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Farewell to the hero! chapter 39

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Owen’s eyes darkened as if sinking into the depths after hearing my casual suggestion.

After a brief silence, he asked, “What do you mean?”

“Hmm.”

Before answering Owen’s question, I took a moment to gather my tangled thoughts.

I connected the scattered puzzle pieces filling my head into a single picture.

It took some time to express what was only vaguely clear to me in coherent words.

I wondered how to explain it so that my hypothesis would sound convincing.

After all, this was a gamble based solely on intuition.

Unlike humans, monsters were known to act purely on basic instincts such as hunger and greed.

The Mother was one such creature.

However, the Mother differed from typical monsters in that he wasn’t solely driven by hunger and greed.

Rather, he reproduced on his own, gave birth, and protected his offspring until they fully matured, living a seemingly noble existence.

But if his offspring were so precious, there was no reason for his to produce only one offspring per generation, and all of them female.

If his “offspring” were truly that precious.

Dismissing it as mere instinct felt too coincidental.

This made me curious.

Was the Mother really protecting his offspring out of maternal instinct?

Or was it something else masquerading as maternal love?

Kaak!

A bone-chilling cry snapped me out of my thoughts.

“…….”

Returning to reality, I turned toward the direction of the sound.

There was the Mother, his once-severed tongue now writhing more viciously than before, ready to charge at Kaindel.

Even his severed wing feathers had regrown, and he was back in an attack stance.

The Mother’s recovery abilities were indeed as unbelievable as they said, even among higher-ranked monsters.

I raised my gaze further.

And then, as I stared at the Mother’s forehead, surrounded by blood-red eyes, I spoke.

“Bird-type monsters usually have a core located in their forehead.”

Jerome had once explained the characteristics of different monsters to me.

Bird-type monsters, he said, protect the core in their foreheads during hunts by hardening the skin around that area.

According to Jerome, it would take over a hundred strikes with a pickaxe to break the core.

That’s why encountering a bird-type monster was considered bad luck, as Jerome put it.

However, nothing particularly stood out on the Mother’s forehead.

The skin on his forehead wasn’t noticeably thicker than the rest of his body.

In fact, it was so unremarkable that I only remembered the core’s typical location after recalling that most bird-type monsters had it in their forehead.

If the skin on his forehead could be pierced in a single blow, he should have instinctively protected it somehow.

But the Mother didn’t.

Instead, he exposed his forehead to Kaindel, as if daring him to try stabbing it.

That struck me as suspicious.

As if sensing my sudden shift in conversation, Owen, who had been silently observing, gave a slight nod, habitually offering a correction.

“That’s right. To be precise, it’s located between the eyes.”

“But the Mother’s forehead is completely unguarded.”

I averted my gaze from the Mother and glanced at Owen.

His blue eyes, silent and deep in thought, flickered faintly as if pieces of a puzzle were falling into place.

After a moment, he let out a quiet sigh, his lips moving as if to say something but ultimately staying silent.

It seemed that he, too, had realized the flaw in the Mother’s defenses.

“……Indeed. If that was his core, he should at least be trying to protect it.”

“Right. While it’s true that Kaindel isn’t directly targeting his forehead, if his core were there, she’d surely react to Kaindel’s sword somehow.”

“Or maybe she’s just confident that Kaindel’s sword isn’t a real threat, and that’s why she’s leaving it exposed.”

“But if that were the case, wouldn’t the Mother be acting far more relaxed?”

Owen’s suggestion made sense, but if Kaindel was truly that insignificant, the Mother should have been toying with him like a cat with a mouse trapped in a corner.

She shouldn’t be struggling like this.

I continued observing the Mother, who was focused entirely on Kaindel.

Despite how long this had been going on, the Mother remained fixated solely on him.

His six eyes were locked onto a single prey without any deviation.

There was a subtle sense of urgency in his gaze.

Kaindel adjusted his stance and swung his sword diagonally toward the Mother.

From my vantage point, it looked like he was just slicing through the air, but his strike was precise.

As he retracted his sword, a chunk of flesh was severed from the Mother’s lower wing.

Kaaak!

The Mother let out a pained scream as he suffered a deep wound.

The flesh chunks that fell onto the blackened ground squirmed like larvae, crawling toward each other and merging into a grotesque form.

The resulting mass resembled a crude bird, without eyes or a tongue, but eerily similar to the Mother.

Kaindel’s expression hardened, as though he hadn’t anticipated the separated flesh coming together like this.

His twisted lips suggested a bitter smile.

This is getting annoying, he muttered softly.

Watching the sword marks on the ground fade quickly, Kaindel blocked the small bird’s sudden attack with his sword.

His shirt was torn at the side from a slightly delayed response, but he didn’t seem to care.

He quickly adjusted the direction of his sword and thrust it downward at a right angle.

Then he pressed the writhing pieces of flesh under his foot, grinding them into the ground.

As a result, acrid smoke rose like snuffed-out steam, and the flesh stopped moving, sinking into the blackened earth.

“However, Isa, the Mother isn’t protecting any part of his body right now. There’s no way a monster wouldn’t have a core. If the Mother doesn’t have a core in his body, then where could it be… Could it be?”

Owen’s eyes widened as he scanned the Mother from head to toe.

Meanwhile, the Mother slammed his foot into the ground with a thunderous noise, aiming directly for Kaindel’s arm.

Kaindel narrowly avoided the swift attack and extended his left leg diagonally.

He then pulled the hilt of his sword backward as if gathering strength into his arm.

The tip of his sword was now aimed at the Mother’s forehead.

It seemed like he was planning to drive his sword into what he suspected was the core.

Until now, his face had shown a clear enjoyment of the battle, but now it had stiffened.

It appeared that he had finally realized the drawn-out fight was turning against him.

Unlike the Mother, who could regenerate endlessly, Kaindel, as a human, had limited stamina.

Moreover, with the flesh pieces that had separated from the Mother still attacking as if they had a will of their own, the situation had become increasingly difficult.

His hand gripping the sword trembled slightly.

The bulging veins on the back of his hand hinted at the strength he was exerting.

At that moment, he thrust his sword forward, but the Mother lowered his body and flapped his wings in resistance.

As a result, the sword missed his forehead and grazed a couple of his blood-red eyes instead.

The eyes, sacrificed in place of his forehead, split open hideously, oozing purple liquid.

Kaaak, Kaaak.

The eyes didn’t regenerate as quickly as his tongue, and the Mother’s moment of hesitation grew longer.

I watched the Mother’s struggling figure and Kaindel, who was hidden and revealed alternately by his massive wings.

“The Mother is known for having a strong maternal instinct. That’s why he builds his nest in a hidden place and protects his offspring.”

People believed that the Mother’s behavior of tirelessly guarding his offspring was due to maternal love.

They were convinced that the Mother loved his offspring and protected them because of it.

After all, a monster that otherwise only cared about basic urges couldn’t possibly be so dedicated to its young unless it was due to maternal instinct.

Maternal love.

I rolled the awkward word around in my mouth.

Was it because I had never experienced it myself?

There were even those who justified the Mother’s killings as an act of maternal love, but I couldn’t quite understand.

If that was noble, just how noble was it?

I couldn’t say.

But still…

Random thoughts endlessly tangled, one after another.

The more I chewed over my conclusion, the drier my mouth became.

For some reason, my mind was restless.

Even though I knew well that what

I believed was right, something kept bothering me.

Something felt guilty.

But this too was beyond my understanding.

“I’ve heard that monsters are most vulnerable to external threats during the first year after they’re born. So, I wondered—if Mother’s maternal instincts are so strong, how would he want to protect his offspring when they’re at their most vulnerable?”

Monsters only protect themselves.

More specifically, they protect their core.

So even if Mother was devoted to his children, he would first have to ensure his own safety.

Yet, Mother had only one thing he was protecting.

This made things clear.

“Are you suggesting that the core is in the nest?”

“No, in the children.”

As soon as I spoke, Kayndel, who had been facing Mother, turned and swiftly thrust his sword.

It was a perfect strike while Mother’s vision was obstructed.

The sword pierced deep into Mother’s forehead.

“Mother’s core… it’s likely in the eggs, right?”

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Comment

  1. DMV-Lychee says:

    Issac is contributing a lot to the heroes group already, the audacity of Kayndel to not credit him.

  2. Misachan says:

    Ok ok

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