It’s been an entire week since we failed to communicate with the Stadiea and went back home to train.

Since then, we’ve grown a whole lot.

I’d love to tell you exactly how much, but I can’t remember every skill we gained and grew…

Is what I would have said two days ago, before insight went up to level three!

At level two, we could just see our species name and three letters.

Now, we can see all of our skills as well.

H

M

E >

>

Pretty good so far, if I do say so myself.

I made Gloria practice drawing in the dirt, so we got the artistry skill.

It leveled up pretty fast, so it’s at level four already.

After that, we got lessened energy consumption and energy regeneration randomly.

Aside from those three skills, we didn’t get any new ones, but we did level a ton of our old ones up a lot.

Both digging and soul manipulation are already at level six!

I admit, I did have to do some dangerous stuff to level soul manipulation, which is made obvious by soul defense increasing by two levels.

Since a week has passed and we’ve gained four levels in artistry, we’ve decided to give communicating with the Stadiea another try.

We just finished up a big healthy breakfast of moss, moss, and more moss, so it’s time to leave.

As we walk, I use insight on anything I can. Gloria used to yell at me whenever I used it, but once it reached level three, she was convinced of its usefulness and decided to let me use it.

I’ve been thinking about magic a lot, but I still haven’t managed to find a way to use it. Hopefully, we can successfully communicate with the Stadiea and befriend them. That way, we can have them teach us magic.

Suddenly, the ground beneath us begins to shake violently.

An earthquake?

{Gloria, let’s put off finding the Stadiea for now and find some shelter instead.}

[Mhm.]

Gloria begins to run towards a cave, but a giant chunk of rock falls right in front of us, just barely missing.

This is more severe than I thought.

{Quickly! You focus on running, I’ll warn you about any falling rocks I see!}

[Got it!]

At first the rocks are all small enough for Gloria to dodge easily, but the rocks keep getting bigger the longer this goes on. Is there any closer shelter we could go to?

{To your left!}

Gloria jumps to the left.

{No, the rock is to the left! Go to the right!}

Gloria quickly jumps out of the way, leaving us flat on our stomach on the ground right as a giant boulder slams down on where we just were.

[You could have done a better job of warning me!]

{I told you it was on your left!}

[Be more clear next time!]

Before we can continue arguing, another huge rock falls right next to our head, so Gloria stands up and gets back to running.

This is really, really bad. Are earthquakes normally like this?

I’ve been assuming this is an earthquake up until now, but I’m starting to doubt it is.

Though, I really don’t know anything about earthquakes, since I’d never been in one in my previous life, so I can’t really say for sure whether it is or isn’t one.

Either way, there are giant rocks falling towards our head and even one is probably enough to end our second life as quickly as it started.

Ah, I hope the Stadiea are okay. It’d really suck if we went through all that work to communicate with them and they just end up dying right before we finally do it.

And of course, by ‘we went through all that work’ I mean ‘Gloria went through all that work’.

I just sat around messing with my own soul the whole time.

The Stadiea will probably be fine, right? They’re supposed to be masters of magic, some ordinary rocks are probably like particles of dust to those guys. Yeah, yeah, they’ll be fine.

I really hope they’ll be fine.

The rocks really just keep raining down.

This can’t be normal. If this kind of thing was a normal occurrence, this cave would be filled in by now.

In that case, why is this happening?

Maybe it’s some kind of once-in-a-century earthquake?

Or perhaps… It’s being caused by the movement of a giant monster deep underground…

Nah, no way. There can’t be something that big.

{Just a little further!}

Right in front of us is a small cave.

{To the right!}

Giant rocks slam into the ground all around us.

I can feel tiny rocks raining down on our back.

At this point, there are too many rocks to completely avoid.

{To the left!}

Sharp rocks rain down on us, one stabs straight into our back.

{We’re almost there!}

I feel our back being torn open by the rain of rocks hitting us.

{Jump!}

Gloria leaps forward, entering the small cave right as a large chunk of rock hits us.

{Are you okay?}

[Do you think I’m okay?]

{Right, sorry… Do you think you can move at all?}

[Nope. And I’ll just ignore you if you try to make me.]

{Don’t worry, I won’t.}

Man, that turned out worse than expected.

I think we almost died like twenty times back there.

Ah, every cloud has a silver lining I guess.

I wish we were home right now. I’m pretty sure the moss we eat is medicinal, so that would definitely be very helpful.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I feel like we won’t be able to be home for a while though.

I hope we don’t starve here…

[I’m gonna sleep. You stay up.]

{Got it.}

I would have stayed awake even if she didn’t tell me to.

In situations like this, doesn’t going to sleep usually mean dying?

It happens all the time in movies, the character gets out of a bad situation, barely hanging onto life, and tells their friends they feel tired and want to take a quick nap.

But then they just don’t wake up.

Yeah, I don’t want that to happen to us. Although passing away in our sleep would probably be one of the best possible ways to go in this hell hole.

Ah, I’m getting tired now though…

No, no, I can’t sleep.

But…

No. I shouldn’t.

I’m so tired…

{Gloriaaa!}

[...What?]

{Can we trade roles? I’m tired.}

[Fine.]

{Yay! Thanks Gloria!}

[Whatever.]

Finally… I can feel myself drifting off to sleep… Ah, it feels so good…

Yaaaawn! Good morning! It's a lovely day tod-

Ow ow ow ouch!

Owwwww!

[Good morning sunshine.]

{Oh, hey Gloria.}

[You slept for a very long time.]

{Did I?}

[Yes, you did. Despite the fact I was also exhausted, probably even more than you.]

Gulp.

{S-sorry?}

[That won’t cut it this time. I don’t want an apology, I want you to make it up to me.]

{And how do I do that…?}

[Oh don’t worry, it won’t be anything too difficult.]

I can practically hear the sneer she’d be making if she had the face of a human.

[All you have to do is take over my work for a week.]

{Whaaat?! No way!}

[C’mon, it’s not that bad!]

{No, it is!}

[Hmm… If that won’t do…]

Uh oh, I feel like her next suggestion is going to be even worse.

[Remember that big hole we found in the deep woods near the glowing rock?]

{...Yeah? Why?}

[I wanna go in there.]

{Are you crazy?!}

[It’s either that or the work.]

Let’s think about this.

She’s crazy, but not stupid. She's definitely not serious about going in that hole.

She only said that so the other option, doing all of her work for her, seems less extreme.

So, she expects me to choose the work, since she thinks I definitely won't agree to go down that pit.

Therefore, what I should do is…

{Fine, we can go in the hole.}

Ha, bet she didn’t expect that.

[...Seriously?]

{Yeah, let’s go right now.}

[We still have like twenty gashes on our back, idiot. We’re not going anywhere right now.]

{Oh, right.}

Then I guess it's time to go back to the classic time-waster, soul manipulation.

[Hey, Fir.]

{Hm? What’s up?}

[I think there’s something outside the cave.]

{How can you tell?}

[Vibrations.]

Hmm… She’s right.

{What do you think it is?}

[I’m not sure. I can’t see outside at all, but I can tell from how bright it is that it’s not night, so it’s probably not wolves. But Stadiea usually stay down in the grassy areas, so I don’t think it’s them either.]

I focus on the vibrations.

{I wanna look at this thing. Crawl us over to the cave’s entrance!}

[Fine, but only cause I wanna see it too.]

Slowly, Gloria inches over to the opening of the cave.

She stops as soon as the creature that was making the vibrations comes into sight.

It towers over the trees around it, being almost twice as tall as the tallest tree nearby.

Thick white fur covers its entire body, except for its giant claws and its face, which is completely bare, leaving the bone exposed.

And now, its piercing amber eyes are staring right in our direction.

[I’m running.]

Gloria struggles to get to her feet, despite the wounds on our back opening up and causing a burning pain.

{Wait! Let me use insight on it!}

[No way, I’m running!]

{Please!}

[Fine, but it’s your fault if we die!]

Returning its gaze, I activate insight.

Level unknown?!

[Alright, that’s enough, I’m running.]

Gloria takes off into a sprint, running as fast as she can despite the immense pain from our injuries.

As we run along the rocky wall of the cavern, Rorthal continues to stare at us, unmoving.

{Into the woods!}

[Why?}

{Just trust me!}

[Fine!]

Gloria continues to run far into the woods, until the glowing stones above us begin to dim.

[Do you think we lost it.]

{Probably. It wasn’t chasing us in the first place.}

[That’s good. Man, what was that thing?]

{According to insight, its name is Rorthal}

[Hold on, its name?]

{Yeah. It also had the words ‘engineered guardian’ next to its name, like some kind of title.}

[What was its level?]

{I don’t know. It seems like insight can’t tell the level of things above a certain level.}

[Jeez. That’s… that’s crazy. How could something like that exist?]

Pain tolerance going up a level brings our attention back to our back, which is still spewing blood like a fountain.

{Do you think we'll be okay?}

[I don't know. We'll probably live as long as we make sure our injuries don't get worse. Probably]

{That's... good? I think?}

[I guess.]

{Hey, do you see that light over there?}

[Oh, yeah. Wonder what that is.]

{Let’s go check it out.}

[Ugh, fine.]

Crawling carefully so as to not allow our wounds to worsen, we slowly make our way over to the light.

Is this another one of those stones that sent the information about the Stadiea into our heads?

I wonder what kind of information we’ll get this time.

As we get closer, I notice that this light seems to be dimming slowly, and is more of a yellow than a cool blue like the information stone was.

[Hey, isn’t that one of the glowing stones from the ceiling?]

She’s right, on the ground before us is one of the stones that glows during the day.

It must have fallen during the earthquake.

{Quick, go over there, I wanna check it out!}

[Easy, easy, I’m going as fast as I can.]

I might be able to learn how to use magic from this stone!

Ah, I’m so excited!

With magic, we’ll be able to do so much!

Throw giant rocks with ease, summon giant pillars of flame, teleport anywhere we want in an instant, with magic, we’ll be able to do anything!

As soon as we get close enough to touch the stone, I take the body and grab the stone.

[Hey!]

I rotate the stone around in my hands, examining every inch of it.

…There’s nothing.

The stone is completely featureless, apart from some shards of rock on one side that I assume used to be what kept it stuck to the ceiling of this place.

No way, there has to be something, right?

Some mechanism that makes it work?

Anything at all?

…Nope.

I return control of the body to Gloria, defeated.

[What’s this?]

{What’s what?}

Gloria is pointing to a part of the stone near the back, where it used to connect to the ceiling.

[This line here.]

{What line? There’s nothing there.}

[Yes there is! Right here!]

She runs a claw down the surface of the stone.

{I don’t see anything there.}

[Look closer!]

She shoves the stone up to our eye.

{Agh! Move it away! It’s still not completely dark!}

[Look!]

Wait, she’s right?

Where she was pointing, there’s a faint line, as thin as a thread.

{Ah! That’s it! You did it, Gloria! You did it!}

[Hahaha! I’m so great! So, what can we do with this?]

{I don’t know.}

[You don’t know?]

{I don’t know.}

[So why are you so excited to get it?]

{Because it’s the first step towards getting access to magic. The skill is just mana perception, so all we can do for now is perceive it. But being able to perceive it is the first step towards being able to control it.}

{And that’s probably the next step. If we level these two skills, we’ll definitely be able to use magic.}

[Seems like it’s gonna take a long time though…]

{Maybe.}

[Anyway, we should find shelter for the night. We definitely can’t go back to our cave with that Rorthal guy walking around.]

{That’s true.}

[How about that hole we found? You said you want to go in there anyway.]

{...I don’t know about that.}

[C’mon, we need shelter! Plus, you said you’d rather go in there than take over a week's worth of my work!]

{But what if there’s a monster worse than Rorthal in there!}

[Pff, no way. There can’t be anything scarier than that guy.]

{I… Ugh, fine.}

[Yay! I’ll start crawling my way over to the hole now~]

I have such a bad feeling about this…