Ring Ring 45

“Ook!”

I saw a small baby monkey around thirty-centimeters tall. He had whitish fluffy fur except for his hands, feet, tip of tail, and face, where the color switched to pitch-black. Sort of like a panda.

I think Earth had monkeys with similar colors too. This one, however, was looking a lot more like a stuffed animal than an actual living one, with his beady blue eyes and soft downy fur.

The ball of fluff was sitting on a table, looking at me. What was he doing here? Was he merchandise to be sold? I thought he was a monster… wait a minute… he’s not a monster player, right?

“…” I gave him a mild glare.

“Ook!”

The baby monkey shook his head, as if to say “no way!”

What was up with him? I wondered. Then he slapped his hand a few times on… oh. There was a thin chain anchoring his leg to the table.

“…you want me to cut it?”

“Oook!”

He seemed awfully used to humans. Had he been a pet before? But then again, he was trying to escape…

So he really was just a normal monkey monster…

“Oook!”

Seeing me still cautious, he pulled out a mini-banana.

“What? You’ll give it to me if I cut the chain?”

“Ook!”

“Wait, no, another banana wouldn’t… Blobsy?!”

The little slime bounced on the table. The monkey handed over his bananas, and Blobsy happily took them.

Did he just bribe her?!

“Okay, fine… Hey, do you know where they keep the really bad drugs?” I asked without much expectations.

“Ook!” He confidently pounded his chest, seemingly to say “leave it to me!”

“Ook!”

I cut his leg manacles with my fingers. He began guiding me through the storehouse with his newfound freedom.

“Ook!”

“No, I don’t need coffee.”

“Ook!”

“Not the strongbox, either… but maybe might as well…”

Did he really understand where I wanted to go, here…?

I couldn’t keep calling him ‘him’ all the time… let’s see… he kind of looked like a panda with his colors, so let’s call him Panda.

Panda (provisional name) led me everywhere, from the leisure room to the offices. Then we came to a caged aquarium.

“Is something here?”

“Ook!”

So here was where the mafia kept some other kind of monster as pets like they did this little guy, then? As I peered into the water, I heard a voice from inside.

“…Is someone there?”

There was a small girl with dark blue hair inside the water. She had a fish’s tail from her waist down.

“…a mermaid?”

“Who are you, miss?”

Turned out they weren’t keeping a monster. They were keeping an aquatic demihuman. I showed my rabbit ears to calm her down, and we started talking. According to her, the population of merfolk demihumans had sharply decreased due to human hunters. Now, the only home the merfolks had were the region around the island to the west of Wartos.

Even that island had a small country named Lontrois. Their main industry was fishing (normal fish), and capture and export of merfolks. This girl had, unfortunately, been caught in a net, then sold to Wartos.

She had stayed here for a while. If the mafia hadn’t been careful when talking around her, she might even know where they kept the drugs. And when I asked her, it turned out she really did.

“…can you go home from a river?”

“Yeah! I’m really good at swimming!”

“Ook!”

“Did he wanted me to save the girl too…?” I muttered.

Well, coincidence or not, the important thing was that I knew where the dangerous drugs were now. I asked the mermaid girl to see if she knew anything about Panda. She said he was a type of monster called a Monochrome Monkey. Very smart. Could do quite a lot of things, including acting as lookouts.

I wrapped a spare cloak around the mermaid girl, carried her from the warehouse district, and released her into a large river that directly connected to the sea.

“Thank you, miss rabbit! Come play with me some time!”

“Sure.”

She waved, then dove under the water surface, disappearing from my sight.

Yeah… I’ll come see you soon. I needed to destroy that country’s Sapling too, anyway.

“Ook!”

*bounce*

“Yeah, that was a nice thing I did, wasn’t it?”

Now let’s do something bad.