The beast tamer exiled from the hero’s party and the cat eared girl from the strongest race meet
"Long time no see, Mona. Have you been well?"
"W-Wh-Wh-Why is Al here!?"
Mona was visibly shaken...
Then she noticed the rest of us behind her and let out a strange little noise like, "Pugya."
"You guys too... w-why?"
"Now then, why might that be?"
"D-Don't tell me you tracked me down... no, wait, were you letting me roam free on purpose? So you could crush my research...?"
Apparently misunderstanding something, Mona's face turned pale with terror.
There was no way we could tell her.
That there happened to be a Cat Spirit Tribe village nearby, and this was all just coincidence.
"First of all..."
"Uwah!?"
I used Aegis to fire out a wire and captured Mona.
What was she doing here?
What was her objective?
We were going to make her tell us everything.
"Sorry, but I can't let myself get captured, you know?"
"What!?"
Mona's body suddenly melted into sludge...
Then, after slipping out of the wire restraint, it reformed itself.
We already knew she possessed transformation abilities, but to think she could do something like this too...
What a troublesome opponent.
If possible, we wanted to capture her and interrogate her thoroughly, but that was starting to seem difficult.
"You should just give up on capturing me, okay? Hehe."
"Oh? Then I suppose we have no choice but to erase you here and now."
"...Huh?"
"Isn't that obvious? Capturing you is impossible, but we cannot allow you to escape either. In that case, the best solution is to defeat you here, would you not agree?"
Al-san wore an extremely wicked grin.
At this point, it was hard to tell who the villain really was.
"U-Um... i-if you quietly let me go, maybe I'll come back later to repay the favor... perhaps?"
"You're not the kind of person who would do that. Here we go!"
"Yeah!"
Kanade and I moved first.
We kicked off the ground hard and instantly closed the distance between ourselves and Mona.
"Ahaha, charging straight at me so honestly? You really haven't grown at all."
Laughing, Mona placed her hand against the ground.
Her fingertips transformed into spears and traveled underground...
Then countless spikes burst forth like bamboo shoots, aiming to pierce Kanade and me.
But we had already anticipated this.
"Mmh."
With Nina's support, Kanade and I teleported sideways.
We trusted that she would do exactly that, which was why we deliberately charged straight in without taking any evasive action ourselves.
"Wha!?"
We trapped the shaken Mona between us from both sides.
"Hah!"
"Nyaa!"
"Take this!"
Mona transformed both of her hands into shields and blocked our punches.
But that wasn't enough.
We didn't stop after a single strike and continued hammering blows into her.
Kanade alternated between punches and kicks, unleashing a relentless assault like a raging storm.
"Ugh, guh...!? Th-this might actually be bad...!?"
"Sorry, but you'll have to prepare yourself to lose an arm or two!"
"N-Now, now, calm down. I don't intend to fight you guys this time..."
"We have every reason to fight you!"
She had done terrible things to Kuu's mother.
She had made Nina and Kuu suffer.
There was no way we could let the one responsible walk free.
"Exactly so. Give up already."
Al-san had moved directly above Mona before anyone noticed.
"W-What!? Since when did you get there...!? I see! That fox girl's power!?"
"Correct. Blue Cocytus."
Kanade and I stopped our barrage and jumped backward simultaneously.
The next instant, Al-san's supreme-tier magic erupted.
A localized blizzard raged violently, turning the entire world white.
A world of absolute zero.
As though refusing to permit any living thing to exist within it, the spell froze Mona solid in an instant.
"And there we go. Restraint complete."
"Uwaaah..."
The attack was so utterly brutal that Kanade and I instinctively recoiled.
Freezing someone's entire body solid...
Wasn't that basically an instant-kill move?
At the very least, I couldn't think of any way to resist it.
"Is it... over?"
Still wary, Nina stared at the frozen Mona.
"Indeed, it is. Even for Mona, escaping from this state through her own power is impossible. Next, we'll place a seal on her and take her back to the village. After that comes the long-awaited interrogation time."
"Al-san, you seem awfully lively all of a sudden."
"Shh, don't say that."
Al-san looked incredibly excited when she mentioned interrogation.
But pointing that out might end up bringing some strange disaster upon us instead.
"Anyway, let's do as Al-san says and— Nina!"
"Fweh?"
Sensing bloodlust, I rushed toward Nina.
I scooped up her small body protectively and—
"Gravity Reversal!"
Using the power I gained through my contract with Tina, I escaped into the air.
The very next instant, gigantic monsters came charging through, shaking the earth itself.
And there wasn't just one.
Dozens of them appeared from seemingly nowhere...
Crash!
One of the monsters shattered the frozen Mona into pieces.
"Ah!?"
By the time we realized what had happened, it was already too late.
We had lost our valuable prisoner.
...Or so we thought.
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