I didn’t give Nowa an answer until we were back in the safety of our room. Locking the door behind me, I placed Nowa down on the bed and sat down next to her.

“Nowa…about your kiss…”

“...?”

“You— we shouldn’t. Kisses on the lips are only for a special someone that you love.”

Nowa tilted her head. “But Nee-chan is special!”

‘Okay, this is a lot harder than I thought.’

“Look, Nowa, I don’t count. You must reserve those kisses for the person you love.”

Unlike what I’d expected, Nowa nodded with a beaming smile. “Nn!”

And also unlike what I’d expected, she gazed at me with pleading eyes.

“C-Can I practice with you, Nee-chan?”

“...”

“I-I also want to make the kiss special for my special someone…”

I thought about it very seriously and hard. Yeah, from the memories of my first kiss with my Ihwa, I knew that a kiss between two very inexperienced people would just be…awkward, and a bit painful.

That combined with Nowa’s pleading eyes made me sigh.

“Fine… But can you tell me who’s that ‘special someone’ of yours?”

Nowa widened her eyes. It seemed that she was surprised that I didn’t know. With a cheek grin, she laughed. “Se~cret!”

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I spent the entire night not sleeping, but thinking about Nowa’s request of wanting to go to school.

‘Well, I wouldn’t want her to do anything dangerous.’

So, intellectual jobs such as teacher or librarian, or accountant would be perfect for her in the future. Regrettably, those jobs require a “school degree” or whatever they call it.

So, here I was, sitting at a table with the Guildmaster to negotiate.

“Enroll Nowa in an all-girls school. In exchange, I’ll—”

“Okay.”

“E-Eh?” He accepted it just like that?

“I was wondering when you’d ask.” He chuckled. “You really don’t want her to do anything dangerous, huh?”

What kind of mind-reading bullshit was this?

“I don’t read minds. Your intentions are as clear as water.”

‘That’s what a mind-reader would say!’

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After figuring out everything with the Guildmaster, I continued my masochistic training near the lake. However…

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Why are you here?”

…Freya, the Dryad, was sitting near the tree as if she was waiting for me.

“Brother says that you’d be here.”

“...And why exactly do you want to find me?”

Smiling, Freya held her hand out. Vines quickly crawled into her hand and formed a big bow. “To go hunting! Come on! We drained our supply for the feast two days ago!”

I thought about her request. On one hand, I need to continue racking up ARC points. On the other hand…I was kind of the reason why their food supply was running low, and it’d been a while since I last fought anything.

So, I accepted. “Okay, lead the way.”

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We spent an hour or so trudging deep into the forest. I’d seen no animal; nothing but the boring brown and green.

“Hey, does it always take this long?”

Freya stopped in her track and scratched her chin for a few moments before shaking her head. “No…I always at least find a rabbit in five minutes.”

“Then why did you continue walking here for an hour!?”

She scratched her head innocently, embarrassed. “A-After five minutes, I-I thought that maybe I will see a r-rabbit in another five… And i-it snowballed into this.”

“Just great.”

I’d wasted my time. As I was just about to turn around and go back to the glade, I heard a deathly growl to the side.

“W-Why is it here!?”

Red Wolf—a 2-star Monster. Normally, I could dispose of it easily, but there were three of them…all staring at us hungrily.

I gulped. The Wolves were eyeing us carefully, assessing the capability of their breakfasts. Very sneakily, my hand found its way toward Freya’s to stop her from firing her bow.

“Don’t. They’re not hostile…not yet.”

One step, two steps, three steps; slowly, I began backing away from the Wolves. The tension was still there, ready to snap at any moment. But I was confident that as long as we didn’t make any abrupt movement, we’d be able to get out of here just f—

“Ah!”

Of fucking course! Freya slipped on a tree root and fell down. By some divinely shitty luck, her arrow was fired right into the torso of a Red Wolf.

“Get up! Run!”

We have three seconds of a headstart. That was it.

The Wolves were seasoned hunters. Everywhere we ran, they’d block our way and force us to run the other way.

If it wasn’t for my Ice magic making them slip and Freya commanding the trees to hold the Wolves back, we’d have been long dead.

“Fox spirit! W-Why don’t you use your Flame magic?”

“How did you even know that?”

“Dad told me!”

Eugh, I really didn’t want to explain it while we were being hunted down, but fine!

“Do you really want to start a forest fire? We’d die!”

“Oh, yeah…” She scratched her head sheepishly, as if her certain death wasn’t just a few meters behind her.

Eventually, we reached a dead end—a cliff that seemed endless.

“Dammit, did they lead us here!?”

But there was no time for an answer. A Wolf had already begun pouncing at us at full speed, no doubt trying to devour us whole in one go.

I gritted my teeth and grabbed Freya’s hand to pull her closer to me. “Don’t let go! [Star Step]!”

As we both jumped above the Wolf, I froze the ground beneath me. “Eat shit!”

The Wolf, having missed its target, slid on the icy ground toward its doom. I could hear its distressed howl quickly fading away as it plunged down the cliff.

Landing on the ground again, I heaved a brief sigh of relief and quickly turned toward the remaining Wolves. ‘Looks like they’re not letting us go.’

“Freya, I’ll take the left one. Distract the other one.”

She nodded.

The left one was the one that Freya’d injured, so I was confident in my winning chance.

Crashing my fists together, I initiated the fight and quickly covered the distance between us. “[Iron Tail]”

My steel-hard tail met with the Wolf’s sharp claws, creating a slight shockwave that knocked me away. Of course, being a fox, I landed on my feet.

The Wolf, though, had its body embedded in a tree behind it and was stuck there.

I quickly rushed up to it and slammed my tail into its face, crushing its snout in the process. I then directed the sharp tip of my tail toward its body and gouged its heart out, really making sure that it was dead.

Stopping for a moment to catch my breath, I looked to my side to see how Freya was doing.

She was doing alright. The Wolf had basically turned into a pincushion, but it was still going strong. In fact…it was closing its distance with Freya.

I frowned. ‘She’s definitely going to get hit.’ So, I leaped down from the Wolf’s corpse and dashed toward Freya just as the Wolf was about to bite her head.

The Wolf bit down on my arm, which I used to shield Freya from it. Stifling a scream, I kicked the Wolf away. I could feel bits of my flesh being torn off as the Wolf’s sharp teeth slid away, but that didn’t matter right now.

Dashing up to it, I aligned the tip of my tail with its eye and thrust, swiftly ending its life.

With all the danger now over, I plopped down to the ground while covering my arm in pain. “Oww… oww… That fucking hurts…”

I could see Freya looming over me with a worried gaze.

“F-Fox spirit, are you okay?”

I raised my injured arm up. “What do you think?”