Chapter 106
Mari was one of the characters in the Academy who has her own story.
In the original, she was also one of the characters who was extremely wary of people, and it was difficult to watch all of her stories because she would be extremely wary of anyone who tried to talk to her or get close to her, but it was later revealed why.
[Title: Mari Pierced]
[Author : ㅇㅇ]
[Contents : I was going to take the academy handsome route and do the unreleased, but I got Mari in chapter 2.]
It was.
She was a character who was weary and reluctant to talk to anyone who wasn’t handsome enough.
I don’t know why, but…… fortunately, my notoriety level at the academy was extremely high due to the attribute [Bad Guy], and I could boast of being much more attractive than a normal character.
As a result…….
“Uh, can I call you Mr. Eugene Han?”
“Feel free to call me Eugene. Oh, and I can call you Mari, right?”
“Mari…… Yes!”
It was possible to have a conversation like this.
“Academy Year 1, Class A, we’re going to start Survival class now, let’s go!”
At the same time as the survival lesson, the children began to climb the mountain one by one, and we were about to walk up the mountain to get the ingredients.
“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha! It’s so hard!
One minute into the climb. Even though I can still see the starting point, Mari shouts at me in a deathly voice.
“……Too hard?”
“Haaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wandering around the academy except on her way to or from school.
Does she always sit down, even during breaks?
I sighed as I realized that she didn’t have the stamina I had imagined.
“You should just do what you normally do.”
“But, if I’m the only one doing it, I’m going to look a little out of place…….”
“I don’t care. I’m not this tired in the first place.”
“Oh. Well, then…… excuse me.”
After listening to me, Mari finally squirmed in her seat.
She touches the floor with her bare hands and there’s a thud. With a sound, the dirt began to rise and mold into a golem that was slightly larger than a human.
Guuuu──
The golem let out an odd sound and emitted a red glow from its eyes.
Mari jumped on top of it and clung to it with an expression that said she was finally going to live.
“……Aah, I’ll live.”
This was her ability, ‘Puppet master’.
She could create puppets that could control anything within the limits of her magic.
These puppets are considered inanimate objects, making them completely immune to curses, poisons, and diseases, and she uses this to her advantage as a hero in many dungeons and against villains.
……Of course, even then, it’s hard to get a conversation going if you don’t have a certain amount of charm.
“I didn’t think to ask in all the hustle and bustle, what kind of food do we make?”
The golem stomps along in silence.
Mari looks at me, finally relaxed, and asks.
“Well, since the class is outdoors, we’ll need something simple to prepare. Mmm……Cacciatore should do the trick.”
“Caccia…… what?”
“It’s an Italian meat dish. I’m making it with rabbit, so it’ll be Coniglio alla Cacciatora.”
I don’t know why I knew, but it was the only dish I could vaguely recall, so there really wasn’t any other answer.
The recipe was pretty simple, coming from the way hunters cooked their kill.
It might even look pretty good to the instructor, since the word cacciatore meant hunter.
“Konilialakacha…… Eh, I don’t know about that, so what do we do?”
“Well, we’ll start by spreading your minions throughout the forest for supplies as soon as we can. Here’s what we need…….”
I explained to her every single ingredient that would be there.
“I just need you to find some wine flowers, evil tomatoes, blue limes, rock salt, wild leeks, and your favorite vegetables.”
These were ingredients easily found in the mountains behind the academy, so they shouldn’t be hard to come by.
“Uh…… that’s a lot?”
“If we’re going to do it, we might as well do it right. By the way, how many minions can you handle in total?”
“Three, if they’re golems like this one. Nine if they’re the size of mice.”
Nine…….
“The ingredients aren’t that big, so mice should be enough. Can you do it right now, and do you know what the ingredients look like?”
“I look like this, but I’m a top handwriter…….”
From beneath her golem, nine deformed mice with bulletproof helmets sprang forth.
Unlike ordinary golems, their eyes reveal intelligence.
“One through nine. The ingredients I sent to your head. Can you retrieve them?”
Click-click-click-click!
One of the rats, who seems to be the leader of the group, steps forward and stands on his two feet, saluting Mari.
Judging by the number [1] on his helmet, he must be number one.
After looking at the rats scattering in all directions, Mari looked back at me.
“So, we can rest now?!”
“Of course not, we have to go get the main ingredient, rabbit meat.”
“What……?!”
She asked, shocked that we had to get moving again.
“I know where the rabbit is, just follow me slowly. It’s not that far away anyway.”
“It’s …….”
With that, Mari followed me on the golem further into the mountain.
The further we went, the more difficult the mountain became.
Wouldn’t we be able to say that we were on a real mountain?
Just as I was thinking about it.
“Oops, there’s a rabbit in No. 6’s vision! What should I do? Should I go there?”
Apparently, her minion had spotted a rabbit in her field of vision.
“What does it look like?”
“What? A rabbit is just a rabbit, right?”
Mari asks, confused by my question.
Judging by her reaction, it’s not the rabbit I’m looking for.
“Well, I guess we can leave it alone, then, because I don’t think it’s the rabbit we’re looking for.”
“What? You’re looking for a different rabbit?”
“It’s just an evaluation. If you cook with an ordinary rabbit, you’ll end up with an ordinary dish, so you should use a special rabbit. Oh, is that it?”
Just then, a large cave appeared in front of us.
It was surrounded by stunted trees and barren ground and the sight was so eerie that Mari slowly shrank back inside the golem.
“Hey……it’s kind of weird here……there’s nothing around, there can’t be rabbits in a place like this……!”
“There.”
I say, pointing to the front of the cave, to the mountainous pile of bones.
“There’s a pile of bones right there. That’s proof that there’s a rabbit.”
“What? No, what kind of rabbit eats meat! More than that, aren’t those monster bones?”
“Is it weird that monsters eat monsters?”
“It’s not weird! What’s weird is that a rabbit ate a needle bore! What the hell lives in there──”
“──Quiet.”
I quickly raised my hand to stop her from saying more.
“It’s him.”
At that moment.
A thud! Thump! The ground begins to rumble with thuds.
“…… What the hell is in there?”
Mari asks in a whisper, still not sure if she wants to follow my instructions to be quiet.
“A rabbit.”
“……It can’t be an ordinary rabbit with the ground rumbling like that.”
Yeah, no ordinary rabbit.
“It’s called fluffy rabbit.”
“……Fluffy rabbit?”
Fluffy Rabbit was the owner of the mountain behind the academy and was nicknamed Mountain God.
His characteristic was, as the name suggests, a full-bodied rabbit. He weighed six tons and had a distinctive appearance.
“Here it comes.”
The thumping sound gets closer and closer, and the creature is revealed.
His fur is white and fluffy, reminiscent of a snowy field. Two long ears and red eyes. And…….
“……It’s a rabbit?”
“I told you. It’s a rabbit.”
And it’s cuddly.
It had the appearance of a poor rabbit.
“……How the hell does it hunt in that form? It looks so weak.”
“It’s a trap.”
Its hunting method is very simple.
If he stands still, predators will pounce on him to eat him. That’s when he does what he does best: torso bashing.
With six tons of mass compressed into its tiny size, it could have been described as a point-blank dump truck.
A torso slam alone could shatter the shields of an average mage.
Still, he wasn’t such a difficult prey for those who knew how to catch him.
“Mari, I need to ask you a favor.”
“What? What kind of favor? You’re not asking me to do anything, are you? I’m going to die, I’m really going to die……!”
I haven’t even spoken yet, and she’s already freaking out.
I sighed and pointed not at her, but at the golem she was riding.
“I’d like to use that golem as bait.”
“You mean……not me?”
“Yeah.”
What the hell was she thinking?
No one in their right mind would ever think of baiting a child in their own class… or so I thought…….
Anyway, for now, I was just using the golem as bait.
“Because of its weight, once it charges, there will inevitably be a gap, and I plan to take advantage of that gap.”
It felt like a one-hit wonder risk.
After all, the hunting grounds behind the academy were reserved for beginners, and the patterns were all simple, no matter how strong the monsters were.
“If that’s the case, I don’t care. It’s a golem, and if it breaks, I can just rebuild it.”
“Then do me a favor. Slowly, very slowly, move the golem in front of him.”
“Yes, ouch.”
Mari gets off the golem with a grunt, and at a wave of her hand, the golem slowly begins to walk toward the rabbit.
The rabbit’s ears perk up in response.
When the golem is finally completely off the cliff, the rabbit is alert and begins to scratch at the ground with its hind feet.
A pattern of sorts, before it lunges.
At the same time.
BANG────!!!
A sound like a bomb exploding rang out as the rabbit shot like a cannonball toward the golem, causing a huge cloud of dirt to rise.
“Kaaaak───!!!”
Mari ducked down, stunned by the overwhelming power.
Leaving her behind, I used my [Skill: Aura Sonar] to locate the creature and jumped towards it.
With its overwhelming mass, the most reliable way to deal damage is through strikes.
I wrapped my fist in aura and threw my fist at the fluffy rabbit, hoping to finish it off in one blow.
“──Gotcha.”
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