After confirming the Magic Eye of Shock, Rei considered what to do next... and, as expected, he and Set resumed advancing toward the river's source, just as they had been doing.
Set, carrying Rei on his back, appeared to be in particularly high spirits.
That was undoubtedly because he was happy the Magic Eye of Shock had leveled up.
It wasn't that he looked down on his other skills — he had simply wanted to acquire the Magic Eye of Shock from the Giant Ape's magic stone, and having that wish come true was what mattered most.
"Set, it's fine to be happy, but this is the Forest of Magic. Stay prepared for anything."
"Gruu!"
At Rei's words, Set purred in acknowledgment.
For Set's part, it was true he was rejoicing over this success, but that didn't mean he was neglecting his reconnaissance of the surroundings.
Rei probably understood that too, but said it anyway as a precaution.
A few minutes after they resumed walking, Set came to a stop.
"Grurru? ...Grurururu."
That cry sounded less like a warning and more like confusion.
Rei wondered what it meant — but in the next instant, water splashed from the river and something leapt out.
He wondered if it was another hair-covered fish... but what hung in the air was a long, slender creature.
For a moment, he thought it might be a snake.
Sea snakes weren't particularly rare on Earth, and he recalled seeing on TV or somewhere that they were even eaten as food in certain regions.
Growing up in the mountains, Rei had seen his fair share of ordinary snakes swimming in rivers.
In that sense, he thought it wouldn't be strange to find a snake in a river...
"No, an eel?"
Looking at the creature that had flown through the air and landed — or rather, fallen — onto the ground, Rei muttered in surprise.
Having lived in Japan, Rei knew about eels too.
Things like the Day of the Ox in midsummer were an annual tradition.
That said, eels had gotten expensive in recent years, so they were mostly imported... and occasionally he would splurge on domestic eels.
Rei liked eel rice bowls, so a smile formed on his face as he watched the eel flailing on the ground after its fall.
"I don't know if it's a monster or not, but since it's an eel, there's no way I'm letting it go."
So saying, he severed its head with Death Scythe.
Why the eel had jumped out of the river in the first place, Rei had no idea.
But since it had come out on its own, there was no question of letting it escape.
"Still... the problem is how to prepare it. The seasoning is an issue too."
He vaguely recalled seeing how to prep eels in a cooking manga.
But naturally, he had never done it himself, and Rei wasn't particularly skilled at cooking to begin with.
"Drive a nail through the head... ah, damn."
Even as he said it, he remembered that he had already cut off the eel's head.
"Grurru?"
What's wrong? Set approached and asked. Rei told him it was nothing and stored the eel in his Misty Ring.
He understood that when it came to cooking, he was completely out of his depth.
In that case, his only options were to ask Marina, who was good at cooking, or perhaps have a cook in Gilm prepare it.
(Though even if I can get someone to prep it... the real problem is still the seasoning, isn't it.)
Naturally, something like eel tare did not exist in this world.
That meant he would need to make it from scratch, but Rei didn't know how.
He had heard of things like secret eel tare recipes passed down through generations...
But knowing that such a thing existed meant nothing if he didn't know specifically how it was made.
(At worst... eel jellied, was it? Something like that dish? Would I have no choice but to make something like that? No, no — I don't even know if I can make jelly here. Besides... ah, wait. Even without tare, I can just eat shirayaki with salt, can't I? Yeah, shirayaki it is. ...Assuming this eel is the same kind of eel I know, that is.)
With shirayaki, you could eat eel with salt instead of tare.
Feeling glad about that, Rei shifted his mindset.
"Set, that eel just now... if there are more, do you think you could catch as many as possible? It jumped out of the river on its own, but if it's you, Set, couldn't you spot eels in the water?"
"Gruu!"
At Rei's words, Set purred as if to say, "Leave it to me!"
Set then approached the river, but he couldn't start catching eels right away.
If there really were eels in there, Set would have been able to find and catch them — scooping them up with a front leg and flicking them out of the water, for instance.
But... that was only if there were eels to begin with.
If there were no eels, there was no way to catch any.
Watching Set move along the riverbank searching for eels, Rei realized this.
(Besides, this river has quite a number of monsters in it. Given that, even if there are eels, the possibility that they've already become food for those monsters can't be ruled out... It's probably harder to find them than eels on Earth.)
Though Rei had grown up in the mountains, he had never caught an eel in a river.
Being a mountain river, it was quite clean, but still.
Then again, the possibility that there had been eels in that river too, and Rei simply hadn't spotted them, couldn't be entirely dismissed either.
In any case, Rei had been watching Set search for eels, but he probably felt bad about standing around doing nothing.
So he moved to the riverbank himself, a little further away, and looked into the water.
A river in the Forest of Magic... it wouldn't be unreasonable to picture a very dirty river.
But the river before Rei had high transparency, worthy of being called a beautiful river.
Of course, if it were too clean, creatures wouldn't be able to live in it — so there was a certain degree of murkiness to it.
As Rei gazed at the river, something suddenly burst from the water, and he reflexively struck it down.
Whatever it was hit the ground from Rei's hand and died effortlessly from that single blow.
"A fish? ...Or a monster?"
Given that it had launched itself out of the water to attack him, he didn't think it was an ordinary fish.
Operating on that assumption, he dissected the roughly twenty-centimeter fish that resembled an ayu — though it had sharp fangs — using his dissection knife...
"It's a fish."
Finding no magic stone inside its body, he was satisfied that it was an ordinary fish, not a monster.
"Gruu?"
Seeing Rei's reaction, Set, who had been searching for eels, approached and asked what had happened.
Rei showed him the fish in his hand.
"This fish suddenly came at me. ...Still, this is the Forest of Magic, after all. To think that even an ordinary fish would have fangs like these, and on top of that, launch itself at me when I'm standing on land."
Rei was smaller than Set.
Not only that, he was small even compared to the average height in Elgin.
But even so, compared to a fish about twenty centimeters long, he was overwhelmingly larger.
Despite that, this fish had come at him, trying to sink its fangs in.
Thinking about it normally, attacking such a gigantic opponent would require considerable courage.
Or perhaps it simply had a habit of snapping at whatever prey it found, regardless of the opponent — that possibility couldn't be ruled out either.
"Grurururu."
Purring as if to say, "Be careful," Set turned back toward the river to search for eels again...
"Grurururu!"
Suddenly looking up at the sky, Set noticed an enemy diving down from above.
Areas around rivers generally tended to be places where large quantities of small stones gathered.
There were also areas where trees grew normally, of course, and the place where Rei and Set currently found themselves was one such spot.
Because of that, there was nothing overhead to block the view, making the incoming threat easy to spot.
For a monster inhabiting the Forest of Magic — especially a flying type — it was only natural to attack immediately upon spotting an enemy in such exposed terrain.
And when attacking, rather than targeting the over three-meter-tall Set, it would go after Rei, who was smaller.
"Whoa!"
Rei had been focused on the fish in his hand, so Set's sudden cry startled him, and he barely managed to dodge the attack from above.
Where Rei had been standing a moment ago, the enemy's impact carved a shallow crater into the ground.
"A Harpy? No, that's different!"
The upper body was that of a woman, so for a moment he thought it was a Harpy — but its arms weren't wings like a Harpy's. They were bat-like wings.
Or perhaps it was a High-ranking Species or Rare Species of Harpy, but either way, it wasn't an ordinary one.
Its legs were shaped similarly to a Harpy's, resembling those of an eagle, but the talons growing from them were clearly larger and more viciously shaped than those of any Harpy Rei knew.
And it wasn't just their appearance that was vicious — their power was too, as was obvious from the crater where Rei had stood moments before.
"Kwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
The entity that appeared to be a Rare Species of Harpy — perhaps judging that its dive at Rei had failed — opened its mouth and let out a loud screech.
For a moment, Rei wondered if it was some kind of sonic attack, but in the next instant the sound vanished... and lightning erupted from its mouth.
"Lightning Breath?!"
Even as he shouted, Rei swung Death Scythe.
The Breath unleashed from the Harpy's mouth was indeed a Lightning Breath, but rather than a concentrated beam, it was a spread attack that covered a wide area.
Naturally, a spread Breath had lower power.
Then again, Death Scythe was an item that ranked among the highest even among Magic Items.
Even against a concentrated Lightning Breath, dealing with it probably wouldn't have been difficult.
"Set!"
The word from Rei's mouth carried two meanings — checking whether Set had taken damage from the Lightning Breath, and ordering him to attack the Harpy if an opening presented itself.
"Grurururururu!"
In response, Set immediately activated King's Intimidation, simultaneously confirming his own safety and launching an attack.
It had no effect on an extraordinary entity like the Crystal Dragon, but this time the target was a Harpy.
It wasn't an ordinary Harpy but an entity that appeared to be a Rare Species, yet even so, it lacked the power to shrug off Set's King's Intimidation.
"Kyii!?"
Even so, it wasn't completely immobilized — the fact that it could still let out a scream was a testament to it being a Rare Species of Harpy that inhabited the Forest of Magic.
But... its flight speed had clearly slowed.
"Then take this!"
With those words, Rei hurled the Twilight Spear at the Harpy, which was still airborne.
The released shot pierced through the air and flew straight...
"Kwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
Another Lightning Breath was unleashed.
Unlike the spread attack from before, this was a concentrated shot.
The Harpy must have judged the Twilight Spear to be a threat.
But... the Twilight Spear Rei had thrown, even after taking the Lightning Breath head-on, continued its advance without any change in speed or trajectory, pierced through the Harpy's torso, and flew off in another direction without losing momentum.
Recalling the spear to his hand, Rei observed the Harpy as it fell to the ground — its torso pierced, or rather, half-crushed — and reflected on what had just happened.
The Magic Eye of Shock that the Giant Ape had used earlier had managed to alter the thrown Twilight Spear's trajectory, if only slightly.
But the Lightning Breath the Harpy unleashed, despite striking the Twilight Spear, couldn't change its trajectory at all.
That meant the Lightning Breath — even the concentrated version that should have been more powerful — was weaker than the Magic Eye of Shock, despite being a focused attack.
"Well, I guess that just shows how powerful a monster the Giant Ape was."
So saying, he plunged his knife into the upper body of the dead Harpy and extracted the magic stone from its heart.
Even though its arms were wings, its appearance was otherwise indistinguishable from a human woman's.
Because of that, it wasn't a pleasant feeling — but securing the magic stone was a matter of course.
And Rei found himself hesitating over whether to use the magic stone for Death Scythe or for Set.