“Grooooar!”
Fighting snow bears isn’t that difficult.
You just need to keep two things in mind.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
First, don’t get hit even once.
Didn’t I say before, bears are naturally stronger than humans? Rather than taking a hit from a bear’s paw, it would be better to take a sword strike. You must absolutely avoid getting hit by a bear’s fist.
They had the ability to send a human to the other side of the Sanzu River with just one light punch.
A bear’s forepaw strike was so powerful that even a knight wrapped in plate armor would suffer serious injuries if hit directly. If hit in the head, it was instant death regardless of armor.
In other words, engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a bear was no different from neatly packaging yourself and offering yourself as its daily bread.
This was true not only in the original world but also in this world where things much worse than bears were scattered about abundantly.
This is a world where one can become strong enough to crush steel with strength just by repeatedly fighting and training, so compared to Earth, isn’t it surprisingly doable?
That’s knowing one thing but not knowing two.
Is it only humans who can endlessly become stronger through training? Bears too become endlessly stronger as they fight and fight again.
Unlike humans who can heal wounds with potions or miracles of healing, bears can only rely on natural recovery when injured, so they usually die before getting stronger…
“Grooooar!”
Snow bears are beasts that can crush the head or body of any ordinary opponent in one blow.
Unless it was a human who came fully armed, they were not the type to be injured by other beasts.
…Well, in other words, this means they tend to get injured, wounded, and die in front of humans who come thoroughly prepared.
* * *
“Grooooar!”
“Too slow!”
I duck down, lowering my upper body until my left arm touches the ground, avoiding the snow bear’s forepaw aiming for my head.
The claw passes through the air leaving a whooshing sound. If it had hit, it would have been powerful enough to blow my head off… but if it doesn’t hit, it’s nothing.
“Haaah!”
I push off the ground with my left hand, springing up my body while thrusting the longsword I was gripping like lightning.
Towards the lower jaw of the snow bear roaring with its mouth wide open.
Squelch!
“Grrrrk…?!”
The black iron blade pierces through the bear’s jaw effortlessly and burrows into its skull.
Gripping the sword hilt with both hands and twisting the tip, stirring it around, the snow bear’s brain is mashed like meat porridge and sliced up. It foams at the mouth, rolls its eyes back, and convulses.
The second thing to keep in mind:
Aim for vital points and kill in one blow.
A wounded beast is always the most frightening and dangerous prey.
If you carelessly aim for the legs or body and only wound without killing, you’d have to deal with the frenzy of a beast that has become even more ferocious, going berserk from the pain.
If you make a mistake, overwhelmed by that momentum, you’d immediately get hit once and cross the Sanzu River, so when hunting snow bears, you should try to kill them in one blow as much as possible, giving them no chance to counterattack.
Novice adventurers who don’t know this and act recklessly often end up becoming companions on the journey to the afterlife, falling victim to the desperate struggles of enraged beasts.
It’s not once or twice that I’ve seen people die vomiting their entrails after being hugged, having let their guard down thinking they had stabbed the snow bear’s heart or internal organs.
A real bear’s bear hug was literally a killer hug. In the sense that once you’re hugged, you can only die.
Even if you struggle with all your might to avoid being crushed to death, you’d likely end up dying in an even more horrific state with your head chewed by the bear’s mouth.
It was like offering yourself as the last supper, like Jesus the night before being crucified.
Instead of bread and wine, you’d be offering real blood and flesh, but from the snow bear’s perspective, the latter would be more of a proper feast, so it wouldn’t be much different.
“Grrrr…”
The snow bear staggers as if its strength has left it and falls forward.
Whether it’s a counterattack or a desperate struggle, you need your head intact to even attempt it. With the brain mashed and sliced like a roughly boiled stew, it was out of the question.
I quickly pulled out my sword and kicked off the ground, moving away to avoid being crushed by its body, and shouted triumphantly.
“That makes two!”
I’ve already taken down two, what are you doing, Friede?
“Oh, um… is that so…?”
Friede turned her head to glance at me and answered.
While slightly pointing with the tip of her greatsword at three snow bear corpses whose bodies were split open, bones and all.
…Wait a minute, three?
She took down three snow bears? Already?
‘Don’t tell me, am I losing…?’
Cold sweat ran down my spine.
* * *
The cave was discovered after thirty minutes of tracking. Inside the cave, which was longer and larger than expected, there were as many as ten snow bears that had made their den.
It seemed like an entire family had moved here, as their sizes varied greatly. From adults reaching 3m in height to cubs about my size.
If they had all rushed at us at once, it might have been a bit troublesome, but fortunately, they were scattered throughout the cave, allowing us to take them down quickly before reinforcements could arrive.
“Three…!”
“Haaah!”
I fought by nimbly avoiding the bear’s claws and teeth by a hair’s breadth, thrusting my longsword into their heads whenever an opening appeared, while Friede simply chopped up everything her greatsword touched without mercy.
“Fighting dangerously.”
“Strong have special rights. Instead, if die, become fool.”
While Friede and I hunted bears competitively, Amy and Kikel fought calmly, supporting each other.
“Mordax Lapis!”
The binding magic Amy said she had newly learned, Biting Stone.
As she pointed her staff at the snow bear and chanted the activation words, the cave floor cracked open, creating a hole the size of a head in front of the beast’s feet.
Then, at the moment the snow bear slightly stumbled with its ankle caught in that pit.
Chomp!
“Grooooar!”
It clamped shut like a hunting trap with serrated teeth, firmly gripping that ankle.
Not a magical restraint, but a physical one.
Since the trap itself was just a stone rather than metal, the bear could break free immediately if it applied force, but for now, that was enough.
“Help, good!”
If it could create even a moment’s opening like that, Kikel’s explosion lance would pierce the snow bear’s head or body, causing a flame explosion.
Boom…!
No matter how sturdy the beast, it couldn’t withstand the shock of having its skull or abdominal cavity burst and cooked.
The snow bear with its belly burst let out a miserable death cry as it fell.
Indeed, it was a good decision to lend him that spear.
To kill a snow bear in one blow. At that level, even though his rank was iron token, his actual combat ability could be considered fully on par with a copper token warrior.
You say it’s just because of the explosion lance?
Well, that’s true, but… so what?
In games from the original world, there was a trend of mocking those who performed well due to the power of their equipment as ‘gear-carried’, but that’s something you can say because it’s a game.
What meaning would words like ,gear-carried’ have for adventurers in this world who risk their lives fighting every day?
In this world, relying on strong equipment wasn’t something to be mocked, but rather a natural virtue.
Even if you won because of your equipment, a win is a win. In a world where defeat means immediately becoming meat, as long as you can win, the means don’t matter.
If you lost because of equipment, you shouldn’t feel resentful, but rather blame yourself for not having good equipment. As a half-eaten piece of meat.
* * *
After massacring the snow bear family that had been lumbering around in the cave, we stayed in the cave for a while without leaving.
We had dealt with all the snow bears inside the cave, but there might be snow bears that had gone out hunting outside the cave.
So we planned to wait here for about two hours.
At the same time, we searched the inside of the cave for anything that could be sold, and skinned the snow bears, piling up their hides neatly.
“Not much here. Even the rings and necklaces are all crude and cheap.”
Unfortunately, the only additional income worth mentioning was the snow bear carcasses.
We did find five or six human and animal corpses in what seemed to be their feasting area, but they hadn’t left behind any belongings worth money.
Just severely rusted and broken farming tools, or cheap rings and necklaces that would probably only fetch a few copper coins if sold.
We couldn’t find any truly valuable gems, armor, or money pouches.
Well, the people who died here eaten by bears were probably villagers from down below or wandering beggars.
Such people wouldn’t be carrying anything valuable.
“Let’s bury them properly. Judging by the state of the corpses, it doesn’t seem like bringing them back to the village would do any good.”
The miserable corpses with rotten flesh tangled messily on top of bones, crawling with maggots.
These bodies were even more tragic because some of their original form remained slightly intact.
If we told their families ‘this is your family member,’ it wouldn’t be strange if they collapsed from shock and ended up having another funeral.
“…Yes, that would be best. Leaving them like this… doesn’t feel right.”
Friede nodded as if she thought it was a good idea too. Then, as if suddenly remembering, she turned to me and added a word.
“Ah, by the way, you know I caught one more than you, right…?”
“…Yeah, that’s right.”
I answered in a reluctant tone, letting out a deep sigh.
The final number of snow bears I took down was three. Friede had taken down four snow bears, one more than me.
The remaining three were dealt with by Kikel and Amy working together.
…In other words, I had lost by one bear.
Damn it. Who knew there would only be ten?
If Amy and Kikel had just passed the last one to me, I could have at least ended in a tie…
“I clearly tried to stop it? So don’t think about blaming me.”
“…I know.”
Not a chance.
Amy had slightly withdrawn her staff, trying to pass it to me, but Kikel, who was caught up in the excitement of battle, mercilessly pierced through its body and blew it up.
“Kachak! Self-called disaster!”
It’s not a disaster I called upon myself, but one you brought, isn’t it?
I want to say something, but Kikel had just fought his best as a party member, so I couldn’t really complain about that.
“Haah…”
A sigh escaped involuntarily.