Chapter 11: I Wanna Nibble on You

Chapter 11:
I Wanna Nibble on You

 

EMMA AND I returned to the Arrone Plains to complete our monster-eradication request. This time, it was large hares, a rabbit-type enemy. They didn’t normally appear on plains, but sometimes they wandered into the area. That’s when they became a problem. You see, when large hares found a nice area, they inevitably brought more of their kind and the population exploded. They were stronger than goblins and had a bottomless appetite for grass, so they were all kinds of trouble for the local wildlife. That’s why the kingdom commissioned requests like this one.

“I wonder where those hares are?”

“Why don’t we try over there?”

The plains were pretty big, and we didn’t know exactly where to find the hares. For a time, Emma and I just wandered about. Before we came across our quarry, we encountered two goblins.

“Garrr!”

They charged right at us.

“Here they come.” I took a defensive stance.

“I’ll take the right one!” Emma shouted.

Which left me the one on the left. It was Level 10…and a male. Goblins had two sexes, just like humans. You could immediately identify the males from the additional “appendage” between their legs. We still had the large hares to fight, so I decided to be more conservative in my approach.

I fired a Stone Bullet, one foot in diameter, right at the goblin’s crotch.

Direct hit! The creature shrieked and doubled over in pain. I dashed to close the distance and swung my sword to slice him clean in half.

Fwip!

Sure would’ve been cool if I’d managed it, but the creature’s skull was harder than I’d expected. My blade got stuck partway through its head. Great. At least it was dead. I’d be in real trouble if the other one came at me now, though.

“Gah!”

The other goblin screamed and flew past as Emma nailed it with Wind Strike. Once she’d knocked her enemy over, she stabbed it through the neck with her dagger. She didn’t even hesitate. But that wasn’t really surprising—she had way more combat experience than me. Meanwhile, I’d only reached my present level by defeating easy enemies like those golden slimes. Regardless, Emma had an incredible command of her daggers and skills.

“Wow, you beat yours faster than me…” she said, standing straight.

“Ha ha, I’m not so sure about that. Look at the pickle I’ve gotten myself into.”

It took a while to dislodge my sword from the goblin’s skull. When Emma wrapped her hands around the grip to help, a gentle breeze wafted a wonderful fragrance into my nose.

“Huh. Your hair smells nice.”

“What?! Wh-where’s this coming from all of a sudden?”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean anything weird by it. The soap you use must be high quality.”

“Umm, I guess? Do you not use soap?”

“Well, we don’t have any soap at home. If we did, it wouldn’t be long before my father sold it off.”

“Your dad…”

Alice and my mother got on his case about that the other day. He ended up getting on his hands and knees and apologizing, but enough about my family. Sniffing someone else’s hair did have a bit of a perverse overtone to it, but I had a secret weapon—I just had to say it was cool because we were best friends and Emma would accept it.

“Are you serious?” she asked.

“Of course I am. Anyway, I kind of need this.”

“Well, I don’t mind, really… But I want you to explain why. You’ve been hiding something, haven’t you?”

I probably should’ve known better than to try and keep a secret from Emma. We’d been friends for the better part of our lives, and she could see right through me. Once I refreshed my LP from sniffing her hair, I spilled my guts about everything—the hidden dungeon, my special abilities, and the LP-recovery thing, all of it. Of course, I also made her promise not to tell anyone.

“Okay, then take me to this hidden dungeon too!”

“Sorry, that’s the one thing my master told me I couldn’t do.”

Olivia really did tell me that. And anyway, I didn’t really want to take Emma there. Golden slimes aside, I didn’t want her to have to face dead reapers and the like.

“That’s not fair,” Emma pouted. “Why are you the only one who can get stronger?”

“Well, I’m thinking of a way to get around that.”

“Hmph. Then you better let me defeat those large hares by myself! Don’t you lift a finger!”

Emma ran on ahead without me. She had a bit of a childish streak, but it was part of her charm. I decided I would honor her wishes. I would only back her up if she looked like she was in trouble.

Before long, we came upon our targets.

“Oh, look.”

Up ahead, a large hare was munching on grass in a large clearing without a care in the world. Its ravenous appetite had rendered the surrounding area almost completely barren. And it was really, truly huge.

Visually, these hares resembled normal rabbits with horns, but in every other respect they bore no resemblance to cute little bunnies. This one stood almost six-feet tall and was incredibly muscular. While they were herbivores, these creatures were highly efficient at extracting nutrients from grass and, despite being distant cousins to common rabbits, they were extremely aggressive—if they caught sight of a human, they’d attack. This encounter was no different. The second it spied us, the massive creature charged, impressively light on its feet.

“I don’t think so!” Emma was all fired up and opened with a Wind Strike.

It hit, but the hare was barely affected and swiftly retreated for another pass.

“How about another!”

Emma fired again, but this one didn’t work—the hare dodged right out of the way. At this point, Emma charged, both daggers in a backhanded grip. She covered the creature’s white body in streaks of red with a series of short slashes. The hare counter-attacked, shaking its three horns at her, but Emma was too fast—it didn’t even graze. I should mention that the hare was only Level 14. Not exactly a formidable enemy.

Over and over, the hare kept striking air. At some point it realized that its approach wasn’t working and shifted strategies. This time it took a flying leap.

“Mmph.”

Emma put up her guard. The hare was aiming right for her head. Taking a hit from that kind of weight could’ve killed her, so she dashed to avoid it. The earth shook when the creature hit the ground. Without missing a beat, it jumped again, but Emma continued to dodge. This repeated for a while, until suddenly, Emma was cornered.

“Eep?!”

Oh no!

Just as she was about to be crushed, I used all my energy to fire a three-foot diameter Stone Bullet up into the air. It knocked the hare’s massive body off course mid-fall, so it crashed to the ground and missed her by inches.

“Finish it.”

“G-got it.”

Emma threw herself at the creature and landed a critical hit while it struggled to its feet. Apparently even a monstrous hare couldn’t withstand a solid dose of rock to the family jewels.

In the end, Emma was out of breath, but she went up a level. I put a hand on her shoulder to congratulate her.

“Noir…thank you…for saving me…” She was pretty bummed out not to have defeated the hare alone.

“Things got kinda dicey there at the end, but you did great otherwise.”

“I think the wounds I inflicted were just too shallow,” she said dolefully. “That thing had surprisingly tough skin.”

That was one of the downsides of daggers. You could get more strikes in, but they were fundamentally weak. They weren’t really the best choice against a large enemy.

“Cheer up, you’re Level 19 now.”

“Yeah…”

Wow, she really was down. I tried to think of what I could do. I actually had a lot of options. I considered giving her a skill—or maybe upgrading one of her existing ones?

I had just about settled on making her a Dual Wielded Daggers skill Grade B when I stopped myself. Using Get Creative to produce a skill automatically made it mine. I’d have to use Bestow to actually give it to her, and both of those things required LP. Rather than expending additional effort and wasting LP, maybe editing the skill was a better option. She’d already mastered C-Grade Dual Wielded Daggers, after all. I took a peep at the description for the skill.

 

Dual Wielded Daggers (Grade C): Improves holder’s handling of dual wielded daggers.

 

I had to think about how to best adjust it. As a test, I tried adding “significantly” in front of “improves.”

 

Adding “significantly” for 500 LP

Dual Wielded Daggers (Grade C) → Dual Wielded Daggers (Grade B)

 

Hooray! It was cheaper than producing the B-grade skill from whole cloth, but 500 was still a pretty big hit. Still. Worth it.

I told Emma, “I can make you stronger with my abilities, but I’m a little short on LP.”

She frowned. “What can we do about that?”

“Well, I do have one idea.”

“I’ll do anything you need! Assuming I can do it, of course!”

“No take-backsies?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

I took that as my cue to slip around behind Emma. She seemed a little tense, wondering what I was going to do. Then I announced my intentions. “Mind if I bite your ear?”

“E-excuse me?”

“Oh, I mean, not literally bite it off or anything, just like a little nibble.”

“Uh, um, is that really going to increase your LP?!”

“I have some other ideas, but this is probably the least risky.”

Emma looked a bit confused, but it didn’t take her long to summon the resolve. “Bring it on!”

“Here I go.” I gently wrapped my lips around her ear without letting my teeth touch her.

“Eeep!” Emma’s shoulders abruptly dropped, but she caught herself. Her earlobes were surprisingly soft and nice to the touch. The cartilage was firm and springy. Not half bad.

“Oooh! N-Noir, are you done yet?” Emma seemed to have a bit of a weakness for having her ears teased. Her knees began to tremble. It didn’t look like she’d be able to tolerate much more.

I silently prayed for as much LP as possible. When I checked my stats, I’d jumped from 700 to 1,300. “Perfect! It worked.”

I immediately used Editor to boost Emma’s Dual Wielded Dagger skill to Grade B. It cost me 500 LP, leaving me with 800. I wanted to tell her the good news, but when I asked, “Feel anything yet?” I didn’t get a response.

Emma’s knees were still trembling like a newborn calf’s.

Were her ears really that sensitive? In all the time we’ve spent together, how did I not know about that? Friendship sure is complicated.