「Ahh, I lost. I was pretty close as well.」

Vihera gave a sigh when she saw Rei’s Death Scythe cutting diagonally through the Spear Frog’s head.

Rei spun around to avoid the spear like strike from the tongue and struck the Spear Frog from below, scooping up with the Death Scythe.

As she watched on, Vihera fluidly dodged the tongue of an approaching Spear Frog, kicking it with her armed feet before slashing it with her claws.

The Spear Frog’s blood, flesh, and internal organs were scattered into the surroundings as a strong scent of blood drifted into the surroundings.

The bloody smell was quickly blown away by the desert wind, leaving only remains that had been slashed apart by magic empowered blades.

「Why don’t they at least secrete some bodily fluids like the abnormal species to reduce the impact? That would have made it a bit more fun.」

「Mm.」

Byune gave a brief reply to Vihera as she jumped forward to avoid the tongue of a Spear Frog leaping towards her. Landing next to the Spear Frog, she thrust her dagger into its body.

「It might just have been ability the abnormal species had, but that’s just boring.」

Byune was able to get her thoughts across with a single sound. Vihera muttered to herself as avoided another tongue stretching out towards her from behind and pierced it with the blade extending from her heel.

The Spear Frogs had been chasing after the abnormal species earlier, but the moment the abnormal was killed, they started to move independently, as if they had regained their own will.

(Or maybe their relationship is like the Queen Bee and the Sword Bees.)

Avoiding the attacks of the Spear Frogs attacking her, ELena slashed them one by one with her magic empowered sword whip in whip form.

Even as she was thinking, she was still able to precisely kill the Spear Frogs, as expected of the General Princess.

「GURURURURU~!」

Next to Elena, Set gave a loud cry as he swung his claws, pecked with his beak, or used his hind legs to crush the bodies of Spear Frogs.

Seeing the number of their friends rapidly dropping, the Spear Frogs started to realise they couldn’t win. When one Spear Frog that resembled the abnormal species made a high pitched cry, the other Spear Frogs saw that as a signal and those that had been fighting started to scatter in all directions.

Byune and Elena started pursuing the retreating Spear Frogs.

Rei couldn’t chase after them because he still had to deal with the corpse of the abnormal species. As for Vihera, she didn’t seem to be able to muster up any fighting spirit against the ordinary Spear Frogs.

After fighting at close range, she didn’t have a single drop of blood on her cloak. That showed how strong Vihera was.

「Mm!」

Byune, who needed to make as much money as she could, stabbed her right dagger into the back of a Spear Frog that was running away before striking it again with her left dagger, killing it.

As for Elena, she sliced the bodies of several Spear Frogs with her sword whip and wind magic.

After chasing the Spear Frogs for about 5 minutes, there were nearly 50 Spear Frogs lying dead on the ground.

「Huff, huff. ……Both of you are very fast. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. ……Huh?」

Several minutes after chasing the Spear Frogs, the porter hired by Vihera and Byune finally caught up, though they looked a little worn out.

(No, it’s not that the porter is slow, but that Vihera and Byune are too fast.)

Rei thought to himself as he looked at the corpse of the abnormal species.

Elena went over to Rei and called out as she shook the blood of the Spear Frogs off her sword whip.

「What’s wrong? Why aren’t you storing it into the item box?」

「Hm? Yeah. I was just wondering what to do. You remember what happened earlier?」

Rei was vague because Vihera was nearby, but Elena immediately understood what he meant.

After all, it wasn’t easy to forget someone as extraordinary as Rei getting knocked out earlier.

But……

「That aside, there wasn’t an issue with storing away the corpses of the Stone Golem and Sword Bee queen, was there? The this shouldn’t be an issue.」

「……Yeah.」

Hearing what Elena said, Rei nodded.

He had definitely stored the corpses of abnormal species into the Misty Ring before. It was clear that there shouldn’t be a problem storing away the one next to him as well.

It seemed that the back flow of magic power from absorbing the magic stone still weighed on his mind.

Regardless, if he left the corpse out in the desert, there was a possibility that other monsters would quickly start to gather due to the smell of blood. Thinking of that, he quickly stored the corpse into the Misty Ring.

(On the other hand, thinking about it a different way, I could also use it as bait to kill the monsters that come over, right?)

Storing away the abnormal species Spear Frog, he noticed Vihera coming over. He spoke up to hide his thoughts.

「I’m sorry to say, but it seems this bet was my victory.」

「Fufu, that’s right. It’s a pity as we had found it earlier.」

「That’s true. It was going after the Sandworms that we had killed.」

「……Ah.」

At Elena’s words, they looked over at the corpses of the Sandworms a short distance away.

In the mess with the Spear Frogs, Rei had completely forgotten to store them away.

「Ara~, ara~, I’m sorry to hear that.」

Following Rei’s gaze, Vihera shrugged her shoulders and murmured after seeing the Sandworm corpses.

The corpses of the five Sandworms had been fine when the abnormal species first showed up, but after it was killed and the rest of the Spear Frogs were running away, some seemed to have eaten bites out of them or simply ran over them. Maybe they attacked the corpses because they were in the way? Regardless, there was damage all over their bodies, to the extent that it would be a waste trying to strip any materials from them.

「……Haah. No, that’s fine.」

「Oh, is that really okay?」

Vihera seemed slightly surprised at Rei’s unexpected response.

However, Elena knew exactly why.

In the first place, Rei was after magic stones to absorb using the Magic Beast Art. He had already obtained several Sandworm magic stones prior to this and absorbed them. ……That said, he hadn’t been able to learn any skills.

If they had been Sandsnakes or a Grand Scorpion, which he had only managed to get one magic stone of, he might have been angry enough to kill with his eyes.

「Mm!?」

Byune’s voice was heard from behind Vihera, Rei, and Elena.

As usual, her face was expressionless as she made a sound, but even so, Rei and Elena could feel that she was angry.

Well, it wasn’t surprising that Byune, who had few emotions, would get mad after seeing them talk casually while she and the porter were working hard to strip materials, magic stones, and proofs of subjugation from the Spear Frogs.

They knew that Byune wasn’t without emotions, she just wasn’t very good at expressing them. Otherwise, she wouldn’t want to stroke Set and Yellow whenever she could.

「Yes, yes, I understand. I’ll do as the lady says.」

Cowering slightly, Vihera shrugged her shoulders and borrowed a dismantling knife from Byune to start stripping materials from the Spear Frogs.

「……Ah.」

Rei made a sound in understanding when he saw that.

Vihera really only had the bare essential on her person.

Rei remembered that even when Vihera had been working together with them, she had borrowed a knife from Byune to strip materials from monsters.

(But, I recall that she often works solo, what does she use then? ……The claws on the back of her hands?)

Even the Stone Golem……or rather, the abnormal species, that was about to turn into a magic metal, could be torn apart by her claws, so she shouldn’t have had any issues stripping materials from monsters using them.

「Rei, please help me strip materials from the ones I killed.」

「Hm? Yeah, I understand.」

At Elena’s request, Rei also took out his dismantling knife that he used to strip materials as he started work on a Spear Frog.

He cut off its right fore leg, the proof of subjugation, before cutting off its spear like tongue which could be used as material. In this situation, it was necessary to cut it as close to the base of the tongue as possible.

While it was stretchy and supple, it also had resistance to slashing. The tip of the tongue could also easily pierce through armour made from low ranking monster leather.

The tip could be used as spear tips, or the tongue could be used as a whip by the rare whip wielders. It was a material with a wide variety of demands.

Next, Rei cut off the two hind legs, which were said to be delicious, before taking the magic stone out of the heart.

Spear Frogs weren’t very large and the number killed by Elena and Set was small in comparison to those killed by Vihera’s group, so it didn’t take them long to finish.

The ones Elena and Set had killed were also some distance away from the ones killed by Vihera and Byune, so they didn’t have to worry about who they belonged to, contributing to how they could finish so quickly……

「Hmm, that’s it for now. ……So what about the abnormal species you killed?」

Rei turned to look at where the abnormal species Spear Frog had been when Vihera asked, as she handed over the last magic stone to the porter.

「No matter what you say, the fact is that the Silva family will buy it off us and pass it to the guild for various investigations. There’s no way I can strip any materials from it.」

「Well, that’s true. In that case, shouldn’t we return to the surface? It’s hot in this desert, even with a cloak. Oh, as for the bet, I lost in the end.」

「It was a meaningless bet to win though.」

「Oh? Did you realise?」

Rei turned away from where the abnormal species had been and looked at Vihera as he replied with a smile.

「Of course. Well, there wasn’t much I was going to ask anyway, so I don’t care.」

「That hurts my pride when you say it like that.」

「Mmm-!」

The two of them calmly exchanged words in this blood environment that smelled of Spear Frogs and Sandworms.

Seeing them like that, Byune told them to get out of the dungeon with her eyes.

To Byune, the abnormal species, her biggest target, had been snatched away from the side, so there was no point for her to stay here any longer.

That said, the materials, magic stones, and proofs of subjugation they obtained would be purchases by the Silva family at a higher than market price, so she was still able to earn quite a bit of money from it when you consider that.

(No, it might actually be a physical problem. She’s still only 10 years old after all……)

Rei thought of that as he looked at Byune before turning to Elena next to him.

Elena might have thought of the same thing as Rei, she looked at Byune worriedly.

「Well, I’m sure that travelling through the desert would be tiring and you’d want to relax. What do you think?」

「I agree with Byune-san. We couldn’t kill the request target, but considering the number of monsters that Vihera-san and Byune-san killed, there will be more than enough rewards.」

The porter also agreed and Vihera probably wasn’t in the best of moods after having her target, the abnormal species, taken away from her. She nodded at Byune and the porter before turning to Rei.

「Why don’t we head back together? There aren’t any abnormal species anymore, so it would be better to move together instead of separately, right?」

「I don’t mind……what about you?」

To Rei, it was encouraging to have a thief like Byune with them. Because of that, he asked Elena, who gave a sigh before speaking.

「I’ll allow it if you don’t mess with Rei. ……I’m more worried about Byune.」

Like that, Rei and Vihera’s groups joined up and headed for the small room with the magic circle.

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