"All right, that's the last one!"
With those words, Death Scythe cleaved through the Hermit Crab along with its rock-camouflaged shell.
That took care of every Hermit Crab in the area, but the battle itself wasn't over yet.
"Grrrl!"
The moment the fighting ended, Set let out a sharp cry and bounded toward a Hermit Crab corpse lying a short distance away.
But the instant Set moved, hair shot up from underground, coiled around the corpse, and dragged it straight down into the earth.
"Grrrrrrl!"
Set growled in frustration at having yet another corpse snatched away.
Throughout the fight, hair had erupted from the ground several times to steal Hermit Crab corpses.
Each time, Set had tried to stop it, but even with its keen senses, detecting the Fish underground was nearly impossible. It couldn't pick up on the creature's presence until the hair actually broke the surface.
"Troublesome. But a troublesome opponent just means we need a different approach. The key is making sure there's only one Hermit Crab corpse for the Fish to target."
With multiple corpses scattered about, guarding all of them was simply impossible.
So the solution was to narrow it down to a single corpse.
Of course, that was easier said than done. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be feasible at all.
Even if they piled the corpses together, the Fish could drag one down from the center of the pile—somewhere out of sight—and they wouldn't even notice the theft had happened.
But... that only applied to normal situations.
Rei and Set were anything but normal, and for Rei, who carried the Misty Ring, leaving a single Hermit Crab corpse behind while storing the rest was a trivial matter.
After stashing all but one slightly larger Hermit Crab corpse in the Misty Ring, Rei and Set backed away from it—just far enough to avoid tipping off the Fish, but close enough to close the distance in an instant if needed.
About a minute passed. No hair emerged from the ground.
(Did it sense that the fighting above ground stopped? Through ground vibrations or something?)
It would normally be unthinkable, but given the monster's appearance to begin with—countless hairs sprouting from its body, and the ability to swim through the ground as if it were water—it was clearly an unusual creature.
Rei wouldn't be surprised at all if it possessed some kind of special sensory ability.
Still, with the commotion above ground gone and a little time having passed... maybe it would surface to check things out.
Acting on that assumption, they kept waiting. Eventually, about ten minutes passed.
A large-scale battle had taken place here just moments ago, but now the area was so still it was hard to believe any fighting had occurred at all.
And then... hair began extending from the ground beside the lone remaining Hermit Crab corpse.
(Not yet. Not yet. Just wait for it to take the bait...)
It was just like fishing.
Rei told himself that, and the instant he saw the hair from underground coil around the corpse, he broke into a sprint.
Set lunged forward at the same moment.
Whether the Fish heard the sound of their footsteps or was monitoring the surface through some other means, Rei couldn't say. Right now, hauling it out of the ground took priority.
(Don't snap.)
Grabbing the hair tangled around the corpse, Rei pulled with all his might.
Hair was surprisingly fragile. Praying it wouldn't break mid-pull, Rei kept the tension steady.
The Fish was undoubtedly aware its hair was being pulled. But it apparently couldn't sever its own strands at will—which was a small mercy.
"Grrrrrrl!"
As Rei dug in and held fast, Set arrived beside him. Clamping a different strand of hair in its beak, Set started pulling too.
Set's beak was sharp enough to qualify as a lethal weapon. Yet it seemed able to modulate its grip, because the hair held firm without severing.
With Set added to the effort, the balance of power shifted.
Little by little, they hauled the Fish toward the surface.
The Fish thrashed violently, resisting being dragged from the safety of its underground domain. Rei and Set, determined to kill it, hauled back just as hard.
Fishing was something he'd done countless times since childhood back in Japan. Compared to those days, this Fish put up a far stronger fight.
...Though calling it "fishing" was a stretch, given that there was no rod involved. He was simply grabbing the Fish's hair and reeling it in by hand, so whether the term even applied was debatable.
"Set, synchronize with me."
"Gruu!"
It was like a tug-of-war. No matter how many strong people you assembled, if everyone pulled at their own rhythm, they couldn't generate much force. Match the timing, pull together—that was how you produced real power.
Of course, there were always exceptions. Even if a crowd of people timed their pulls perfectly, Rei or Set alone could match them.
And it was exactly these two—Rei and Set—who now synchronized their timing and pulled together.
The Fish couldn't withstand their combined strength. The next moment, it was wrenched bodily from the earth.
Naturally, the Fish recognized the danger and immediately tried to burrow back underground. But having gone to all the trouble of dragging it to the surface, Rei wasn't about to let it escape.
"Not a chance!"
As the Fish dove for the ground, Rei snatched up Death Scythe and delivered an upward scooping strike, while simultaneously hurling the Twilight Spear with his other hand.
In perfect sync with Rei, Set lashed out with a front leg.
The Fish sensed the danger and tried to dodge, but Rei and Set's attacks were faster.
What made the Fish special was its ability to burrow underground. Using hair like tentacles was unusual too, but considering the nature of hair versus tentacles, that part wasn't particularly shocking.
While it was underground, neither Rei nor Set could touch it. That ability was undeniably troublesome—but that also meant once it was dragged to the surface, the hair covering its body was certainly eerie, yet dealing with the creature itself wasn't particularly difficult.
Death Scythe carved a deep gash across the Fish's body, and the Twilight Spear punched clean through it. Set's front leg strike delivered more than enough force to cause major damage.
"Gyupii!"
Letting out a shriek that didn't match its appearance at all, the Fish slammed against the ground.
Neither of them had used Skills, but the Fish had taken direct hits from both Rei and Set. It was barely clinging to life.
In its current state, there was no way it could flee.
"Set, let's finish it!"
But as long as it could burrow, they needed to end this fast. Even half-dead, if it managed to escape underground, neither of them could do a thing about it.
Whether it would recover safely or die down there, Rei couldn't say. But losing access to the Magic Stone was a certainty.
Given that, Rei absolutely wanted to kill it here and now.
Above all, there was the Fish's burrowing ability. That might be obtainable from its Magic Stone.
Driven by that decidedly materialistic desire, Rei swung Death Scythe and sheared through the Fish's head from the middle.
Set had been ready to intercept if the Fish somehow survived and tried to flee underground, but it was relieved that wasn't necessary. Perhaps bothered by the hair that had been in its beak, it confirmed the Fish was dead and then headed for the river.
Watching Set go, Rei turned his attention back to the Fish's corpse.
(Yeah, no appetite for this one. ...Strange thing to say, though.)
He'd eaten all sorts of monsters before. Yet the fact that this Fish stirred no appetite in him was something even he found odd.
"First things first—the Magic Stone. But before that, let me check its stomach."
The blue Rare Species Hermit Crab had been dragged underground by this Fish—more precisely, by the hair growing from the Fish's body. What happened after that was a mystery, but the logical assumption was that the Fish had eaten it.
Given how little time had passed between the blue Hermit Crab being dragged under and the Fish's death, there was a decent chance the corpse was still in its stomach.
Since Rei had already fought the blue Hermit Crab, the conditions for Beast Magic were satisfied. In other words, if the blue Hermit Crab's corpse—or more precisely, its Magic Stone—was still in the Fish's stomach, he could acquire a Skill.
"How about it?"
He slit open the belly and cut out the stomach. It was completely empty.
(Maybe it didn't eat the blue Hermit Crab after dragging it under? Or maybe this Fish digests its prey at an abnormally fast rate, and the Hermit Crab has already been absorbed? ...Either way, no use crying over it.)
There was a chance the Fish had dragged the blue Hermit Crab underground without eating it, storing it somewhere for later. Among animals, there were plenty of species that buried food to preserve it. Squirrels, for instance.
Rei had learned from TV back in Japan that squirrels buried acorns and other nuts to store them. According to the program he'd watched, squirrels often forgot where they'd buried their food. The segment even ended with the tidbit that those forgotten acorns and seeds would sprout and grow into the trees of groves and forests.
But the Fish with the burrowing ability was already dead. Even if the blue Hermit Crab's corpse was still underground somewhere, there was no way to find it now.
A serious search would mean excavating this entire area. Death Scythe's Terrain Manipulation could handle it in theory... but at its current level, it could only dig down to a depth of five meters.
Given the Fish's size, it could easily have burrowed ten meters or more underground. Searching for it wasn't technically impossible, but they didn't have the time to spare. Rei reluctantly gave up on the idea.
"Grrrrrl?"
Set returned from the river, having washed its beak and apparently caught a small fish to eat on the way back. After swallowing it, the creature gave a purr that seemed to ask what happened next.
"I was hoping the blue Hermit Crab's corpse might be in the Fish's stomach, but there was nothing. Looks like it hadn't eaten it yet and just stashed it somewhere underground."
"Gruu..."
Set had watched the blue Hermit Crab fire its Water Breath at Rei, so it too looked disappointed at the explanation.
"Better to focus on the corpse in front of us than something we can't find."
Muttering to himself more than to Set, Rei extracted the Magic Stone from the Fish's body.
"Now then... do we feed this Magic Stone to Death Scythe or Set?"
"Grrrrrl."
Set's reaction was unmistakably uneasy.
Naturally. If things went well, it might acquire a burrowing Skill. But the Fish had another defining trait—and arguably a more prominent one than its burrowing ability: the hair covering its entire body.
In other words, if Set used the Fish's Magic Stone, there was a real chance it would acquire a Skill that caused hair to sprout from its body. That was the last thing Set wanted.
And so, Rei and Set found themselves at an impasse over what to do with the Fish's Magic Stone.