Night Raid! Night Trite!

“Hokee, kyororororororo......”

A beast, a bird, or perhaps an insect.

A cry from something no one could even identify echoed through Kaise Forest at night.

Bathed in the moonlight filtering through the gaps in the leaves, Emi was taking a nap at the base of a great Kaise tree, leaning her back against the trunk.

No matter how superhuman a girl Emi was, she still needed rest and sleep.

That remained true even within this dangerous demon realm.

The damage she had taken from the Bulletpeeps during the day had not yet fully healed.

Next to her previous life's, her body was incredibly tough and recovered at an absurd rate, but that didn't mean her wounds healed in an instant.

Right now, Emi needed rest.

“Suu......”

The girl, breathing softly in her sleep.

If not for a culture that shunned black hair and black eyes, any painter who saw her sleeping in the moonlight would surely have dropped everything to pick up a brush; such was the beauty there.

But to the residents of the demon realm, such beauty was worth nothing at all.

To the monsters, what lay there was no beautiful girl, but wounded prey.

And now, here was one monster with his eye on that prey.

He was a Night Trite.

A Trite was a monster that looked like a dog with a large nose.

In size, to compare him to a creature of Earth, he was about as big as a golden retriever.

This large-dog-sized creature with a black coat had followed his keen nose all the way to the wounded prey called Emi.

“......”

He didn't let out a single cry, but his face was twisted with glee.

He was a hunter of the night.

Make a sound with prey in front of him and let the target escape, he would never do anything that dumb.

Cautiously, cautiously, he approached the girl without making a sound.

The gap was now less than 1 meter.

Close enough for his breath to touch her.

The Night Trite had managed to close in that far.

Time to strike.

The Night Trite opened his mouth, big enough to swallow a human head with ease, and leaped at Emi!

Once it got this far, his hunt was as good as a success.

No living thing could possibly react to a pounce from this close.

That was his unshakable common sense, borne out by every success he had had so far.

But, still.

Here, there was one.

A creature with superhuman reflexes that shattered that common sense!!

“!!”

“!!?”

It happened in the next instant.

Suddenly Emi's eyes snapped open, and on reflex she thrust her right hand at the Night Trite's upper jaw and her left at his lower jaw, catching them and stopping the bite.

W, why!?

How!?

The Night Trite was in a whirlwind of confusion.

Until now, his killer strike had bitten every last prey to death.

So why this one!?

The answer: the killing intent, and the magic power, that had leaked out of him ever so slightly.

Unconsciously, Emi had felt that magic power against her skin and woken up just before the strike.

Just barely, she had reacted in time.

“......RAAH!!”

With a single shout of effort, Emi wrenched the jaws in her hands wide apart, top and bottom.

Against the monstrous strength she had gained through repeated mana transmutation, with 【Body Strengthening】 added on top, the Night Trite's jaws could not possibly hold out.

The big-nosed monster had his head ripped in two, top and bottom, then, without a moment's pause, a hand chop took his head off at the neck, and he died before he could even cry out.

“............”

Buchi...... buchichi......

Emi was not good at waking up.

Quite often, she woke up cranky.

She took that crankiness out on the monster's corpse.

She tore off its limbs with brute force and brought them straight to her mouth.

“............”

Once she had eaten a fair amount, her sleep-fogged head gradually cleared, and Emi began to look back on what had just happened.

That was close.

This time, she had happened to notice the night raid, but that was pure luck and nothing more.

One wrong move, and she would have been the one eaten whole and killed.

Quickly, she needed to figure out a way to deal with this.

That was close.