Catato Patch 

The crowd watched him attentively as he butchered the Large Toad. Assisting Mr. Sheik in the work were his apprentices Ms. Rose and Mr. Arnel. With the Large Toad turned face up, Mr. Sheik entered the side of its stomach with his knife. He struck, and with what sounded like fibers being cut, blood poured out of the point where the knife had entered. He slid the knife horizontally and gooey viscera spilled out of the opening.

 

Was this its guts?

 

Mr. Sheik moved unhesitatingly as he moved the blade further up and made another cut. And just like that, the Large Toad’s belly opened, gracing us with its gigantic stomach.

 

What could make a frog’s stomach swell so much like this?

 

I doubted what my eyes were telling me, seeing such a huge stomach.

 

With the deft handling of his blade, Mr. Sheik made a thin incision into its stomach. The stomach opened and an awkwardly shaped lump of flesh flopped out. The flesh was already in the process of being digested; its entire body had collapsed to the point where I couldn’t tell what it originally was.

 

A human?.....I questioned myself….I couldn’t see it like that. No….I felt it.

 

Mr. Hansel brought a hand to his lips and furrowed his brow. “I can’t tell what this is.”

 

“If you use your appraisal magic, won’t you be able to discover what it is?” Mr. Sheik asked, looking at me.

 

That’s right. This is what I do!

 

I stared hard at the lump of flesh in front of me, just one step away. I absolutely didn’t want to look straight at it, but...it was inevitable. I took a deep breath and began activating my appraisal magic.

 

{Appraiser’s Sight}

 

[Sheep Carcass]

 

The digested remains of a sheep carcass.

 

“It looks to be a sheep.”

 

“A sheep?...”

 

The air whooshed out of their noses as the men let out a deep sigh of relief.

 

“So it wasn’t this bastard?”

 

“The circumstances seem that way.”

 

Mr. Hansel looked at the man and inquired, “What’s the reason you’re looking for a Large Toad that eats people? The adventurer’s guild is willing to cooperate depending on the situation.”

 

“I received a request from an aristocrat, contracting me to slay a man-eating frog,” the man narrated as he stared at the monster. “It seems that the client’s beloved daughter was attacked by a Large Toad. He ordered to have the beast hunted down, no matter what the means, and to rescue his daughter.”