"This is rough… It really does look just like an ant nest."
Rest, Isis, and Urla pressed deeper into the tunnels, heading for the centipede queen — but unfortunately, the holes didn't lead straight to her in one clean path.
At first the tunnels had been straightforward, but gradually the paths grew more and more tangled, with countless branching passages splitting off in every direction.
These hadn't been dug by humans. The centipedes had carved them out.
They thought they were heading toward the queen, only to drift further away — then just when they felt they'd strayed too far, they'd find themselves drawing closer again, only to wander off once more without realizing it.
They relied on orbs of light conjured through magic to navigate, but they couldn't seem to reach their destination no matter how far they went.
"Presence detection can pick up living creatures, but it can't read the structure of the tunnels or the terrain itself… This is going to be a tougher job than I expected."
"Dig… hole?"
"Don't even think about it. We can't risk a collapse."
Urla raised her hand eagerly and made her case, but Isis shot the idea down.
Digging with magic was certainly possible here too, but tunneling carelessly could trigger a cave-in.
"SHARARARARARARARARARARARARA!"
"Nothing but fodder centipedes, huh… What a pain."
Rest slammed a blade of water into the centipede that emerged from the darkness.
He'd already taken down more than fifty, but the centipedes showed no sign of thinning out.
Just how many of them were there, exactly? There really didn't seem to be any way to eliminate them other than killing the queen.
"But… presence detection can't map the route to the queen. All it can tell me is the general direction…"
This was going to take far longer than he'd anticipated.
As he stood there, wondering what to do… Urla conjured water with her magic.
"[Water Manipulation]"
"Urla?"
"Is something wrong?"
"Water, flow."
Rest and Isis asked, but Urla answered in curt phrases while producing water. She simply kept pouring water into the passage with a steady splash.
"Oh… so that's what you're doing!"
It was Isis who caught on first.
She, too, began producing water and pouring it into the passage.
"Isis, too… Don't tell me you're trying to flood the centipede nest? Surely that's got to be impossible…?"
Children sometimes playfully pour water into ant hills to flood them.
Rest had never done it himself… but in his past life, he'd seen classmates doing exactly that.
"Flooding a nest this big has got to be impossible, and if we're not careful, it could even affect the surface…"
"No, that's not it. It's this water—the water conjured with magic."
"The water… Oh, right!"
With Isis's explanation, Rest finally realized.
"[Water Manipulation]!"
Rest, too, produced a massive amount of water and sprayed it into the side passage.
The water flowed into the hole and deeper still, pouring from one side passage into another, and then into yet another.
[Presence Detection] And then... when I cast the mana-probing spell, the structure of the nest rose up in my mind.
The water I'd created with magic naturally contained mana. By probing it with a spell, I could pinpoint its exact location.
By flooding the nest with that water, I could map out the entire structure using the mana embedded within it.
"That's brilliant... What a clever idea. Not bad at all, Urla."
"Mhm, praise me more."
Urla said smugly, jerking her head toward Rest.
When Rest blinked without understanding, she kept nudging her head closer and closer.
"Pet me."
"Oh... I see. Sure, why not."
Rest placed his hand on the purple head that kept pressing toward him and gently stroked it.
"There, there. Good girl, good girl..."
"Mmm..."
A blissful murmur escaped Urla's lips.
He could feel her slender shoulders trembling in tiny, shuddering waves.
As he stroked the head of the girl who seemed utterly overcome with emotion, Rest thought to himself.
*Am I... doing something really weird here?* It felt like he was doing all sorts of outrageous things.
Even if she was a child, she was still a girl who wasn't his family or relative, and he was petting her head.
*Come to think of it... there was also that promise about giving her a present, wasn't there? Giving the same kind of gift you'd give a fiancée to some other girl is pretty much crossing the line, isn't it?* Since being reincarnated into another world, so many outrageous things had happened that he felt like his ability to judge right from wrong had gone completely numb.
It was probably because a beautiful girl had been aggressively throwing herself at him — sharing a bed, bathing together, and all that.
*(But that still didn't mean he could just go back on his promise now... It felt like he'd been strolling down what he thought was a pleasant picnic path, only to realize the whole thing was a minefield.)* "Muu... how enviable. Could I have some too, perhaps...?"
Isis was mumbling something beside him, but Rest kept stroking Urla's head, all the while being struck by a mysterious sense of danger.