I somehow managed to stay awake from the lessons that threatened to lull me to sleep, and just when I thought today was going to be another mundane day.

“N-n-natsume... c-can we g-go som-somewhere a-af-after s-s-school?”

Judging from her squirming eyes, I could tell she was nervous but I was the one that really dumbfounded by her action, enough to make me startled a little bit from my chair and went silent.

“U-um... or do y-you h-h-have a-any ot-other plans?”

“Ah...” I thought about this for a while, trying to remember whether or not I had a plan. “I guess no?”

“T-then, I’ll w-wa-wait f-for y-y-you at the s-school gat-gate.”

Said Kawamoto, she then turned around and patiently eating her boxed lunch alone.

But I never agreed to go with? Still, there was no way I could say ‘no’ I think and why didn’t we just go right from the start? We were sitting NEXT to each other.

“Hey. Hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Soseki, what sort of relationship do you have with her?” Izumi and Toma didn’t say any word, but I could tell from their gaze that that was the question they wanted to ask right now.

To tell the truth, since she asked me I guessed her business must be related to the ‘test’ or maybe confession? Nah must be the former.

As soon as the school ended, she packed her belonging and left the classroom.

By the time I arrived at the front gate.

Kawamoto was already waiting there, running out of her breath and she tried called out to me as soon as she spotted me.

In any case, so she walked to the mountain behind school along with me.

After confirming that there weren’t any people nearby.

“E-energy B-bolt!”

She let out a yell, and at the same time sent the bluish ball of energy flying towards me.

The ball cut through the air and was on the verge of colliding with my forehead.

However, the ball made a loud noise as it collided with something that looked like a barrier that had appeared out of nowhere, lost its momentum, and disappeared.

When she did that, a red, cylindrical gauge appeared at the edge of my field of vision, near the top right corner. It looked like there was only 5 durability left from my shield.

“W-what the hell!?” although I was a little taken aback. I somehow managed to question her action.

“S-s-sorry... I-I j-just w-wanted t-t-t-to t-test som-som-something.”

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“By shooting it at me!?”

I shouted, and her expression seemed turned downward as her voice gradually turned thinner when she explained her action.

To summarize it, she just wanted to test what was the actual damage from her Energy Bolt and whether or not she could control the output.

In a sense, she just wanted to compare her stats to someone else stats.... by testing it without any experiment of confirmation.

I sighed... not because I was mad but because I suddenly felt tired.

“E-e-energy b-b-bolt!”

This time she directed it to the nearby tree, and with the same amount of power she shot another energy bolt.

An arm-thick tree got chipped away as if a human just crunched on a baguette.

And Kawamoto seemed somewhat a little bit happy when she did that... she might be a little bit dangerous.

So the question was ‘is she does 11 point of damage’ with her Energy Bolt? to me yes, but considering the tree didn’t have Resistance from what we knew, she just did 15 amount of damage.

After that she started going on explained about calculating it with pound of force, the speed, the angle and orders of magnitude... while stuttering like crazy.

“T-there-therefore I-I as-assume one p-p-p-point of d-d-d-d-damage is eq-equal to-“

“...Sorry, I don’t know to ruin your fun, but you already lose me at the thrusting and dragging part.”

Yeah, normally it was hard enough for me to understand that kind of thing, and she did that while stuttering. Not like I hated it, but my brain just couldn’t endure it anymore.

“O-oh... s-sorry.”

And she suddenly went silent. That was actually the longest sentence I ever heard coming from her and it wasn’t like she forced me to understand her either. maybe she just having fun by explaining it. urgh... I felt kinda bad ruining her fun.

“So... how much does a human punch do?”

“M-m-maybe o-one or t-t-two? I-it a-also d-depends on t-the s-s-speed...”

Seemed like Kawamoto wanted to say more but decided to stop, she’s also pretty considerate huh.

“U-um... w-w-why d-don’t we-we ju-just try i-it?”

She said, turning against me and closing her eyes.

“...”

“...”

Kawamoto slowly opened her eyes and peeking at me. “U-um... m-my shi-shield is s-s-s!!!”

I clenched my fist and swung it to her face. However, when the tip of the fist was hair-wide close to making contact with her head, a dull sound rang out and my fist was stopped mid-swing, as though it had hit an invisible wall.

“Hyikes!!!”

At the same time she let out a very weird sound... but, her reaction was kinda slow, wasn’t she?

Kawamoto dropped to the ground even though my fist got repelled, and I could hear her heartbeat beating like crazy.

“Sorry~ sorry~ I just want to startle you a little bit, just consider as the payback from that surprise energy bolt.”

I said, then offering my hand and helping her stood up.

She seemed wanted to protest but immediately swallowed it back.

“So...? How much damage?”

I took a bottle of water from Inventory.

Her eyes widened and she pointed at me. “Y-y-you’re n-n-ot s-saying a-anything?”

“Ah... yeah, I want to tell you but I kept forgetting about it.” I said, opening it and handing it over to her. “Anyway, how much does it do?”

“T-two... b-but s-since m-my d-d-d-defence is t-three, i-it s-should b-be fi-five, b-but it a-a-a-also de...”

And there she goes, explaining everything about the theory behind it. Summing it up, basically she said; on the normal situation (without shield) depending on where my punch landed, it should be higher or lower, and something about two 500 pound of force wasn’t equal to 1000.

Likewise, we continued by throwing rock, kicking, biting, using club and et cetera until both of our shield got reduced to zero.

As speaking of which, as we separated I kept grinning while looking at my phone screen. Only three days since school started and I already received a girl contact number, not bad at all, considering I needed around two months to get a girl contact info back when I was in the middle school.