Chapter 306

"A human who ate the flesh of a jellyfish and a mermaid?" After hearing Abe Haruaki's story, Ashiya Hanae shuddered and subconsciously took a step back to avoid Abe Haruaki's sight and sought answers from Abe Harusai, "What kind of monster is a jellyfish? Is there really such a thing, Abe!"

"Wait a minute, if it's the flesh of a mermaid..." Abe Harusai frowned when he heard such a clear sign, "Then I should still remember this incident - although it happened before I became a servant of the Monster Temple."

"Eh? Is this really happening?!" Ashiya Hanae widened her eyes in surprise.

"Yes. Let's go to the scene of the incident through the Monster Temple first, and then I will explain this to you while looking for clues—" Abe Harusai wanted to take the lead and sneak into the Monster Temple, but when he turned around, he saw Maorongrong shivering at Ashiya Hanae's feet, "Huh? What's wrong, Maorong?"

"Maybe... the little furry ball was frightened by the topic just now as I was?" Asaya Hanae squatted down and held the furry ball in her arms, "After all, we are talking about the guy who eats monsters."

——No, unlike Ichiro Akagune, Maorong is trying to stay as far away from the monster who calls himself Hakusan as possible.

"Please let the client go in first, then Asaya and Maorongrong, then Miss Hakusan, and I will be the last one to go in and close the door." Abe Harusai calmly arranged the order for everyone to enter the Monster Temple, then threw the red fox directly into the door, and finally closed the door to indicate that the Monster Temple could move to another location, "Let's go to the scene to see if we can find any clues to the lost items."

Everyone once again passed through the small door of the tea room and arrived at the original scene of the incident.

"Strange, this scene doesn't look like something that could be caused by humans or monsters." Abe Haruaki frowned the moment he saw the scene, and synchronized the latest situation to other members through the communication channel between consciousnesses, "The monster part completely belongs to the client; the other part of the breath, although it should be remembered, does not belong to monsters or humans."

"Consider the phantom." Ritsuka Fujimaru, who was busy drawing up the Chaldea test sheet for the group of athletic boys in the club, gave a brief suggestion and immediately returned to the test.

Abe Haruaki, who was traveling alone, followed the trail in the opposite direction from the others and began to capture elements related to the phantom spirits. On the other hand, while searching for clues, he continued the previous ominous topic of humans eating monsters.

"…I said this happened before I became a servant of the Monster Hermitage because it happened long before I was born." Abe Harusai led the way deeper into the mountain and handed the flashlight to Ashiya Hanae. "We may have to search until late today, so I brought a flashlight with me. That incident happened almost 20 years ago."

"Twenty years ago?"

“It was even a big event that made the local news—if you go to the local library, you should be able to find newspapers from that time.”

"Huh?"

"A large-scale food poisoning case - a large family with many people died in one day and only a few people were left... It was a very evil incident." Abe Harusai closed his eyes, remembering the look on his face when the former head of the family, Aoi, warned him to stay away from certain dangerous people. "But there was no follow-up - not even a small food company was used as a scapegoat."

"Although it was food poisoning, the local government quickly seemed to have forgotten about it and did not prepare any measures to regulate the food industry - not even the customary press conference to apologize."

"That is to say—"

"Ah." Abe Harusai walked up the mountain with his hands in his pockets and gave Ashiya Hanae the answer, "So many people died in that family because they ate the flesh of monsters - the flesh of mermaids."

"But, I remember that legend has it that mermaid meat can make people immortal?" Ashiya Hanae stood beside Abe Harusai and began to feel the different auras. "How could so many people die? If they really ate mermaid meat, they wouldn't have ended up like this, right?"

"Then we have to talk about it." Abe Harusai looked around, picked up the red fox as a client, and took Ashiya Hanae to another road. "But before that, Ashiya, you have to know that most human desires are endless. It's rare to find a guy like you who can be satisfied so easily."

——It is a monster that can predict the future before death.

"In other words, what that family wants to obtain is the ability to predict the future?" Ashiya Hana frowned and came up with the answer based on the line of thought given by Abe Harusai.

"So when they first tried it, they only ate pieces of meat - although they didn't know where they got it from." The sky began to slowly darken, and Abe Harusai slowed down his pace and waited for Ashiya Hanae to turn on the flashlight to illuminate the road in front of them. "But the tribesmen who ate pieces of meat basically died on the spot - only a few tribesmen made words similar to prophecy, but they died soon after."

“Just like the real thing.”

"...But, the ability to predict the future comes with a price, right?" Ashiya Hanae simply adjusted the flashlight in her hand to illuminate a wider range of vision for everyone. "Normally speaking, even a monster can't avoid paying a price, right?"

"The ability to predict the future comes at the cost of death - and they can only predict a limited future." Abe Harusai answered Ashiya Hanae's question while tracing the clues he had discovered. "But such a result obviously cannot satisfy the family - they started the experiment of eating monsters many years earlier, and the food poisoning case was the only record of two successful cases."

"So, in order to solve the problem of sudden death after eating a piece of meat..." Asaya Hanae's eyes became empty, and the furry creature standing on his shoulder rubbed his cheek nervously, "Who in that family came up with the idea of ​​eating mermaid meat that would make people immortal?"

"...That's it." Abe Harusai smacked his lips and pushed aside the tall weeds in front of him. "It's just that the previous experiments basically ended in failure, and then they no longer considered this matter. It wasn't until 20 years ago that the plan was restarted... and it was directly successful."

"Although almost everyone in the family is dead."

"So, what Ms. Hakusan mentioned before - 'the existence of a natural enemy'." Ashiya Hanae followed Abe Harusai and stopped in front of the broken torii of an abandoned shrine. "Do all the monsters think so? Have the monsters seen the two survivors?"

"No, just think of it as an instinctive reaction. Even if it's the first time they meet, all the monsters will have an irrepressible fear of those two people." Abe Haruaki was about to step into the abandoned shrine, but he didn't expect that Abe Haruaki had already arrived here long before them, "no matter how powerful they are."

Acting alone, Abe Haruaki assumed the most pious attitude to communicate with heaven, exposing the white fox's tail and ears completely, and using this completely abandoned sorcerer's camp to search for traces of the phantom spirit. So in the eyes of the two people who had not yet stepped across the Torii, the halo that originally gently surrounded her exuded a more sacred and inviolable power, and it was more like a real god who had descended here than the monsters they were familiar with.

"I can detect the magical fluctuations similar to the phantoms in the subspecies feature point Shinjuku." Abe Haruaki opened his eyes and cut off the connection between himself and the heavens with an expressionless face. He exchanged information with several people at home, "But there is no accurate trace - Master, should I continue to follow the clues of the phantom, or should I just treat this as an ordinary lost object commission?"

"... Lord Haruaki, please come back for now." Fujimaru Ritsuka paused and made a judgment for the next action, "The phantom may be related to the Holy Grail, but at least there is no connection for the time being - and we haven't met the protagonists of the other main story, Iwanaga Kotoko and Sakuragawa Kuro."

"I think we should at least contact both sides before discussing the specific direction - just think of this as the "savior's intuition." "

"I think the difficulty of this mission shouldn't be very high, but the trouble lies in finding the Holy Grail. Just because Mash and I were able to spend two days in school safely, I think the most difficult part of this mission is not how to survive, but how to find the location of the Holy Grail."

"...I know." Abe Haruaki hid his white fox characteristics and, with a rare change of expression, picked up a wooden box that gave off a bad aura from the dusty table in the main hall. He turned around and asked the group of people from the Monster An standing outside the broken torii, "Is this what Ichiro is looking for?"

"...Ichiro, how did you get in touch with this thing?" Abe Harusai's face changed drastically when he saw the wooden box. He coldly held down the red fox that wanted to escape, and a red light flashed in his hand. He issued a verdict to the red fox, "If you don't tell me, I will take you to the hidden world to see the lawmaker and ask him to make a judgment on you."

"Eh? Abe!? What happened!?!"

"Sure enough, I'm not the only one who finds this strange. After all, the divine body 'God's Dirty Cast Body' is very important, but it's definitely not something that ordinary little monsters can touch." Abe Haruaki, who was holding the wooden box, looked indifferent. He walked to the two of them calmly and used one hand to extinguish the red light in Abe Harusai's hand. "But, young man, you still have to learn to control your strength. If you keep going like this, you'll kill it before it can tell you the answer."

"Ms. Hakusan!" Ashiya Hanae hurriedly caught the wooden box thrown by Abe Haruaki. When he looked up, he saw that the white-haired monster had turned into a phantom in his eyes, "That——"

"I'll leave this thing to you for safekeeping. What happens next has nothing to do with me." Abe Haruaki used Yin Yang Jutsu to completely hide his figure, followed the magic supply route of the Servant Contract, left the scene, and quickly returned home. "I'm back, Master - how was the club activity today?"

Abe Harusai and Ashiya Hanae, who were originally left behind by Abe Haruaki, went directly to the Hidden World through the Hidden World Gate, and took the red fox straight to the salamander pond where Legislative was - but before telling Legislative about the red fox Ichiro, Abe Harusai asked Legislative a question that had nothing to do with it.

"The power of 'Awe' - do you know anyone who can use it to emit white light?"