Chapter 9 - Glowing Moss

I put on my T-shirt and jacket, and stacked two fruits in my pocket.

Since I have two knives now, should I dual wield? Though in my opinion, dual wielding is not effective since it needs more coordination and exhausts you more.

Oh right, I can use one as a projectile. Let’s see how effective it is.

I threw a fruit up in the air, and then threw my old knife…

*cluck* It missed and got stuck in the ceiling, while the fruit plummeted to the ground.

“Ah…”

“Shindou-kun, why didn’t you just put the fruit on the ground? That way your knife won’t get stuck up there.”

“Because monsters won’t stay still, so I tried to test my accuracy by hitting something moving.”

To be honest, I just made that excuse up. I was thinking about how cool it will look to splatter that fruit in the air.

“And you wasted a knife…” Hey, stop giving me that disappointed look. It hurts.

“W- well, its durability was getting low anyway, and it seems like I’m not a good knife thrower.”

“... Shindou-kun, you really are a baka(idiot).”

I wonder how she can be so brazen with me now. She was controlled by fear and panic up until a few minutes ago, though it’s great she is cooperative.

“Alright, are you ready?” I asked.

She then checks inside her bag, a wallet… and a stun gun she used back then.

“Don’t you think that’s kinda cheating?”

“No, it’s a woman’s privilege… to protect myself?” She doubted her own words at the end there.

“Were you chased by some stalker or what?”

“I don’t remember, but that seems like a possibility.”

She’s indeed cute after all. Straight silky hair and her modest summer clothes, not to mention she wears no make ups. She looks seiso and attractive visually, yeah. Though she’s actually a bit cheeky.

“Shindou-kun!” She suddenly pulled my ear. “I wonder what you were thinking about me just now~?”

“Owowow! Stop it! My bad! I thought you are seiso and attractive!”

… her face got a little bit red again, but she won’t let go of my ear yet.

“And…?” she pressured me again… why’s she so sharp…

“You’re… a little bit cheeky–OWW! Stop pulling it harder!”

…

Sometimes after that, she finally let me go.

“Ah, I almost forgot.” I stocked some pebbles into her handbag. “Since you need at least to hit them in order to get some EXP.”

“... don’t you think this bag would be a good blunt weapon with this?”

“Swinging that heavy thing around will be exhausting, so that’s a bad idea.”

“I see…”

After we’re done with our preparation, we headed to Path A. She had trouble climbing up, so I lent my shoulder and she somehow managed to reach the edge.

Then, I climbed up too. We walked to the part where Glowing Moss was growing.

The corpses I had defeated were nowhere to be found. Seems like their durability was gone and they disappeared.

“I’ll try to lure a bat here, you wait here since it’s dark there.”

I can manage moving in the dark using [Appraisal] and [Night Vision] passive skills.

“Shindou-kun, we can use Glowing Moss, you know?”

“... huh?”

“This is the first thing I do when I wake up.”

She picked up a pebble and covered it with some moss. The pebble became a light source.

“Though it will only last about 15 minutes. Now that I think of it, I wonder what causes these things to wilt…”

The thought of scraping glowing moss and using them as a portable light source… never came to my mind.

Maybe because I got the skill [Appraisal] and [Night Vision] pretty early that I stopped thinking of other possibilities?

“Dang, I’ve done it again…” Short term thinking. “Yumemi, good job. Keep telling me more if you come up with something.”

“Huh…? … Okay.”

…

And so, we got deeper. I killed one and woke up a swarm. Just how many swarms existed in this path, bruh.

“Yumemi! Now!”

“Okay!” She threw pebbles covered with moss at my instruction, and those faint blue lights from the moss attached to the bats were helping me so much in tracking them.

I killed around 7 of them, and it seems like Yumemi got a lot of EXP.

“It got [x3] now…”

“We can still push further.” I accumulated the glowing moss covered pebbles and returned them to her bag. “Before it hits 15 minutes.”

“So our time limit was the glowing moss!?”

“Of course, you won’t be able to see anything after the light’s gone. Though we can stay in the dark for a few hours while waiting for you to get the passive skill [Night Vision].”

“... it’s certainly a good idea to learn that…”

And so, we used the same strategy and finished a swarm of 6 bats, and that makes her EXP Gauge filled by x4. Mine’s too since I didn’t choose to level up, aiming for the bonus the system offers.

We headed back back and stopped, stayed in the dark near the glowing moss for… only one hour and she got the skill.

Seems like knowing about the skill’s existence helps in acquiring the skill.

Seems like we should test some things when we’re back in the safe zone.