Soon, we reached the boundary of the forest and I stopped walking. You see, orbazards don’t leave their forests, so when Ludo-san slowly left the woods, the Orbazard King didn’t chase after him even though he was no longer close to Puipui-chan. Realizing that, the noble-boy and his escorts ran so fast that it made me laugh. The Orbazard King looked like it wanted to chase after them, but a few ‘pui’s from Puipui-chan made it give up.

When I squatted and put Puipui-chan on the ground, it put its little paws on my forearms and cried “pui~pui~!” “Thank you for your help~”, I said as I stroked Puipui-chan’s head, its tail wagging excitedly. Then, it walked off towards the Orbazard King, the two touched noses, and they disappeared into the depths of the forest together.

The noble-boy seemed to have learned from this experience, quickly giving up on becoming an adventurer and returning home, which was good for him.

After that, I never saw Puipui-chan again when I went into the forest.