Butcher Demon - Chapter 291

The next morning, the rain had stopped, and the sky was clear and dry. That’s great.

――Or so we thought.

It’s so damn hot.

After the rain, the air became extremely humid, and Haruka was soaked in sweat within just an hour of walking along the mountain path.

The night was freezing, and then it got crazy hot. It’s not like we’re in the desert, but the weather is seriously weird. I had a feeling something bad was going on, but right now, I couldn’t help but notice Haruka’s almost see-through bra. Since we are outdoors, it looks like a sports bra type.

“Ha… hah …”

Haruka wiped the sweat dripping from her chin uncomfortably.

Her tired moans, coming from her dry lips in a rhythm, were turning this Butcher on. Something’s been off since yesterday, and my mind keeps going to inappropriate thoughts. Must be the summer. You know, the season of love.

In the uninhabited wild forest, a Butcher and the lightly-dressed girl. No one’s around to judge me, and they don’t need to worry about following any boring social rules. Honestly, I want to do her right away. She has quite a figure. Marking an unknown woman and leaving her in the wilderness is just how things go naturally back then when a male and female encounter each other. It’s the law of the jungle. Just thinking about it makes me all excited. But I have to hold back.

Butcher’s physique can handle extreme temperature changes, even being naked in the snow or completely exposed to the flames, so temperature fluctuations are nothing to me. But Haruka is struggling, and I can bet Yakumo is feeling it too. We should hurry and head to the mountain cabin. We’re also almost out of clean water. There’s no time to waste on fucking around. Listen to me, my son. Be patient.

The hail had been hitting the ground for a long time, but we were lucky enough to spot the goblin footprints, which helped us find our way. I led the path, and Haruka followed, trying her best to keep up.

She’s been looking down at the ground since earlier. It’s commendable that she’s not complaining, but she’s probably low on calories. None of us, not even her, had anything to eat since morning. Our rations ran out last night. It’s about time we find some food.

I hunted koalas as we went along. It was easy. It was as easy as grabbing an apple with my tongue.

“Are you really going to eat it…?”

“I don’t have any hunting tools, and this thing is the best we can catch right now.”

The truth is, I saw some kangaroo-like animals far away, I had a rifle in my bag and thought I could easily take them down with a stone. But I acted as if I couldn’t do it. Curiosity got the better of me, and I managed to convince Haruka. So, we had koalas for lunch!

I excitedly started a fire and roasted the parent and child koalas.

Eating is the most enjoyable part of survival. At Fox, I had already eaten my fill of wild animals and magical beasts around 88. But now, in this unfamiliar place, I can challenge myself with unfamiliar ingredients, just like in the old days. I feel like a child again.

“It’s done.”

“…”

A crispy, roasted koala.

The koala without its fur looked incredibly sinister, almost like a lesser demon. This seems to make Haruka lose her appetite quite a bit.

Holding the roasted koala in both hands, Haruka closed her eyes tightly. Then, she bit into it with determination.

“How is it?”

As I curiously asked, then she looked at me with teary eyes.

“It… smells…”

She couldn’t swallow it, but she kept chewing.

“Then, how about this one?”

At that moment, as if I had been waiting, I offered her the roasted child koala. Here you go.

“…”

Seeing her unwillingness to accept it, I crossed my arms and said in a pretentious tone.”

Traveling along this mountain path requires energy. You need to eat properly to build up your strength. If you can’t walk, I won’t be able to carry you. Your friend’s life is in danger if we stuck here, and we’re also short on water and food. In dire circumstances, you have to suppress your emotions. There are times when our actions endanger the people around us and our own lives. Now, eat up.”

“…..Okay”

Actually, I can prepare a different dish, and carrying her is not that hard. I just want to feed Haruka a koala and hear her impression. Oh, she ate it.

But, you know, as a Butcher, everything tastes delicious to me. I can still tell the difference in flavors, okay? But everything is tasty. Since becoming a Butcher, the only things I clearly felt “gross” were the Jiangshi girl’s earthy body and that dark hotpot that Tiriel made. So, it’s better to borrow someone else’s taste buds to judge the quality of the taste. This is necessary. I’m going to try it too.

――Final verdict.

As I thought, adult koalas have this strange medicinal smell. It’s like mutton, the smell of the food they eat seeps into the meat.

In contrast, as the theory goes, the young ones have less smell and are more tender and easier to eat. This may be due to the fact that they are still fed on their parents’s milk. Haruka managed to swallow a baby koala.

They say Eucalyptus is poisonous. So, just to be safe, I let Yakumo and Haruka have the baby koala while I chowed down on the parent koala. It was pretty delicious!

Unfortunately, there weren’t many edible parts. Is Eucalyptus even nutritious? I only found bones and muscles. I was fooled by their fluffy body. I thought about looking for more, but I changed my mind.

It’s not because I feel bad for Haruka or anything like that. It’s just that I didn’t know that koalas scream like human children when they’re strangled. The screams of children echoing in the forest are quite eerie. Haruka seemed to be hesitant after seeing the grotesque appearance of the skinned koala and hearing the sickening screams from its mouth. It’s a level that’s not suitable for Yakumo’s emotional development. So, that was it for koalas.

It’s not like I’m in a position to talk about emotional development, since he had been exposed to the scene of me having sex with his sister up close. But since Abigail scolded me, I’ve been more careful. I treat Yakumo with an R-15 rating. Come to think of it, how old is he? I haven’t asked.

With that, we continued our journey towards the cabin, taking breaks in between.

We had a small incident along the way. I accidentally got caught by Haruka while using a slingshot to hunt another wild animal, and she gave me a suspicious look. But by the end of the day, we safely arrived at what appeared to be the mountain cabin in question.

In the pitch-dark forest, we hid in the bushes a little away from the hut and observed the situation from a distance.

The cabin had its lights on. It had a log-house-like structure. I heard a quiet murmur coming from inside, where the fire was flickering. It seemed like a group of goblins was hiding in there, but I couldn’t tell how many from where we are.

“Everyone, please be safe…”

Haruka looks at the cabin as if she is praying.

“You can worry all you want, but the outcome won’t change. I’ll go alone from here, so, could you keep an eye on Yakumo for me?

“Understood.”

I stood up and turned to look back at her.

“By the way, do you have any experience with guns?”

“Guns? No, I’m sorry…”

Haruka looked surprised for a moment, then shook her head.

Inside the bag, there are both handguns and rifles, but it’s not a good idea to let an amateur who can get driven by fear handle a gun. If she has no experience, I can’t entrust her with one.

“Well then, stay here quietly. Keep your breath quiet. If they spot you, just yell and run towards me.”

“Um, Ge-Gevaudan…-”

As I was about to leave, she called out to me.

“Please help them.”

I nodded slightly in response and headed towards the cabin.

Activating my 〈Nightcrawler〉 to conceal my presence, I circled around the vicinity. There were no guards posted. The human presence was concentrated inside the hut.

――Ugh, this is such a pain in the ass…

If it wasn’t a rescue mission, I would’ve just happily sprayed them all with a 20mm machine gun from outside. But to rescue the hostages without hurting them, I had to sneak in quietly and clear each room one by one. It would also take effort to prevent the goblins from escaping the hut.

Now, what should I do first? As I was running a plan in my head, I happened to notice a figure a little away from the mountain cabin. It was a girl. She was crouched in the bushes, repeating something to herself over and over again with a look of intense determination. What’s that? It’s creepy.

I approached carefully, watching the girl closely. Suddenly, there was a loud noise, and the door of the mountain hut swung open. Three goblins appeared.

The girl got scared by the noise and instinctively stood up and ran into the forest.

The goblins heard her footsteps and began chasing her, all three of them.

――That girl, if she had just stayed still, they wouldn’t have noticed her…

A typical example of someone being too cowardly and doing something totally unnecessary. It made me feel a little disappointed, but I couldn’t just ignore it. So, I decided to follow her.

The girl’s pace was slow. However, the goblins didn’t catch up easily either. It almost looked like they were playing, keeping a close but not too close distance as they chased her.

During all this, the girl’s speed gradually decreased…

“Ah… gah…”

Finally, she fell.

In the process, I could see that she dropped her smartphone. It seemed like she was talking to it until just a moment ago. She wasn’t even wearing shoes, and her feet were covered in blood. She probably can’t move anymore.

Both I and the goblins closed in on the girl from different directions.

The goblins were the first to notice my presence. They were taken aback by my sudden appearance and all froze.

The girl looked back at me.

Then she fainted. *Flop* Her eyes rolled back. It seemed that my appearance was a hundred times scarier to her than the goblins. How rude.

“Can you speak?”

I tried speaking to the goblin in my clumsy alien language. However, all I got in response was their usual screeching and gibberish. I had no business with goblins who couldn’t even hold a conversation.

Swiftly, I drew out a butcher knife and slashed three goblins in an instant.

I picked up the unconscious girl and also picked up her smartphone. Tapping on the screen, as I expected, there was no signal. Even in this crazy situation, she was all about taking selfies. Did she plan to upload them to the internet later? It’s awe-inspiring how she prioritizes clout even in such a crisis. I have to say, college students impress me. I wonder if doing well in those exams gives them this kind of guts.

With a small sense of respect in my heart, I stealthily approached the entrance of the cabin where the goblins had appeared.

Leaning the unconscious girl against the door, I peered inside through the open door.

There were no screams, just the usual guttural howling, and then the woman’s dry breathing. After that, I could faintly hear something like the faint sound of a man moaning.

Overall, the air inside was humid and heavy, and there was a pungent and foul smell that almost made my nose fall off. It was different from the smell of human semen, but I can guess the scene inside. I was surprised that the smell of blood was faint.

Without hesitation, I barged in.

It appeared to be some sort of back entrance, as the first thing that came into view was the kitchen. There were two goblins there, engrossed in scavenging the fridge to notice me.

With a flick of both hands, I snapped their necks.

I proceeded down the hallway with muffled footsteps. It was cramped with the butcher’s body.

Along the way, I discovered the entrance to the basement, which I hadn’t known about.

I could feel an unpleasant aura from below, but I prioritized the safety of Haruka and the others outside, so I decided to clean up the first floor first. The basement can wait.

Leaning against the hallway wall, I stealthily moved forward, step by step, trying to determine the source of the sounds. It led to the living room.

When I approached the door and leaned my body forward to peep inside, at that moment…

――*creak*…

A loud noise echoed. I made a big mistake. Immediately after, the living room fell silent. I cursed the wood construction. It seems it was impossible to be stealthy on it with the butcher’s massive body…

Resigned, I entered the room openly.

As expected, it turned out to be a gang-bang scene.

Two girls were lying on the wooden floor. Five goblins were gathered around them. I couldn’t spot any others.

“Gya――”

I silenced the green little men one by one as they tried to raise their voices.

When I swung my arm, they turned into pieces, and when I kicked them, they splatter and became red stains on the wall. It seems like the goblins’ blood was red too. Even though they were small, they were strong. By observing their actions, I managed to take out around four of them. Finally, the last one panicked and attempted to escape.

With my tongue, I coiled around its leg and dragged it closer to me, then I stomped on its back, breaking its spine with a sound that echoed through the living room. And with that, the room fell silent.

The girls were still breathing, unconscious but without any significant injuries. They seemed to have been used like toys for a few days here. There were no signs of torture. After Feather, I had given up hope for their survival, so I was surprised by the difference in treatment. Perhaps that girl was tortured as punishment for escaping.

When being violated, it’s a general rule not to resist unless you have a very good chance of winning. It’s the same even against aliens. If you further enrage an already excited man, your life could be in danger. Instead of resisting, you let them do as they please, even pleasing them obediently and luring them into a decisive opportunity. The men will show all kinds of openings to a submissive woman. I remember receiving such training at 88 too.

I left the girls as they were and continued patrolling the first floor. It turned out that all the goblins on that floor had been out in the living room, there were no signs of them left. So, the cleaning was finished.

Haruka and the others were being chased by like 20 or 30 goblins. Considering that, it wouldn’t be strange if there were a lot more of them lying in ambush. But surprisingly, it felt like there were only a few.

Though I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, I finally made my way to the basement.

It was a typical storage room. I descended the dark stairs and reached for the doorknob.

As I opened the door, my face was enveloped in a suffocating stench of blood and filth.

The basement had turned into a slaughterhouse.

The floor, walls, and ceiling were all freshly painted with glistening red.

There was one goblin left amidst the mess of guts on the floor, but it didn’t even get a chance to scream before getting torn apart, becoming part of the gory scene. And just like that, all the goblins in the cabin were gone.

I took a quick look around the basement and found two dead men. One of them had already been dismembered. It seemed like he had been eaten based on the remaining bones. The other man was impaled on a wooden stake, standing on the ground, likely waiting for someone to dismantle him.

――How crude.

I felt a surge of anger as a professional butcher.

Impaling from behind through the mouth? How tasteless. It would cause poop and pee to splash into the body cavity, along with other fluids from the organs. That would taint the meat with a foul smell and make it spoil faster. There’s even a risk of food poisoning. I won’t forgive these amateur goblins for doing such a sloppy job. *Growl* That was the sound of my stomach. There’s still plenty of meat that looks edible. Damn it, it looks delicious. Since they’re already dead, I can have a little taste, right?

Amidst the sea of blood and guts, as I stood there trembling with a mixture of anger and hunger, I suddenly heard a small groan.