Chasing the Ranrananga White Lizards

Arc 10 begins. Thank you for your support.

Byuooo!!

Fierce winds, raging without letup.

Visibility was extremely poor in the raging blizzard.

All around, everything was pure white.

Through all this, a herd of creatures was racing along at considerable speed, kicking up clouds of snow.

The name of these creatures is the Ranrananga White Lizard.

As the name suggests, they are white lizards that inhabit the high-altitude snowy regions of the Ranrananga Mountains.

Their body length is about 1.5 meters, including their thick tails, and they basically live in herds of a dozen or so.

They are omnivores and eat anything edible.

To them, naturally, any human who sets foot in their habitat is prey.

Hence, they are classified as monsters.

But, they are lizards.

Cold-blooded animals.

Why, then, can they stay active in a world like this, silver as far as the eye can see?

It is for no other reason than that they instinctively control their magic power with great skill, keeping up their body temperature.

To look at, they are lizards without a doubt, but in truth, the Ranrananga White Lizard is a fantasy creature built on the premise that magic power exists.

Such creatures are not particularly rare in this world, Ardyst.

And because of that way of life, keeping warm with magic power, the Ranrananga White Lizard holds a great deal of magic power in its body compared with other creatures of a similar size.

That was exactly why they were running like this now.

Fleeing in panic.

From the clutches of a fearsome predator that loved to eat creatures rich in magic power, like them!

Zashu!!

But their resistance was in vain: the Ranrananga White Lizard running at the very rear had its head skewered by the arm of the predator, which suddenly dropped out of the air, and it breathed its last.

Blood gushed out, staining the snow around it deep red.

To ensure not a drop more of that warm blood was wasted, the predator pressed its mouth against the wound and drank the blood, gulp after gulp.

Next, it began to eat the meat.

It crunched up the hard scales and the bones too, leaving nothing behind, and packed them away in its belly.

As for this predator, it was not a particularly large creature.

Its body length was smaller than that of a Ranrananga White Lizard.

Though it was now stained deep red with blood, the fur covering its entire body was grey.

Fluffy and bristly in appearance, from a distance it looked like a big furball.

From that furball, 2 legs and 2 arms extended.

If some reckless adventurer who had ventured into the harsh demon realm of the Ranrananga Mountains in the dead of winter saw it, they would surely declare it a new species of monster; and yet, in truth, this creature was a human.

She was simply a girl who, because she wore layer upon layer of grey fur, had turned into a mysterious furball-like creature to look at.

As proof, the head of a girl with very refined features popped out from the top of the furball.

Of course, her head too was snugly wrapped in fur against the cold, but the color of the glossy hair peeking out from it was, black.

The color of those cold, clear eyes was also, black.

An appearance that, in the human world, is called a “cursed child,” and is loathed and despised.

That girl's name was Emi.

◇ ◇ ◇

After eating her way through a horde of Dark Magic Wolves and a giant Huge Red Boar near the fortress city of Liheid, Emi judged that there was no longer a satisfying amount of meat living in the area.

And so, she began heading ever westward through the Ranrananga Mountains.

Along the way, devouring every monster that caught her eye.

Among them were some so powerful that even Emi, as she is now, would be forced into a fight to the death.

The strongest was a giant golden bear.

Emi fought the bear all night long, and in the end, when the morning sun dazzled its eyes, she sliced its throat open with a knife-hand and killed it.

It was very, delicious.

Anyway, that was how Emi had been making her way through the Ranrananga Mountains, but now a problem had come up.

Namely, winter had come, and her prey had begun to visibly dwindle.

This was a problem she had never faced in the relatively temperate Kaise Forest.

In the middle of all that, she came across some prey.

That was a herd of Ranrananga White Lizards.

When she tried hunting them, she found they were quite delicious.

Having decided not to let a single one escape, Emi began chasing the herd of Ranrananga White Lizards that had started running in fear of her.

Ranrananga White Lizards are very fast runners.

For an ordinary person, chasing such a herd would be impossible, but with Emi's leg strength and stamina, it was an easy task.

Emi chased the herd and hunted them down, ate them and gave chase again...... and as she kept at it, completely absorbed, before she knew it she had arrived at this snowfield.

Now, where was she?

Having finished off the very last Ranrananga White Lizard, Emi wondered as much.

Visibility was poor due to the blizzard, but she could tell that a vast snowfield, where not a single tree grew, stretched out around her.

Standing alone in a silver world where she could sense no sign of living things, Emi finally reached a conclusion regarding her situation.

Ah, crap.

I'm totally stranded here, she concluded.

How carefree of her.

Well, to begin with, she basically lived out in the wild, leading a life you might call permanently stranded.

Why was there any need to be distraught now just because she didn't know where she was?

Also, thanks to the repeated mana transmutation of her body, she couldn't imagine running into anything that would kill her that easily.

Compared to before, she had become tremendously strong.

That strength had made her attitude toward all manner of things, the fury of nature included, somewhat, arrogant.

“............”

Even so, cold was cold.

Emi brushed off her face, plastered with snow in no time by the driving blizzard, with a few quick swipes of her palm, and then started walking.

Wasn't there a cave or something somewhere, that could keep off the blizzard?

Even the lee of a big boulder would do.

She would rest somewhere out of the wind, Emi thought, and once the blizzard stopped, get moving again to make her way across the snowfield.

And yet, walk as she might, it was all vast snowfield.

Everything was buried under snow, and there was just no resting place of the kind Emi was hoping for.

This couldn't be helped.

It was just as Emi had started talking it over with the voice in her mind, Omake-sama, about maybe digging a hole and resting in it,

that the blizzard suddenly stopped, and before her eyes...... a strange mansion appeared.

Emi's current look is a perfectly round furball with arms, legs and a face sticking out, that kind of comical look.

She stays in this getup for the whole arc.

Even if things get serious, it's this getup.