Yuji and Hiiragi-san caught up with me after hearing my shout, but their expressions were nothing short of exasperated. Actually, the exasperated look came with a side order of a heavy sigh.
Well, I knew exactly why they were reacting that way.
"Hey, Daiki? I just want to confirm... exactly what is that?"
"..."
Next to Yuji, who was asking in a bitter tone while rubbing his temples as if fighting off a headache, Hiiragi-san made no effort to hide her dismay, simply nodding along.
I averted my eyes and replied in a small voice.
"What do you mean, what is it? It's... a boar, I guess?"
...Haaah.
At my answer, Yuji and Hiiragi-san let out a synchronized, heavy sigh.
The object of their gaze was a boar, its legs bound, rolling helplessly on the ground.
"Look, Daiki. We split up to pick wild vegetables, right? Why are you hunting a boar of all things?"
"I didn't exactly do it for fun, you know. This was just... a proper response to an emergency situation."
I offered a strained rebuttal to Yuji, who was sounding thoroughly fed up. But even to my own ears, the argument felt weak.
Looking at me as if I were a lost cause, Hiiragi-san spoke up, waving her right hand dismissively.
"Kokonoe-kun, Kokonoe-kun. Honestly, that excuse is a bit of a stretch. For people like us, even if we didn't want to hunt it, simply running away would have been easy."
"I mean, that’s true, but... you know?"
Averting my gaze from Hiiragi-san's perfectly logical point, I wore an awkward expression.
"Don't 'you know' me. For now, could you explain how you ended up hunting a boar? I can't really judge the situation until I know the details."
"...Understood. I'll give you a brief rundown. To start with..."
I began to explain the sequence of events to Yuji and Hiiragi-san—how my search for wild vegetables had taken an abrupt turn into a boar hunt.
When I finished my explanation about five minutes later, Yuji looked indescribably troubled.
Finally, in a voice that sounded like it was being squeezed out of him, he gave his take on the situation.
"...I see. In other words, when the boar suddenly came face-to-face with you, Daiki, its survival instinct went into overdrive."
"What do you mean by that, Hirose-kun?"
"Oh, well, basically..."
According to Yuji's theory, the moment the boar encountered a "strong being" like me, its mind jumped to two choices: kill or be killed.
I tilted my head and asked why it hadn't considered a third option—running away—but Yuji shook his head. He argued that the boar likely realized instinctively that I wasn't someone it could actually outrun.
"What do you mean it 'realized' that? From the start, I was totally on the defensive, just dodging its charges."
"That's strictly from your perspective, Daiki. To the boar, it probably felt like it was being toyed with, even though you could have killed it at any time. Besides, like I said, its defensive instincts were overreacting."
"So, it was a 'kill him before he kills me' situation..."
"Yeah, essentially. Its thoughts were cornered by fear, and its vision narrowed until it couldn't think of anything except defeating the enemy in front of it. Especially considering its size... that thing was probably a lord among the local wildlife."
Drawn by Yuji's gaze, I looked back at the boar.
It was about 150 centimeters long, with a massive frame that easily looked to be over 100 kilograms. Yeah, I couldn't deny that "lord" seemed like an appropriate title for a beast that size.
"A smaller one might have fled regardless of its chances, but with a body that big, it probably thought it had a shot if its charge actually connected."
"If it was capable of that much thought, I wish it would have just chosen to run away. It would have saved me a lot of trouble..."
I shot a resentful look at the boar. If it had just run off after I dodged the first charge, I wouldn't have bothered to chase it.
A somber atmosphere drifted between Yuji and me for a moment, but Hiiragi-san dispelled it with a sharp kashiwade clap.
"Alright, that’s enough. Since we can't undo what's been done, let's decide what to do with it."
"What to do... Right. What should we do?"
"Even if we were to eat it... there's a lot of prep work involved. We definitely can't have it for dinner tonight."
With Hiiragi-san's prompt, our collective focus shifted to the boar on the ground.
At that moment, a question occurred to me.
"Hey, Yuji? Why can't we use it for dinner? If we do the dismantling, we can eat it, right?"
"I mean, you could eat it, but it'll be gamey and probably taste terrible. For wild game, you need to bleed it and let it age for a few days for it to be any good."
"Huh."
"For some reason, the monster meat that drops in a dungeon is delicious without any of that, but real wild animals require proper processing before they're edible."
It seemed my confusion was a side effect of being too used to the dungeon. When he put it that way, it made perfect sense.
Still, the fact that dungeon meat drops in ready-to-eat blocks is incredibly convenient...
"So, what's the plan? If we can't use it for dinner even if we dismantle it, there's no point in lugging it back to the tents."
"True. It's sustained some injuries, but since it's still alive... should we just release it?"
As Hiiragi-san and I began to lose interest in it as a food source, Yuji hurriedly stepped in to stop us.
"Wait, wait, don't do that! Don't just release a wounded wild animal! If it holds a grudge against humans, it could start attacking people!"
...Ah!?
"Especially one this big. If something goes wrong, someone could actually die."
When Yuji pointed out the danger so sternly, Hiiragi-san and I looked away, feeling awkward. I realized it wasn't as simple as just letting it go because we didn't want it.
Yuji let out a long sigh and covered his face with his hand. After thinking for a few seconds, he made a suggestion.
"...Let's let Koarashi-san have it."
"The manager?"
"Yeah. He has a hunting license and catches wild animals himself sometimes. He has to maintain the grounds here so the wildlife doesn't tear the place up. There's a dismantling shed on-site, so I'm sure he can handle it if we ask."
Hiiragi-san and I shared a look, then nodded in agreement.
"Works for me. Since we can't release it, we have to do something."
"Besides, none of us have any experience dismantling a boar. It'll taste better if someone who knows what they're doing handles it."
In the end, we were just asking for help with the processing, not just dumping a problem on him... probably.
"Then it's settled. Let's move it before it wakes up. Daiki, help me tie it."
"Hey, Yuji? If we're taking it back to the campsite, shouldn't we finish it off? It'll be a nightmare if it wakes up and goes wild while we're carrying it."
I voiced my concern as Yuji approached the beast. Even if the campsite wasn't busy, bringing a live boar into a public area felt a bit questionable.
Yuji shook his head slightly.
"You can't do a proper bleeding unless the heart is beating."
"I see. The blood won't drain if the pump isn't working."
"Exactly. But since we don't have a cage, we have to be extremely careful."
Accepting the reasoning, I followed Yuji's lead and bound the boar's legs with the rope we'd brought. It was reasonably thick, but it felt a bit flimsy for a beast of this size.
After securing it as tightly as possible, Yuji and I slid a log between its bound legs and hoisted it up.
"Alright, looks good. Hiiragi-san, sorry, but could you go ahead to the campsite and talk to Koarashi-san?"
"Sure. What should I tell him?"
"Just tell him the truth... that we caught a boar that attacked us and want to know if he can help us dismantle it. That should be fine... probably."
"Right... I'll try that."
As I listened to them talk, a thought crossed my mind. "We caught a boar that attacked us, so we want to dismantle it." That definitely wasn't a request a normal camper would ever make.
With that thought, I watched Hiiragi-san's back as she ran off toward the campsite.
When Koarashi-san saw the boar we brought in, his jaw dropped in sheer disbelief.
"...Is that the boar you said you caught?"
"Yes. It attacked us while we were foraging, so we captured it."
Since Koarashi-san was looking at us as if we were hallucinations, Yuji explained that we had caught it as a group. In reality, I'd handled it myself.
"Since the evidence is right here, I have to believe you, but... haah."
Koarashi-san let out an exhausted sigh and looked us over once more.
"I knew you were explorers, but... this is something else. You don't have a scratch on you, and you took down a beast this big without real weapons."
"We just dodged until it got tired and then took our opening."
"The fact that you say that so casually is what's terrifying..."
With a wry smile, Koarashi-san led us to the dismantling shed, a short distance from the log house. It was a small, one-story wooden building, likely a repurposed structure from the original abandoned village.
After cleaning the boar and bringing it inside, our first-ever boar dismantling lesson began under Koarashi-san's guidance.
"Alright, first we drain the blood. Secure the back legs with those chains and hoist it up, then wire the snout so it can't thrash."
"Yes!"
Yuji and I secured the legs to the chains hanging from the ceiling beams and hoisted the carcass, while Hiiragi-san looped a wire around its snout and anchored it to a bolt in the floor.
Once Koarashi-san checked the restraints, the real work began.
The sun began to dip below the horizon, and the woods grew dark.
Having finished the evisceration and basic butchery, we followed Koarashi-san's instructions to let the meat cool for half a day and headed back to our tents. Hiiragi-san and I were silent the entire way.
...
"Hey, are you two doing okay?"
"Ah, yeah. I'm fine."
"Me too... I'm okay."
At Yuji's concerned voice, Hiiragi-san and I snapped out of our daze.
The dismantling process had been a visceral experience. We were used to seeing blood from fighting monsters, but the act of using a knife to methodically take apart a creature and separate the meat felt different—it stirred up a complex range of emotions.
"Here, drink this and relax."
Yuji handed us both cups of cocoa he'd made with water boiled over the hearth.
...Phew.
We took the cups in silence, and after the first sip, the heavy feeling in our chests finally started to lift.
"...Feeling better?"
"Yeah. Thanks, Yuji."
"Thank you, Hirose-kun."
Once we had regained our composure, we began to discuss our next steps.
"We'll go pick up the boar meat tomorrow. For tonight, let's stick to the food we bought in town. We can cook the wild vegetables we gathered along with it."
"Wild vegetables... Right, sorry. I didn't actually get any because of the boar."
I bowed my head and apologized for my empty-handed return. I'd ditched the few I'd found when I had to start dodging.
"Don't worry about it. We have plenty of food; the wild vegetables were just supposed to be a bonus."
"Hirose-kun and I gathered more than enough for all of us anyway. If anything, we picked too many..."
"Thanks."
The bag they'd filled was huge—there was no way we'd finish them all here. We could take the rest back as souvenirs.
Boar meat and wild vegetables... it almost felt like the universe was telling us to make a hot pot.
"Alright, let's get dinner started before it gets completely dark. It's dangerous to work when you can't see."
"Agreed. Though since it's mostly retort pouches, we're really just heating things up."
"Nothing wrong with a delicious meal that's guaranteed not to fail."
We shared a small laugh and began our preparations for dinner.