玉蒲团之云雨山庄

*ROAR!!!*

A thunderous roar resounded throughout the forest.

"Dodge!!" (Alice)

Right after the moment of Alice\'s notice, the three valkyries jumped back and retreated. At the same time, the ground where they stood before got savagely torn by the magic beast before them.

"Now! Attack the Togre!!" (Alice)

Togre.

A huge tiger that is capable of standing with its both feet like a bear. There are books that consider them as a variant of an ogre with a hide of a tiger, and other books that group the Togre as a whole different magic beast from an ogre.

But the reason why the Togre is considered as a variant of an ogre with a hide of a tiger is not just a baseless assumption based on its tiger-like hide. But it\'s because of the ability of the monster.

A Togre possesses a powerful strength rivaling or even stronger than a normal ogre, while having great dexterity and speed just like a tiger. The speed and strength beyond an average men\'s ability made the Togre a fearsome opponent and classified as an A-rank monster.

But of course, it\'s fearsome only for average men.

"Here I come!! Take this!!" Holding her new greatsword, Emilia rushed towards the Togre with a great momentum.

The Togre didn\'t idly wait for her attack, looking at her speed which is slightly inferior to itself, the Togre confidently rushed head-on toward Emilia with its tiger-like speed. But when the Togre jumped and was about to pounce on her, Emilia stopped in her tracks and swings her greatsword with a speed that didn\'t match with her running speed.

The giant claws of the Togre that were supposed to be shredding her into pieces met her greatsword, but together with the loud sound of metals colliding, there is also a sound of something cracking.

!?!?

The Togre realized how much in great danger it is when the claws it used to strike at Emilia cracked. But of course, the experienced Mythril-ranked mercenaries, the Valkyries won\'t let the opening goes wasted.

"You\'re full of opening," From above a tree, Surena leaped with a speed boosted by the wind magic from her magic sword, and swiftly unleashed five wind mana-imbued slashes to four different points of the Togre.

The first strike is aimed solely at the neck, but after feeling the hard sensation, she precisely aimed at the parts with fewer muscles as well like its knee pits and its armpits.

(Its muscle on the neck is as hard as a metal. I guess that magical-like attribute is what makes it considered as a monster and a magic beast, huh?) (Surena)

"Alice," (Surena)

"Roger, it\'s the finishing blow," Alice that is standing right before Emilia applied force to her feet and made a powerful leap as she made a thrusting stance.

"It\'s checkmate, bye, beast," (Alice)

*Thrust!!*

The Togre that lost its ability to stand and block because of Surena\'s attacks didn\'t even give the chance to open its mouth to try to retaliate with a bite as Alice made a hole in its forehead at a terrifying speed.

"Hm. That went considerably well," Alice uttered in satisfaction as he swings her sword and get rid of the blood.

"What do you think, Lyan? We didn\'t deal with monsters often, but it doesn\'t mean that we can\'t handle them. Well, we\'re mercenaries not adventurers in the first place, after all," (Surena)

Mercenaries usually dwell more in quests with people as their opponents rather than monsters, giving them more access to politics, connections, and gold. While on the other hand, adventurers live mostly from killing monsters, adventuring dungeons and labyrinths, or venturing to unexplored regions.

The matter like the goblin king subjugation where the mercenaries willingly take a quest filled with monster subjugation is a very rare case. Unlike adventurers, killing monsters don\'t really make a mercenary considered as great as the tactics used between battling with monsters and humans greatly differ from each other.

The greatest example is that in the battle of humans, not just strength, but wits takes a powerful rule. In a battle between royalties or nobles, the ability of a hired mercenary to notice the dangerous plots and defend their employer from getting killed by assassins and poisons is more important than the ability to kill a griffin.

"That\'s a great fight. You killed it in such a very short duration. That\'s a splendid performance," (Lyan)

In a normal conditions, the Togre would have retreated before Alice made her jump, and would be able to counter her by making another leap of counterattack when Alice was in mid-air.

"Well, I\'ve seen your fights in the goblin king subjugation anyway, so there is no need for you to make me see your fight again, isn\'t it? You should have let me fight too," Lyan said with a wry smile as he stare at the glaive that he has been holding since the beginning. He\'s hoping that he could try doing some other moves and get more experience in using the glaive in real battles, but the Valkyries insisted on him observing their fight for some reason.

"Well, at the end of the battle, we kind of show you our pathetic side. So we kind of want to rewrite it by fighting a monster as strong as a goblin champion," Said Surena with an apologetic face.

(I see... So that\'s why they got so worked up when the Togre appeared, huh...) (Lyan)

Lyan noticed that Emilia had been fidgeting for a while and remembered that at the goblin king subjugation, she is the one that got attacked first by the black goblin champion inside the goblin king\'s lair. Because of that damage, the three of them ended up getting surrounded and ended up in a pinch.

(I guess it\'s not surprising that their pride as warriors- no, as knights to bear the embarrassment of showing their weakness at a fight, huh?) (Lyan)

"I see. I understand. You guys fought really well, I believe that even if you register yourself as adventurers, you will obtain the same rank as you are as mercenaries now," (Lyan)

The expression of the three brightens when they heard Lyan\'s praise, but before they could say something, they heard a rather loud neigh from the direction of the wagon.

Lyan take a peek to the side, and saw that the black horse is staring at him with a very annoyed face.

\'Stop flirting and acting cool, let\'s quickly continue our journey\'

(Seriously that horse... Show a bit sign of respect to your master, would you?) (Lyan)

Letting out a sigh, Lyan stretches his hand and sends the corpse of the Togre to the Grimoire\'s space. Of course, He sent it not to inside the house since the spirits will attempt to kill him if he do so, so he send it to a place fairly distanced from the house.

"With this, the skeletons inside there will drain the blood and skin the hide. When it\'s time for a meal, the meat is ready to cook. Damn, having the skeletons got trained by the spirits as servants surely comes in handy," Lyan didn\'t expect that the time when he will be benefitting from the great spirits training the skeletons as servants will come.

(Fufu! Brilliant, right? It\'s a brilliant thinking of me to make use of the skeletons for these kinds of troublesome tasks) (Hestia)

The idea of ordering them to process the corpses of the monsters and magic beasts he hunted was suggested by Hestia. Since she casually took five of the hobgoblin skeletons as her private servants that she ordered around to make tea, clean the house, and other orders, she told him why doesn\'t he use them to process the monsters\' corpses rather than him doing it manually.

"Yeah. Luckily we have the grimoire\'s space. If I summoned them to this world and got caught by other people, I might get seriously targeted by the knights and the church," (Lyan)

In this world, necromancers and dark magic users are often looked at negatively by the society. Because of the ability that could easily be misused, they are considered as magic that is taboo to be practiced especially for the church.

"In normal fantasy stories, it\'s a cliche for religions to be corrupted and messed up in a fantasy world like this, so let\'s avoid making trouble with them. Hm?" Lyan stopped in his tracks as he noticed a sign on the highway.

[Arkanera Town Ahead]

"Nice! Looks like we\'ve arrived at the first town!"

___________________________________________________________________________

Name: Lyan Arkanium Evocatore

Occupation: Mythril-ranked Mercenary

Money: 3,798,721,000 Elnes / 3798 gold 72 big silver 1 silver

Weapon: Magic Glaive, 1 (Decent) One-handed Sword, 2 (Good-Quality) One-handed swords, 1 (Decent) bow

Equipment: Black leather cloak, Leather Armor, Breastplate, 2 Health Potions, 2 Poison Vials

Grimoire\'s Companions: 8 High Spirits, 3 Valkyrie, Shadow Goblin Lord (Lv. 5), Papilio Slime (Lv. 45), Galewing Butterfly (Lv. 45), Rock Golem (Lv. 50), Deadlight (Lv. 63), Moonlight Butterfly (Lv. 45), Ice Golem (Lv. 50), Acid Ant Queen (Lv. 9), Magma Bear (Lv. 1)

Grimoire\'s Army: 6 Shadow Servants, 800 Skeleton Army