Chapter 187

Chapter 187 – Bear-san Exterminates Some Moles

As Marina started to lead the way, Misa happily darted to her side .

She must really trust Marina, huh .

Well, I did find her party to be quite trustworthy as well . When they had been attacked by the orcs, they stood and fought without trying to run .

I noticed Marina was looking at Misa with a warm expression, too .

「Marina, where is the rest of your party?」

I asked her as we approached the gate .

When her party had been escorting Gran-san, there had been four of them . I couldn’t recall their names at all, though .

「Oh, Masurika and Euri are off doing something else . Bringing Elle here with me is more than enough for this request . 」

Ah, without her, she wouldn’t be able to get the moles out from underground .

The fields came into sight a short while after we passed through the gate .

How vast . I could see several people working on them .

When we got close enough, Marina called out to one of the workers .

「Excuse me . We are here because there was a request for mole extermination at the Adventurer’s Guild . 」

「Oh, you came for that? That’s great…」

The man turned around to look at Marina, but his gaze soon fixated on me instead .

「A bear?」

「Oh, you don’t have to mind her . 」

Marina took a glance at me before telling him to not worry .

I wanted to thank her, but wasn’t that a bit cold?

Yet, the man got even more interested in me and kept staring at me for a while longer .

「Alright, what about these children with you?」

The man turned to look at the girls .

「They came here just to watch, so you don’t have to mind them either . Anyway, where did the moles appear?」

「Oh right . It’s right over there . They have already ruined a lot of crops, so please take care of them quickly . 」

The man finally stopped staring at us and pointed to where the moles were popping up .

Marina thanked the man, and we started to walk in that direction .

I used detection magic just to confirm that there were no monsters nearby, and it turned out that Marina was right . It was just unfortunate that it couldn’t detect any moles, either .

Detection magic could only pinpoint monsters and humans . Since moles weren’t considered monsters, my detection magic didn’t work on them .

I was only able to detect the people working the fields .

I took another look at my map and realized there were quite a few people around .

I didn’t recall passing anybody, but there was a dot behind us as well .

I turned around to check, but couldn’t see anyone .

The dot was idling near a big nearby tree, so maybe they were resting or skipping work there?

Farming must be hard work .

「It must be somewhere around here . Elle, I’m counting on you . Also, please step back everyone . 」

Marina gave her orders when we arrived at the spot .

「I will check the state of the area, then . 」

Elle began walking around the field .

「There sure are a lot of holes here . 」

I took another closer look as well and noticed that there were indeed many hole-like shapes .

「How are you going to find the moles?」

Misa asked curiously .

「Maybe I could use water magic to draw them out . Well, the easiest way would be to dig them out using earth magic, but I’m kind of bad with that . Okay, here we go . 」

Elle put her hand near one of the holes and began using her magic .

Water started to pour from her hand and into the hole . More and more water flowed into the hole, and just as I wondered what would happen next, the water started to come back up .

Was she taking the water out?

The three girls watched her in complete amazement .

「Just letting you know, Elle is using some difficult magic . 」

Marina boasted to the three girls, who looked at her with serious expressions .

「Really?」

「Summoning water is easy, but manipulating that water is rather difficult . 」

Marina kindly explained to Misa .

True, I could bring out water without a problem, but creating a golem out of it was much harder .

Hmm, maybe it depended on the imagination of the process?

「Marina, would you mind cutting your conversation short? They’re about to come out . 」

Marina turned around and readied her sword when Elle told her that .

「Everyone, it’s dangerous, so please step back a bit further . 」

We took a couple of steps back and continued watching from a distance . As Elle sucked out the water, a black thing flew out from the hole .

「S-something came out!」

It was a mole, but it was larger than the ones I had seen on TV .

Marina thrusted her sword into the mole that was sucked out from the ground, killing it instantly .

Two more moles flew out, which Marina dealt with just as swiftly as the first one .

「Only three, huh . 」

「That’s good enough . Let’s go to the next hole . 」

Elle walked over to another hole .

「Misana-sama, it’s really not interesting at all, right?」

Misa tilted her head .

「Elle’s magic is amazing, though . 」

「Thank you for your compliment, Misana-sama . It’s not really that great at all . 」

「But, Marina said that your magic is amazing . 」

「It’s hard to use, but it’s still only considered middle-level magic . If I don’t touch the water directly, I can’t control it at all . More advanced magic users can move the water without having to touch it . 」

Hm? Didn’t that mean that I was doing some amazing stuff, considering I could make water golems move from afar?

「Could you please think of me as a slightly amazing magician instead?」

Elle smiled at Misa .

She had to bend forward slightly to meet Misa’s eyes, and that emphasized her huge breasts .

They were really big . One day, mine will be that size as well .

In the end, I also helped with exterminating the moles .

Well, all I did was look for holes . The extermination was Marina and Elle’s job, so I didn’t help with killing them directly .

「Marina, there’s another hole here . 」

Misa called out to Marina from a spot quite far away .

「Okay . We’ll go over there once we finish up here . Elle, let’s go . 」

Elle used her magic and repeated her, by now, well-practiced process .

Since there were several people looking for the holes, we progressed pretty quickly . Still, when we ran into the holes that were too close to each other, we sometimes ended up with some empty ones .

The extermination was going smoothly otherwise .

「How long will we do this for?」

They already took out a lot of moles, but it was probably impossible to take them all out .

「There’s no way of knowing when we will be done, so it depends on the time and Elle’s magic . If Elle’s magic runs out or it gets dark, we will have to stop . Still, thanks to your help, we already reached our quota, so we just have to report back to the guild . If the damage gets worse again, they will put up another request . 」

Nobody knew how many moles existed down there anyway . We could only wait and see what would happen after we exterminated lots of them .

「Elle, are you still okay?」

「I’m fine . 」

「In that case, should we keep going for a while longer? Also, what do you girls want to do?」

「We’ll follow along . 」

Misa answered . She must be enjoying her first mole subjugation .

Noa wanted to stay, too, so Fina agreed as well .

「Still, there’s a lot more than I thought . 」

「True . We haven’t even cleared half of the holes, and we have already gotten rid of quite a few . 」

Marina and Elle discussed between themselves, but it seemed like they couldn’t come to a conclusion as to why there were so many .

It wasn’t like anyone in our group knew how many moles were there normally, so I wasn’t able to judge whether we had removed too many or too few .

The three girls were thinking the same .

「Are there more than usual?」

「Yes, there are . Usually you don’t find and subjugate this many in such a short amount of time . 」

「Maybe… there’s a Big Mole around here…」

「A Big Mole?」

Like, a large mole?

「Yeah, that would be possible . Let’s stop hunting these moles for now and look for a hole that might have a Big Mole in it . 」

「Marina, what’s a Big Mole?」

Misa asked the question I had on my mind .

Nice, Misa . If it had turned out to be exactly what the name suggested, I would be terribly embarrassed from asking .

「A Big Mole is basically the mom of the moles . We have to subjugate it before it gives birth to a bunch of baby moles, or they will finish off all the crops here . 」

「Still, if that’s the case, we should get other people to help us . Things will end up badly if we subjugate it too late . 」

「It should be fine if we look for the hole first . Besides, we should be able to take it down ourselves . 」

「Okay, then let’s go look for it . 」

Following Elle’s instructions, we began to look for a big hole .

The hole should be about the size that a child could fit through . Just how big could these holes get?

Just as we started looking around, a man came running up to us .

「Excuse me!」

The man was completely out of breath by the time he got to us .

「Did something happen?」

The man took some time to catch his breath before replying .

「There’s a big hole over there, and all our crops have been destroyed in that area . 」

「A big hole?」

「A Big Mole?!」

「Yes, it might be so . I thought that it would be better to let you know . It will be a problem if this continues . Please do something about it . 」

The man bowed .

It seemed like the hole with a Big Mole inside had appeared .

The man then guided us to the hole so that Marina could investigate it .

When we got there, I noticed that the hole was indeed big; big enough for a child to fit through .

「It is quite big, yes . 」

Elle circled the hole and confirmed its surroundings .

Most of the crops around the hole had been eaten .

「It might indeed be a Big Mole’s hole . 」

I still hadn’t figured out what a Big Mole was . It wasn’t a monster from my understanding .

I used my detection magic but still detected no monsters .

The only thing that it reacted to here were humans .

Oh, the guy who skipped out on work was still under the tree .

「Do the honors, Elle . 」

Elle chanted the same magic as before and poured water into the hole . When she reversed the flow, however, nothing came out .

「Is it not inside?」

「I don’t know, maybe not . 」

Elle looked around the barren field .

「It should still be around . 」

「Maybe it’s so big that my magic isn’t strong enough to pull it out . 」

Elle had sucked all the water out, but we didn’t sense any moles coming out .

I hadn’t planned on helping out, but it would become a problem if any more crops got ruined .

「Want me to do it?」

「You want to do it, Yuna?」

「If you can, could you? I don’t think my magic is enough . 」

「I know you’re really good at earth magic, but you can use water magic as well?」

「Yeah, I can . 」

I used water magic just like Elle had, making water pour out of my Bear Hands’ mouths into the big hole .

「That’s a lot of water . 」

「That’s more than double the amount of mine . 」

Through the water magic, I could tell what was going on underneath . I could feel that the water was touching something .

「There’s something big down there . 」

「You can tell?」

「Somewhat, yeah . 」

I started to suck up the water, just like how Elle had .

Yup, I could definitely feel something huge about to come out .

「Marina, take care of whatever comes out . 」

「Yeah, leave it to me . 」

Marina readied her sword .

It would come out any time now .

The thing that came out was… a mole?!

「A Big Mole!」

Marina yelled out .

It wasn’t that big, though .

It was about the size of a wolf, but well, that was definitely not the size of a regular mole .

「Marina! Don’t let it get away!」

「Got it!」

Marina thrusted her sword into the Big Mole once it came out . Her sword went right through its body, executing it with a single hit . The Big Mole’s body then fell lifelessly to the ground .

「It’s big . 」

「I didn’t know there were moles this big . 」

I could understand Fina being fine looking at the dead mole, but it was weird to me that Misa and Noa seemed to be unfazed as well .

When I had first come to this world, I had been disturbed by the sight of a wolf’s corpse .

The children of this world sure were strong .

「Yuna, thank you for helping us . 」

「Yes, thank you so much . My magic just wasn’t strong enough for it . 」

The two of them thanked me .

「The farmers would be troubled if the moles kept eating their crops, right?」

The crops they raised with love .

I couldn’t leave the farmers to fend on their own, knowing that they were suffering .

Back in my world, I would hear news about crops the farmers put a lot of effort into getting destroyed by a typhoon or some other natural disaster .

I might even eat food made from the crops here one day, so it was something I had to protect .