About 20 minutes after leaving the forest behind, they arrived at a wide expanse of grassland. Hopping off Set near a particularly large rock, Rei let out a long breath.

「I feel relieved for now, at least.」
「Guru~」

He sat down on the grass, leaning back against the rock. Set trotted over and rubbed his head against Rei, giving a deep cry.

A smile floated onto Rei’s face as he scratched Set’s head.

「Set, we were only able to get out of the forest safely because of you.」
「Gururururu~」

Don’t worry about it, Set’s cry seemed to say.

「We’ll camp here for the night. Tomorrow, we’ll start looking for people, a village, or a town. ……However, according to Zephyr’s knowledge, there shouldn’t be any towns or villages anywhere near this area……well, what should we do?」

Doubt began to spread in his chest. There had been no information in Zephyr’s knowledge regarding the Water Bear or the Flying Blade Squirrel.

Certainly, with a gap of several hundred years, it was expected that some information might be outdated. However, he couldn’t understand why there was absolutely no record of the two monsters they had encountered back-to-back in this specific area. There had been information on the wolves since they were common beasts, so Zephyr’s knowledge wasn’t completely untrustworthy.

But then there was the size of the forest. According to Zephyr’s memories, the forest should have been much smaller. It had taken him nearly 10 hours of riding on Set’s back at high speeds just to reach the edge……the scale was completely wrong.

「Guru~?」
「Oh well. There’s no use worrying about it right now. For the time being, let’s just get something to eat and prepare for tomorrow. Set, could you bring that tree over here?」

Glancing at a medium-sized fallen tree nearby, he asked Set to retrieve it. Rei then pulled the severed arms of the Water Bear out of the Misty Ring.

He specifically chose the bear paws because he had a faint memory from his past life that the meat there was supposed to be delicious.

Taking out the right arm of the Water Bear, Rei chopped the meat into manageable pieces using the Mithril Knife. He then skewered the chunks of meat onto sturdy branches gathered from nearby deadwood.

「Gururururu~」

Just as Rei finished preparing about ten meat skewers, Set returned, effortlessly rolling the fallen tree along the ground with his forelegs.

Watching him, Rei couldn’t help but be impressed by Set’s raw strength. He pulled the Death Scythe from the Misty Ring.

「This is the first time I’ve ever chopped firewood with a giant scythe……I wonder what Zephyr would say if he saw this.」

Smiling wryly, he poured magic power into the blade. One strike, two strikes, three strikes, and the thick fallen tree was cleanly diced into small pieces of firewood.

Once a sufficient amount had been gathered, he cast a spell to start the campfire.

『Fire, gather on my fingertips. Small Flame.』

A small flame appeared and quickly spread to the firewood. Rei firmly planted the bear meat skewers into the ground at a moderate distance from the fire. With that, their camp preparations were complete.

Since he didn’t have any camping gear like a sleeping bag or a tent stored in the Misty Ring, the roaring fire would be their only companion for the night.

「Gurururu~」

The flames immediately began to roast the meat. As Set caught the appetising scent, he drifted closer to Rei.

I can’t wait, Set seemed to say. With a wry smile, Rei tossed him some of the raw meat that hadn’t been skewered yet.

「Eat this for now while we wait for the rest to cook.」
「Guru~」

Catching the raw meat in his beak, Set swallowed it after only chewing a few times. He immediately turned his pleading blue eyes back to Rei, begging for another piece.

(If you’re going to eat like a human, you should chew your food properly. I wonder how Griffons normally eat.)

He continued feeding Set pieces of raw meat like this for about five minutes. At long last, the skewers were fully cooked by the fire. Rei pulled a skewer from the ground and bit into the juicy meat.

It was the first time Rei had ever tasted such an overwhelmingly mellow, rich meat. In his past life, Rei had eaten bear meat from a bear killed by a local hunter back in his rural hometown. His impression at the time had been that it was not completely unpalatable, or something along those lines. But the bear meat Rei remembered and the meat of this Water Bear tasted so completely different that he might have mistaken it for a different animal entirely.

When he had dismantled the body to retrieve the magic stone, the blood had naturally drained out. The faint, lingering smell of blood, combined with the peculiar, rich taste of wild game, created a deeply complex flavour.

His only regret was that it was a purely unseasoned meat flavour, as he didn’t have any spices on hand. The taste would have elevated dramatically with just a simple pinch of salt.

In truth, though Rei didn’t know it yet, the meat of higher-ranked monsters tended to be more delicious due to the dense magic power suffusing their bodies. But ultimately, a tendency is just a tendency, and there were plenty of monsters with high magic power that tasted terrible, just as there were low-ranking monsters with incredibly delicious meat. In a sense, he was quite lucky that his first meal in this world was the meat of a Water Bear.

「Gurururu~」

Keeping one skewer for himself, he held out another to Set, who pushed his face close and dexterously slid the meat off the stick with his beak. Rei watched Set eat for a moment, satisfied with his own meal. He then pulled out a Clara fruit to serve as dessert and bit into it.

Quickly polishing off the sweet and sour flesh and juice, Rei stood up. Set’s eyes were still glued to the remaining raw meat. Rei grabbed the Death Scythe and held it horizontally.

「Guru~?」

Set noticed Rei’s shift in demeanour but quickly went back to focusing on his meat after determining there was no danger in the surrounding area.

Smiling wryly at Set’s one-track mind, Rei moved a bit further away from the fire. Leaning the Death Scythe against a nearby rock, he began to stretch, testing the limits and condition of his new body.

Although the body of Saeki Reiji in his memories had decent flexibility, this new body was far more supple than he expected.

First, he found he could easily place his palms flat on the ground without bending his knees, and he still had room to push further.

For the next few minutes, he ran through a series of standard stretches he had learned back in junior high and high school.

「Alright, that should be enough of a warm-up.」

Saying so, he grabbed the Death Scythe leaning against the rock and took a firm, two-handed stance.

「Hah!」

One sharp exhale, one heavy strike. The blade of the Death Scythe split the air. However, Rei felt that something was slightly off. He reset his stance, tilting his neck in thought.

「Hah!」

Again, one sharp exhale, one heavy strike. This time, the twist of his body was different. As he swung the massive scythe down, he consciously rotated his hips, ensuring the kinetic energy transferred perfectly into the weapon.

「Yeah, something like this.」

Beginning to understand the weapon’s centre of gravity, he tried two different horizontal swings, which were a wide sweep from left to right followed by a reverse sweep from right to left. He then relentlessly practised every angle of attack he could think of, including scooping strikes from below, without showing any signs of fatigue.

He kept this up for about 30 minutes. At first, he had handled the Death Scythe awkwardly, relying purely on brute force to move its massive frame. But as time went on, his handling became increasingly smooth and refined. If veteran soldiers or skilled swordsmen could see the sheer speed of his swings, they would undoubtedly be jealous.

He swung the Death Scythe down in a heavy vertical arc, stopping the blade mere millimetres before it hit the ground. Using the momentum, he instantly flipped the blade back up and angled it to the right.

If that specific combination had been used against a human opponent, they would have first been cleaved diagonally by the initial strike, had their right arm severed by the rising cut, and finally had their head taken off by the sweeping follow-up.

He kept the heavy scythe moving in continuous, fluid motions. Occasionally, he would incorporate tricky, unpredictable movements, using the long handle like a spear just as he had done against the Water Bear. Before long, the weapon felt like a natural extension of his body.

When he first started, Rei had to stop and reset his posture after every single swing. Now, all awkwardness was gone, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say his movements resembled a deadly, elegant sword dance. A single sweep of the heavy blade was sharp enough to cut the very air, and a thrust from the handle carried enough kinetic force to shatter low-quality armour in a single blow.

Rei focused entirely on the rhythm, continuing his intricate dance of death. As his movements grew sharper and more precise……

「Haaaaatsu~!」

With a final, explosive yell and a devastating strike, he brought the Death Scythe to a sudden halt, resting it easily by his side.

「Phew, I think I’ve roughly gotten the hang of it.」

Several hours had already passed since he started his training. Even though the Death Scythe’s unique properties meant he barely felt its true weight, Rei had been swinging the massive weapon continuously without a single break.

「As expected of a body crafted by the world’s greatest ancient magicians. I can keep moving like this without even losing my breath.」

Although a thin sheen of sweat dotted his forehead, he wasn’t even breathing heavily.

Returning to the campfire with the Death Scythe, he found Set casually tossing a piece of firewood into the flames with his beak. All the meat had been stripped cleanly from the Water Bear’s right arm, and only bare white bones remained scattered on the ground.

「Gurururu~」

Welcome back, Set gave a short, happy cry as he saw Rei.

Unlike normal Griffons, Set possessed an intellect equal to or even greater than a human’s, all thanks to the sheer density of Rei’s extraordinary magic power used in his creation. This intelligence was evident in how well he understood Rei’s words. While Rei was testing his physical limits, Set, who clearly wanted to be spoiled, had waited patiently, knowing his master needed time to master his unwieldy weapon.

Because of that……

「Set, can you make some water for me?」
「Gururururu~!」

Asked by his beloved Rei, Set happily conjured a Water Ball.

The sphere of water floated buoyantly through the air, stopping gently in front of Rei. Rei cupped his hands, scooped some water from the floating sphere, and splashed it over his face to wash off the sweat.

「……Ah, damn it. I don’t have a towel.」

Realising his mistake immediately, he had no choice but to let his face and hands dry naturally in the cool night air.

「Guru~」

Set gave an affectionate cry as Rei sat down on the grass and leaned back against his warm, feathered side.

While gently rubbing Set’s head, Rei began to plan tomorrow’s schedule.

(For now, we’ll stick to the original plan and look for a town or a village……but which direction should we go? For better or worse, we haven’t seen anything remotely resembling a highway or a beaten path since putting some distance between us and the forest. At this rate, we might just have to treat the forest edge as a completely unmapped frontier.)

Even though he had inherited Zephyr’s vast ancient knowledge, it didn’t include anything convenient like a modern map of Japan or a comprehensive world map. He could roughly recall where the nearest neighbouring country used to be, somewhere over a distant mountain range, but that was just raw geographical data.

And since that data was several thousand years old, it was practically useless as a reliable reference in his current situation.

(If my bad feeling is right, most of Zephyr’s geographical and political knowledge is likely going to be completely obsolete.)

There had been zero information on the specific monsters they had encountered, and the sheer scale of the forest was entirely different from Zephyr’s memories. Thinking it through logically, it was highly probable that far more time had passed since Zephyr’s era than the ancient magician had assumed.

「Well, we’ll be able to figure all that out once we actually find a town or a village.」
「Guru~?」

What’s wrong? Set seemed to ask. Rei shook his head and said it was nothing while scratching his own head.

「Anyway, that’s a problem for tomorrow. Let’s start looking for a place with people as soon as morning comes.」
「Guru~」
「Can I count on you to keep watch tonight?」
「Guru~!」

Leave it to me! Set gave a confident cry. Hearing that reassuring sound, Rei wrapped himself in Set’s silky, warm feathers and quickly drifted off to a comfortable sleep.

[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] [Next Chapter]