Magic Incantations
呪文詠唱
An excellent caster of magic is, namely,
an excellent singer of song.
"... Here's one...!"
While very, very discreetly making my way through the forest's foliage, I finally found my prey. A deer.
I call it a deer, but it's not exactly the one I know of. It has a strikingly geometric pattern down its whole body, a heroic-looking horn, and is a being that could easily push down a tree by pushing against it.
Be it me or that Armored Bear, doesn't this world's wildlife have too much in the way of combat effectiveness?
"Ai. Can I leave it to you?"
"Yeah...!"
When I whispered to Ai on my back and felt her nod, the trees in front of the deer rustled. Noticing that it was clearly different that being rustled by the wind with its senses, it jumped backward on reflex.
—In other words, it was heading right toward us.
Using that chance, I jumped out from the bushes and swung my claws. However, just before I made contact, the deer quickly changed its course and dodged my swipe.
"Missed!"
Spreading my wings, I assaulted it with a gust of air by flapping them. Although the deer did lose its balance for a moment due to that, it vanished into the forest before I could give chase.
"Another failure, is it...?"
"I'm sorry, Mentor..."
"Oh, no, it's not your fault. It's my clumsiness."
I'm not too good at hunting to begin with.
To the point that I would've been doing good by being successful one out of ten times.
I've gotten to the point of succeeding once every seven times thanks in no small part to Ai's help, so it's definitely not her fault.
Although it isn't...
"What should I do..."
Our current way of life has stumped me.
There are a total of sixteen people in Ai's settlement. Adding me, Nina, and Ai to that, it brings to total to eighteen people and one pretty big animal.
Even if it was possible for me to cover us three with my current success rate at hunting, it's difficult to maintain it for that many people.
They were able to live in this world up until now, of course. It's just that although they could live on their own, they did so with a major lack in nutrition.
And that they had no time to do anything else in their life.
They would set out to hunt in the morning when the sun rose and sleep when it went down. That was almost their entire life. Even so, it was a question as to whether or not they would have enough food to eat. Many of them had died of starvation, half of those sixteen were children.
I was feeling quite acutely that having the time for education was itself a luxury that they didn't have.
"Oh well, let's call it a day and head back."
"... Alright."
Seeing that the sun was in the middle of the sky, I spoke to Ai.
Today's harvest was nuts, fish, and shellfish. Things like these are fairly stable in harvesting compared to large prey, but the fact that it's easy to over harvest them makes it difficult, so I only take what's needed for the day.
