“Anyway, so after I set up my home lab, Slime-bro and I…”

I cut myself off mid-speech, noticing a mother surreptitiously glancing at Shinya with an infant in her arms, before averting her gaze almost immediately. The others at the table noticed my distraction, turning to look at her, and the villager blushed fiercely.

“Well, seems like you’re wanted again, Shinya.” I sighed. “You go do your hero things.”

“I’m so sorry,” he apologised, standing from his seat. “I’ll be just a moment.”

It hadn’t struck me just how much the summoned Hero was held in high esteem by the everyday folk in Everach. Shortly after my, uh, overenthusiasm in communicating the finer points of Earth’s culture to my students, both our groups had begun to make our way back to Willowdale, chatting and exchanging introductions during the short walk.

That moment, however, didn’t last for long. The instant that our party – well, their party – came within sight of the villagers, Shinya had been swarmed with attention, and my explanation as to just what circumstances had led to me channelling my inner Tim the Enchanter had been cut short.

Only now, a full hour after the arrival of Shinya’s party to Willowdale, did both our parties have a chance to finally sit down in the inn, a wide table generously provided for by the innkeeper, and chat about what each of us had been doing since our untimely summoning.

Even then, stragglers who had missed the initial buzz of excitement streamed in every few minutes, eager to catch a glimpse of their fabled hero. The more daring ones among them, such as this mother, waited patiently by the side-lines, hoping for a chance to exchange words, receive a blessing, or otherwise interact with Shinya Haruto, [Sword Saint], future saviour of Everach, and a couple other titles I hadn’t yet caught.

I had to admit, for an isekai protagonist, he was remarkably popular, considering this had to be only the equivalent of the first couple volumes of his adventures. Where was the evil church lurking in the shadows to defame his reputation? Where were the corrupt nobles seeking to influence him in taking out their rivals? Where were the jilted lovers who now sought nothing more than to destroy his existence entirely, believing that if they could not have him, then no one else should either?

“So…” I attempted making idle conversation, since it was looking like Shinya would be taking some time. “What a coincidence, huh?”

“I would not have expected for us to be meeting under such circumstances,” the crown princess agreed diplomatically. “Again, on behalf of our kingdom and my family, I apologise for any error we may have made resulting in your unintended summoning.”

“Oh, that?” I grinned. “Vergence’s much more interesting than Earth! There’s just so much more science to science here, I don’t even know where to begin science-ing! Isn’t that right, Kylan? Slime-bro?”

“Meerrrep!”

“Science is not a verb.”

Bah. Give it a couple more weeks, and he’d be science-ing right along with me.

I took a quick inspection of the members of Shinya’s party. Finn Deyland, Alicia Everach, and Celeste Grynas were their names. [Pathfinder], [Ice Knight], and [White Mage] respectively. I had only been given the highlight reel of what they had been doing so far, but I got the gist of their adventures. They had been solving some outstanding threats over in the outskirts of the kingdom to get Shinya trained and boost his level up, and that endeavour had paid off. Though he had been Level 12 during his summoning – higher than I was even now – he had pushed that even further over the past month, ascending all the way to Level 25.

That title of Hero really wasn’t for show. He really was shaping to be a light novel protagonist!

There were two things I sorely wanted to ask them. The first was a matter of curiosity, but it would probably be considered impolite – I highly doubted it would be socially acceptable if I asked the girls of his party whether he had yet developed a romantic interest in either of them, both of them, or perhaps extended his circle of romance past his own group as isekai protagonists were wont to do.

As one might have guessed, without any isekai material to consume in this world, I was sorely missing that favoured form of entertainment.

The second question, however, was a matter of professional interest.

With that thought, I glanced at Celeste Grynas once more, pointedly taking note of her rather angular auricular structure. I knew that elves existed in this world, having been summoned here as their heroes in times past, and that they apparently had settled down in the different kingdoms, but knew little of what happened to their descendants – or if they even had any.

Would it be considered rude if I simply asked her whether she possessed any elven heritage? I knew nothing of what was deemed socially appropriate here; would that be a faux pas that everyone in this world knew not to commit?

Added on to that was the fact that she was, apparently, a member of the noble family that governed Grynasar – a detail that had completely slipped my notice when Aksal had pitched his idea earlier in the week – and hence held major influence on whether or not I might be able to squeeze out some extra funding from the city’s governors. I had always disliked the unspoken nepotism in the scientific circles when I was still a biologist of the mundane variety, but now that I was experiencing it for myself, I would unashamedly admit to being willing to exploit it to my benefit if it meant having more research grants to fiddle around with.

That meant requiring her to continue having a good impression of myself, and I was already at a slight disadvantage after how I had portrayed myself earlier. I simply could not afford to slip up.

But in the off chance that there really was a descendent of elves sitting right at the same table as myself, and I didn’t take the chance to enquire about the specifics of their physiology, genetics, anatomy, and a whole myriad of other sub-branches of biological disciplines, how could I even dare to call myself a [Biologist]?

I mean… did the different morphology of their ear even do anything? I knew from undergraduate neurophysiology lectures that there existed a ‘cone of confusion’, whereby inter-aural phase difference and amplitude differences derived by comparing signals transmitted along cochlear neurons from each ear could not distinguish between the potential origins of a single sound, if a person was modelled simply as a fully symmetrical spherical object. The specific shape of the pinna imparted ‘flavour’ to sound through its asymmetrical structure, and through this action as a filter, allowed for downstream processing further along the auditory pathway to resolve this ambiguity in sound localisation. Was that somehow at play here?

Or were her ears capable of a wider degree of rotation to be better at localising and amplifying sounds from different angles, the way a rabbit’s ears could? Did the length and shape of the external auditory meatus allow for resonance and amplification of specific frequencies of sounds to increase the pressure at the tympanic membrane? If so, why did they need to be that adept at localising sound? Was there some selective pressure acting on them?

And if ancestral elves had been able to interbreed with humans, didn’t that just make them the same biological species, since their offspring were fully viable and fertile? Did both humans and elves have the same diploid number of chromosomes? How similar were we genetically?

I frowned. But wait… even if they had been able to breed, surely most alleles that came from a single founder ancestor would have been diluted out into the gene pool at large by now? It was – what, twenty generations of sibling matings before the progeny of a mouse strain could be considered congenic?

Taking that into account… I didn’t know much about elven life expectancy, but considering how long ago the ancient elven hero was summoned… that should either make her genetically similar to everyone else in Vergence, or for a decent chunk of Vergence’s populace to have some genetic alleles originally unique to the elven gene pool. Why would it only be her having elven-like features, out of all the (admittedly small) number of people I had come across in Vergence thus far?

Ah… but yes… if that specific family were hypothetically engaging in exclusive inbreeding, that could allow maintenance of that bit of heritage among their progeny, and factoring in for that possibility, then –

“Eric!” Kylan abruptly whispered into my ear. “Stop staring at her! You’re creeping –”

“Celeste, are you inbre –“ Startled, I spoke the contents of my last thought. Thankfully, I was just barely able to catch myself in time – had I been less aware of her position as a member of the House of Grynas, I wouldn’t have been able to do even that – faking a coughing fit to transition to a more polite question. “Are you an elf, I mean?”

Alicia’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a problem?” she asked, rising to her feet, hand inching toward her blade. She postured herself to shield Celeste from harm, but it was obvious from her reaction that this particular line of questioning had, indeed, been the wrong thing to ask. Beside her, Finn did not speak, but his eyes narrowed fractionally.

“Eric!” Kylan hissed.

“No! No!” I hurriedly denied. “Not at all! I mean, sure, I’m interested in what elves are like – Earth had no elves, you know? Ah, but you probably know; Shinya must have told you – and I’m a [Biologist], see, so I really wanted to know all about the details of your physiology and anatomy and whether there were any differences at all – if you were an elf, that is – ah, crap, I didn’t mean anatomy in that way; what I really meant was –“

“What Eric means to say is that he is easily excitable, and that his desire to satiate his curiosity may sometimes cause him to be blind to the unease his words and actions may have on others.” Aksal really put it in far better words than I ever could. “I can assure you, Lady Grynas, Princess Alicia, that he means no harm of it. I humbly ask that you forgive his misgivings this once.”

“Yes, Lady Celeste. Eric is just an idiot,” Kylan supplied helpfully, although he was deliberately attempting to speak in a more refined manner, clearly unused to addressing those of higher social standing.

Yep. If the question that I deemed innocuous provoked that intense of a response, I was beyond glad she didn’t manage to hear what my original question had been.

“It’s alright, Alicia,” Celeste assured her friend who was still glaring daggers at me, urging her to sit, before turning her attention toward me. “Eric didn’t mean any harm, and it is common knowledge, anyway. I… indeed, am a descendent of the Hero of Grynas, and the first in several generations to be blessed with my ancestor’s gift.”

I would have loved to enquire further on how that even worked, but it was probably best that I saved those questions for a later time and date, once I deemed our potential friendship suitably close enough that I could get away with sensitive questions. One could not afford to offend potential funders.

“I’m sorry,” I said, abashed. “I don’t think before I speak, sometimes.”

“Most times, actually,” Kylan corrected.

“Meereep!”

Hey, I was not about to let someone with potential influence over my future funding become my enemy. If it meant being able to secure just that extra bit of coin to fund my intended projects, I would gladly beg for forgiveness without any shame at all! Shame was temporary; biological discovery was eternal!

“It’s fine, Eric. I did not take offense.”

“Great! We’re cool, then!”

I grinned, glancing at the princess, who still clearly had a poor impression of me, even though Finn appeared to have accepted it as an honest mistake. How best to remedy that?

Ah, yes!

“…but not as cool as the [Ice Knight], of course!”

Though the tavern was packed with patrons for the one night that their summoned hero would be staying in Willowdale, and their conversations were spilling into neighbouring tables, the silence that ensued at our table following my joke was painfully apparent.

“That,” Kylan declared. “Was the most awful pun I have ever heard.”

“Slurrrrp.”

The simmering unhappiness had now been blunted, however, becoming replaced by disbelief and pity. It wasn’t my intended effect, but at least it did the job.

“Heh. Cool. Nice one.”

Heads turned toward Finn, who had finally spoken, an amused smile at his lips. Alicia groaned with annoyance, returning to her seat, while I looked at Finn with newfound respect. Here was someone who could appreciate a joke when he saw one.

Kylan had no appreciation for Monty Python – no matter how much I tried convincing him of their genius – but perhaps Finn would be different? A man of culture, dare I say?

It was at that point that Shinya returned, having finally finished with whatever inane request the villager had asked of him.

“Welcome back, hero,” I said. “Did she want you to bless her child to become a strong adventurer like you; same as the other three did?”

Shinya looked away, embarrassed. “They think too much of me. I’m still not strong enough to be able to protect Everach from the demons. Did I miss anything?”

“Nothing much, really,” I said. Thankfully, the others at the table were willing to overlook my minor indiscretion, nodding in agreement. “So, uh… where were we, again?”

“You were telling me about how you met – uh, Slime-bro – and decided to start looking into slime biology,” he reminded. “I must say, I’m even more curious now as to how that leads to you doing… whatever it was, that you three were doing when we met.”

Kylan twitched at that comment, glaring at me angrily. Fair enough – he looked up to adventurers, and being caught in a display as peculiar as that without context by someone who might as well be labelled as the adventurer had to be deeply embarrassing. If Galen or Pasteur – perhaps Darwin or Mendel, or any of several dozen biologists I would be hard-placed to rank as my favourites – saw me engaging in acts that were far removed from biology, I would be just as annoyed as Kylan now was.

“Hmm,” I hummed idly, thinking of how to quickly summarise the events of the past month.

Though Shinya’s party had already shared an overview of their adventures, I was still curious on the specifics. The less time I spent talking about me, the more time I would have vicariously living through them. I thought over my words carefully, sieving off the bits of information that were likely irrelevant.

“Well, long story short, after wrapping up Project: Slime, I found some minor biological explosives that may be feasibly mass-produced from Fire Eel cultures given the right resources –“

“What?”

“– created a cure for a mysterious and potentially magical poxvirus that the people here call the Blighted Curse –“

“What?”

“– got roped into heading to Grynasar with Aksal to act as an advisor while he organised a team in the Alchemist’s Guild to eradicate the Blighted Curse from Everach and potentially further; bless him, he’s got no idea how hard that would be –“

“Eh?”

“– then I counteracted a goblin shaman’s Crimson Weeping curse with [Manipulate Protein], found out that magic is intent on making me question everything I thought I knew about biology, started training up these two assistants of mine to become acceptable biologists themselves –“ I gestured toward Slime-bro and Kylan. “– and now I’m really curious to see if it would be feasible to start looking into manticore biology, because at present they are absolute bullshit of the highest degree.”

“Meeerrp!”

“Oh, yeah, we’ll be starting a lab in Grynasar too! Thanks for reminding me, Slime-bro!” I grinned. “Any and all donations or grants would be very much welcome! I’m open to collaborations or special requests, provided that the research topic sounds interesting! Tell your friends and colleagues all about our lab!”

Heh. Networking done right.

“Nowhere close to as prolific as you and your adventures, of course,” I finished. “I’m only Level Nine; I could only wish I levelled as quickly as you! But enough about my adventures – I want to hear all the nitty-gritty details of how you quelled a bandit uprising within three weeks of arriving in Vergence!”

For a moment, Shinya and his party were silent, staring at me.

Did my words really deserve that response? Sure, creating a vaccine was neat and all, but it was nowhere near as impressive as the work of a hero. Anyone could become a biologist if he so wished, becoming a [Sword Saint] and the summoned hero took a truly special individual!

I glanced at Aksal, who was now sighing, rubbing at his temple. Kylan was contentedly leaning back into his seat, looking plainly amused, with Slime-bro perched on his shoulder.

“Ah… that didn’t really explain what Kylan, Slime-bro, and I had been doing, did it? See, I really liked Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and there was this one scene where King Arthur and his knights met Tim the Enchanter to ask for directions, but then the funny thing is that their portrayal of a wizened sorcerer was just an old dude with a stick who blew stuff up every few words or so; so now that I managed to create Bang and Boom I just had to –“

“I… don’t think that is what Hero Shinya and his friends were confused about, Eric,” Aksal cut in. “You need to remember that what you consider basic knowledge from your world may be ideas that had never been thought possible in Vergence.”

Ah, crap. I thought I had detailed what I had been up to in as jargon-free a manner as possible, but had I unknowingly slipped in some technical language somewhere?

“Ah. Well, did something there need clarification?”

Shinya was the first to speak. “You discovered explosives?”

“Kind-of, but not really? I mean, I did make a couple prototype grenades out of them, but I’ve been told that each one is only about as good as a [Firebolt] from a junior adventurer.”

Now that I had grenades, though, it just struck me that I could re-enact the Holy Hand Grenade scene as well. One of these days, I would rope Kylan and Slime-bro into doing just that.

‘First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.’

Yep. I could still recite it perfectly. Shame that I hadn’t had the presence of mind to do that back with the hobgoblin.

Celeste was the next to ask her question. “You cured the Blighted Curse?”

Man, why did they have to dig into the technical terms? I tried to be vague to avoid using jargon, but that made it harder to explain the nuances of how vaccines worked.

“Eh… technically speaking, it’s only effective as a cure if given early in the infection; Aksal and I lucked out back in Hawksmoor, since Arlett had only just been infected. It’s more effective as a preventive measure to stop someone from being infected by the Curse in the first place, really.”

Her eyes widened in understanding. “You can prevent the Blighted Curse, even before it happens?”

Ah! Now she was getting it! I nodded, grinning.

“How?!”

Oh, wait. That was surprise, not understanding.

“Short version is that I create a weaker form of the Blighted Curse, and use it to let someone build resistance when the real thing comes around,” I said. If it worked with Aksal, it would work with them, right? “Long version is that by serially passaging the poxvirus in cultures of a different species, its host tropism switches to favour infection of its new host, reducing virulence in humans; then by injecting it alongside small amounts of an adjuvant, it generates a decent immune response, such that when later encountering the original circulating virus, the host now has some degree of pre-existing adaptive immunity due to cross-reactivity of –“

Sensing that I was now thoroughly confusing her, I thought it best to let the explanation end at that point. I was proud of myself – I didn’t even need Kylan to use his [Distract] to let me realise that!

“You and Master [Alchemist] Aksal are planning on eradicating the Blighted Curse.”

Alicia phrased it as a statement. Was I even meant to reply to that?

“That is correct, Princess Alicia,” Aksal spoke, bowing his head slightly. “I hope to raise this proposal among my colleagues in the Guild. We would be most grateful if we could count on your support, if necessary.”

Ohh. Aksal was good. Networking and pandering to the politics; abusing the nepotism inherent within the system… he had thought of it all!

“You can vouch that this cure works?”

Ouch. Guess she still had a poor impression of me, although I didn’t know whether it was from my minor slip-up with Celeste, or from channelling my artistic expression in the form of Tim the Enchanter. Perhaps both.

Couldn’t blame her, I guess. Out of context, I suppose I did look a little loony.

“I have seen it with my own eyes, Princess Alicia.”

“Then I will trust your word, Master [Alchemist]. Your reputation is known even in Everach.” She looked at us both, adopting an air of authority. “You will have my support. Eric the [Biologist] – if you can truly cure the Blighted Curse, the Kingdom of Everach thanks you for your service.”

“Eh… don’t mention it? Aksal’s going to be doing the heavy lifting, anyway.” I didn’t get what the fuss was all about. Anyone who attended a few virology lectures could come up with the same. The hard part would come later, and I suspected Aksal had no idea what he was truly getting himself into. “If you come across any other suspected pathogen, give me a shout; I’d love to dig in and research them as well. Aksal will take over any affairs related to public health, though.”

“…pathogen?”

Ah, damn. It was sometimes so easy to forget that some of Earth’s common vocabulary had no place in Vergence.

“Never mind that for now.” Interested though I was at seeing what other weird and wonderful stuff could happen when magic and biology collide, I was not about to begin explaining germ theory and Koch’s postulates here and now. “Anyway, did you have a question as well, Finn?”

The [Pathfinder] was a nice guy – quiet, observant; would have made a fine scientist. Shame that he had found his calling as an adventurer.

“Ah… it’s not so much of a question, but… you said you were interested in manticores?”

“Mmhmm. There was some pretty neat stuff I found in the quill that Aksal recovered, and I was hoping to look into it more once I get to see the actual manticore in person. We had to make a few last-minute changes to our plans to accommodate for degradation of our vaccines, but if we want to make it to Grynasar on time we’ll need to join you on the manticore hunt and rush over to Grynasar right after.” I looked at him curiously. “Why? Do you know something?”

He pursed his lips for a moment, before taking out a sheet of parchment from his satchel. “I’m not sure if this will be helpful, but my mentor in the Pathfinder’s Lodge had faced manticores in two separate occasions in his youth. They are more monstrous than the stories ordinary folk know, and this is what he told me during our lessons…”

-x-x-x-

“Woah,” I said, turning to look at Finn Deyland with amazement. “That’s what a manticore looks like?”

The stoic [Pathfinder] nodded. “This was how he described the two manticores he had fought in our lessons.”

“They’re unsettling.”

I couldn’t turn my gaze away from the lifelike depiction of the manticores. Aksal’s words had done insufficient justice to the monster – and monster was certainly the best way to describe it. From Aksal’s earlier portrayal, I had pictured a Cerberus-like multi-headed beast stitched together from the best parts of multiple monsters, its strength and majesty inspiring a sense of awe.

Instead, what Finn had sketched was chilling to the bone – taking just one of them as an example, the giraffe’s head that jutted out from the back of the torso was bent at odd angles, an ugly mess of flesh, hide, and teeth. Its real head was that of a lion, but the skull itself was partially caved in, with more fangs than a lion should have visible past its gaping maw, and with a sweeping wild mane that ended in razor-sharp points. Its fore limbs were the arms of a tiger, but with six claws on one paw, and eight on the other.

“He would never forget that moment when the leader of his party finally slew the manticore with a mighty slash that split its thick hide in half at the belly,” Finn continued quietly. “The messy remains that hadn’t been digested spewed forth from where the beast was parted. Flesh and bones, teeth, skin, even hair, and parts of a brain… they were all still within the beast. I wouldn’t have believed it if anyone else told me, but the legends are true. Manticores – man-eaters – devour their prey whole.”

The other manticore was no less eerie. Its form was twisted, and the scales surrounding where an alligator’s head protruded out from its back contrasted harshly against the thick hide of a bull just adjacent to it. A second supernumerary eagle’s head was placed haphazardly on its left flank. Half its real face was that of a bull, but it was split cleanly along the sagittal midline, the other half bearing the ferocious visage of a cobra. Its tail ended in a serpent’s head, poised and ready to strike. Beyond merely the barbed spines similar to the one now in my possession, there were fangs protruding out along the length of the tail as well.

Even across its body, the manticore was a biological Frankenstein’s monster. Patches of skin bore feathers, others held scales, some a thick leather, and a variety of other unique features of the integumentary systems arising from different animals, as though someone had forced pieces of different jigsaw puzzles together. There was no blended transition at all between them, the patches simply fusing together seamlessly. Some patches even had fangs and quills extending outward, although these appeared less dangerous than those on its tail.

It was eerie and chilling, and it was fascinating.

There was something that gnawed at me, however. I stared at the image, taking in every detail. Through the madness and complete defacement of biology that the creatures represented, there had to be some kind of underlying pattern to the madness. From my admittedly limited experiences thus far, it seemed that magic could make what was normally biologically unfeasible become very much real, but it could not overwrite the underlying theory.

It was frustrating. There was something there that pricked at my intuition and seemed so very familiar, but no matter how much I looked, I just couldn’t identify what it was. Like trying to search for a word that adamantly eluded my efforts, the more I tried to think, the less I was able to come up with anything that fit.

“Did you figure something out, Eric?” Shinya asked, after I had studied the drawing for too long. “We asked around in the Adventurer’s Guild in Everach as well, but there wasn’t much anyone could tell us that Finn didn’t already know.”

“Not much,” I admitted. “Going on from just this, I don’t think there’s anything of value I can add.”

Their entire existence was maddening. How did manticores work?

One obvious possibility from the stories surrounding them would be that they were parasitic in nature, incorporating and assimilating bits of slain prey into their being, but there was something in that theory that didn’t seem right to me. Making it work in biological terms would be pretty damned difficult, but perhaps the bullshit power of magic would prove me wrong on that account. Strange things had happened thus far, and I wouldn’t be surprised if magic could conjure stranger things yet.

But if not that, then what? Could manticores be artificially created, similar to Frankenstein’s monster? I certainly wouldn’t be able to do it, but the locals of Vergence might have some exotic skills that could achieve just that. Already, I knew that skills seemed to work in a roundabout way to achieve an outcome, just as how [Bless] hadn’t targeted the issue at its source back with the curse.

The only other general possibility I could think of would be that somehow, this grotesque form was derived from normal development and patterning.

Pattern. Again, I was drawn to that word. It was infuriating – for whatever reason, my mind seemed to think that I knew something there, but refused to yield any answers when probed. Embryology was already one of my weaker disciplines; I had little hope of explaining the underlying developmental biology resulting in such a creature from just looking at it.

How was there even a pattern, in that mess of body parts and species that defied all logic?

“Pattern,” I muttered, hoping saying it aloud would jolt my memory. “Pattern…”

“Did you see something?”

I didn’t answer Shinya just yet. “May I?” I asked Finn, gesturing to the brush in his hands.

“Go ahead.”

I began to label what I could see. Did this pattern lie in the species contributing to each of the creatures? Was there any commonality in which body part came from which area? Did each species have a preferential location from which they comprised the manticore’s body?

It was only a sample size of two, but already, there was simply no pattern there. Even if I tried keeping my mind open to the fact that magic drastically altered normal dogma surrounding biology, I could not find what I was looking for.

“Anything?” Kylan asked, peering over my shoulder.

I sighed. “No luck.” I rubbed at my eyes tiredly. “It’s just… I think I should know something, but I can’t figure out what it is. I think I need to study the real thing for myself before I can get anything concrete.”

“Don’t worry,” Shinya assured. “We can set out together tomorrow to track down the manticore. Maybe you’ll be able to learn something then.”

“Yeah…”

“I’m sure you will figure something that could help us out, Eric,” he said kindly. “With manticore sightings on the rise, the Adventurer’s Guild and the Kingdom could use any information you come up with.”

Wait…

“Manticore attacks are increasing?”

“We think so, yes,” Finn said, glancing at his companions. “Manticore sightings were rare, at least from the documents the [Scribe] in the Guild branch dug up – historically, one might pop up every ten years or so. In the last ten or so years, however, we’ve been seeing them every few months on average.”

“Strange,” I said, frowning. That was odd, indeed. “A change in an ecological niche?”

I made a face. Ecology was decidedly not my strong suit. In terms of biological disciplines that I was familiar with, I would rank that just slightly above botany.

“It might help if you compiled a list of locations and times in which they were sighted,” I suggested. “If this is due to some change in their behaviour, knowing this might let you identify and correct the issue at its source.”

Shinya nodded, and Celeste took out a journal from her pouch, jotting down a quick note.

“We can make preparations later tonight, and set off in the morning,” Shinya suggested. “In the meantime, let’s take the opportunity to get some rest.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, then eyed them speculatively. This had been put off for long enough! “Alright! You’ve already heard basically everything that I’ve been up to; it’s time I heard about your adventures! I want all the specifics, not just the highlights!”

What was a measly scientist when compared next to a hero of legend, anyway? All I’d been doing was mucking around with stuff and smacking them together in the hopes of finding something that worked; Shinya’s exploits thus far along with his reputation as the summoned hero were already making him known throughout the kingdom!

Perhaps one day, once my well of inspiration of biological curiosities ran dry, I could even have a shot at writing an isekai light novel of my own based on Shinya’s adventures! If I were to be bold and cheeky, maybe I could even have myself make a cameo as a side character?

I took out a sheet of parchment, brush held at the ready, eager to take notes. This would be important in plotting and structuring my future novel!

What to call it, though? Going by light novel title trends, perhaps… ‘I Became a [Sword Saint] in a Fantasy World!’?

Eh, nah. Rather uninspired. I would leave it as a work in progress, for now.

“Well,” Shinya said, glancing at his companions for a moment. “After you left with Tycelius, we…”