"W-was it supposed to do that?" I asked Masa, who looked as shocked as I was.

"That makes no sense! It's not an earthworm or a starfish!" exclaimed the Japanese boy. "The encyclopaedia didn't say anything about it splitting in that way."

"Wait, I don't know about starfish, but earthworms don't become two new earthworms when you cut them into two," pointed out my dad. "Trust me, I've accidentally done it when digging before."

"Dears, I don't think now is really the time to discuss that," Mum interrupted before they discussed the issue further. "We need to find a way to get rid of it or we won't be able to collect our reward."

Of course she would be thinking of that.

At any rate, now we were facing two, albeit smaller fire-breathing slugs. I was afraid that they would just multiply exponentially if I cut them again, so I held back, but Masa seemed to have gotten a flash of inspiration. He lured one of them towards me and yelled, "Use that Salt Splash thing!"

Oh right, it had worked on slimy leeches, so maybe it could work on slugs too? I concentrated to conjure salt once again and hurled a handful at it. The slug seemed to sense the danger and ducked out of the way with a speed that was anything but sluggish. It then retaliated with a couple of short blasts of flame at the both of us. Oi! Nobody said that this slug was going to be so difficult to defeat! My t-shirt's sleeve was almost singed by that, you know!

"Girling! Cut the slug into smaller ones and defeat those instead," suggested my father as he now faced off with eight thirty-centimetre-long slugs that were breathing tiny gouts of fire at his ankles. Huh. That was almost...cute.

"Right! But how does that get rid of them?" I asked, dodging another burst of flame.

"Then you do this!" declared my mum as she covered one of the eight smaller slugs in a pile of salt. As we watched, the pile of salt dissolved the slug, which finally turned to dust. "Well, I just borrowed Masa's idea, but it seems to work."

"Great! We'll settle ours, so you guys settle yours, all right?" called my dad as he gleefully cut the remaining seven slugs into even smaller pieces.

I nodded and turned back to Masa, who had already begun putting the plan into action. Conjuring up more salt, I darted towards the nearest small slug and threw the salt at it. One down! Seven to go! No, make that nine...wait, twelve? "Hey Masa, don't give me so much work!" I burst out after defeating my fourth one.

"Ah sorry...I just thought making them smaller would be more manageable," he said with a sheepish look. "And I wanted to try something out."

When I glanced in his direction, he created a stone wall and had it squash one of the slugs. "Aha, so this works too," he observed with a small smile when he lifted the stone and saw only dust under it.

Right after that, we gathered all our remaining small slugs and experimented on ways to kill them. Kinda morbid, I know, but it was for science! And they were just game creatures anyway, so I didn't feel that bad about killing them. The results were that they could be defeated by salt, blunt force, water and surprisingly, even fire, although it took a campfire-sized fire to kill one. Kinda strange for a fire-breathing creature, but I didn't question a good thing.

Masa was tired out by the excessive use of his magic though, so I finished off the last few slugs in our corner. Mum was all smiles now that the slugs were gone and we were going to return to tell the headman the good news. Our exhausted guide finally arrived by this time and he looked surprised that we were done so quickly.

"Are you sure you've exterminated all of them?" he asked, glancing around at the field. "Leaving even a single one alive will just land us in the same situation a week or so from now."

"Come to think of it, the slug we defeated was just a Flame Slug, not a giant one," muttered my dad.

"It then turned into Small Flame Slugs after being cut," added Masa.

Uh oh...I didn't like where this was going. The others were frowning as well. It looked like we were really going to have to earn that fifty silver reward.

~*~

"Masa, get that one!"

"Yes, Ma'am!"

"Girling, it's going over to your side, get ready!"

"Okay, okay."

We ended up having to scour the neighbouring fields as well and found quite a few smaller Flame Slugs. Apparently, some villagers had taken the initiative to hunt the Giant Flame Slug down themselves since the request had been left unanswered for so long at the guild. Unfortunately, they only managed to create more problems for themselves, so we now had to clean up after them. My parents decided to use this chance to train the both of us individually. Mum took Masa under her wing while my father trained me.

I had mixed feelings about this arrangement since I wanted to spend more time with Masa while I could, but at the same time I hoped to improve my swordsmanship. For obvious reasons, learning from a sword master was going to be awesome, even if he was just my dad. Sure enough, he rapped my fingers, adjusted my posture and even made remarks on my footwork as we fought the slugs. I soon came to realise that Deux had actually been rather mild in its complaints. I knew my dad was strict on discipline, but did he have to attempt to fix everything I did wrong? No, don't answer that. It'll just make me feel sad.

Yeah, it was a wonder I managed to get the Swordsmanship Skill at all, let alone raising it to Swordsmanship 2, unless just holding a sword and being able to swing it around were the requirements of getting it.

Nevertheless, unlike on Earth, the benefits of all this training came in a very visible form. I whooped and gave my grinning dad a high-five when Inspect showed that my Swordsmanship had risen to 3.