“Yuji. There’s a monster!”

Just as I was about to experiment, a perfect wolf-type monster approached.

Judging by its appearance, it seemed about average in strength.

Compared to the weaker monsters around town, it was decent.

And now it would be tested on.

‘Magic Transfer—Water Supply.’

I tried the most peaceful-sounding one first.

As expected, water came out of the slime.

…Well, it was no surprise. It was magic that created water, that was all. It would be useful for securing water.

But it didn’t seem like I could use it during combat, so I tried the next one.

‘Magic Transfer-Gravel Bullet.’

A small rock went flying towards the monster.

“Gaaah!”

It struck its target and the monster let out a cry before losing its balance and falling on the ground.

While it couldn’t kill a monster in one hit, it could at least knock them off of their feet.

And so I continued to shoot at the monster. At 4 hits its HP went down to 0.

…Well, it was about what should be expected for this amount of MP.

Besides, the wolf wasn’t that weak either.

‘Magic Transfer—Wind Cut.’

I found another monster of the same type, and this time I used magic that seemed to have a wind attribute.

All of a sudden, a small cut appeared on the wolf’s stomach.

Apparently, you could not see ‘Wind Cut.’

That in itself was quite useful, but the damage was very low, and the monster just howled in confusion and looked around.

And so I used the slime to launch Wind Cut repeatedly at it.

The result was that it took 20 Wind Cuts to get its HP to 0.

That was 5 times as much as Gravel Bullet, but not being visible was quite valuable.

There was no harm in knowing how to use it.

Now, the last one.

‘Magic Transfer—Weak Fire Bullet!’

I chanted as another wolf-type monster pa.s.sed by one of the slimes. Then a very small bullet of fire shot out.

It was about 3 cm in diameter.

I had a.s.sumed that such a small bullet would just disappear upon impact…but the moment it made contact with the wolf, the monster’s fur blew up with a burst of flames.

It was covered in fire and it only took a few seconds for its HP to fall to 0.

Not only that, but the ground around the wolf was also burnt.

…Weak Fire Bullet, huh? It’s pretty strong.

Perhaps this monster was just weak to fire. But even then, it seemed incredibly powerful for magic that only required 1 MP.

Still, there would be times when I didn’t want the ground to burn. It would also not be good in caves where I had to be careful about oxygen.

Magic that was hard to use was powerful, while weak magic was easy to use.

It was quite balanced in a way.

Though, it would have been a lot easier if there was just one really strong magic that I could use without thinking.

I thought about it as I continued to fire off the fire bullets at monsters who came towards the slimes.

While it was quite powerful, it was still magic that just consumed 1 MP.

I had wondered if wolf monsters were just easy to burn, and if it would be ineffective on other monsters…but it was surprisingly not the case.

Of course, it did not kill all monster types in one hit, but even those monsters burned.

Perhaps the magic itself was made so that the fire spread.

…I definitely could not use it indoors.

As I thought about this, Tina said,

“Hey, don’t you think it’s strange?”

“There are too few monsters. It’s not normal to walk this much without encountering any.”

Ahh. This was because I had killed all the monsters who looked like they would get close.

After all, there was actually quite a distance between us and the slimes in the front. And the slimes also stored all of the bodies, which caused Tina to think that ‘there were no monsters.’

“I’m having the slimes kill all of the monsters up ahead in advance.”

“…But don’t you lose MP every time the slimes use magic? I would think the MP depletion would be serious if they killed so many.”

“Not necessarily. The slimes do use MP, but I’ve been only using efficient magic.”

“Efficient magic?”

“Yeah. Like fire magic. It’s difficult to control but quite powerful in return.”

“I never heard that before. Or perhaps slime magic is special. …So, how many monsters did they kill?”

How many…

I hadn’t exactly been counting, but it was probably…

“I think around 30. Don’t worry, I haven’t used that much MP.”

“Only 30 after walking in this forest for so long. We should consider ourselves lucky. …Still, the magic must be incredibly efficient if you aren’t worried after killing 30…”

Tina said this and paused…then she looked up at the sky.

“Is it also because of the slimes that it’s become darker?”

I looked up as well and it did seem like the sky had darkened.

However, I hadn’t done anything. Besides, what reason would I have to darken the sky?

But it did seem very strange.

It wasn’t particularly cloudy, and the sun was still up. And yet it was dark.

It was almost like a solar eclipse, but the sun was still visible.

“It’s very eerie… I want to hurry up and finish this quest so we can go back.”

I agreed.

Unfortunately, from what I could tell from the slimes through Shared Senses, nothing had been found yet.

…But I decided to ask just in case.

‘Hey. Any signs of something strange or very powerful monsters?’

‘There are no powerful monsters at all!’

‘The thing that is strange is that there are no powerful monsters!’

‘There is strange magical energy, but no monsters!’

It seemed that the monster we were after was not close by, but the slimes also felt that something was wrong.

Well…what would happen now?