Side Story—Yuki and Natsuki

I panicked at the sudden flash of light and closed my eyes. A few seconds later, I cautiously opened my eyes again, and what I saw in front of me looked like an alley that you’d see somewhere in Europe. I feel like I’ve seen something like this before on a travel TV show. I mean, it has to be that, since I’ve never gone on a trip overseas before. I sighed to catch my breath. When I looked around, I met eyes with someone next to me. She looked somewhat different from before, but she still closely resembled a good friend of mine.

“Natsuki?”

“Yuki? I’m so glad that we managed to meet up! I thought we would be separated!”

She hugged me after she said that, and she looked very relieved, as if she was about to cry. I hugged her back. We had been sitting next to each other on the bus, so I’d hoped that she was near when I’d decided to stick to the soul that was right next to me. I’m glad I made the right choice! Honestly, I would’ve felt terrified if I’d been thrown out here alone.

“I’m really glad we’re together! Um, where’s Haruka? Is she not here...?”

“Yeah, her seat was far away from ours...”

Natsuki, Haruka, and I hung out together quite often. I had known Natsuki since elementary school and Haruka just since high school, but for some reason, we all got along well, so we’d become good friends quite fast. Haruka would spend a decent amount of time with Nao and Tomoya, though, so Natsuki was my best friend. Damn it, Haruka! You’re the one with the good life! I can’t believe you’re keeping two hot guys all to yourself! Curse you!

“Yuki, what’s wrong? Do you feel uneasy because Haruka’s not around?”

The recent turn of events that had placed us here had been quite shocking, so I was somewhat subconsciously trying to escape from reality by thinking about stupid stuff. Natsuki seemed like she was worried about me; she was looking at me closely while my mind was wandering. However, the expression on her face looked like she was feeling way more uneasy than I was. I hastily shook my head after I saw that expression.

“Oh, nah, I’m fine, trust me.”

As I shook my head, I tried my best to calm her down, since she definitely needed reassurance more than I did. Whew, that was close. I almost gave in to my inner dark side. I do wonder, though—who’s Haruka actually going after romantically? I feel like she’s closer to Nao. I mean, the normal choice would obviously be Nao, right?

“Oh yeah, who do you think Haruka is going after romantically, Natsuki? Do you think it’s Nao, or do you think it’s Tomoya?”

“Huh? Was that what you were thinking about in this situation?!”

Whoops, right, my bad.

“Hmm, I think it might actually be Tomoya-kun. I feel like there’s less restraint behind Haruka’s interactions with him. The easy answer would be Nao-kun, though.”

I love that you answered anyway, Natsuki! Thanks!

“You sure? As far as lack of restraint, I feel like she almost goes too far. Wouldn’t you be, like, a bit more demure towards the person you like or something...?”

I wasn’t exactly very experienced when it came to romance, but the way Haruka would jab at Tomoya and shoot down his antics felt quite ruthless. Surely she would hold back a bit more around the person she loves, right...?

“I mean, well, it’s probably just her inner shyness as a girl that’s preventing her from being honest with herself.”

“Inner shyness...?”

“Yeah, her inner shyness. Wait, Haruka’s inner shyness...? Hmm, that actually doesn’t sound right.”

As she pondered, Natsuki had an expression on her face that indicated mixed feelings. Haruka was quite cute and feminine, but she wasn’t exactly the type of person that I would use words like “shy girl” to describe. Well, based on what I know of her, at least. She was more like the type of cool girl who other girls would look up to—the type who would be more popular with girls than with boys. However, she didn’t have many fangirls like that, since she was good friends with Nao and Tomoya and spent a lot of time with them.

“Wait, no, now’s not the time for this kind of girl talk!”

Right, we should stop getting sidetracked.

“Well, believe me, Natsuki, I only brought up this topic because I wanted to help you calm down.”

“I’m not too sure if that’s really all you intended, but okay. More importantly, is there anyone else we know nearby? It looks like there isn’t...”

I looked around as well, and there was nobody around at all. We were the only ones here.

“Let’s move to wherever the main street is and sit down in some cafe to discuss things.”

“That sounds fine with me, but are you sure things will work out, Yuki?”

“He he, you can count on me! I have the General Knowledge skill!”

I’d had 5 Points left over once I’d gotten everything I wanted during the character creation process. I hadn’t been sure what to use those points on when I’d happened to stumble across the General Knowledge skill. Intercultural communication would be key when visiting a foreign country, so I obtained the skill because I felt like it would be quite useful for that purpose. Thanks to that skill, I knew how to act so as not to be suspicious or stand out, and I knew the prices of things in cafes and dining places as well.

“Well, it’s a good thing you chose to get that skill, but what about money?”

“Ugh, I completely forgot about that...!”

Right, there’s no point knowing the price of things if we don’t have any money! There’s only one thing to do in this case.

“Let’s sell something for—”

“What do we even have on us to sell?” Natsuki spread her arms out as she said that. Her clothes looked like the kind of cheap cloth garments that a commoner would wear. She didn’t have any belongings on her, and neither did I. That would help us not to stand out, but it also meant that we couldn’t obtain money by selling the belongings we’d had on us back on Earth.

“I wish we still had our old clothes, since we could’ve sold things like the handheld mirrors that we had in our pockets...”

“Pockets? Wait, Yuki, there’s something in the pockets of these clothes!”

Natsuki held out her hands as she said that, and there were a few coins on her palms. I checked my own pockets right away and found the same ten coins that she had.

“These are large silver coins! Let’s see, ten of these are worth the equivalent of about ten thousand yen in total, so it’s more than enough to pay for food at a dining hall, since the price of regular food in this world is cheap!”

We could get a full meal with the amount of money you’d have to pay for a beef bowl back in Japan. High-quality food, on the other hand, was very expensive, because distribution channels weren’t developed at all in this world.

“All right, let’s get going, Natsuki! We can have some drinks while we discuss our plans!”

“Wait a minute.”

Just as I was about to take a step forward, Natsuki grabbed me by my hand and stopped me in my tracks.

“Are you sure we can go to a dining hall right away?”

“Well, I know what places to avoid thanks to the General Knowledge skill, and we won’t get ripped off in terms of prices either.”

“No, that’s not the problem. The problem is the money we have. Between us, we only have the equivalent of twenty thousand yen combined, you know? Will this last us until we can start earning some money? As for clothes—well, sadly, we’ll have to give up on clothes for now, but we still need money to stay at a place like an inn and for food as well.”

“Oh, right...”

Accommodation and food expenses were relatively cheap in this world compared to back on Earth, but twenty large silver coins wouldn’t last us more than ten days even if we tried our best to be frugal. That was only if we allocated all our money for those two expenses, so we would run out of money even sooner if we had to spend it on other things. I explained that to Natsuki along with the typical prices of things.

Natsuki grimaced when she heard that and then sighed deeply. “That means we don’t exactly have the luxury of finding some cafe to sit down at while we discuss things. Let’s just find some safe place first and discuss things there. I don’t want to discuss things here, since we seem to be in an alley.”

“Mm, you’re right. Well, I don’t think this is a dangerous alley by any means, but let’s head for the main street first.”

It didn’t seem like we were in the slums, so we probably weren’t in any danger of being suddenly attacked out of nowhere, but it was still true that there was nobody around if that did happen. I took Natsuki’s hand and led the way towards where the main street seemed to be.

★★★★★★★★★

“Okay, let’s discuss what skills we have first!”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea!”

It appeared that the town we’d been transported to was a small port town near a river. One side of the town faced out towards the river, and the port was in that area. There was an area a bit away from the town and the port that appeared to be a plaza. It probably served as a buffer zone whenever floods occurred. That was the place where Natsuki and I chose to discuss things. We didn’t want other people to overhear what we were discussing, but we also felt uneasy about talking in a place where there was nobody around. This area was a fairly open space with a decent number of people around, and it would be easy to notice someone approaching us. On top of that, we would look like we were just gazing at the river if we sat together, so we wouldn’t be very suspicious. It was a pretty good place to choose.

“Okay, so how can we check our skills, Yuki?”

“Um, well, first of all, skills aren’t common knowledge among people in this world.”

“Huh? Why’s that? We have skills, though, right?”

“Mm, based on what I know from the General Knowledge skill, it’s just what common sense appears to be in this world. Maybe these skills were gifts and talents that the evil god let us choose since our lives ended abruptly before we got transported here?”

We hadn’t had any magic skills back on Earth, of course, and many of the abilities we did have would be useless in this world. If we had been transported to this world as we were before, without skills, then life would obviously be easier for someone who had worked hard at athletic activities compared to someone who’d spent all their time mastering a different language, for example. Knowing a different language back on Earth wouldn’t help you at all in this world.

With that in mind, skills were basically a way for us to reallocate the abilities that we had learned and accumulated in our lives to different fields, and we’d been granted a chance to start over with those skills in this world. He called himself an evil god, but he was rather kind for someone “evil.” However, that didn’t mean you would completely forget things like the languages you knew, so I had no idea how all of that was factored into calculating the number of points that he’d granted us individually. Perhaps the value attached to our abilities depended on how useful they would be in this world.

“Well, that’s a bit of a problem for me. I don’t remember what all of my skills were.”

“As for me, I remember most of my skills.” That was because I’d spent most of my points on the Copy skill, so I didn’t have many points left to get a lot of other skills.

“I remember about half of my skills and that I got the Help Guide—hold on. Oh, I see.”

Natsuki had suddenly interrupted herself in mid-sentence, and her eyes wandered around for a bit before she nodded to herself as if she understood something. I have no idea what you mean by “I see,” Natsuki.

“What happened?”

“Yuki, you just need to say ‘Status’ to check your skills.”

“Huh? How do you know that?” I had no idea about that. How come Natsuki knows about this and I don’t?

“It’s because I got the Help Guide. The Help Guide is a skill that provides some advice, and—wait, does that mean you don’t have the Help Guide, Yuki?!”

“Y-Yeah, I don’t...”

Visible panic suddenly spread across Natsuki’s face when she asked me for confirmation. The cost of the Help Guide had been 20 Points, and I’d thought I would only be able to use it during the character creation process, so I’d ignored it right away. Based on what Natsuki had said, if you could still use it and receive advice after being transported to this world, then it did sound useful. I have the General Knowledge skill, though, so surely I didn’t need it, right?

“Listen to me carefully, Yuki. There were some very bad and dangerous skills among the ones that we were offered. You didn’t get skills like that, such as Copy or Plunder, right?”

“Uh...”

Yikes. Wait, did I step on a land mine or something? I thought if I had the General Knowledge and Copy skills, I would do just fine in this world, so in my head, I went, like, “I’ll protect you as well, Natsuki, yeah!”—but am I actually in big trouble? Based on the look that Natsuki was giving me, I probably was. I felt the blood drain from my face after I saw that look. Oh God, I feel a bit dizzy.

“Calm down, Yuki. Say ‘Status’ to yourself and tell me what your skills are.”

“O-Okay. Status! Wait, what?”

Name: Yuki

Race: Human (Age: 17)

Condition: Healthy

Skills:

A display window that looked like a status screen appeared in the air, but I didn’t see any skills listed.

“Um, my status screen doesn’t show any skills for me, Natsuki. What’s up with this?”

“Huh? That shouldn’t be right. Wait, my skills are gone too—they’re back? Is this status screen bugged or something?”

My skills were displayed as soon as Natsuki said that her skills were back. It seemed to be something like lag when loading a website. Her status screen, like mine, hadn’t displayed properly at first, so it was probably just a bad connection to the god internet or something like that.

“Is this what I think it is...? Hmm, that means the first thing we should do is...okay. Can you tell me what your skills are first, Yuki?”

“Okay.”

It appeared that I couldn’t directly show her my status screen, so I read my skills out loud.

Copy, General Knowledge, Magic Aptitude: Earth, Magic Aptitude: Fire, Magic Aptitude: Water, Magic Aptitude: Time

Level 1 Earth Magic, Level 1 Robust, Level 1 Third Eye

“Your skill build seems a bit weird to me, but it looks like the only bad skill you have is the Copy skill.”

Natsuki breathed a deep sigh of relief after I had finished telling her my skills. I sighed in relief as well after she told me that I didn’t have any other bad skills. I would have been overwhelmed with despair if she’d told me that all of my skills were bad.

“It’s a good thing you decided to get Copy instead of Plunder. Copy’s still gimmicky, but it can be useful depending on how you use it.”

“I mean, Plunder is basically theft, right? Copy bothers my conscience a bit as well, but it’s still better than Plunder.”

I’d thought Plunder would be very useful, but it kind of didn’t feel right to steal other people’s hard work and talents. Plunder had required fewer points than Copy to get, though, so it had been a very tempting choice.

“I’m glad your conscience kicked in. In this case, it saved your life, Yuki.”

“Really...?”

“Yeah. I’ll explain in further detail later, but just promise me you won’t use the Copy skill, okay?”

“I mean, if you insist, then sure, but why later?” If I somehow saved my own life without knowing how, I’d prefer an explanation now...

“It’s because there are more important things to deal with right now.”

“Hm?” Natsuki had a serious look on her face when she said that, so I put on a serious look as well and asked her for more details.

“First, let’s take a walk through the main street of this town for about an hour.”

“Huh? A walk? Did I hear you right?”

“Yeah, you heard right. I’ll explain why later, so can you just trust me for now?”

It seemed that I had heard right. What is she thinking? A walk, despite the plight that we’re in? I would’ve ignored those words if it hadn’t been you who’d said them, Natsuki!

“Okay, sure. Should we just walk together, Natsuki?”

“Yeah. While we’re walking, we can take the opportunity to discuss common sense and knowledge in this world.”

She smiled happily as she said that, so I went along with her idea. We actually ended up walking through town for about an entire hour.

★★★★★★★★★

As soon as I could see again, I swiftly examined my surroundings. I was in some plaza, and the town landscape looked like what one would expect from a town in a fantasy world. Once I was done looking around, I dashed into an alley and hid myself in the shadows, out of plain sight. How far up I could ascend in life here in this different world would depend on how I started out. It also depended on whether I could successfully get by in life without my classmates finding me. I mean, that’s obvious, right? My classmates have cheat skills, so it would definitely be dangerous to bump into them.

The most yikes skill among the ones that we’d been offered had definitely been the Plunder skill. After all, it would let you steal skills that people had spent their own points to get. I’d wanted to get the 2x EXP skill, but I hadn’t had enough for it after I spent points on the Plunder skill. Some of my classmates had probably decided to get the 2x EXP skill, since they would’ve also thought that it seemed useful, so I’d figured I could just steal it from those people. There were skills that would affect one’s looks, so I could expect to become good-looking myself if I stole those skills as well. Those kinds of skills made absolutely no sense to me, but all that mattered was that they were obtainable one way or another. That was why I’d decided I would use all of my points to get the Plunder skill.

“My highest-priority targets are definitely my classmates. Some of them should be nearby right now.”

It was highly likely that my classmates had useful skills, but there was a chance that they would move to a different town over time. I had the option of just randomly choosing targets to steal skills from, but it was highly unlikely that a cheat skill like Plunder had no limits or restrictions.

“There wasn’t anything about restrictions in the description, but maybe it’s something like ‘Plunder only works once per target, since they’ll try to resist,’ or maybe there’s a daily limit to the number of times I can use this skill.”

If there were restrictions like that, then it meant that I couldn’t randomly use my Plunder skill without thinking. It would be the end for me if I bumped into another classmate who also had the Plunder skill while I couldn’t use my own Plunder. There was a high chance that all of the skills that I’d gathered up to that point would get stolen away from me.

“Yeah, that means my best choice of action is to prioritize my classmates as targets.”

They were almost guaranteed to have useful skills, so they were basically like freebies for the taking. But I might only have one shot to take that freebie, since it was possible that things would end up as a stealing competition between those of us who had gotten the Plunder skill. I wanted to go out and search for my classmates right away before I lost my chance, but at the same time, it was risky, since another Plunder user might find me first instead.

“If some of my other classmates got transported nearby, then they would probably avoid deserted alleys like this and head for open areas like the plaza. I should just wait here in this alley for now.”

After I muttered to myself to wait, I spent some time observing my surroundings from where I was hidden. My patience was finally rewarded when two familiar girls appeared a couple of meters away from me. They looked like they were Yuki Shidou and Natsuki Furumiya. Those two hung out together with Haruka Azuma as a group of three quite often, and they were all quite popular among the boys. Azuma and Furumiya were the beautiful type, while Shidou was more like the cute type of girl, but Azuma’s beauty was on a whole different level. Azuma was good friends with Naofumi Kamiya and Tomoya Nagai as well, so those two were the victims of some nasty jealousy from other boys. Well, both Kamiya and Nagai were friendly and sociable, so it wasn’t like they were completely ostracized. It was more like just teasing in good fun. However, everything might change in this different world.

“It’s a shame Azuma’s not with them, but oh well. Shidou and Furumiya will do just fine as my first targets.”

They would probably struggle to survive in this world if I stole their skills. If I just acted kind to them and helped them out after that, then everything would go well for me. I was going to become stronger and stronger from now on.

“All I have to do is make them completely reliant on me! Also, this isn’t Japan, so I can eventually buy some slaves and have some fun, mwa ha ha!”

I intuitively knew how to use my Plunder skill, and I used it as I looked at them. Right after I used my skill, my consciousness faded to black.

★★★★★★★★★

“Okay, Natsuki, I want an explanation!”

We’d actually done nothing but walk. On the way, we’d discussed things like the Adventurers’ Guild, the price of things, and common sense about money in this world, but it was still just a walk. We’d walked all the way from the port to the town gate and then back to where we started. That was all we’d done. Well, we did a bit of window shopping, but that doesn’t really count as something significant, right?

“Of course. I’ll start by explaining to you exactly why the Copy skill is dangerous.”

She explained the gimmicky part of the skill to me in a very flat tone and with a serious look on her face.

I felt the blood drain from my face again as I listened. “Wh-What should I do, Natsuki?! Am I done for?! Is my life ruined and over?!”

“Calm down, Yuki. It’s true that you’re not helpful at all right now.”

Ouch! I can’t deny that, but those words hurt, Natsuki!

“However, we can still put your Copy skill to use. You can just copy my skills.”

“O-Oh, yeah, that works! Good idea, Natsuki! I knew I could count on you!”

I can still use skills that I get via the Copy skill as long as the person teaches me how to use them! I thought I had wasted 100 Points, but I guess not!

“Well, I don’t know how I’m supposed to teach you so that you can also use my skills, so that’s a problem.”

“Ack!” That makes sense! Teaching someone a skill like Cooking sounds easy enough, but I have no idea how I would teach someone a skill like Third Eye!

“I think I’ll be able to teach you the practical skills that I have, so there’s no need to feel down about it. You’ll be able to copy and learn more skills from Haruka as well once we meet up with her.”

“Yeah, that’s true! I wonder where Haruka is, though...”

“She’s probably together with Nao at the moment.”

“Oh yeah, then that means Tomoya is probably with them as well. Those three were most likely able to tell each other apart even in that soul form we were in.”

When the god had told us that it would be a good idea to stay near people we knew before we got transported, I’d only had a vague feeling that Natsuki was close to me. I think I would’ve noticed Haruka if she had been nearby as well, but I’m not completely sure. Well, those three were probably able to recognize each other even if they weren’t physically close together initially.

“If all three of them were transported close together, then they’ll probably do just fine. In fact, they’ll most likely be better than us at getting by in this world.”

“Mm, they definitely seem reliable when it comes to survival.”

Another way to word it would be that they were very tough and good at adapting to whatever situation got thrown at them. Tomoya had a bit of a reckless side to him, but that wouldn’t be a problem if Haruka was around to rein him in. It would probably be safer for us two girls to wait for them to find us instead of searching around ourselves.

“I hope they’re in this town as well...”

“We didn’t bump into them even though we walked down the main street and beyond, so I’m not too sure if they’re here.”

Mm, that makes sense. This isn’t a big town by any means, so we would have probably met them by now if they were in this town.

“We haven’t met any of our other classmates either. I wonder if none of them are nearby at all...”

“Nah, considering the existence of the Plunder skill, it’s unlikely that there was nobody nearby. Actually, there was someone we passed who might’ve been one of our classmates.”

“Wait, really?”

“Mm. I’m not completely sure about it, though.”

“Hmm, yeah, I guess we all probably look a bit different compared to before.”

Neither of us had gotten skills that affected our looks, but the shade of our hair had changed slightly, which was enough to make us appear a bit different from before. There were various factors that would affect your looks, such as your race or skills like Extremely Attractive Appearance, so there was a good chance that we wouldn’t recognize people we weren’t really familiar with.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention just how bad Plunder is compared to the Copy skill. You’ll understand once I explain.”

Natsuki sighed as she told me about the gimmick behind the Plunder skill, and I was absolutely shocked when I heard what she told me.

“Wait, does that mean you’ll outright die if you randomly use the Plunder skill on the wrong target?”

“Yeah.”

“Yikes, I almost screwed myself over! I’m glad I decided to listen to my conscience!” If I’d given in to temptation back then and had decided to get Plunder instead of Copy, then I would be dead for sure. “Hm, wait, why did we spend time on a walk earlier, then? Wouldn’t it have been more important to explain this first?” I didn’t plan to use the Copy skill without thinking, since Natsuki told me not to use it, but wasn’t this explanation about Plunder very important?

“Hint: the explanation itself. Take a guess.”

“The explanation itself...?”

The explanation about Plunder? The information provided by Natsuki’s Help Guide was that the user’s life span would be reduced by four percent of the level of the stolen skills, and that total amount would be transferred over to the target, right? Let’s see, we walked nonchalantly through this town while one of our classmates who had the Plunder skill was also in this town, so...

“Wait, did you let that person use Plunder on us on purpose?”

“Yeah. Remember earlier when our status screens didn’t display our skills for a bit?”

“Was that because someone used the Plunder skill on us?”

“It’s very likely that that was the case. It would make sense for someone with Plunder to choose other classmates as their targets.”

It was technically possible for someone with Plunder to steal another person’s Plunder skill. The logical conclusion would be to steal as much as possible before someone stole your own Plunder, so Natsuki’s theory made sense to me.

“Besides, we might as well make good use of life span freebies, right?” Natsuki smiled as she said that.

You sound a bit evil, Natsuki! Well, what you said makes perfect sense, but still! It would be great for our own safety if people who had the Plunder skill and didn’t hesitate to use it would disappear from this world as soon as possible. It was a bit harsh, but that was a fact.

“Perhaps I went too far by calling them life span freebies, but we technically did take a risk by purposely dangling ourselves as bait to tempt such people to use their Plunder skill on us, so it is what it is. Also, that applies to the Copy skill as well.”

“Huh?”

“We can bait someone to use their Copy skill on us in order to weaken them.”

“Right, that would apply restrictions to the skills that person could learn...”

Skills that you could normally learn gradually through training would become unavailable to people who copied them from us. They would have to beg us to teach them if they wanted to be able to learn and actually use those skills. That in itself would give us an advantage over those people, so it was perfectly rational to use ourselves as bait while we walked around. Well, it’s still a bit evil, but oh well.

“There are also nasty skills like Heroic Aptitude that will cause trouble for anyone else nearby, but all we have to do is avoid people with those kinds of skills.”

“What if we get asked to team up with them?”

“Huh? Just say no, of course. Do you think we can trust people like that in our current circumstances, Yuki?”

“I guess not...”

We didn’t really have that many friends. Or rather, we technically did have a lot of friends, but they were more like casual friends. We would get along well with them in school, but we would barely associate with them outside of school. None of us knew where each other lived, and we wouldn’t meet up on the weekends or during the holidays either; that was the kind of friends we were. In this world, it would probably be very stressful to team up with people like that for a long period of time.

“I wouldn’t call such people our enemies, but there are too many demerits to consider teaming up with them.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Is there anything else I should watch out for?”

“Nah, there’s nothing else that I really have to say about your skills, Yuki. Well, your skill build is a bit weird and bothers me somewhat, but that’s about it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Let’s start off by writing our skills on the ground so we can discuss them.”

“Okay.”

We sat down right where we were and started to write on the ground, copying down the skills that were displayed in our status screens. It would have been very convenient if we could just show our status screens to each other directly, but people in this world didn’t know about status screens, so even if we could, it would only cause trouble.

“Okay, I’m done.”

Copy, General Knowledge, Magic Aptitude: Earth, Magic Aptitude: Fire, Magic Aptitude: Water, Magic Aptitude: Time

Level 1 Earth Magic, Level 1 Robust, Level 1 Third Eye

“Right, I’m done as well. Let’s start off with your skills, Yuki.”

“Sure.”

“I’m going to ignore your Copy skill for now and focus on the other ones. This General Knowledge skill of yours was a good choice. I didn’t notice that there was a skill like that available at all.”

“It was probably added later at someone’s request, I think? I didn’t notice this skill at first either.”

This skill was a very useful one even though it had only cost 5 Points to get. It would only be useful during our first few months here in this world, but it was probably important for getting past and surviving those first months.

“You probably took the Third Eye skill to go along with your Copy skill, right? That’s fine. What interests me the most is the fact that you took a lot of aptitude skills for magic, but the only magic skill you took was Earth Magic.”

“I mean, aptitude is something innate that you can’t get later on in life, right? Magic is something you can learn over time, but aptitude isn’t, so wouldn’t it be better to spend points on aptitude skills instead? I would’ve gotten some more magic skills if I’d had more points, of course, but yeah.”

You could get better at things like sports over time if you practiced, for example, but your aptitude for sports wouldn’t change over time. On the other hand, if you had an aptitude for sports, then there was a chance that it would be easier for practice or training to come to fruition even if you started as an amateur. Well, I don’t want to think that it’s impossible to achieve anything without natural talent, but I still think you need some aptitude to master whatever sport you choose to tackle. I mean, I don’t think the difference between pros and amateurs is the amount of time they’ve devoted to practice and training, so there has to be another factor.

“That’s why I decided to get aptitude skills while we could. It would be a waste not to, right?”

“So that’s the reasoning behind your choice of aptitude skills? I see. Well, you made the right choice in this case, then. Humans actually can’t learn magic without a specific aptitude for that type of magic.”

“Wait, really?” I said. “So, does that mean if you weren’t born with the innate aptitude for a certain type of magic, then you wouldn’t be able to learn it no matter how long or how hard you practiced?”

“Yeah, that’s how things work. On top of that, there’s no method for people in this world to check their skills. Is it very difficult for people in this world to learn magic?”

“Um, let me use my General Knowledge skill to check. Okay, yeah, there are very few human mages in this world.”

My General Knowledge skill didn’t tell me anything about how aptitude was required for humans to learn magic, and there was no way to check what magic you had aptitude for if you couldn’t access a status display screen. In order to learn magic in this world, you would normally have to become a disciple to some mage, and then you would have to spend some time practicing magic. It was common knowledge in this world that if you couldn’t learn to use magic through that practice, then you wouldn’t be able to become a mage. However, that common knowledge didn’t factor in aptitude for different types of magic. It was possible that those disciples who couldn’t learn to use magic actually had an aptitude for a different type of magic than the type that their masters could use. With that in mind, the path to becoming a mage in this world was actually quite harsh and tough. It was a field that was completely dependent on what kind of aptitude you were born with.

“It’s a shame you don’t have the aptitude for Light Magic. If you did, you could copy my Light Magic skill.”

“Oh, do you have the Light Magic skill, Natsuki?”

“Yeah. It’s Level 1, though. Injuries in this world sounded extremely scary to me, since there’s no healthcare system here, so I decided to get that skill. Oh yeah, why was Earth Magic the one magic skill that you decided to get, Yuki?”

“Well, I thought it would be the most useful one among the magic skills for earning money safely. I mean, there are a lot of uses for earth, right?”

I’d had no idea what a different world would be like, so I’d based my decisions on what I knew from back on Earth, but magic didn’t sound like it would be useful for daily life there. Indoor plumbing made Water Magic redundant. Fans would do just fine for making a breeze, so Wind Magic wasn’t necessary either. Fire was no good, since recently you weren’t allowed to even light a fire in your own yard. Light Magic had sounded useful because of the Cure spell, but I’d figured it probably wouldn’t be possible to make money off it if your Light Magic level was low. I couldn’t really think of a good use for Darkness Magic. The only thing that came to mind was something like a dare or a test of courage. Time Magic, however, sounded like it offered infinite possibilities. Or rather, it only offered possibilities, since it was a form of magic almost no one could master.

Out of all those types of magic, Earth Magic was the only one that seemed like it had many different uses. You could use it for combat and also for construction work or farm work, so there would probably be no shortage of jobs available on a daily basis. Construction sites that don’t use machines would probably value Earth Magic highly, right? Well, this is a different world, so things probably aren’t the same, but it’s probably still true that Earth magic is a very flexible form of magic for daily life. When I explained all of that to Natsuki, she seemed quite impressed for some reason.

“I chose skills for my own build based on what would help protect me from harm, but you sure put more thought into this than I expected.”

“What do you mean by ‘more’ thought? How rude!”

“That’s amusing to hear coming from you, considering you took the Copy skill without thinking.”

“Please, just forget about that!” I want to bury that memory forever! “What about your skills, then?! Show me, Natsuki!”

“Sure, take a look.”

Help Guide, Level 4 Robust, Disease Resistance

Poison Resistance, Night Vision, Weapon Proficiency: Spears

Level 4 Spearmanship, Level 1 Light Magic, Magic Aptitude: Light

Level 1 Throw, Level 3 Martial Arts, Level 3 Pharmacy

Level 1 Traps and Snares 101, Level 2 Lock Picking, Level 2 Sneak

“Hmm, yeah, your skill build really looks like it was designed for protection from all sorts of harm. Well, you have some skills such as Lock Picking that sound like what a thief would have, but other than that, yeah.”

Back on Earth, Natsuki had been someone who was a little sickly and frail, so she’d probably decided to get skills like Robust, Disease Resistance, and Pharmacy to help improve and maintain her own health. Robust itself already provided resistance to disease, so she was probably quite vigorous and tough now, considering her other choices. Well, she still looks like the same frail and graceful beauty on the outside, though. As for Spearmanship and Martial Arts, she had practiced martial arts such as aikido and naginata wielding for the purpose of building up stamina, so those choices weren’t too surprising to me. The levels she had for those skills were much higher than I expected, though.

“I have no plans to walk down the thief path in life. I just decided to get this skill, since I thought it would be useful if I ever found myself in a situation where I was locked up somewhere.”

“Let’s see: you’re vigorous, tough, sneaky, can see and act at night, and you know martial arts. Well, you sound like you belong in special forces or something.”

If she had skills that were related to the use of a knife instead of a spear, then she would fit that description even more.

“Please, all I did was prioritize skills that would help with survival. Well, is your Earth Magic useful in any way, Yuki?”

“Of course it is! Give me a second. Let’s see, the spells I can use at Level 1 are...” Ground Control and Sand Blast are the spells I can use, eh? I guess I’ll try out the one that sounds obvious from its name first. “All right, here I go! Sand Blast!”

I extended my hands as I cast the spell, and a mere handful of sand shot out of my palms directly forward. It immediately fell down to the ground afterwards.

“You could use this to blind someone, I guess...? I can do something similar, just like this.” As she said that, Natsuki picked up a handful of sand from the ground and threw it at me.

You didn’t actually have to throw that sand to prove it! I know my spell wasn’t exactly impressive by any means, so give me a break!

“Well, I mean, I’ll have the element of surprise if I cast this spell suddenly in the middle of combat, right?”

“I guess that’s true. Mm, and you wouldn’t have to sneakily pick up dirt or sand since you have that spell.”

Natsuki nodded with a kind and gentle smile as if to reassure me that things were okay, so I hastily waved my hands around to indicate that I had more up my sleeve.

“It’s okay, I still have one other spell! Ground Control!”

I pointed at the ground as I cast the spell, and a dent appeared in the ground that looked like a hole. The hole appeared to be about thirty centimeters deep.

“This spell sounds like it’ll be useful for creating holes to throw garbage in, I guess...?”

I felt a stronger sense of kindness and gentleness behind Natsuki’s smile after that result. Why?! I thought Ground Control would be way more amazing than this! I can’t even use this for gardening purposes!

“Hold on, don’t jump to any conclusions just yet! This is nowhere near the limits of my inner potential!” I guess it’s my fault for using these spells without any thought behind them, yeah. I’m sure it’ll be different if I imagine a concrete and clear result in my mind and give it my all. Let’s do this!

“Ground Control!”

This time, a hole in the ground appeared in front of me that looked like it was about one meter wide and about two meters deep.

“Success!” I staggered and swayed around as soon as I joyfully exclaimed that word.

Natsuki hastily hugged me from behind to prevent me from falling down the hole I’d made. “A-Are you okay, Yuki?!”

“Y-Yeah, I just felt exhausted all of a sudden, but I’m fine now. Thanks, Natsuki. Without your help, I was about to fall down this hole. I almost literally dug my own grave, ha ha!”

“That’s not funny, Yuki. In fact, almost isn’t the right word, since you literally dug a hole.”

I’d basically laid my life on the line to pull off this amazing joke, but she ignored it with a straight face. Damn it. Well, I’d staggered due to the sudden rush of fatigue, but it wasn’t so bad that I’d be unable to stand up if I was calm and ready for it. Is this how it feels to spend mana? I probably need to get used to this feeling, or else I won’t be able to go all out with magic during combat.

“Well, I learned something from this, at least. It looks like magic is dependent on how much mana you use and what image you have in your mind when you cast a spell, so you need to have a clear mind to conjure a concrete image in your head. Check this out, for example.” This time, I used the Ground Control spell to make the ground rise up a bit. The bump that protruded out from the ground was only about ten centimeters in height, but it looked like enough to trip someone if I could swiftly cast the spell.

“I see. That is quite impressive. However, you’re forgetting something, Yuki.”

“What is it?”

“We need to fill in this hole you made. You know that, right?”

“Yeah...”

We couldn’t exactly just leave this hole alone, since it was a hazard. It was possible that someone who fell into this hole would suffer grave injuries if they were unlucky. There was a chance that we would be put on a wanted list if we left the hole alone. We absolutely need to avoid that! I mustered as much of my inner potential as I could and restored the ground back to its original state. I had to take a few breaks in between tries, but I still succeeded in the end.

“Well then, Yuki, I guess your Earth Magic turned out to be a bit useful, surprisingly.”

“What do you mean by ‘surprisingly’ and just ‘a bit’ useful?! I’m sure this magic will become very useful once I master it!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m looking forward to it. More importantly, you don’t have any skills that affect your close combat abilities, right?”

“Huh? Well, no, I don’t.” I’d felt like I would get by just fine if I could copy a skill like Swordsmanship from someone else. Things weren’t as easy as I’d thought they would be, though.

“Honestly, I feel uneasy about starting our life here right away. I’m not sure how safe this town is, but we’re just a group of two girls, so if we can’t protect ourselves, then...”

“Oh, yeah, it would be quite dangerous for us.”

I had gotten unwanted attention from random guys before back on Earth, so I had learned some simple self-defense techniques, but I was nowhere as skilled as the pros. On the other hand, Natsuki had Level 4 Spearmanship and Level 3 Martial Arts, so the average adventurer would probably be no match for her at all. Do I have to roleplay as the princess and ask her to protect me as my knight? If I clung to her and said something like “Oh, please protect me, Prince Natsuki!” would she protect me?

“Thus, our first priority is to have you learn the Martial Arts skill from me.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. We might as well put my Copy skill to use if possible, after all...”

“I’m not sure how much you need to learn from me to be able to use the skill, but I’m confident that I can teach you.”

“Well, let’s give it a try, then. Copy Level 3 Martial Arts.”

I probably didn’t have to say that out loud to use my skill, but I did so anyway to make it obvious that I’d used it. Hmm, I don’t feel any different—oh, a skill got added to my status screen.

“Okay, I’ve obtained Level 1 Martial Arts. The skill name is grayed out in my status screen, though.”

You were only able to see your own status screen, and the default state of mine was a black semitransparent screen with white words written on it. However, the words Level 1 Martial Arts were in gray, whereas my other skills were in white. Is this what the Sealed status looks like?

“Good, that means your Copy skill worked fine. All that’s left is for me to teach you so that you can learn to use the skill. I’ll start by teaching you the basics, so check your status screen frequently and tell me at what point the skill isn’t grayed out anymore.”

“Okay.”

I obeyed Natsuki’s instructions and copied the moves that she showed me, and my Martial Arts skill turned from gray to white in my status screen around ten minutes after I had started. Well, it was more like my body movements suddenly became quite smooth, so I checked my status screen when that happened and saw the result. It wasn’t as natural as the ordinary experience of getting the hang of something over time, so it was a bit scary.

“Hmm, it only took you ten minutes? Perhaps the Copy skill actually is quite useful as long as the person you copy from can teach you, even if you can only copy the Level 1 version of the skill.”

“Yeah, maybe it is! See, I didn’t make a mistake by choosing this skill, right?”

“It’ll truly be worth the cost if you manage to learn at least twenty skills with it. On a side note, there are only about three or four skills left that I’m sure I can teach you.”

“Ack!”

Most skills cost about 5 Points to obtain at Level 1, so Natsuki was right about the number of skills I would need to learn in order to make up for the cost of the Copy skill. Skills related to weapons seemed like they would be pointless no matter how many of them I learned, since it would just be the basics. As for other skills, they probably aren’t very useful at Level 1, so yeah...

“Was this skill a waste of points after all...?”

“It’s possible that you might end up with a good skill build if we can meet up with Haruka, so don’t feel too bad about it.”

My hopes had been dashed. I curled up in a ball on the ground. Natsuki gently patted me on the back to cheer me up, but she was in no position to do so.

“You know, you were the one who struck down my hopes, Natsuki.”

“Well, that wasn’t my intention at all...”

Natsuki forced a slightly awkward smile as she said that. I slapped myself on my cheeks when I saw that look.

“Okay, I’m done being sad about this! All I have to do is learn at least five skills per person from Haruka and the other two who are probably with her, and that’ll make up for the cost of the Copy skill!”

If that didn’t work out, I still had a backup plan. I could just spend all my time mastering Earth Magic, and then I would become famous and get a title like “Earth Archmage” or something.

“Besides, I don’t have time to be sad right now. We don’t have much money on us, so we need to spend the time we have on coming up with a proper plan and course of action, or else we’ll be in big trouble!”

“Mm, indeed. Based on what you mentioned earlier, we should start off by registering at the Adventurers’ Guild and then find work there to earn money.”

All we had on us was about two thousand Rea. The phrase “time is money” was definitely true for us, since we didn’t have much of either to waste before we would run out.

“Before we do that, however, we should come up with a backstory for ourselves.”

“Backstory?”

“Yes. We’re two young girls with no belongings aside from the clothes on our backs, which is definitely a bit suspicious. We need to come up with a story about why we’re here and what our short-term and long-term goals are. We also might need to buy things on the way to achieve those goals.”

“Oh, that makes sense. That’ll affect what kind of work we can choose and how we should explain things to others in this world.”

I knew I could rely on Natsuki in situations like this. If we didn’t decide on things like that beforehand, then we wouldn’t even be able to answer if we were asked something like “What kind of work would you two be looking for?” at the Adventurers’ Guild. We discussed those topics together for a while and decided that our backstory would be that we had arrived at this town in a party with some other people, but things had come up that they’d had to deal with, so they were temporarily away, and we were waiting for them to return. It would normally seem strange for two girls who didn’t look very strong to be traveling alone, after all.

“The next thing we need to decide on is what kind of work we should look for. There are two rough categories, right?”

“Yeah. Either we look for a part-time job in town, or we look for work that’ll require us to go outside of town.”

“That makes sense. Work that requires us to go outside of town sounds like it’ll be a bit dangerous. Can you handle combat, Natsuki?”

“It depends on what kind of danger we encounter, since we don’t know what kind of enemies might appear. Thanks to my skill levels, I think I’ll be fine if I can obtain a spear, so I’m more worried about you, Yuki.”

“Yep, I’m worried too!”

I had managed to obtain the Martial Arts skill thanks to Natsuki, but the skill was only Level 1. This world wasn’t like a game where each area would have its own fixed pool of enemies that appeared as random encounters, so I wanted to be as ready as possible. Bandits in particular would be the worst kind of enemy to encounter. Two girls like us were definitely easy prey for bandits. Natsuki would probably be able to defeat the average bandit with her Spearmanship skill, but I would feel extremely bad if I forced her to take on a life or death fight against other humans by herself. I wanted to learn to fight to a certain extent myself so that all the burden wouldn’t be on her.

“I guess we’ll have to spend some time earning money via part-time jobs for a while...”

“Yeah. I doubt we can afford proper weapons at the moment with the amount of money we have.”

“We should buy proper weapons and armor for ourselves before we take on work that’ll require us to go outside of town, right, Natsuki?”

“Mm. Based on what you mentioned earlier, it would be dangerous to walk around unarmed.”

“All right, let’s go to the Adventurers’ Guild to look for work, then.”

The Adventurers’ Guild in this world offered many different services, and one of those services was helping people find work, which was basically what an employment agency would do. That meant the most efficient way to find a part-time job would be to ask a staff member at the guild. Things like help wanted posters on shop fronts or magazines advertising part-time jobs weren’t common, after all, because most people in this world couldn’t read.

“No, let’s go shopping first before we do that. We would appear suspicious without any belongings on us.”

“I guess that’s true.”

It was possible that the staff at the guild would assume that we’d left our belongings at an inn—but actually, maybe that was just wishful thinking. It would also probably be better to ask for inn recommendations at the guild.

“Also, it would be better to have a weapon on us so that we seem like we can handle ourselves just fine. I’m quite decent with a spear, after all. We’re just a group of two girls together, so we should be as careful as possible.”

“Okay. Let’s start with that, then!”

The first place we headed towards was the weapon shop, and we bought a spear that Natsuki said would do for now—barely. The price of that spear was eight hundred Rea, which was close to half of all the money we had on us, but it was a very cheap spear that wasn’t of any real value. Natsuki had tried her best to look for a good deal, but we hadn’t been lucky enough to come across one, so we’d just ended up with a somewhat okay spear. The next place we headed towards was the general goods shop. Satchels were a luxury that we couldn’t afford, so we just bought some cheap bags that we could carry on our backs. We wouldn’t be able to convince anyone if we had nothing on us, but it was possible that people would think we had the luggage we’d need for travel if we just stuffed these bags with random odds and ends. After all, it wasn’t like they would know what was inside the bags.

“We bought the cheapest things possible, but we’re already down to about one thousand Rea. This isn’t good, right?”

“Mm. Even if we decide to take on day labor, we can’t start working until tomorrow, so we’ll need to spend money to stay at an inn tonight.”

“Ideally, we need to find a place where the two of us can stay for five hundred Rea, so that only leaves us with five hundred remaining...”

We wouldn’t have much money left at all, and everything was quite expensive in this town. It wasn’t like we could do anything about it, though. Natsuki and I discussed what to do with our remaining money, and we decided to purchase what we considered absolute necessities, which were spare underwear and some cloths to use as towels. We threw them inside the cheap bags that we’d bought earlier. The underwear and cloths were just as cheap as the bags, but they were all we could afford.

“We couldn’t afford to buy a change of clothes...”

“Mm, even the ones at the secondhand clothes shop were a bit pricey. The prices made sense considering they aren’t mass-produced goods, but that doesn’t help us at all.”

“At least the clothes we have on us seem quite sturdy despite looking very plain.”

These clothes seemed like they were actually of quite decent quality compared to the clothes at the secondhand shop and the clothes of people we passed in town. The texture of the cloth was quite firm, and the stitching also seemed well done. We would probably be able to afford a couple spare sets of secondhand clothes if we sold the clothes we had on us, but I dropped the idea after I gave it some more thought. I mean, those clothes I saw at the secondhand clothes store were a bit too much for me. They looked quite dirty, and a lot of them looked like they would wear down and become full of holes just after being washed a few times. The quality difference between those secondhand clothes and our clothes is just too big.

“All right, let’s go look for some work!”

“Mm. It’s finally time.”

“Yeah. We just need to find work that fits with our backstory that we’re looking for some work while we’re waiting for our other party members to come back.”

★★★★★★★★★

We arrived at the Adventurers’ Guild thanks to directions from people in town who we asked along the way. The building we saw looked quite compact. We wouldn’t have known this was the guild building if we’d had no information beforehand. It was quite empty inside as well, and there was just one old lady sitting at a counter. This isn’t what I expected at all from the Adventurers’ Guild...

“Um, hello.”

“Hello. What would you happen to be here for today?”

“We’re here to look for work. Is there any work for adventurers available here?”

“Oh, there’s barely any work like that available. Take a look over there.” As she said that, she pointed in a direction, and I saw a bulletin board when I looked at where she was pointing. “Most jobs and quests for adventurers tend to be offered at Laffan, so it’s rare for such work to be available in this town.”

For real? Are you implying that we should move to that town called Laffan if we want to make a living as adventurers?

“Would there happen to be any other kind of work that the guild here could help us get...?”

“Nope, there’s not much like that either. This is a small town, after all. Well, there’s still some work available. What kind of work are you looking for? The guild doesn’t offer any recruitment services for prostitution, just so you know.”

“W-We’re not looking for that kind of work!”

“Hmm, is that so? You two look like you would be able to earn quite a lot of money in that field if you were.”

I could feel my forced businesslike smile crack a bit when I saw how the old lady snorted at me after she finished her sentence. Natsuki had left the talking to me, since I was the one who had the General Knowledge skill, but I wondered how Natsuki had reacted to what I’d just heard. Well, actually, I guess Natsuki’s able to maintain a poker face if needed, even when she’s furious deep inside. We’d only come to the Adventurers’ Guild looking for work because my skill had told me that the Adventurers’ Guild would recommend proper job opportunities. If we were looking for work in the field that the lady had mentioned, we wouldn’t be here in the first place. Can we really trust this old lady to do her job properly? I felt a bit uneasy about how things had turned out so far, but it wasn’t like we had any other choice.

“We’ll be waiting for a while for our other party members to return from dealing with their business, so we want to earn money for living expenses while we’re waiting. Lodging expenses aren’t cheap, after all.”

“I see. Well then, I do have a good recommendation for you two. There’s an inn that’s looking for live-in waitresses to work in their dining hall. The pay isn’t much, however.”

“Live-in work...?”

I asked the lady for more details, and apparently we would only be paid a mere one hundred Rea per day, but we wouldn’t have to spend money on lodging and food. I asked her to describe the other kinds of work that were available, and the pay for those jobs would barely be enough for us to afford food and lodging at the average inn in this town. The working conditions in this town were quite horrible, but there wasn’t much work available here in the first place, so there would still be people who took on such jobs even if the pay was bad. I guess the live-in work doesn’t sound too bad compared to our other options. I looked at Natsuki for confirmation, and she grudgingly nodded back at me.

“Okay, we’ll take the live-in work.”

“Hmph. Hand over your adventurer cards.”

“Oh.”

Right, I forgot that we needed to register at the Adventurers’ Guild first! Should I say that we lost our cards? Actually, there’s probably no point in lying...

“Can we re-register here...?”

“Hmm? Yeah, that’s fine. It’ll cost six hundred Rea.”

“Ugh, okay...”

I know what you’re thinking, but don’t glare at me, Natsuki! We barely had enough, but we’re basically broke now! I endured Natsuki’s inner glare while we finished registration as quickly as we could, and we left the guild as soon as we received the job posting.

Natsuki started speaking as soon as we were outside. “Yuki? What was that about the registration fee? I didn’t hear anything about it beforehand.”

“I completely forgot about it! I’m sorry!”

I’d completely forgotten to explain that there was a registration fee when I told Natsuki about the Adventurers’ Guild earlier. We hadn’t included that fee in our initial budget, so we were lucky that we happened to have enough left to pay.

“We happened to have enough this time, but you know that we might not have been able to register if things had gone a bit different, right?”

“Yes, of course, you’re completely right.”

“I trusted you on this, since you’re the one with the General Knowledge skill, but I guess I was wrong to do so...”

“I’m very sorry. I have no excuses.”

Ugh, Natsuki’s losing a bit of trust in my General Knowledge skill! It’s basically the only advantage I have over her! Well, I’m the one at fault for forgetting something as important as the registration fee, but still!

“Well, everybody makes mistakes, so I’ll leave it at that, but I can count on you in the future, right?”

“Of course! You can trust me!”

It wasn’t a grave mistake, so she dropped the subject right away, but the flat tone of her voice when she scolded me was very scary...

★★★★★★★★★

“Hmm, so you two are the ones who applied for this job? I guess you’ll do just fine.”

When we arrived at the inn with the job posting in our hands, we were greeted by a fat lady who looked like she was fairly old—at least fifty-something. Well, maybe I was wrong to assume that. It was always hard to tell how old a foreigner was, especially in this different world. That was just what I assumed based on what I saw in front of me.

“Were you told about the conditions for this job?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, will you two start working today? You won’t get paid for today, but I’ll provide dinner and a room to stay in.”

“Yes, please.”

We would have to sleep outside if we didn’t start working today.

“Oh yeah, there’s one last thing I have to mention. You can take days off if you tell me beforehand, but you’ll have to pay for lodging and food on those days. You’re free to sell yourselves after work, but if you’re going to pick up customers here at this inn, then don’t forget to hand over a portion of your earnings.”

“We won’t do that!”

Why do all the ladies we’ve encountered in this world recommend prostitution to us?! Well, I kind of understood why the inn lady had said that to us. In this world, waitresses at inns would often offer their services as prostitutes too. If they only earned one hundred Rea per day for waitressing, then it would be impossible to save money, so it made sense that they would have to take on side jobs to survive.

Waitresses who were basically prostitutes also existed in Japan not too long ago, during the Edo period, and their existence was considered fairly normal at the time. However, we had no plans to do such work. I would rather gamble and go outside of town to hunt monsters for a living than become a prostitute, and Natsuki would probably commit suicide by biting her tongue off instead of choosing the prostitute option. Well, actually, she would probably murder monsters with absolute wrath for sure. She’s definitely strong enough to pull that off. The only reason we hadn’t considered the option of hunting monsters for a living at the moment was that we weren’t completely cornered yet. We probably wouldn’t hesitate at all when it came to it if we were actually in danger of dying due to a lack of money. If possible, safer options in life were the ideal, but yeah. And thus, that was the end of our first day in this different world.

★★★★★★★★★

I said earlier that “that was the end of our first day in this different world,” but I was lying! The rest of our day all the way until bedtime was extremely tiring in all sorts of ways. I’d thought waitress work here would be similar to what waitresses had to do at restaurants in Japan, but the customers in this world were absolutely disgusting.

They would try to grope our butts without any hesitation, and there were also many men who told us that they would pay for sex. I refused right away, of course. It was ridiculous that they thought saying something like “How about three thousand Rea?” would work. I mean, that doesn’t mean I would sell myself for any price, but lowball offers also kind of pissed me off. I was really glad that Natsuki had taught me the Martial Arts skill. I wasn’t able to skillfully dodge all of the sexual harassment like she did, but I dodged most of it. However, the look on Natsuki’s face became scarier and scarier over time. She kept up a businesslike smile initially, but that gradually shifted to an expressionless look. I was scared that at any moment she would lose it and smash her elbow into a guy’s face. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all. She looked like a graceful and quiet girl on the outside, and that tended to be true most of the time, since she was physically frail, but she was absolutely terrifying when she was angry. When she was angry, she would unleash some very nasty attacks without batting an eye, and— Actually, I won’t go into details.

Our waitress work was hard and stressful, but the real trial we had to overcome was waiting for us after we finished work. The old lady assigned us a room for two, so the lodging part worked out fine. The problem was the food she provided.

Based on how bad our working conditions were, we were scared about what kind of food we would be provided, but we ended up receiving leftover food from the inn. It was as if we had been scared for no reason, but it made sense considering that we served all of the customers large bowls of stew, so there was no reason for the inn to cook something different for us waitresses to eat. I was a bit worried about what would happen if there was nothing left, however. The cost of this food was 70 Rea, and the quality of the food that we would receive for breakfast and lunch would probably be a bit worse, so the total value of our meals from this inn was probably somewhere around 150 Rea per day.

As for lodging expenses, it would cost 400 Rea per night for two people to stay in one room. If we included the amount that the old lady paid us per day, then that would add up to a total of 650 Rea. It felt fairly cheap for an entire day’s worth of waitress work. That daily wage of 650 Rea was the equivalent of 6,500 yen, and a day’s worth of work was ten hours, so we would be earning an hourly wage of 650 yen. It wasn’t ridiculously low paying by any means. Well, it wasn’t much at all, but we also had to take into consideration that the inn lady had hired us despite not knowing about our background. Perhaps this job isn’t too bad compared to what our other options could have been. Or, well, that was what I thought until I actually tasted the food.

What the hell is this? Can you really call this food? Isn’t this an insult to the art of cooking itself? Was this a form of torture specifically for us—actually, probably not, considering that we also served the customers this food, and they ate it with no problem. I looked at Natsuki sitting next to me, and she was frozen in place with her spoon stuck in her mouth. She had turned a bit pale, and it looked like a cold sweat had broken out on her forehead. Based on the muscles moving in her throat, it seemed like she was doing her best to stop herself from spitting the food out. Honestly, if I’d been served this kind of dish at a restaurant back in Japan, I wouldn’t just have wanted my money back—I would have gone so far as to sue the restaurant for damages, and I would probably have won the case too.

However, this was a different world. We had no choice but to consume this food if we didn’t want to die, since we had no money to spare. Let’s try out the water first. Hmm, okay, it isn’t delicious, but I can drink it down just fine. I took a deep breath to prepare myself and then pinched my nose as I forced myself to chew and swallow the food along with a mouthful of water to alleviate the taste. I didn’t want to suffer that taste by itself. I repeated that process a few times and managed to set a record for the fastest meal I had ever finished in my life. I washed out my mouth with water afterwards and exhaled deeply as I let go of my nose.

“Ack!”

What the hell is this strong smell?! I wasn’t ready for it at all, since I had my nose pinched the entire time! I pinched my nose again immediately. It would probably be a good idea to just breathe through my mouth for a while.

“Well done, Yuki.”

Huh? Natsuki, why do you look like you’re as proud of me as if I just defeated your mortal enemy for you or something? If you consider it objectively, all I did was make myself look like a fool, so I don’t get it.

“Do I have no choice but to do the same thing as well...?”

“If you can get the food down without having to pinch your nose, then it’s fine, but I think cutting off the smell will definitely help suppress the urge to spit the food out.”

The smell of food was more important than you’d normally think. For example, spiciness would only be a sensation of pain without the taste behind it. The difference would be very obvious if you pinched your nose while you ate some ginger, which would just be a painful experience. However, if you took your hands off of your nose, you would be able to smell the ginger, which would then change the taste impression from pain to something completely different. The experience I had just gone through with the inn food was the exact opposite of that. The food was already absolutely disgusting, but it transformed into some unfathomable blasphemy against the art of cooking itself after I took my fingers off of my nose. Is this what it means to gaze into the abyss of cooking? Have I discovered some dark secret...?

“You’re right. I guess I have no choice but to force this food down my throat somehow, since we barely have any money left. I never thought I’d experience something like this in my whole life...”

Natsuki had been born into a fairly wealthy family back on Earth, so what she said made sense to me. If she had continued her life without any incidents—like being transported to this different world—then it was highly unlikely that she would have found herself in a situation where she didn’t have money for decent food. In addition, a proper meal didn’t cost that much money in modern-day Japan, as long as it wasn’t some ridiculously expensive food.

In the past, there was a politician who’d gotten bashed for saying “The poor can just eat wheat,” but it was now possible to buy wheat for cheaper than rice if you weren’t picky about a specific brand. That politician’s words had a different meaning behind them than you’d expect, however. What he meant was more along the lines of “Wheat is good for your body, so you’ll become more resistant to diseases by eating wheat, which will also help save on medical fees,” apparently. That politician had eaten wheat himself in the past because his body was quite frail back when he was younger. The media had simply cherry-picked the words that were convenient to report on—or rather, the media had twisted his words, since he hadn’t specifically said “the poor” at all.

In the past, wheat had been the go-to example of a cheap grain, but now it would probably be brown rice instead, since brown rice was cheaper and easier to obtain than white rice. Brown rice tended to be more nutritious than high-quality white rice, which had some of its nutritional value removed during the milling process. Brown rice was definitely the better choice over white rice if you could stand the smell and taste. I was quite confident that I could happily devour some cooked brown rice by itself right now. There was also a mixture of various grains and beans that used to be consumed as a substitute for white rice in the past, but that mixture was now more expensive than white rice itself, sadly...

Oh, whoops, this food tastes so bad that I ended up distracting myself from facing reality. Time to slowly take my fingers off of my nose—okay, I can stand this. It still bothers me a bit, but it wasn’t like I could breathe through my mouth forever. I looked at Natsuki afterwards, and she was still trying her best to get the food down.

“It’s a good idea to continue pinching your nose for a while after you finish eating, Natsuki. The food might fly back out of your mouth the moment you let go if you don’t react very well to the smell.”

She looked teary-eyed as she nodded in response and forced herself to swallow these mysterious objects that were supposed to be food. It looked like a very painful experience for her. She tended to prefer food that was light and delicate in taste, so this food was definitely more painful to digest for her than for me. She looked like she was trying her best to chew the food as thoroughly as she could, but she was also swallowing very fast, which would probably be bad for her stomach. I hope she doesn’t get sick from this. Level 4 Robust, Disease Resistance, and Poison Resistance will do the job, right? My Robust skill is only Level 1, so I’m a bit worried for myself. Well, now that I think about it again, this should just be normal food. The customers who came to the inn ate it just fine, so the only problem with the food is probably the taste. Surely it isn’t something that would require the Robust and Poison Resistance skills to protect you, right...?

“Well done, Natsuki.”

“Thanks. Honestly, I didn’t expect that it would take this much effort just to finish a meal...”

“Yeah, I didn’t expect it either, considering the fact that the dining hall was full of people who came to eat.”

“Wait, is food like this what people eat every day in this world?”

“Huh? Where did you get that terrifying idea from, Natsuki? Don’t scare me like that...”

Well, people probably wouldn’t come to this inn to eat if they thought the food tasted bad. Even if the food wasn’t the main attraction here, people surely wouldn’t come back if the food was of lower quality than the average in this world. That didn’t seem to be the case, since people came and ordered this food as if it was normal.

“Ugh, I don’t feel confident about whether we can actually survive in this world anymore...” I said.

“You too? I happen to feel the same way. That food, if it could even be called food, or something that seemed like food was...”

“You’re going to short circuit your brain if you keep repeating the word food to yourself, Natsuki. Anyway, this is a small town, so there’s still hope that there’s something better somewhere out there in the world. Besides, there might actually be some delicious food hidden somewhere in this town as well.”

“I guess you’re right. It’s too early to lose hope. Let’s go find some delicious food to eat once we actually have money.”

“Yeah, let’s use that as motivation to do our best at work and earn money!”

We firmly held each other’s hands and reaffirmed our resolve together to survive in this world. However, we would have to wait until we met up with Haruka before we were finally able to consume delicious food.

★★★★★★★★★

About two weeks had passed since we’d first started doing the live-in waitress work. By now, we had gotten used to what this job entailed, which included being able to deal with and dodge sexual harassment from the customers. The job itself was quite simple—there weren’t that many items on the menu, and we weren’t required to provide great customer service the way similar places would have back in Japan. It made sense that the pay was low, since basically anyone could perform this job. However, the one thing I hadn’t been able to get used to was the food that the old lady provided us every day. Breakfast was fine, since we would just get some brown bread and water. It was a simple meal, but it actually tasted fairly decent if you lowered your expectations. The bread itself was baked and delivered in the morning, so it would still be a bit warm, and it wasn’t that hard to chew either. Natsuki would look very calm and at peace when she ate that bread, since it had a light taste.

As for lunch, it was still fairly acceptable. The lunch that we were provided was some brown bread that had gotten a bit hard and some light tasting soup with vegetable scraps stewed in it. It wasn’t delicious by any means, but it also wasn’t bad enough to make us want to spit it out. Meat would be mixed into the soup on some rare occasions as well, which usually tasted fairly decent. There would also sometimes be fish fillets in the soup that seemed like they were leftovers from the previous day, and the soup would become absolutely horrible when that happened. It would make the soup smell and taste muddy. Natsuki’s face would become expressionless whenever she saw this version of the soup. However, that fish fillet was rather popular among the other part-time waitresses, so maybe the people in this town had nostrils that were immune to that muddy aroma.

Dinner was the part of the day that was really a struggle to survive. If there were any leftovers from the daily special that this inn offered, then the food provided would be similar to what we’d experienced on our first day. The main dish would be some kind of freshwater fish, and there would be three different variations: stewed, simmered, and grilled. That order indicated how bad they were, with stewed being the worst and grilled being the least bad. They all had a muddy aroma, but the grilled variation wasn’t as bad as the other two; we wouldn’t have to spend as much time pinching our noses while we ate it. We would receive some rye bread or potatoes along with some vegetables. The lucky outcome would be some stewed vegetables, while the unlucky outcome would be sauerkraut.

During dinnertime, Natsuki would usually look like her soul had escaped her body or something. Her eyes would wander around unfocused, and she would operate like a machine that repeated the process of stuffing food in her mouth and washing it down with water, her nose pinched shut the entire time. It would take a while after we were done with the meal before she recovered.

There were some rare days when the dining hall was completely filled with customers, and on those days, there would be no leftovers from the special, which was the best outcome we could hope for. We would be provided some cheap and simple meal in place of the special whenever that happened. The best variation that we had gotten so far was some dried meat along with parboiled and lightly salted potatoes. The other waitresses didn’t seem to like this kind of fare, but Natsuki and I would celebrate in our room and toast each other whenever we had a cheap and simple meal like that for dinner. Well, we toasted with water instead of alcohol, since we had no money to spare, but yeah. In the days after we first experienced that simple dinner, we became absolutely dedicated to convincing customers to get the special, of course. However, after that happened, the inn lady who’d hired us increased the amount of the daily special that she would cook every day. It was pointless in the end, but still!