第310話 Digging Rabbit
The collapsed Power Supply Tower.
What was discovered at its destroyed foundation was a small rabbit.
“…A rabbit.”
“Yes, Onee-sama! It seems to be a relatively common monster! In the local language, it’s called a Digging Rabbit, or in our terms, a ＜Digging Rabbit＞!”
Asahi shouted this with high excitement in front of the rabbit placed in a metal cage.
The rabbit flinched and huddled in the corner of the cage.
“Asahi, keep your voice down. You’re scaring it.”
“Oops, my apologies. Well, rabbits are naturally timid creatures, so it can’t be helped!”
“No, it’s just that you’re being too loud.”
This ＜Digging Rabbit＞ seems to be a rather small monster. According to information gathered in North End City, an exploration base of the Afrasia United Kingdom, it’s almost the smallest class of monster.
It widely inhabits the Demon Forest and can be seen almost anywhere.
And the characteristic of this monster is its outstanding digging ability.
It lives by digging holes, and its food consists of tree bark and roots.
Apparently, it had been hiding underground when the land clearing by ＜The Tree＞ began.
The truth was that it used its absurd (fantasy) ability to break through the foundation structure that was built right next to it.
“It seems there’s a mysterious buff applied to the act of digging! We’ve also observed numerical values indicating that its forelegs are strengthened!”
“…We need to redesign the structure… I found many mechanical weaknesses in the foundation…”
“Oh… Well, we don’t really think about the foundation being directly attacked…”
While stroking Olive’s head to comfort her disappointment, Eve also made a troubled face.
“I was careless because there were no sightings of Threat Creatures like Worms. I didn’t expect monsters to be lurking underground.”
“I’ve modified the underground exploration analysis algorithm, so this Digging Rabbit is now almost detectable! But there may be other similar monsters, so we need to proceed with caution!”
The exploration of the base has already been completed. Apparently, 14 Digging Rabbits were found that were either hiding underground or buried during the land clearing.
If they had continued construction as is, the structure might have collapsed again.
“For now, we’ve secured a few as samples. The rest have been exterminated and sent for investigation! Well, it seems like we’ll be dealing with these kinds of monsters for a while!”
They stumbled early in their advance, but managed to get through it somehow. The clearing, including underground, is complete, and the forward base is steadily nearing completion.
“Also, about the matter of the scout units being hunted…”
“Yes, Onee-sama. It seems that attacks by monsters called Climbing Wolves or Forest Bears are occurring. It’s happening as soon as we cross the Black Monkey’s Territory, so the Demon Forest is truly teeming with monsters.”
The Climbing Wolf is a type of monster adapted to the environment of the dense trees in the Demon Forest. It primarily hunts animals and monsters in the trees and makes its nests on the ground.
The trees in the Demon Forest are generally large. This is because they absorb factors other than sunlight, probably Maso or something similar, and grow. The sunlight reaching the ground is suppressed by the spread-out leaves, but the trees still grow upwards.
However, it seems that an environment with almost no sunlight is harsh, and only plants that can grow tall are seen.
In that sense, there are actually few plants near the ground, and there are only intricately intertwined roots and branches and trunks that twist and turn upwards.
And because of this environment, most animals and monsters have moved their habitats to the trees.
The Forest Bear also mainly lives in the trees. However, since it’s quite large, it often moves on the ground as well.
“Wolves and bears, huh? It seems the Black Monkeys were also being preyed upon…”
“Climbing Wolves and Forest Bears don’t eat Jumpers. It seems they’re being intercepted when they enter their Territory.”
Climbing Wolves seem to hunt Jumpers by cornering them in packs.
Forest Bears are simply chasing and destroying them. Their mobility seems to be very high.
“Hmm… I understand that this is a phase where we’re gathering information regardless of losses, but the attrition rate is too high to ignore…”
“There have also been cases of Backbackers being attacked. If we advance any further, we’ve determined that the entire scout team, including the Backbackers, could be wiped out.”
“I see.”
Then, it seems that their attack power and defense are fundamentally insufficient.
With the units they’re currently using, it’s difficult to advance any further.
To solve this, they need to develop even more powerful units, or perhaps…
“Perhaps we have no choice but to seriously cooperate with those Chimyera Clan…”
Eve decided.
“At least, it’s difficult to mass-produce units with that level of defense and attack power in human sizes.”
“Yes, Ma’am. With the current technology level, and considering operation on an Earth-like planet, we would need to raise it by several more levels.”
“That requires some kind of breakthrough… We’re clearing the resource problem, but we need either high-performance material manufacturing equipment or a molecular synthesizer, or something like that.”
The manufacturing equipment currently operated by ＜The Tree＞ cannot realize advanced technologies such as improving the strength of the materials themselves.
There’s a shortage of materials for building the equipment, but the bottleneck is the energy source.
To use high-level equipment such as molecular synthesizers or atomic conversion furnaces regularly, a huge amount of energy is required. To cover that on a planet, there are various risks involved.
For example, a reduction furnace has a micro black hole inside. If an accident occurs, it would be good if it only resulted in a large explosion involving the surrounding tens of kilometers. In the worst case, there’s a possibility of black hole-izing the star system.
In the first place, there was a risk of it exploding because the energy it produced was too enormous to consume.
They want to build such powerful but difficult-to-handle equipment in interplanetary space where nothing exists for at least several thousand kilometers around.
And it’s naturally very difficult to prepare on a planet what can only be made with such equipment.
In other words, they’re not in a situation where they can mass-produce automatic machines with higher performance than the current ones.
“Well, that comes with the caveat that it’s as far as our scientific and technological system goes!”
The Chimyera Clan demonstrate abilities equal to or greater than units that require preparation including such an environment.
“The fact that it takes at least 14 years to raise them is a bottleneck, but well, if we’re using what we already have, we don’t need to worry about it!”
“Rather, there’s know-how that can be prepared in 14 years…”
In the Prawa Theocracy, they selected born citizens at a certain age, gathered individuals who met the standards, trained them, and used them as Warrior Monks. The department that actually did this seems to have been wiped out in the Theocracy invasion war, but the Chimyera Clan also had some information that made it possible to some extent.
“They’ve become very cooperative after seeing our power and actual actions! They should fully cooperate, but only as long as our goals align!”
Apparently, the Chimyera Clan visited the forward base developed by ＜The Tree＞ and were very impressed.
Even if they made a base on the front line, it had been difficult because personnel were taken to defend it. The fact that automatic machines that don’t need to consider human losses can replace that was apparently very groundbreaking.
Digging Rabbit-chan is everyone’s food (violent theory)
It’s fun to think about the food chain. The problem is that the plant (Trent), which should be at the very bottom, turns into a predator.
What are you going to do about it…?