25 Magical Girl Explores the Forest

Author: Kumanano
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n7313mj/25/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Sarche has gone out.

“Now then, what should we do. Kumayuru, Kumakyuu.”
“Kuuun.”

The house’s tidying is done.
I made a bath too.
There’s nothing to do.
I decided to become happy in this world.
In other words, that means having fun.
Dad and Mom should want that too.
There’s no Cat God here, and no magical girls after my life.
I don’t have to move on the Cat God’s orders.

“Kumayuru, Kumakyuu, let’s go explore outside!”
“Kuuun.”

I get ready to go out. That said, I only make a boxed lunch.

“Now then, which way should we go?”

I go outside the house and look around.
What I know is that if I go in front of the house, there’s the meadow where I met Sarche.
I don’t know what’s in the other directions.
I float up, and Kumayuru and Kumakyuu float up with me.
I look out from the sky.

“Whoa~”

A landscape I’ve never seen stretches out.

“That’s the meadow I was lying in, right.”

I look back, and the forest goes on all the way in.
I’ve only seen it on TV, but it’s like the Amazon hinterland.
I look all the way around.

“Is that a town?”

Something like a town is visible in the distance.
I wonder if that’s the town Sarche talked about.
I want to go to the town, but we have plans to go together with Sarche.
And even if I go to town, I have no money, so I can’t buy anything.
If money or an ID is needed to enter the town, I can’t even go in.
So today’s exploration is this way.
I look at the back of the house.
Forest spreads like the Amazon hinterland.
Sarche said there are monsters, so I must not go near.
When you’re told you must not, you want to go. That’s kids.
Using being a kid as an excuse, I break my promise with Sarche.

“Kumayuru, Kumakyuu, first we explore from the sky.”
“Kuuun.”

We fly toward the depths of the forest.
It’s been a while since I flew, but it feels good.
I might be grateful to the Cat God for making it so I can fly through the sky.
Flying through the sky is one of a kid’s dreams.
I spin around and accelerate.
The forest goes on forever.

“Kuuun.”

Kumayuru cries.
Something is flying in front of us.
A large black bird.
It’s coming at me.

“Is that a monster?”

It’s a size larger than a hawk.
If it were before I became a magical girl I might have been scared, but as someone who’s fought magical beasts, I don’t feel fear.
I loose a mana bullet as usual.
An ordinary mana bullet.
The bird that takes the mana bullet holds up, but when several shots hit, it falls.
I come down to the ground and go near the fallen bird.
It’s a large black bird. The beak is sharp.
It’s a monster, right?
I can’t tell the difference between a large bird and a monster.
Either way, it attacked, so I have to defeat it.
When I first became a magical girl I hesitated too, but because of that hesitation I got in danger over and over.
So I had come to attack anything that comes at me.
I look at the dead bird.
Magic stones can be taken from monsters, right.
In manga, monster materials were traded, and if you sell them they become money.
And I used a huge amount of magic stones making the bath.
I look at the bird again.
In other-world manga and novels there are scenes of dismantling them, but.

“Yep, no way.”

There’s absolutely no way I can dismantle it.
Sometimes ordinary people reincarnate or transfer to another world and dismantle monsters, but I can’t.
What a modern kid like me can do is about cutting meat sold at the supermarket.

“Can Sarche dismantle them, I wonder?”

For now I put the defeated bird away in the Extra-dimensional Box.
I’ll leave the dismantling to someone who can.
If it becomes money, it would be a waste.

After that I’m attacked several times by living things that seem like monsters, but I defeat them and put them away in the Extra-dimensional Box.
At first when I heard there were monsters I was worried, but I can use magic ordinarily, and I can defeat them too.

“But if Dad and Mom wished for their daughter’s happiness, wasn’t there a world without monsters or something?”

And it feels like I was dumped here, too.
If I couldn’t use magic, I might have been attacked by monsters and died.
I at least wanted a peaceful world.
Or being reborn as a noble’s daughter or something?
I think about it for an instant, but that looks hard in its own way.
Etiquette, dealings between nobles, political marriages—that’s impossible for a kid like me.
And I only have one Dad and one Mom.
For now I’ll think about living enjoyably in this world.

“Kumayuru, Kumakyuu, let’s go!”
“Kuun!”

In the forest there are somewhat large birds flying, and on the ground there are monsters like wolves and boars.
When the wolf sees me it opens a big mouth and bites at me, so I take it down in a snap.
Its movement was fast, but that was all.

“Huge.”

The boar is big.
About as big as a bear.
When I see living things of a size I’ve never seen on Earth, I feel that it really is another world.
There are also rats about the size of a cat running around in the forest.
A wolf chasing those rats.
I can’t tell whether they’re animals or monsters, but there are all kinds of living things.
Once I know they aren’t that much of a threat, it starts feeling like a zoo.

“Is that a river?”

When I go near the river, there’s a hippo-like living thing.
I saw one last year when I went to the zoo with Dad.
Even when I come down nearby, it doesn’t react.
It opens a big mouth and takes it easy.
That instant, something jumps out of the river and attacks the hippo.
It’s a crocodile-like living thing.
The crocodile-like living thing bites the hippo’s leg.
The hippo doesn’t look like it cares, and goes up on the bank with the crocodile still biting.
Then it stomps the crocodile with the leg that isn’t being bitten.
The crocodile with its body stepped on opens its mouth wide and lets go of the hippo’s leg.
The hippo stomps the crocodile over and over with both legs.
Then when the crocodile stops moving, it swallows the crocodile with its big mouth.

“Ugh.”

I feel like I saw something I shouldn’t have.
The farther I get from Sarche’s house, the more kinds of monsters there are.
There are vicious monsters, and there are quiet monsters.
They might even be ordinary animals.
With how I am now, I can’t tell ordinary animals from monsters.

“Kuun!”
“What’s wrong?”

I look the way Kumayuru is looking.
That’s a dragon, a dragon!
It’s flying, moving large wings.

“Kumayuru, Kumakyuu, it’s a dragon. A dragon.”

So dragons really existed.
I want to go closer, but going closer might be dangerous, so I watch from far away.

“Right.”

I take out my phone, open the camera app, and zoom the screen.
The dragon shows on the phone’s screen.
I take a picture.
It’s a little scary, but it’s cool.
If I rode it, could I become a dragon knight.
In my case, a dragon mage?
While I’m thinking that,
the dragon flies off into the distance.
I wonder if I’ll see it again.

After that, I keep exploring the forest until Sarche comes back.
What I learned is that there are also monsters that use magic.
Monsters can be defeated with my magic.
There were also monsters that were uninterested even when they saw me. (Maybe animals?)
It seems not all monsters come attacking.
Incidentally, I didn’t see the dragon again after that.
Also, Sarche looked at Kumayuru and Kumakyuu and said “bears,” so I think there are bears, but I didn’t encounter any.