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 Chapter 4: Everyone's First Step Is Slow Two days later, sooner than he'd expected, Griare summoned Kanata again. After days of being called in like this, the other battlefield scavengers had taken to giving him pitying looks but Kanata couldn't stop grinning. If it meant someone was finally going to teach him about mana, losing a little break time was nothing to complain about. On the stairs leading to Griare's room, he was so caught up daydreaming about becoming a mage that he nearly missed a step. That was how excited he was. "Alright, hold out a finger. I'm going to cut it a little." "Hiiiiiiiiii!? Whyyyy!?" The instant he stepped into the room, the quiet hiss of a blade being drawn drained the blood from Kanata's face. He'd come to learn how to control his mana and yet here was a veteran swordswoman drawing her blade, seemingly about to take off one of his fingers for reasons Kanata couldn't fathom. If he hadn't already used...

 Chapter 3: The Traditional Posture "Huh? Where's Kanata?" The next day, the Karejasu Mercenary Company returned to town alongside the lord's army they'd joined up with. They dropped their gear at the inn serving as their temporary base and free time followed... even the battlefield-scavenger children were granted a brief rest. But Kanata was nowhere to be found so Roa restlessly looked around the inn's dining area. "Kanata? He got called away a bit ago." "Bet he did something stupid again. He gets weirdly stubborn whenever it's about that hobby of his." "Ohh... come on..." Told this by the other battlefield-scavenger kids, who'd gotten a head start stuffing their faces with bread in the dining area, Roa's shoulders drooped a little. She'd been planning to invite him into town to buy a new sleeping bag since he'd mentioned last night that his had gone up in flames, but of all things, he'd been called away e...

 Chapter 19: The Fourth Pity Cap A few days after renewing my resolve. While hunting on Floor 17 of the Hachioji Dungeon, I hit my fourth pity cap without much fuss. "Guess by the fourth time, it doesn't really stir up any feelings anymore." "I'm not sure that's a good thing, honestly?" Lapis gave a wry smile at my blunt honesty. People are creatures of habit. You can get used to anything. I'd already finished pulling the gacha and was back down to Lv1. All that was left was to tap "SSR Exchange," which is now showing on my Status. My stats had gone up a bit since last time. Out of 60 pulls, I'd gotten 20 stat orbs. A bit of a low roll, I guess. More misses than usual this time. ―――――――――――――――――― [Lv] 1 [HP] 323/323 [MP] 269/269 [STR] 10+105 [VIT] 8+96 [AGI] 10+99 [DEX] 8+96 [INT] 11+120 [MND] 12+126 ―――――――――――――――――― Even so, my stats added up to a total of 701. For a normal Explorer, that was the kind of strength you'd only reac...

 Chapter 5: Joining the Fight Shinya and Akane watched the fight unfold from a short distance away. "We're totally out of the loop here, you know!" "Yeah. But that oni's what they're after, so why not just let them do their thing?" "That's not how this works! That oni's definitely going to get classified as Top Rank, you know! Just because he's got a spirit armament doesn't mean we know he can actually win!" At Akane's words, Shinya thought that taking it down with just the two of them would probably be tough. Ryuki, as he was now, was probably stronger than the Ryuki he remembered. A spirit armament wasn't just a weapon; it was also an amplifier for spirit power. It amplified the already-high spirit power of a Six Houses practitioner. Barring an exceptional opponent, losing shouldn't have been on the table. But the opponent in front of them was that exception. And besides... (That oni, it's taking hits and every...

 Chapter 2: Traces That Connect "Today's one is... here, it's like this... Heh. What a weird shape..." The night had deepened and Kanata lay wrapped in a sleeping bag stitched together from scraps of cloth while writing something onto a stone with a piece of charcoal. Relying on the crackling light of the campfire nearby, he peered closely at the Rubbish he'd picked up that day. Kanata's hobby of collecting Rubbish had started two years ago, the same time when he began battlefield scavenging. His father was long gone and his whereabouts unknown. His mother had gone into town to shop one day and died shielding a noble's child, right in front of him. The people of his old village were all good, decent folk but naturally none of them had been wealthy enough to keep an orphaned child around for long. A little over a year later, Kanata found his way to the Karejasu Mercenary Company. He was eight years old at the time. It wasn't as though he'd been drag...

 Chapter 18: The Billion-Yen Retirement Plan I'd finished up today's exploring and made it back home. A twenty-year-old two-room apartment in Hachioji City. I'd picked this place for being close to my university but now that I was an Explorer, it turned out to be a great find for a whole different reason. The rent was 60,000 yen. With that said, I was still living off my allowance so I owed my parents plenty of thanks for that. I was already earning income as an Explorer so it wasn't like I couldn't cover it myself... but I figured I'd let myself mooch off them a little longer. I stepped into my room and sank into the sofa. Normally, I'd feel a fair amount of fatigue after getting back from the dungeon, but not today. Right — I'd finally lifted the ban on taking a taxi home. Shimotsuki-san had given me an exasperated look over it. I even got a "Must be nice, being so well-off" out of her. Nice. Today's income was 28,900 yen. At that rate, s...

 Chapter 4: Encounter "Yep, perfect weather for exorcising!" After transferring trains and riding a bus for about two hours, they finally arrived at their destination: a privately owned mountain somewhere in a certain prefecture. "Is there really such a thing as perfect weather for exorcising? Come to think of it, I guess a clear afternoon really isn't great conditions for a youma." As a general rule, youma, evil spirits, vengeful spirits and the like grow stronger at night and the later it gets, the stronger they become. In broad daylight under a clear sky like this, that strength really did get suppressed. That said, the effect only really applied to youma at Minor Rank or below. Once you got to Mid Rank or above, they were tough opponents day or night. "So let me check one more time, this youma we're after this time..." "Yeah. What got reported to me is a Low Rank small-fry youma which is shaped like a boar. It's been prowling the mount...