Chapter 87 :

Episode 19 : Brother Figure (5)

My expectations were nothing to Mya when she greatly destroyed it with her new skill.

"Scattering leaves..? Is ‘she’ accepting Mya as her vassal?" I mumbled with my amazed eyes, having a gaze on the amulet.

Mya's new skill, ‘Scattering Leaves’ emerged when Mya released her bowstring, shooting her arrow toward the lake.

As implied by the skill name, leaves with edges as sharp as a blade came forth and rustled beside the arrow.

With an arrow piercing through the wind, lowering itself down into the lake and hitting on whatever inside the lake, caused the leaves to scatter around.

Once the leaves plunged into the water, sniping countless fish and sticking onto the gills and flesh of the fish, the leaves soon stopped upon coming in contact with its target.

Despite Mya's skill lacking power to fully kill a fish, they were sufficiently enough to force a fish to be unable to breathe underwater.

"Did I do that? I-I gained a skill! Wow!" Mya, feeling exhilarated by the thought of accomplishing her task, smiled with joy.

"Mya. What you did had exceeded my expectations completely." I grinned at Mya, giving her a thumb up.

"Yes! Yes! I finally did something..! Finally!" It seemed to me that Mya almost had teary eyes when she said that. 

I thought while turning my bow into a spear. ‘This child is obviously excited about doing her quest now. Then I don't have to worry about giving her a helping hand with shooting the bluegill fish.’ 

Once Mya finished celebrating, she started to draw her bow again, preparing to aim for another great shot. 

"Don't overuse your skill or else you'll lose Mana, Mya. Just focus on shooting normally first." I gave her advice before I stepped closer to the lake.

Mya uttered out as a response. "Yes, uncle!"

‘Say.. Mya didn't stutter much. Could it be she was overjoyed because of just a simple shot?’ I pondered, setting my foot in the lake.

Upon entering the lake, I instantly spotted fish that were slowly swimming away from me. While I observed them trying to escape from me, I found out that these fish were hit by Mya's leaves.

Considering that those fish had leaves stuck on their gills which meant they didn't have much time to live anymore, I grasped my spear as I aimed it at the pitiful fish.

Instead of letting those fish suffer from struggling to get oxygen, I ended their misery by stabbing them one by one with my spear.

When my spear penetrated the fish simultaneously with great succession, I naturally got a ton of bluegill and a variety of fish impaled on my spear as I began to take out the bluegills which were needed for the Mya's quest into my inventory.

After getting the bluegills inside my inventory, I now had other fish on my spear, almost seeming like a skewer of raw fish. 

Seeing as how we got a lot of fish to cook and eat, we might be having a feast later by how plenty the fish were in this lake.

"Hey! Get off of me, blackie!" 

The voice of a startled and infuriated Louis resounded toward my right, including the sound of hissing and meowing of fright.

Out of curiosity, I glanced toward that direction as I found Behemoth on top of Louis's head, hissing in fear.

Behemoth looked as though he was clinging tightly onto Louis's face, not budging an inch when Louis tried to remove Behemoth.

Just watching this sight was enough to make me smirk at how ridiculous it was. Thus, I called out to him while holding my laughter slightly. "Behemoth. Get over here."

After hearing my voice, Behemoth looked at me and started to take a leap off Louis's face, freeing Louis from the suffocation. 

"Meow?!" While Behemoth was in mid air, coming toward me at full speed, I noticed a sudden net being made and was shooting straight at Behemoth to capture him.

When Behemoth got caught in the net, he plummeted down into the lake. As soon as he went in, the water surface had too many bubbles popping and appearing on top.

It was when I went ahead and picked the captured Behemoth out of the water and witnessed him get his fur wet. 

I could sense Behemoth's anger arising from just every water droplet dripping down his fur.

"Did you really have to do that!?" Behemoth growled and bawled while moving his head around to get himself out of the net.

I sighed, knowing an argument will happen soon, so instead of letting it occur, I uttered the name who was responsible for the net. "Mimi. Why did you do that to Behemoth?"

"I was only trying to help Captain get more fish but this cat just jumped right at it." Mirai exclaimed while staying on my head, acting all angry and such while looking cute.

Behemoth obviously didn't buy it and became enraged by Mirai's lies, quickly bellowing. "What!? You were clearly trying to prank me, itsy weensy spider!" 

"I did not! You were just blind to see the net!"

"You sure did! Plus my eyesight is way better than your tiny eyes!"

"Technically speaking, spider's eyesights are much better than your silly kitty's eyes. Bleh!" Mirai, sounding as though she was sticking her tongue out, argued with Behemoth.

And of course, Behemoth talked back to her without losing in this argument, as a result, they argued back and forth without stopping for a moment.

"These two.." I exhaled a long sigh while I watched them behaving like children.

At which they didn't even notice me creating a platform made out of silk thread. Not only that, I was laying both Mirai and Behemoth on the raft while removing the net off of Behemoth.

"Quarrel is a way to build one's friendship but I wonder if theirs are a bit different. I hope they won't bring out a disaster by fighting physically." I pushed the raft-like platform away as Behemoth and Mirai drifted further into the lake's surface.

I spoke indistinctly. "Finally, peace and quiet." 

"Do you speak animal and insect languages?"

However, it seemed I couldn't have my moment of tranquillity when Louis had a question for me.

Thus, I stabbed my spear into the water, even though I wasn't attempting to get a fish, I unexpectedly pierced an unlucky fish with my spear.

Not stunned by the unexpectedness, I let go of my spear which I initially was planning to do a moment ago.

Then I said something in response to Louis's question when I stared at him with a slight hostility. "It's none of your business whether or not I can speak gibberish."

"Jeez, man. Don't be so rude to me." 

"Said the guy who was suspicious of me all day and was giving me a hard time by mistaking me for a villain." I glared at Louis.

"I..! Tsk." Louis clicked his tongue as he turned away. 

I assumed Louis got nothing else to say, so I was originally planning to grab my spear and move further away from him. 

But then, Louis suddenly explained his reasoning behind his behaviors. "I'm sorry for my rude conduct earlier. It's just I get overprotective of that girl over there because she resembled my young sister."

‘So that was the reason? Just because Mya bears a resemblance to his sibling?’ I raised my eyebrow at how absurd his justification was.

Not only that, I also noticed Louis's tone of voice had a touch of sorrow and traces of mourning mixed in when Louis was explaining.

‘He's depressed and regretful.. Did he mention something saddening? Could it be that his sister—’ On second thought, I wouldn't want to come into conclusion when I knew nothing about Louis, so I ignored it entirely. 

"Enough chit chatting, I'm going to help Mya do her quest. You should help her as well." I mentioned before taking my spear and proceeding to tend to capturing the bluegills.

"Right. We can't let Mya do all the work her own." Louis agreed with me for once.

And since Mya had been shooting fish the entire time without stopping for a second, we both presumed it was bad of us to be idly standing and talking with each other.

Without further ado, each of us went different directions of the lake, so that we wouldn't bother one another. 

———

A spider who didn't realize her captain had put her on a raft, persisted on quarreling with a black cat.

As for the black cat, he wasn't aware that the net around him before was completely gone by his master and that he had been placed onto the same raft that the spider was on.

Mirai and Behemoth arguing on a raft nonstop, remained hostile to one another.

They didn't insist on losing this argument and continued on bellowing until one of them gave up on this quarrel.

"Can't you just admit that it was a prank?" Behemoth hissed, gritting his teeth while showing it to Mirai.

But Mirai didn't faze and tried to intimidate Behemoth by displaying her long curved fangs and legs to scare Behemoth off.

In spite of that, it didn't work and Behemoth completely scoffed at the idea of Mirai scaring him. "What? Are you going to make me fear you, itsy spider?"

"Hmph! I was making sure you weren't a scaredy cat."

"Grr! Did you think I would be frightened by a mere spider?!" 

Their heated conversation went on and on without pausing to take a deep breath and soon, Behemoth began stomping his legs. 

"Do you think you would get away from pranking me?! How about I'll show you what you'll get if you prank me again!" Behemoth roared as he was about to step onto Mirai.

When Mirai witnessed Behemoth's paw descending down onto her, she quickly jumped up to give a kick to Behemoth's paw.

What they didn't know was that if they collided right this moment in the middle of the lake, the impact would cause a shockwave that could lead to the surface of the lake to rise up, perfectly forming a small tsunami or a wave.

Behemoth's paw and Mirai's legs were coming an inch closer to crash until they were stopped by a sudden portal manifested itself in between Behemoth and Mirai.

The portal caught their attacks easily and released them on separate portals, flawlessly stopping them from creating a disruptive tsunami.

It was then that Behemoth and Mirai noticed a silhouette forming onto them and perceived a sinister presage from the one who casted the shadow.

"Did you have fun?" 

The voice of Behemoth's master as well as Mirai's captain sounding malicious with his portraying smirk, prompted Mirai and Behemoth to sweat in trepidation.