Chapter 65: Grey Fog [4]
Only after the system confirmed the kills did I open the spear and turn it into a solid platform under me.
The bodies of the crocodiles, with holes in their flesh, floated lifeless around me.
I was surprised that it actually worked and I managed to kill all of them.
"That’s what you get for trying to eat me." I said to them, even though I knew they wouldn’t reply.
It wasn’t really a nice experience getting chased by predatory animals that hunted humans for food. That was something you’d only see in horror movies.
Just in case, I spread my senses to detect if there were any other crocodiles, and I found nothing.
"Thank God, I managed to keep myself clean." I stood and sighed in relief.
I looked up at the sky, where I couldn’t see the sun, so it was hard to tell what time it was.
Thankfully, I had a pocket watch, so I checked the time and it was 3pm. Night was coming, and I had to get out of the swamp as soon as possible to find shelter, because during the night, horrifying things appeared.
"Ezio, which direction is northeast?" I asked again, having lost my sense of direction because of the fight with the crocodiles.
’Turn 30 degrees to your left.’ Ezio replied.
I turned 30 degrees as he said, and just before I was going to create a platform for myself to step on, he interrupted me.
’What are you doing?’
"What do you mean, what am I doing?"
’Are you just going to leave the precious meat of the crocodiles to rot here?’
Oh, right. I had almost forgotten about selling monster corpses at the adventurer’s guild.
"Thanks for remin— huh? Did you just say precious meat?" I stopped myself from thanking him and frowned.
’Yes, crocodile meat is quite the delicacy, so it would be a waste to leave them here.’
This bastard...
Here I thought he was worried about me not selling the corpses, but he was instead worried about his own stomach!
"No, like seriously Ezio, all you think about is food? And how many types of monsters and beasts have you not eaten?" I raised an eyebrow.
’Yves, one day you’ll come to understand that food is the more important thing in this world.’ Ezio said with certainty.
"Even above women?"
’Even above women.’
I bet Ezio would do anything for food...wait, he already did, by signing the mana contract in exchange for food when I first arrived in this world.
Oh, nah, he’s insane.
’Oh, and you asked me if I have eaten any type of meat? Hah, obviously. I have eaten reptiles, amphibians, monsters like Underground Lurkers...’
The more he kept talking about what he’d eaten before, the more I felt like vomiting, and the more I questioned his sanity.
’—and of course, I still have yet to eat dragon meat. Legends say they taste like chicken.’
My face went pale at his final words.
’Y-You bastard, did you just talk about eating dragons?’ I said, with a hint of fear on my face.
’Yeah, why?’
’Are you insane?! Why would you want to eat a dragon, you bloody fool? Do you know you can get killed just for saying that?’
’Hey, who are you calling a fool?’ He hissed. ’I know that dragons became part of our society very long ago, but did you forget that there are rogue dragons as well? If I got a chance to kill one for its meat, I’d do it in a heartbeat.’
Why does he only spew nonsense?
Dragons were one of the strongest races, if perhaps not the strongest race in this world.
They were the oldest race in Estoria and held more knowledge about the world than you could even fathom.
They were mostly arrogant creatures, but their strength backed it up.
It is said that one shouldn’t speak badly of a dragon aloud, because you never know when one is nearby, and hell, they had the greatest hearing in the whole world.
And this bastard was just talking about eating a dragon?? A race that could have wiped us humans out and made us extinct ages ago. But thankfully he only spoke in my head, because if there was a dragon somewhere here, and it heard that, we wouldn’t be getting out of here alive, no matter how strong Ezio was.
Because if Ezio was that strong, he would’ve already sensed them.
I definitely did not want to get burned alive.
’You are insane, Ezio.’ I shook my head in frustration.
’Nah, I just have taste.’
Taste of death.
After pinching the bridge of my nose several times, I opened my spatial ring, stored the corpses inside it, and continued crossing the river by jumping from tree to tree.
Fortunately, no crocodiles decided to chase after me, so I crossed the swamp peacefully.
Soon enough, thanks to my senses, I finally found dry land.
I jumped from the tree and crossed the remaining distance between the swamp and the dry land, landing on the ground.
"Finally, dry land." I whispered in relief.
The land before me had trees that towered over me, and more of them appeared behind one another, until they were no longer visible because of the fog.
And just a few centimeters from me, there was some sort of writing on the ground. My gut told me that I shouldn’t read it.
’Stay aler—’ Ezio was about to say something when he suddenly stopped and went silent. I thought he was doing one of his shenanigans again, so I didn’t bother to ask what he was about to say.
I walked into the forest silently.
One thing that was very weird about this forest was that it was so silent I could hear my own calm heartbeat.
There were no creatures, no wind to lift the trees’ leaves — there was nothing at all. It was as if the whole forest was dead. It was so creepy that it made me want to turn around and forget about ranking up my story. But with [Calm Mind] active, I couldn’t feel fear.
As I walked deeper into the harrowing forest, I suddenly heard a voice that made my head snap towards it.
"Idal..."
It was a familiar voice.