Chapter 12: Compression
[Edited by Arthur300000]
[Proofread by ArchmageNaoki]
[Death joined the party]
The sceneries outside the city were covered by a white blanket. However, I saw some strange creatures were running around on the snowy field from time to time. A pack of blue wolves with electric arcs around their bodies brutally hunting prey. However, a small wyvern came in and snatched their prey from their jaws. According to Sophia, those wolves are called thunder wolves. Is it a wolf version of an electric eel? I hope they can’t shoot a coin with an electromagnetic force like a certain Railgun. If I remember correctly there is also a dish called thunder wolf burger in the menu I saw yesterday. So, if I sold their meat to that restaurant, I would get some pocket money? I wonder how many panties I could buy from hunting a pack of thunder wolves.
You might already notice that I am running away from the real problem. The problem being the book that had 0% story and 100% erotic nonsense is still in my possession. The only realistic thing in that book is the Hero can’t draw that massive sword from his back. The rest is just erotic fictional nonsense like those yaoi hole thingies. Damn, if I ever meet the writer, I will Excalibur him with this book. Why haven't I returned the book to Sophia yet? Well, I'm gathering up my courage alright? I need a few seconds... minutes, no hours. So I used the “I have motion sickness, I will read it later” delay tactic. I don't know why but right now my head is full of pessimistic and anxiety. So I tried to postpone the difficult thing as long as possible.
Along the way, some curious students came to greet us, and those guys who intimidated my brother were also on the bus but they kept their distance. Once we arrived at our destination, a firmly built woman in a military suit ordered us to form rank in front of the bus.
Contrary to my belief, the so-called ‘high school’ doesn’t look like any high school I remembered in my previous life at all. It’s just a large building in the middle of nowhere. By the middle of nowhere, I mean a snowy field, a dense pine-like forest and a big lake in the back. Far away I saw some teenagers fishing near the lake. I never tried fishing in my past life, and I would like to try if I had a chance. However, being in a fantasy world made me wonder if there might be a giant monster in the lake that might come up without warning and swallow people whole.
“Today we have a transfer student joining us. Ms. Kuro come and introduce yourself.” Once we had formed our rank the military suit woman called me to the front of everyone. I don’t know her name so I will just call her Major Motoko then.
With all eyes staring at me, I got nervous, but when I looked into their eyes, my nervousness slowly faded. The look of contempt or disgust that was usually in the eyes of people around me was replaced by something like curiosity and adoration. Although there were looks of caution from people like those guys in the back, those are a minority. I tried to calm down my fluttering heart and started reciting the phrase that I practiced yesterday.
The self-introduction had gone smoothly, I think. However, there were some annoying questions from students like “Do you have a boyfriend yet?”. Of course, my answer is, ‘absolutely not.' My answer raised some clamor from many guys in my class. To make the matter worse, my sister suddenly proclaimed “If you're interested in Kuro-chan you will have to get through me first!”. Why do you have to act like an overprotective father, Pristia?
“This week's assignment for you guys will be trimming the overpopulated monsters inside the [Black Forest] region. Prepare your equipment and plan your strategies well. The scores will be calculated according to the number and quality of the monster cores you bring back. We will meet here at seven hundred tomorrow. Dismissed.” Major Motoko sharply announced. Huh? Is that all? Where are the classes?
“Let’s go Kuro-chan.” While I was still confused about the current circumstances, people began to move to the building and my sister also dragged me along. The Inside of the building is clean and bright. However, the corridor is like a maze. It took us 16 turns to arrive at the cafeteria, the path from the entrance we took being Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-A Floor- B Floor and so on. The noise of overactive people inside the cafeteria is deafening, and there were about fifty people already sitting on the tables.
We are queuing after about 20 teenagers, so I just mimicked their behavior by picking up a tray and proceed to the counter which I noticed has a lot of pre-made dishes arranged on top of it. There are three types of dishes I can choose from this counter. The first one looks like Nouvelle cuisine that has several eyeballs arranged neatly on the big wide rim white plate with bright and vivid colors of unknown vegetables as garnish. Those eyeballs were attached neatly to the plate with something that looks like mashed potatoes. The chef also artfully decorated the dish with some creamy green sauce. I would give this dish a 10/10 plating score as art, not as food.
Stolen story; please report.
While I admired the beauty of this unknown dish, my brother just picked it up. He said, “Minotaur's eyes only taste good this time of the year.” So what taste good in the summer? I hope it’s not Cyclops’ balls. The second one which Sophia selected is something that looked like a horde of octopus tentacles wiggling minutely in the white porcelain bowl. Well, it looks somewhat harmless until Sophia adds some lemon juice into the bowl then the tentacles began to shake violently. She said something like ‘It feels good with the tentacle violating my mouth.’ Sophia is a hardcore woman in many ways. The last choice which my sister and I chose is a giant steamed insect appendage served with lemon wedges and some white sauce with little pieces of herbs inside. How do I know it's an insect appendage? It’s because I saw the chef dissecting some giant grasshopper-like thing behind the counter. However, I chose this dish because I heard crab and insects are in the same ... phylum? I think they're called Arthropod or something. So, according to that flimsy biology knowledge of mine, this dish should be somewhat harmless. Huh? Rat and Cow are even closer, you say? Nah, there is always an exception to those rules.
The drink corners also have PoroPoro juice, but I got something that looks and smells like root beer. Well, I arrived in a strange place and eating exotic food I would like to have something that made me feel at home, and this root beer is just what I need. We picked the seat near the windows to sit, and of course, I took the windows seat. We are at around third-floor height so I could see quite far away. However, I saw only an endless sea of pine-like forest outside the window. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t believe that I was still on a floating island.
“Is that the Black Forest?” I asked.
“Yes and No. What you are seeing is just the outer region of the Black Forest. The core of the forest which we are going to tomorrow is so dense that the sunlight rarely gets through the branches.” After my nerdy brother answered, he put the eyeball inside his mouth and started chewing while closing his eyes like some gourmet on television.
I looked around the table to see how people around me are doing. My sister is struggling with her giant insect's leg. Some boys from another table suspiciously looked away when I looked at them. Most of the people are enjoying their food and chatting happily. However, Sophia destroyed the mood by creepily smiling when she ate a mouthful of those tentacles. She is a maniac I concluded.
The method of eating these steamed giant insect's appendages is simple. Just snap the shell in half and suck the meat from inside. The seafood like smell came out with the white steam when I broke the first appendage, the big fat crab-like meat spilling out from its shell. The taste of the meat is similar to king crab claw which I only had a chance to experience it once in my previous life. Each appendage I don’t have to break it more than once because the meat is resilient enough that I could just pull the whole chunk of meat from its shell in one go. The white sauce has perfect harmonization of the butter, garlic, shallot, pepper, parsley, chives and some unknown herb. After adding some lemon juice, it’s going along really well with the meat. The mountain of the steamed appendages was replaced with the empty shells in no time. I also helped my sister break some legs that she was struggling with and stole some of it in the process.
After we finished the excellent lunch, we proceed to our planning room, although it looks more like a club room. Before we could go inside my sister rushed in. There must be something inside the room my sister doesn’t want me to see. Maybe I should take a peek at her room in our home later. Inside the room is quite spacious, there is a big table with four chairs around it. The air inside is a bit stale, but after opening the window for a while, the air was clean again. This room is located on the fifth floor, so the view outside is quite spectacular, I can even see the entire lake from here! It’s a big lake with several little islands scattered across it. Those people that I saw fishing is still there. I focus on them to see how much they caught. Well, they caught quite a lot of fish, and there is also something like lobsters in their basket. Huh? Shouldn’t lobsters live in the sea? I guess they’re just another weird fantasy creature.
Regardless, each corner of the room have shelves for placing personal belongings, so each one of us owns a corner for personal use. My sister’s corner is the most suspicious. It’s was picked clean, but according to the dust gathering pattern, there was some circular and rectangular object removed from there recently. My brother’s corner is a nerd corner. Only those magic books and theories were displayed there. I almost looked at Sophia’s corner and suffered another critical hit from it. Luckily I turned my head away just in time. Well, I saw what cursed items were in that corner but let’s just use the three seconds rule here.
Well, I don't know what to place on those shelves yet. I don't have a lot of things anyway. I tried to understand how my brother is planning the route. But I got bored. My brother said a lot of jibberish about monster ecology and their behavior. So, I helped my sister preparing the camping equipment instead. Those gears were also gathering dust, so we were cleaning them up and rechecking their condition. There are only three tents, one large and two small. So, I got to sleep in a large tent with my sister.
I thought the tent is going to be exotic because this is a sci-fi fantasy world. But it's just an ordinary spring type tent. Well, at least it is easy to setup. My sister demonstrated the tent by tossed it to the empty space, and it just turned itself into an elegant and practical shelter. Well, packing it is a bit tedious, but I enjoy watching the tent expand itself. So I volunteer to test other two. While I still struggle with packing the big tent, my sister came to me and said.
"Kuro-Chan after finished this, let's go to the public bath together." Huh?