I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not, but it's a good idea.

"What?

　I was stunned for a moment by the unbelievable sight, but even so, I have a certain amount of experience.

　You'll be able to find a lot more information on this subject in the following article.

Wow. ......
It's moving, isn't it?

　As if pulling my foot out of the mud, I saw the roots of the tree undulate and start to move.

　And indeed, in this state, there is a clear response to the [search enemy].

"I don't think I need to tell you this, Trent. I thought your skill was [Mimicry]. Do you have any other information?

It doesn't come up quickly, but it seems to be more valuable as timber than the trees we're cutting down.

Would you be willing to take it home?

　If you ask me, I think I read something like that in the Demon Encyclopedia.
　In a way, it would be a popular demon in the town of Raffan. .......

"How do I kill it?

"You can either destroy a certain amount of it or destroy the demon stone. It's hard to say what to do.

　If you damage the tree too much, it will lose its value as wood, and if you destroy the magic stone, you will not be able to sell it.

　If you have a magic bag that you can take home, you should probably go for the magic stones. .......

"Do you know where the nasty ...... magic stone is?

"It's in the center of the base," he said. I think that's fair. It's the thickest part.

That's true.

　The thickest part of a normal tree is at the base.
　If you place a magic stone in the center of it, it will have the highest defense.

There is no ...... means of attack that can penetrate that far at once.
I'm not sure if you can cut it down little by little or burn it. It's also difficult because it's raw wood.

　I really regret that Toya is not here.



　And then there's Haruka. If I had the Sickle Wind Air Cutter, I could use it to drop the branches bit by bit, but I'm not very good at wind magic.

　A spear and a naginata is not a good match for me and Natsuki.

　Incidentally, the reason why Natsuki and I are able to talk to each other relatively slowly is because of Trent's slow movement speed.

　Its wavy roots are a bit uncomfortable, but it doesn't seem to be very good at moving, and escaping itself doesn't seem to be difficult.

　However, if there are other torrents on the way to escape, there is a high risk of being caught by surprise.

...... No, seriously, how do I die?

　If you don't think about it later, you can probably get away with using my specialty, the Fire Arrow, but if you're going to do that, you'll want to secure some wood.

　I want to bring it back to Rafan to see if it's worth hunting Torrent in the future.

I'm going to have to use my axe to cut off those roots and-- oh, by the way, isn't there a space-time magic called 'Plane Shift'?

"Oh!　That's it!

　This is a level 5 spacetime magic, "Spatial Fragmentation".

　I'm not sure what to make of it, but I think it's a good idea.

　First of all, it takes time to activate.

　In the case of fire arrows, the spell is cast on the enemy after it is activated, but in the case of space fragmentation, the process of specifying the location of activation, concentrating on consciousness, and activating the spell is followed.

　In other words, there is a slight time lag between specifying the location and activating the spell, and normal enemies will have moved away from the target location in the meantime.

　Even if you can deal with this by reducing the time lag and predicting the location through training, the other problem is the consumption of magic power.

　If you want to kill orcs and the like, the fire arrow is by far the more cost-effective option.
　It is not only difficult to use, it is also inexpensive.
　In other words, there is no advantage to using them.

　That's why I forgot about it as a means of attack, but I think it's just right for this situation.

　Trent's movement is also slow.

So let's get started. ...... The magic stone is the thickest part, right?
Yes. It's not the roots, it's the thickest part of the trunk.
That's another subtle ......

　It's a little hard to tell where the trunk is and where the roots are because it's crawling out of the ground.

　The size of the magic stone suggests that an error of a few centimeters might be manageable, but...

I'm not sure what to do.

　I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not.


　It was a very simple spell with no apparent change, but the change in Trent was clear.
　The roots of the tree, which had been wiggling, stopped moving.

　Immediately after that, the roots began to snap as if unable to bear the weight, and the trunk that was on top of it began to move toward me.

Oops!
Whoa!

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I'm not sure what to do.

　It seems that he was able to successfully cut the location of the magic stone.

　You can find a lot of people who are interested in this kind of thing.　Isn't this magic?

I should have used it the other day when I was cutting down that tree.

But you can't use this magic more than once, can you?

Well, yeah. But if Yuki and I had used it together, we could have cut down half of the trees with this magic.

　Manual logging takes a lot of time, so we have time to rest.
　It also takes time to trim the branches after cutting them down.

　I won't be logging for a while, though, and my priority right now is to go home.

　I picked up my spear and poked at the stump, but there was no response. There's no response from the stump either, so I guess it's dead. If I kill it, it'll die.

If it dies, it will lose its strange flexibility.

　Natsuki nodded while inspecting the broken roots and branches that looked like ordinary trees.

　I touched it too, but it looked like wood.

　Looking at it like this, I can't imagine that the roots were moving like tentacles or that the branches were flexible like rubber.

　The only indication that this was a torrent is the severed magic stone that can be seen in the cut of the stump.

The only indication that this was a torrent is the severed magical stone that can be seen in the cut of the stump. The magic stone has been ruined.
I'm sorry. It's a good idea.

　We're used to cutting down trees.
　The two of us quickly remove the branches and put them in the magic bag.

　We didn't know if there was any use for the stump, but we collected it and moved on, but after that, Trent kept popping up as if he remembered.



　After the second time, I've been cutting them down with the 'space divider' before they start moving, but it's a bit of a hassle if I miss the location of the magic stone .

　It attacked me with just the stump.
　In addition, they are strangely quicker, probably because they are lighter.

　Well, I guess that's inevitable, considering that you have to move around to avoid knocking over a tree that's over ten meters tall.

But aren't you saying that if you destroy a certain amount of trees you can kill them?
That's what the ...... book says, if you ask me.

　I'm sure you'll be able to find a lot more information on this subject in the future.

　I'd like to complain about the author, though, because most of them can be killed with a single blow by avoiding the roots and hitting the center of the stump with an axe.

　Still, they are reasonably fast, and if Natsuki gets entangled in one, it might be R18, so I'm the one who has to deal with them.

But you really can't walk in this forest at night. It's too dangerous.

"Yeah. Shadow Margay coming at your neck from the dark. It's like Trent suddenly getting clubbed over the head.　It's a little high on the killing intent, isn't it?

　He also has the skills of stealth and mimicry.
　It's just like an ambush, a surprise attack.

I'm not sure if there are any other similar types of demons out there.
You can't say that there aren't any. ....... Let's proceed with caution.
Yes.

　I'm not sure if that was a flag, but I've seen exactly the same type of demons appear since then.

　The first kind was Stub Burrows.

　The first type is the Stub Burrows, which also appeared around the entrance of the dungeon. but the other one was a bit trickier.

　It was the Shadow Viper.
　Its name sounds like a relative of the Bind Viper, but its biology is very similar to it.

　The differences are that it has [Covert], it is about five meters long and somewhat slender, and it is all black.

　And this difference is not so subtle.

　In addition to being difficult to detect by [Searching for Enemies], it can slip through the branches from a very high position in the tree and extend its body at once.

　And yet, its skin is harder than that of a Bind Viper, and its strength is even greater.
　If you are attacked in the dark, the blackness of its body color is a real threat.


　The snake is likely to have a pit organ or something, and the darkness won't matter to them.
　--Well, Natsuki still managed to easily cut off his head with his naginata.
　It's easier to cut than the Bind Viper because it's thinner," he said.