2-1.  「Months of progress」

Half a year after the summon of the Heroes at Kriste Kingdom, yes, that means half a year after those heroes kicked this poor man’s ass out of their castle, their fame and popularity rose exponentially.

Apparently, the Demon Lord is dominating the Northern lands, where ice and snow reign over. But that’s not all, a vast area of plains between Kriste and those freezing lands is also ruled by the Demon Lord.

During these past few months, under the training and support of the royalty, the group of summoned Heroes pushed the demons back to the far North quite considerably. The newspaper every morning was flooded with their heroic efforts and overwhelming achievements.

「Heh. Can’t believe there’s propaganda in this world…」

But to my eyes, it all looked like fancy fairy tales the royalty of this country made up and painted colorfully to gain the people’s trust. The reason I thought so, is because I saw my schoolmates once or twice on the streets and they didn’t look all that happy. As a matter of fact, their face looked terrible. I wonder what happened.

「Onii-chan, do you think they will be okay?」

Closing the newspaper in my hands, I finished my cup of tea, staring out to the far distance beyond the window of the inn and answered Yui’s question:

「Well…I say they would be OK. As long as they’re still clinging to the faint hope of return to Earth, they’ll be strong enough…」

…though that faint hope seems…too faint.

But anyhow, if they defeated the Demon Lord, they’ll surely be able to manage something to go back to Earth. When that time come, I might have to make some choices, both for my sake and Yui’s sake. In any case, there’s no problem for me staying behind at this world for good, I’m just a little worried about Yui…

「Jeez…you’re making that face again…」

「Hm? Ah. I’m just thinking about some things」

「And those things are?」

I have no reason to lie to Yui. In fact, if I lied, she’ll notice my voice and it’ll just worry her even more. Making Yui feels anxious would absolutely be the last thing I want right now. This situation doesn’t allow me to be selfishly paranoid and accidentally drag Yui into it with me.

That said, I told the truth:

「I was thinking about how should we proceed if we actually find a way home…though I don’t know if I can even call that place home…」

Truly, I don’t know if it’s even a good idea for myself to return to Earth. I mean, I have a cheat ability in this world, I can manage well enough to live a comfortable life if I put in enough seriousness and efforts.

「…onii-chan’s overthinking again. Yui’s gonna follow you anywhere y’know?」

「Yeah, I’ll take your words for that. Now then, let’s go to the Guild」

「Yeah~」

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「Ogres huh…they became too easy for us now that it almost didn’t give any EXP at all…」

「That’s because onii-chan’s too high level! I still have a little bit of EXP fighting Ogres」

Going through the southern gate of Kriste Kingdom, we walked towards Es’anore Forest. Normally it would take half an hour of walking to arrive at the forest. That wasn’t really a problem though, since our levels are high, we have a lot of stamina.

With my hidden skill Rapid Leveling, these past few months, we made some incredible progress in leveling up ourselves. I myself, by just fighting monsters from simple requests, got to level 175, and Yui got to level 100 under the influence of my skill as something like a party member.

Though it went really fast at first, right now it’s super slow, because the EXP I got from monsters, even after being multiplied by Rapid Leveling, is still too low to push my level to any new heights. In fact, I’m already stuck at around 25%.

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In addition, the skill 『Swordsmanship』 I acquired also receive a ton of EXP from me repeatedly using it. Then when it finally hit 100% of the EXP required to level up to LV.11, it evolved to skill 『Swords Master』, giving me even more knowledge on how to handle a sword efficiently. Naturally, it also became a lot harder to level since it’s already on a completely different league of its own.

「『Appraise』 is so hard to level…」

「Isn’t that just natural? It’s a really convenient skill after all」

The method of acquiring a skill is quite basic for someone who used to play a lot of fantasy MMORPG’s in the past.

You simply repeat an action over and over again, as many times as you can, until the time when you become really good at it and you’ll acquire a skill for that specific action. For instance, if you keep on swinging down the sword from above your head repeatedly, you’ll soon acquire something like a 「one slash kill」 skill.

But for me, I have Rapid Level, the EXP I got every time I perform an action is multiplied by 200. That’s why even when I was fighting with shitty swordsmanship half a year ago, it was still counted as me attempting to learn the sword, thus EXP was multiplied and I acquired skill 『Swordsmanship』. Then by using it again and again to fight monsters, after about 6 months, I arrived at myself now, 『Swords Master』 skill holder.

During these past few months, I learned various things from other adventurers we cooperated with and succeeded in acquiring a few more skills for my own. For example, there was a person who taught me how to distinguish edible herbs from poisonous ones, and there was also a person who taught me how to judge equipment as bad or good. From people like that, I practiced together with Yui and we acquired skill 『Appraise』. Yes, Yui’s EXP for skill leveling is also under the influence of my hidden skill, though not as much as I get from myself.

Though that being the case, it’s indeed easier said than done as this skill is super hard to level, because not everything can be appraised normally. Some items were protected with magic, or monsters that had skills to hide their identity. But we surely are making progress in trying to level up this 『Appraise』 skill.

「How about your set of fire-attribute magic?」

「Ah, I’m using them equally, so almost all of them are on LV.6 now」

「Heh~ Remind me not to try to anger you then. Don’t exactly wanna become grilled meat yet」

「…maybe I should really just grill onii-chan for saying stupid things all the time」

「Hohoho. Do you think you can lay your hands on this cute oni—yikes!! That burned you…」

「…you what?」

「…」

「…」

「…you…cute little sister of mine?」

「…hmph」

Turning her head, Yui continued walking while pouting. This young woman who is my little sister has become a lot scarier because she figured out how to control fire in various ways and acquired a whole set of spells. She can shoot fireballs, rain flaming-hail, or even heat beams nowadays. There was a molester who tried to mess with Yui when she was going out to buy me fish balls…well, that guy became a barbeque main dish…

As we continued walking while talking about meaningless stuffs, I suddenly felt peaceful deep inside. Our everyday life has been more quiet, yet full of bliss more than ever before.

But I guess my timing was just terrible, when we ran right into them just before arriving at the edge of Es’anore Forest.

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Author's Notes: Beginning of the 2nd Arc. I do want to focus a bit more on the story, so you won't encounter a sex scene every 2 chapters or something like that. Sorry if I disappointed some of the [18+] seekers haha...

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