Splat! [Part 3]
“Um, that, sorry…”
The prince, who wasn’t splattered in monsters’ blood as much as the king, had gradually regained his sanity.
“No, Your Highness. The Royal Family mustn’t apologize easily,” Arthur, who also gradually recovered his sanity, chided Prince Edward.
“Even if you say so, Arthur…”
He couldn’t say anything other than an apology when his father was slaughtering monsters while shouting “WOO HOO!” before his eyes.
“Well, I understand your feelings…”
The king had let himself go so wild that everyone couldn’t help but think he was trying to release the stress accumulated during the social season.
“The Empire’s chief delegate and merchants only consisted of discourteous people as always. His Majesty had put up with it for cotton until now, but even the most-important cotton was of inferior quality this year…”
The king must have had a headache because even though he cut down his favorite sword training time to socialize and reduced his favorite inspection visits to the Knight Order to put efforts into securing cotton, it didn’t yield many results.
After that, the nobles’ dissatisfaction increased due to the first shortage of cotton since the foundation of the Kingdom, and some even demanded the country do something about it.
“Whoops!”
“!?”
When Prince Edward was looking at his father with melancholic eyes, George abruptly reached out his hand towards the side of the prince’s face at a blinding speed.
“Your Highness, Arthur, please be careful. We’re less than a few hundred meters away from the barrier, so monsters will appear from everywhere.”
George was holding a squirrel-like monster around 20 centimeters in size, the same as the one the king just slayed earlier.
“S-Sorry.”
“Peep!”
The monster in George’s hand stretched its small hands out to the prince desperately.
“…How cute.”
Flying monster squirrels who were small, fluffy, had moist round eyes, and made ‘Peep!’ sounds were adorable like a house pet rather than a monster.
“Wait! Your Highness, you mustn’t bring your face any closer than this. This flying monster squirrel looks cute at first glance, but its favorite food is human eyeballs! It will dig your eyeballs out in an instant if you let your guard down!”
At the same time William pulled the sleeves of the prince, who tried to look closer because it was cute, the monster opened his mouth from ear to ear, showing its sharp fangs.
Begone was the cute image with moist round eyes.
“Woah!”
“Peep! Peep!”
As if shouting, ‘Hand me your eyeballs!’ the monster struggled to get out of George’s hands.
“No matter how cute it is, you can’t think, ‘Oh, look, it’s not scary. It’s frightened of us,’ about monsters, or else both of your eyes will be eaten clean. You can’t make light of the forest near the barrier.” George squeezed the neck of the monster and twisted it in one swift motion.
Pro hunters would break the neck of flying monster squirrels to not damage their fur as much as possible. Nobody would cut them in two like the king.
“See there, look at the expression on the hunters’ faces. They are that tense… Because we normally will never come this far…”
Actually, George and William were also tense, not just the hunters. Entering the forest’s depths this far without their father, uncle, and cats was completely out of their expectations.
“Ah… Sure enough, we should have had Emma come with us.”
Koumei-san would have come along if Emma had been here.
Right when George was lamenting, a rustling sound of bushes was heard from behind.
“Hm? Nii-sama, are you looking for me?”
“Meow?”
“Yeah, I was just saying how good would it be if Emma and Koumei-san were here… Wait, huh? EH? EMMA?!”
