I knew that
at least one of the three steel wires I had laid down should have been above his neck, so that he didn't even have a chance to scream. He died silently.
There was only one enemy left.
"Halson, how are you?"
In the darkness, the last enemy asked anxiously. His tone was already very flustered.
"Can't you tell? He's dead."
"You're that adventurer? I didn't expect the person the Lord tasked us with to be a kid. Heh!"
"But your two companions died at the hands of a child like me."
I stopped disguising my voice and kept changing my position in the darkness.
"Of course I know that. But that's only if you sneak up on me. If we drag this on until dawn, do you think you'll still have an advantage?"
The enemy's voice kept coming from the other side.
Judging from the distance of his voice, the other party was probably doing the same thing as me.
Moving and adjusting his position to avoid being locked onto by me.
"Then we'll wait and see. Don't run away,"
I said.
There was still half a roll of thread in my hand, enough for me to set up a few traps.
Now, I needed to constantly lure him into talking to determine the approximate range so that I could surround him in the trap.
"Hmph! If we continue like this until dawn, we won't know who will be the one to escape."
"Then you can rest assured. I won't leave this forest until I've completed the test. Of course, I won't let a scumbag like you off either."
"Kid, don't be too confident. I have five lives on my hands!"
…
Good.
It seemed that he hadn't realized what kind of trap had killed his accomplice. He even treated my conversation with him like an ordinary cat playing with a mouse.
I used every minute and second to set up all the steel wires in the area within a 10-meter radius of him. In any case, I could retrieve them after tomorrow. There was no need to feel heartache.
The sky gradually brightened.
My opponent and I, who had dragged this on half the night, finally found each other behind our respective bunkers.
A man in his thirties in thin clothes. He held an iron sword in his hand and there was a conspicuous scar on the left side of his face.
"You're indeed a kid. I'll teach you a lesson now!"
After seeing my appearance, the man shouted and rushed towards me with a his sword in one hand.
I shook my head slightly. The person in front of me was just a murderer, far from being a killer.
The bonfire that had finished burning was not far from his left hand. His companion's head was separated from his body, but he did not notice such a clean wound. He rushed over just like that and wanted to kill me with his sword?
"You should be glad. If it weren't for the cover of night, you'd long be dead."
I stepped out from behind a tree trunk.
"What a joke! If it wasn't a sneak attack, you…"
The voice stopped abruptly.
What followed was a heart-wrenching scream.
"Ah——"
"My leg! My leg…"
"If you had rushed over from the side, it wouldn't be your legs that were cut off. You will truly experience the feeling of sliced in half."
I walked in front of the man and flicked the slightly higher steel wire on the tree beside me. I raised the sleeve arrow in my left hand, aimed it at his head and pressed down.
Swoosh!
The forest returned to its calm.
I retrieved the steel wire that was used as a trap and gathered the three corpses together. After covering them with dead branches and leaves, I headed out in another direction.
When I leave, my father will arrange for someone to take care of these corpses. If I fail to leave, then this shouldn't be something for me to be thinking about…
Returning to where the sunlight could shine down, I bathed in the sunlight and drank two mouthfuls of water, thinking about my plans for the next two days.
Perhaps I could take this opportunity to practice the [Devil's Contract] given by the goddess.
The range of this talent was ridiculously wide. All other creatures and animals would do as it had a certain level of intelligence.
I made up my mind.
I got up and began moving again.
My water was finishing. It was about time for me to find a water source.
A water source in the forest will naturally have many animals living nearby. I might be able to pick my first target for the contract.
I walked as downhill as much as I could.
Right now, I was halfway up the slope, and water tends to be at the foot of the hill.
When the sun was right above my head, the ground under my feet gradually became soft and the air was much moister.
After a few hundred meters, a stream appeared in front of me.
The stream was not big, and the water flowed silently.
Arriving at the stream, I washed my face, filled the bottle, and looked around.
An animal of interest appeared in my line of vision.
It was a bear.
From its size and color, it was probably be a semi-adult brown bear that had just left its mother and started to hunt alone.
After staring at each other for a moment, the semi-adult brown bear began to walk toward me. It must have taken me for a predatory target.
Yep.
I probably weigh enough to make a good meal.
But I have the same intentions too.
A bear's sense of smell was more than 300 times stronger than that of a human. If I can defeat this fellow, it would be a good choice as my contract's experimental subject.
I straightened up and stood up.
The brown bear that was walking in the water also stood up. It was a head taller than me.
"Roar!"
The brown bear lunged at me with a snarl.
I dodged, grabbed the fur on the bear's neck with both hands, and rode on its back. I clenched my fists and smashed them on its head.
The brown bear began to writhe its body crazily, wanting to throw the guy on its back off.
However, as the human with the highest intelligence among primates and after many years of training, I could easily dodge its sharp claws and hang steadily on its body. My fists kept landing on the brown bear's head.
The brown bear's movements gradually became sluggish. It no longer stood but lay with all fours spread on the ground. The angry roar in its mouth also became a faint whimper.
I got off the bear's back and stood in front of it. It didn't get up. Instead, it looked up at me with teary eyes that begged for mercy.
"Are you going to be aggressive?"
"Wu~"
I reached out and touched its forehead. With my current response, even if it was putting on a pretense just now, I was confident that I could dodge its attack.
Still.
It still lay meekly on the ground, allowing me to pet it.
"In that case, how about we sign a contract?"
I pressed my palm against the brown bear's forehead and activated [Devil's Contract].
The process was abnormally smooth. I didn't encounter any resistance. I could clearly feel the brown bear's submission to me.
The brown bear on the ground seemed to sense something strange. It raised its head and looked at me before lying back down.
"Share the sense of smell."
I closed my eyes and chanted in my heart.
In an instant.
Various odors began to rush into my nostrils from around me, funneling information into my mind.
After distinguishing the different smells of decay, stench, flowers, and grass, I smelled something unusual. It was less than a kilometer in front of me.
There.
There was a woman in hiding.