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Chapter 32 – Magic Beast Bug
When had Kelly caught that creature?
Perhaps as a scholar, she had some special skill for catching such things.
“Kelly? Can I ask you something. What is that?”
The thing that Kelly was holding was similar to something I’ve seen plenty of times before. An earthworm.
However, this one was very large.
It was one meter in length. And about five centimeters in width.
So in terms of size, it was more like a snake than a worm.
“It’s just an earthworm? It was close to the area that you were marking, Theo.”
That didn’t sound very clean.
“Uh…is that sanitary?”
“Didn’t you just say it was sterile…”
Kelly really didn’t care about such things.
“Are earthworms on this continent really that big?”
“It looks like it. Or perhaps this one is a magic beast worm.”
“Oh?”
“Victor and the others were searching for farmland, yes? Theo. Why don’t you tame this thing?”
Earthworms were advantageous to have when it came to fields.
That’s probably what Kelly meant.
“Even if it’s a bug, I should be able to communicate with it, if it has high intelligence… I will test it then.”
But just as I was about to activate the taming skill, Fio looked at me with a serious expression.
“Maybe you should try it, Fio.”
“I do.”
“Normally, it would take a lot of thought… But with you, I think you can do it just by wanting to.”
“Okay.”
Fio nodded. And then she looked at the earthworm and tried to talk to it.
I also called to the earthworm.
“I’m sorry that my friend grabbed you so suddenly.”
“…”
However, I could not hear any words or will coming from the worm.
“This worm is indeed a magic beast. However, its intelligence is not high.”
“Is that so?”
It was hungry. And its skin was starting to dry.
That’s all I knew about the worm.
“Fio can’t tell!”
Apparently, Fio had also failed to convert the worm’s will into words.
“Indeed. This thing isn’t smart enough to talk.”
“Yes!”
“Perhaps it doesn’t have any kind of thoughts of its own.”
Upon hearing Fio and I say this, Kelly looked at the worm in her right hand.
“I see. So if you can’t talk to it, then you can’t tame it?”
When Kelly said tame, she was asking if we could make it a familiar.
“No, it’s not impossible. This work is of a low class, and so I could tame it by force.”
“Class? What do you mean?”
“It’s rather difficult to explain…”
It’s something to do with a monster’s overall power.
Magic energy strength, physical strength, intelligence, age, type.
Add all of that together and you can determine a monster’s class.
Hippolius had powerful magic energy as well as physical strength and great intelligence.
That was on top of being a sea hippo, which was a high-ranking dragon.
And so Hippolius would be a very high class.
Even if Hippolius was young, that was only by dragon standards, and Hippolius could be over a hundred years old.
As for Shiro, while not as good as Hippolius, his numbers would also be quite high, barring age.
And while I didn’t know the exact species, demon wolves were quite high among magic beasts.
And so he too would rank quite high in terms of class.
In comparison, this worm would be very low.
It would not be difficult to use my own magic energy and tame it by force.
“So, I could do it by force… But what will I have it do after that?”
“Plow the fields.”
“It would do that on its own, without being tamed.”
“Hmm. Well, I suppose that’s true.”
“While it’s not a lot, it still takes magic energy to tame something. So I’d rather not do it if it’s unnecessary.”
“I see. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“It’s fine.”
“Fine!”
Fio also wagged her tail happily.
It seemed like she was happy to have joined the conversation.
“I think I’ll take this worm back to the base and study it. Then I will let it go.”
Kelly’s main purpose for being here was to study magic beasts of the new continent.
And she was a hard worker.
And so she took the worm away to be studied.
But Shiro seemed to be interested in the worm too, as he started to follow her while sniffing the worm.
“Wou! Wou!”
Apparently, Shiro wanted to eat it.
“Shiro. You cannot eat it.”
“Wou?”
“No. I’ll give you some proper meat later.”
“Wou.”
Why was it that dogs liked worms so much…
As a human, it really did not look like it would taste good.
“Fio. Do you think worms look tasty?”
“Not taste good.”
It seemed like she wasn’t saying that they didn’t look appetizing, but that they, in fact, did not taste good.
So that meant she had actually eaten them.
She and Shiro must have had a hard time after the wolf pack was killed.
Perhaps they were forced to eat worms after failing to hunt other animals.
I felt sorry for Fio, and patted her on the head.
“…I see. Then let’s eat lots of meat later on.”
“Wuff!”
As we talked like this, we eventually arrived at the base.
The Adventurers who had stayed were already preparing lunch for everyone.