T/N: Back to the main story
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Peek-A-Meow [Part 1]
Early morning in the extracurricular lesson campsite in front of the barrier forest, Barony of Skyte.
Wherever the Stuart family was, they never missed starting their day early.
“Meow!”
A cat’s voice from the forest made Emma look over her shoulder.
“Ah! Koumei-san, welcome back~”
“Oomeow♪”
*trot trot trot* The cat jogged over and snuggled up to Emma.
“Fufufu, did you hunt a lot?”
“Meow!”
Koumei happily replied while purring.
“Shh!!! Wait, Koumei-san! Keep down your meows. Or else we will be found out by everyone!”
William also came out from the forest a step later than Koumei and reminded her in a fluster. Although the students participating in the extracurricular lesson were still in dreamland on such an early morning, they would still find it unnatural to hear a cat’s meows in a place like this.
“Hmm? Won’t we be able to fool them if we make them think it’s the sound of monsters and not a cat?” George’s voice came from the forest.
“Urgh,” George grunted when he saw monsters’ blood on his katana and shook the blood off before sheathing it as he slowly walked back to the Stuarts’ camp.
The katana made for him in Imperial Japan wasn’t the same as the double-edged swords commonly used in the Kingdom. He didn’t know how to handle it at first because he wasn’t used to this type of sword, but he was getting the hang of it recently.
“Meow!”
“Nii-sama, Koumei-san said not to lump her together with those things.”
“Eh? Sorry, Koumei-san.”
Koumei dropped a meow and turned her face away aloofly. Seeing that, George apologized and scratched the behind of her ears.
“Oomeow!”
“Nii-sama, more to the right, she said.”
“Eh? Oh. Yeah, yeah…”
“Meow!”
“Nii-sama, Koumei-san said you should just say ‘yes’ once.”
“My bad, okay!”
“George, keep your voice down. You are really going to wake everyone up like this, okay? Even without the noise, these noble students are only lightly sleeping because of the unfamiliar beds.”
*click*… Melsa opened the carriage door facing the forest and warned her children.
“I can’t seem to find Leonard and Arban’s figures anywhere?”
Noticing that only the brothers and Koumei had returned, Melsa’s expression visibly turned cold.
“U-Um? Mother? The truth is we have overhunted a little…”
“Again?”
“The area facing the barrier is supposed to be narrower than Palace, but quite many monsters act in groups here in this forest…”
*sigh…* Melsa sighed while rubbing her temples as if she was already fed up.
“It seems like we have to transport them. Again…”
All kinds of follow-up work after hunting monsters were also troublesome.
The family who had pitched their tent in the location closest to the forest had actually been going monster-hunting in secret.
Because the inner side of the family’s tent was already inside the forest’s territory, as long as they paid attention to the Skyte hunters’ patrolling time, they could go hunting without anyone noticing in the early morning when everyone was asleep.
“There’s no reason not to hunt when there is a forest with monsters right before our eyes, right?”
In the early morning of the second day of the extracurricular lesson, when Leonard grabbed his favorite hammer with shining eyes and declared…
“ “Right!” ”
George and Arban agreed, both holding their respective weapons, a katana, and a bow.
If anything, it wasn’t an overstatement to say that this was the purpose of their participation in the extracurricular lesson.
Every day after that, the men set out to hunt and brought back a large number of monsters.
If they left the hunted monsters lying around, they couldn’t make any excuse for when they were found out by Skyte hunters. Then, there were monsters whose carcasses were also dangerous if left unattended, monsters that could be processed into materials, monsters whose meat was delicious…
Dealing with the dead monsters so they wouldn’t be found out was much more difficult than hunting.
Even if they could relish the delicious meat on the spot, it was impossible to process the fur and bones here. So they had to call a carriage to the campsite and had the coachmen bring their ‘harvest’ back to the Stuart Mansion.
However, with them hunting so many monsters, one or two carriages weren’t enough to transport all. All the pointed stares from the Lord of Skyte and his hunters… started to make them feel awkward…
“Because Koumei-san came along, William could make his hunting debut, which was great, but… consequently, the monsters were so many…”
Although Koumei was still milder than the mischievous Kan-chan, she also hunted quite a lot of monsters in the forest to release stress from having to hide in the carriage during the daytime.
“Well… All I could do was set traps and didn’t fight at all, though.”
“Having moves like Nii-sama seems impossible for me,” William shrugged.
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