by Okina Baba
The Divine Voice (temp.) pulls my mind back to reality.
Or maybe that’s just my new Fear Resistance skill skyrocketing in levels while I’m busy quivering.
At any rate, I have no idea how much time I’ve spent hiding.
Based on how much my skills have improved, I must’ve been concealing my breathing for a while.
I wonder if I could tell how much time passed by checking how much my stamina decreased, but for some reason, it hasn’t decreased at all.
I use Thread Control to pull the web off my body. Then I crawl out slowly from the pile of fiber.
The earth dragon isn’t around anymore.
I’m saved.
TRAINING
Katia and I were lazing around.
The two of us had been working out in the courtyard of the castle to try raising our skill levels.
Well, actually, there were three of us if you count Fei.
Anyway, we had finished for the moment and were resting in the garden, looking at the flowers.
“Ahh, that was tough. My magic-related stats are solid, but my physical stats still need some work.” Since Sue wasn’t around for once, Katia was speaking in Japanese today.
“Yeah. But still, we’ve got better reflexes than we had in our old lives, and it’s nice how much easier it is to improve with training.”
“Totally. It always seemed pointless when we had to run marathons at school and stuff, but every step you run here builds your stamina.”
In this world, both skills and stats only improve when you use them.
Since I couldn’t level up yet, the only way I could strengthen my stats was by training the old-fashioned way.
But that old-fashioned training was all you had to do to get stronger.
It was tough, but when you knew it would pay off, it was a lot easier to stay motivated.
“You may be a girl now, but you’re still boyish on the inside. Personally, I have no desire to work out so intensely.”
“You say that, but you’ve been working out, too.”
“Well, I hardly have much of a choice.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“Well, I suppose it’s not as immediate now that I’m no longer in that egg or freshly hatched, but I’m basically on the verge of death.”
“Huh? Since when? I had no idea.”
“Well, of course not. I never told you.”
“So what gives?”
“You know that I was found in a dungeon called the Great Elroe Labyrinth, right? Well, turns out I was in considerable danger at the time. Apparently, I was in a spider’s nest, and it nearly ate me.”
“Seriously?!”
“Seriously. But the spider ended up being some inferior species, so it couldn’t break through the shell and gave up.”
“Whoa, sounds like a close call.”
“You might’ve wound up dead before you were even born, then.”
“Right. Unlike in Japan, you can be killed at any moment in this world, so you’ve got no choice but to get as strong as you can. Besides, I have to evolve.”
Evolution occurs when a monster satisfies certain conditions, like reaching a particular level. Usually, it comes with a new appearance, better stats, and so on.
“You heard Ms. Anna, didn’t you? If I don’t evolve from this form within ten years or so, I’ll die.”
Fei’s current species was a monster called an Elroe kolift, which had a short life span.
In order to prolong her life, she had to evolve.
To that end, she had to defeat other monsters and raise her level.
And if she wanted to do that, she had to be stronger.
Unlike us, Fei had a very real need to become more powerful.
That was why she voluntarily participated in our training sessions.
“So? How’re you doing?”
“My Instantaneous, Persistent, Strength, and Solidity skills are all up to level eight.”
I was using the Appraisal Stone in my hand to check my status. It was a level 9, belonging to Katia’s family.
This item could be considered a national treasure, yet Katia casually borrowed it from her home. I had to wonder if the duke was all right with it, but since it was convenient, I decided to just be grateful and use it.
“Your skills sure go up quickly, man. Is it just a difference in natural talent or what?”
Katia seemed a bit frustrated.
Even though we were doing all the same things, I was gaining levels faster. In this world, anyone can get stronger with effort, but the speed of progress varies.
They say it’s due to a difference in talent.
“I mean, they’ve called me a prodigy in the duke’s family all my life. How can you be this much faster than me? You cheating bastard!”
“You should give me some of that talent, too.”
I avoided Katia’s and Fei’s envious gazes. It wasn’t like there was anything I could do…
Katia’s and Fei’s skills had strengthened steadily, too, but not as much as mine. For some reason, Fei had Fire Resistance and Petrification Resistance, so I was kind of jealous of that. But I figured she’d get mad if I said that, so I kept it to myself.
“By the way, have you used any skill points?”
“No, I kinda haven’t been able to commit yet, so I’ve still got ’em saved up.”
“Oh, I think I know what you mean. You want to keep them for when it really matters, right?”
Skill points can be used to acquire new skills or add to the proficiency level of the skills you already have.
Usually, people are born without any, but as a reincarnation bonus or something, Katia, Fei, and I’d had plenty of them since birth.
“You’ve got a hundred thousand points? You cheating, bourgeois bastard!”
“Hey, that’s even meaner than before!”
I really hadn’t gotten around to using them yet.
At first, I wanted to acquire magic skills, but Anna told me not to use magic, so I backed off. She probably didn’t realize I had skill points, but to take advantage of that and acquire the skills secretly would feel like a betrayal.
Since then, I just hadn’t felt like using them.
“Does that mean you two have used some of yours, then?”
“Just the hundred points it took to get Telepathy.”
“What about you, Katia?”
“…Only a thousand.”
If I remembered correctly, Katia had 50,000 points.
Given her behavior during the conversation, I had assumed she’d used them all up, but she’d barely touched them.
“What’d you get?”
“…I’m not telling.”
“What? Come on, just tell us.”
“…You promise not to laugh?”
“Yeah, I swear. What is it?”
“Oh, I’m ready to laugh, don’t worry.”
“Hey! Ugh, whatever. I got Appraisal, okay?”
I didn’t laugh, but I probably looked baffled.
Without thinking, I exchanged glances with Fei.
Appraisal is more or less the one skill you shouldn’t acquire.
If anything, I was really curious as to why he did it anyway.
“Why would you do that?”
“I couldn’t help it! Appraisal is a staple of reincarnation stories. It’s tough gathering info in a new world, right? So if this were a novel or something, the protagonist
would be super-good at Appraisal. I just wanted to do that, too…”
“But Appraisal is like the number one offender on the list of crappy skills. Why would you spend your points to get it, knowing that?”
“Listen, man, I didn’t know that at the time! I was still just a baby when I got that skill! You remember how hard it was not understanding anything, right? So of course I wanted to try and get more information. And as soon as I started thinking about Appraisal, the Word of God spoke to me! So of course I picked it up on impulse!”
Yeah, it made sense when he put it that way.
I did remember my anxiety when I was a clueless baby.
Not being able to understand what the people around me were saying stressed me out, too.
And since the Word of God spoke in Japanese, it’s only natural that you’d want to cling to that.
“So is Appraisal as bad as they say it is?”
“Yeah. It sucks. It’s totally worthless unless it’s a super-high level, I get a headache every time I use it, and as a bonus, you won’t get proficiency from Appraising the same thing twice unless you wait a long time in between, so it’s ludicrously hard to level up. I do my best to raise my proficiency whenever I have spare time, but I’m still only level four. It’s breakin’ my heart, man.”
Just hearing about it was irritating.
Still holding the Appraisal Stone, I re-Appraised my skill point field.
As soon as I did so, a list of available skills was displayed, along with the required skill points.
I looked through until I found the Appraisal skill.
“Oh, hey, I can get Appraisal for a hundred points.”
“What? For real?”
One hundred points is the lowest number needed to acquire any skill.
Skills that could be acquired for a cheap hundred points were either equally ineffective or particularly compatible with the user.
The fact that Katia had to use 1,000 points to get Appraisal proved that it wasn’t truly an ineffective skill.
Sure, it wasn’t very helpful at a low level, but it could be a major asset if raised high enough. My low price meant I was particularly compatible with the Appraisal skill.
After a moment of hesitation, I acquired Appraisal.
My remaining skill points went down to 99,900.
“I got Appraisal.”
“What? For real?” Katia repeated herself. “Well, don’t come crying to me if you regret it later.”
“Well, I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it. I’ve still got plenty of points, anyway.”
“Nobody likes a man without a plan, you know.”
For the time being, I decided to hang on to the rest of my points for a more important time.
CLEARING THE LOWER STRATUM
I survived.
I bask in the joy of this fact for a moment. I’m alive. What a wonderful thing.
At the same time, though, panic slowly overwhelms my heart.
What am I gonna do now?
My nest is ruined, completely beyond repair. I look at the site where the breath attack had hit.
There’s a huge crater in the wall there.
Ha-ha.
How strange.
Is it even possible to cave in a wall like that?
I thought craters were formed when meteorites or whatever crash into the ground.
So how am I looking at one on a vertical surface? It seems fairly deep, too.
How very strange.
Despite the fact that I’m standing around in a defenseless daze, the bees aren’t attacking me. Maybe the earth dragon freaked them out, too. I can’t blame them. That thing is a terror. I’m still scared, myself.
Really, what am I going to do now?
I could still try to break through the bees’ territory and return to the original passage.
As long as the earth dragon doesn’t come back, of course.
I was lucky to have survived this time. But if the same thing happens again, I doubt I’ll have the same fortune.
It’s like the dragon saw my nest as an annoyance and deliberately destroyed it.
In other words, if I make another one, it’ll probably just aggravate the monster even more.
In which case, that option is out of the question. I’m a little too afraid to do it, anyway.
My nerves are totally shot at this point.
The last thing I want to do is provoke the wrath of the earth dragon.
Of course, it’s possible that I’m misunderstanding and there’s no particular motivation behind the destruction of my nest.
Considering how powerful it is, though, it’s entirely possible that it was a calculated move.
But from the perspective of a weakling like me, the result was the same either way. If I run into the earth dragon, I’ll die. Simple as that.
I’ve successfully avoided death twice now.
Both times, I was extremely lucky. However, I don’t think luck was the only factor.
Is it possible that despite its overwhelming power, the dragon didn’t notice me hiding?
I think so. I want to think so, at least. Otherwise, I have nothing left to cling to.
My one and only means of survival.
Hiding, and somehow staying out of the way of the dragon and far from its territory. That’s the only way.
I can only rely on my Stealth skill.
When I got it, I didn’t think it’d be particularly useful, but now it’s my lifeline.
Its skill level is 5. To be honest, that makes me a little nervous, but I have no choice but to rely on it.
My mind is made up.
I look at the ground. The earth dragon left some magnificent footprints behind. My gaze follows them toward where the dragon was headed.
There’s a single large passage. So it’s somewhere down that way. Just thinking about it makes me nervous.
I head in the opposite direction.
Obviously. Who would go after a dragon by choice?
I don’t know where this path leads.
To be honest, it would probably be better to ignore my feelings and climb out of the hole, but that just isn’t possible.
All logic aside, my heart is completely against this course.
I proceed with caution, hiding myself as I go. If only I had a cardboard box, the ultimate stealth device.
Whew. Am I a little calmer now, maybe?
Come to think of it, my HP took a serious hit when I fell before, but now it’s completely recovered.
HP Auto-Recovery is awesome.
If only I’d used skill points for this instead of Detection.
But I managed to learn it of my own accord, so it worked out.
I was too frazzled to pay attention to it earlier, but I wonder how quickly it recovered.
Since my skill level is relatively low, it probably wasn’t all that fast, but it seems like it’d be able to take care of small injuries without a problem.
Other than that, I also notice that my red total stamina bar is still full.
Why is that?
This has never happened before, so I wonder if maybe something happened to make it stop decreasing, but I have no idea what that might be.
There isn’t a bug where it’s actually going down but isn’t displaying properly or something, is there?
It sure would suck to suddenly run out of stamina and be paralyzed or something.
But I believe in you, Appraisal! I know I can count on you to always have my back now! I believe in you, although when I think about your track record so far… No, I still totally believe in you! I think.
My Appraisal skill may be due for an upgrade, too.
It’s been a while since it last leveled up, after all, and I’ve been Appraising nonstop this whole time. Considering the giant leap forward when it hit level 6, I have high hopes for the next level-up, too.
Hopefully it will start displaying skills and stuff soon…
Not knowing the effects of some of my abilities
is a little inconvenient. And one of the skills I don’t understand may be able to help me out of this current situation.
That’s probably too much to hope for, but it’s a slight chance to improve things a little.
I’m willing to take any help I can get during these desperate times.
Maybe there’s a skill that can inform me about enemy locations or something?
If that’s possible, I could keep constant tabs on the dragon’s location while I traveled.
It’d be nice if I could use Detection, but that’s useless.
A map would be nice, too.
I have no idea whether this path will actually lead somewhere safe. I mean, it’s just as likely that it’ll take me somewhere even more dangerous.
In that case, well, I’ll probably die.
Anyway, for now, I have to trust in my luck, bad or otherwise.
Please, I’m begging you, let this path lead somewhere safe.
The path I’m traveling along is pretty big.
Big enough for the six-foot-long bees to fly around unhindered, as well as a fifteen-foot, giant praying mantis–like creature.
The giant mantis creature uses its sicklelike claws to intercept a swarm of bees. Unlike a normal praying mantis, this thing has six arms. It looks like an Asura demon.
The bees are trying to attack from the air, but they can’t get too close for fear of entering the range of the sickles, so the battle is at a bit of a stalemate.
I hide in the shadows of some rocks, observing the situation. Neither side has noticed my presence.
My Stealth is still working even better than I thought.
As I peek at them cautiously, I Appraise the species.
Oh, one of the bees got sliced in half.
Those things must be really sharp to bisect something with a single swipe like that. If they’re that strong, they may even be able to cut through my thread.
Well, it doesn’t seem to have noticed me, so I figure I’ll just scurry on by.
Wait, though.
There are some words in those Appraisal results I haven’t seen before.