DAY 19: MORNING — LADY FINGER BOUDOIR

DAY 19

MORNING

Being called a Class Rep is the highest form of praise.

LADY FINGER BOUDOIR

 

ANOTHER UNFAMILIAR CEILING. It was the first time I could think that in ages. I really thought I’d go the rest of my life without making that Evangelion reference again! It really was an unfamiliar ceiling!

It wasn’t just an unfamiliar cave in some unfamiliar woods. It sure as hell wasn’t an unfamiliar high school girl—none of them were unfamiliar at this point. I didn’t care whether this place was called the Lady Finger Boudoir or the Laddy Flinger Boudoir, it had an authentic unfamiliar ceiling. I may have seen it before I went to sleep, but I think it was still unfamiliar enough when I woke up!

Seriously, how did it take me nearly twenty days to run into a new ceiling?

“At last, I’ve reached a town,” I said to myself. “Is this the completion of my quest? Game over? Credits roll?”

At that moment, Class Rep stepped into the room. “Good morning, Haruka-kun. I hope it’s not game over for you. Reaching a town wasn’t your goal in the first place, so I doubt you’ve completed your quest. Why do you phrase everything as a question, anyway?!”

Instead of a wake-up call, this inn offered a wake-up scold.

“Good morning, Class Rep,” I said. “You look very classy and representative today.”

“Why do you look like you think you paid me a big compliment? Don’t be smug. And stop calling me Class Rep already! We haven’t been in school for nearly three weeks!”

Apparently the Class Rep didn’t understand that I was giving her the highest form of praise possible, at least in my book.

“So, what’s up? Couldn’t wait for breakfast? Do you miss grilled mushrooms that much?”

“Why do you think I’m always looking for food? Are you? I came to talk, not eat!”

My mistake, she didn’t have the Gluttony skill after all. Maybe it was another one of her skills she…uh, never mind!

“We learned some things at the guild yesterday,” she said. “So…I need to tell you something. You should sit down for this, okay?”

She made it sound like I’d fall into a pit of despair when I heard the news.

“Oh, you heard about the level wall?”

“What? You knew?”

Yep, she just found out and was trying to find a gentle way to break it to me. No one wanted to be the bearer of bad news—they always rehearsed a million different scenarios in their head, trying to find the perfect way to deliver the truth. But I had to find out eventually, since the level wall was an unavoidable fact of this world.

All combat techniques required a minimum level in a relevant combat skill. If I was a sword fighter, for example, my Sword Mastery skill would need to be level 20 before I could learn basic techniques like Slash and Thrust. Of course, lacking those techniques didn’t prevent me from slashing and thrusting with a sword, but combat techniques were far more powerful than any regular attack.

That was the level wall. It was the real reason levels meant everything in this world—your level determined what techniques were available to you. High-level defensive combat techniques could completely neutralize any normal attack. It didn’t matter what my stats were, I’d still lose to a higher-level opponent.

Monsters knew combat techniques, and they never took prisoners. Without access to combat techniques, I was inevitably doomed. Game over.

That was why the Class Rep came here so early in the morning, looking so worried. Only she would be so caring and sensitive. That’s what made her the Class Rep. No one wanted to tell someone such bad news, but it had to be done. In matters of life and death, it was better to know. She knew I might have blamed her and even hated her, but she did the difficult thing anyway.

“That one old guy told me. You know, not the first old man or the second one, but the third guy—do you remember him?”

“Oh, you mean Guild Master Hakiess? Okay, you only know three old men, but you couldn’t remember any of their names or even that one of them is the guild master?”

“Thanks for trying to tell me about the level wall anyway, Class Rep. Did you lose sheep on my account?”

The Class Rep had dark circles under her eyes. She must have stayed up late thinking of ways to tell me.

“Lost sheep? Sheep have nothing to do with it! Sleep, not sheep!”

Huh? Don’t you count sheep when you have trouble sleeping? She looks like she kept losing count. I wonder how all the sheep are doing back in the real world.

Fish girl dropped by with breakfast—bread! How I missed bread! Sweet…rock-hard bread. Most rocks are softer than this.

“If it’s a world with bread, it’s a world with flour! Let’s go buy flour and never look back! And any other ingredients we can carry! It will all belong to me! All the food will be mine! Bwa ha ha!”

“All the food?” cried Fish Girl. “How did gnawing on that bread turn you into a megalomaniac?”

Was Fish Girl upset because I didn’t like the bread? If she really was raised by fish like she kept saying, no wonder she had strong feelings about hunks of bread.

“You’re homesick, aren’t you?” I said. “It’s okay, I feel you. Don’t worry. I’m sure your mom and dad are swimming merrily across the seven seas.”

“My mom and dad are not fish!”

Why was she admonishing me? She said they were fish, didn’t she? Maybe she meant that her parents were named Mr. and Mrs. Fish?! Sometimes the real world was more fanciful than a fantasy world.

“So, what’s our plan for the day?” I asked. “Heading out soon? Think we should stop by the guild? We should make a quick stop at the guild, yeah?”

If we wanted to go shopping, we’d need to go to the guild first, since I was totally broke.

“You make going to the guild sound like getting a morning coffee!”

“Well, I do remember seeing a sign on the wall advertising discount drinks. What if they have a café?”

It said drinks cost 100 eles on a sign, which meant that an ele was roughly equal to a yen. Maybe there were 100-ele shops? Definitely no bookstores, though…

Money was my first concern. I may have turned in a lot of F-class magic stones, but I doubted they were worth much.

It wasn’t like I needed to be rich. At level 9, I couldn’t even equip new weapons or armor—not even leather armor. And I didn’t want to become an adventurer in the first place. Should I just stay unemployed?

However, I was desperate for new food and kitchen supplies, especially spices! At least I had a seemingly limitless supply of salt. Just how much salt did Villager A buy?