After Ichiro taught how to butcher the terror bulls, he said we would be throwing a "barbeque," which, once again, sounded strangely familiar.
He started by cooking a sauce. Making a bunch of ingredients from scrap using magic, then using the smoke to heat the substance.
As I watched him cook, I suffered another of those strange visions where I saw Ichiro as soone else—the tall man with dark hair and a scar on his face.
I kept pondering about it until dinner ti, when my mind finally cleared once we all ate the delicious food. The bbq sauce ended up being amazing too, which was surprising.
That night, Ichiro said he would holing himself up in his workshop.
I was curious to see him working on potions, and after taking a bath, the entire group paid him a visit. However, when we arrived, he seed to be full of energy and into his work and barely paid any attention to the others in the room.
I stayed there for a few hours with his companions, watching him work, but I ended up falling asleep and waking up in my room the following day.
("I guess Vespera must have brought here...") I thought as I slightly recalled seeing the pretty spider lady carrying to my bed.
A few days later, Ichiro taught his teleportation spell, which was a spell I was excited to cast. However, it proved to be the hardest of them all.
He explained to how it wasn’t possible to travel to a place I had never been before since I couldn’t visualize it in my head. The distance you could travel was also determined by how much magic you could put into the spell.
I managed to teleport a few ters in front of , but I couldn’t travel all the way to town from the forest like he did. At least not yet, but that didn’t stop from practicing it every day.
Before we knew it, the knights’ order arrived in town, and we had to pick up my cousin Reinar from the city of Glorya.
I felt excited for him since I knew that Reinar was very shy and had problems expressing his true feelings out loud. But sohow, I felt Ichiro would be his perfect tutor.
When we visited my family at Glorya, they invited us to drink so tea and eat cookies, and I spoke to my cousin Triana for a little.
"You seem happy," she said before sipping from her teacup.
"Well, that’s because I am!" I said.
Triana smirked. "Could it be that Ichiro makes you happy?" she asked in a teasing manner before giggling.
I blushed a little when she said that. Technically she wasn’t wrong since it was thanks to Ichiro that I felt truly happy.
"Oh, I was just teasing you a little. But I see now..." she said.
"W-what!? What do you see?!" I asked, knowing that her True Color Eye was telling her sothing.
Triana giggled while covering her mouth. "Nothing, it’s nothing... But I’m glad."
"About what?" I asked, noticing that she wasn’t going to tell anything about her eye.
"When I first t Ichiro, he was like you. Soone I couldn’t read at all. So, I was a bit wary of him. But knowing that he’s made you this happy confirms that he isn’t a threat to us." she said with a smile.
("Like ? It probably has to do with his ’Child of Phelena’ title since my blessing is similar...") I pondered.
After our little ti in Glorya, we returned to End Town with Reinar.
__________
On his first day, Ichiro said that I would be hunting with the rest of the group so he could focus on teaching alchemy. At first, I was a little upset because I wanted to keep hanging out with him, but I also wanted to test my abilities.
That day, Yoru and Vespera took the reins of guiding the maids and through the forest. I couldn’t speak directly with the wolf, but thankfully Vespera translated what he said to .
Yoru would separate from us for a few minutes at a ti, supposedly looking for prey, until he found a redback boar not too far away from us.
Hunting the boar was easier than I expected, and now that I could cast the "void pocket" spell, it was easy to take back ho.
I used the "search" spell to keep practicing and noticed that sothing was coming towards us, although I couldn’t tell what it was since my spell wasn’t at Ichiro’s level.
Vespera said to be careful, and I listened by jumping onto the tree branches with air magic to get so high ground and look at the monster.
"A black snake!" I exclaid as I saw its black scales slithering in our direction.
"All yours!" Vespera responded, making both of the maids flinch. However, I knew the spider lady wouldn’t put in danger needlessly, so I nodded and asked everyone to leave it to .
Black snakes were B-ranked monsters, which were just as powerful as the golden bull we hunted on our first outing in the forest. However, I was much better now.
While the snake kept approaching us, I heard Carli yelling at , saying that severing the head was the easiest way to kill a snake.
("Easier said than done...") I thought.
As soon as the snake beca visible and raised its head from the ground to attack at the top of the branches, I used nature magic to move the trees around and impaled its head.
"Th-...That worked!" I said with my heart beating fast as I jumped down from the tree.
Vespera, noticing that we wouldn’t be able to move the snake’s body as it was impaled into the tree, pulled out one of her long spider legs from her back and, with a swift motion, severed the head of the monster and dragged the 8-ter body towards so I could put it into my void pocket.
When we returned, Ichiro and Reinar were still in the workshop but took a small break to have dinner with us.
The next day it was more of the sa. Although we didn’t see any black snakes, we found more terror bulls, and we also gathered so berries and herbs for their potions.
As Ichiro checked the ingredients, we heard Reinar yelling from the workshop with excitent. He had managed to create his first healing potion, and it had only been a few days since his arrival.
That sa night, Ichiro built the "n’s tub" that he had been talking about for the past month. Honestly, I didn’t understand why he didn’t just build it sooner if he wanted to use it so badly.
A few days later, Reinar joined us in our training outside. He needed to increase his MP pool to brew more complex potions, and the best way to do it was by using his magic a lot.
He seed nervous at first, which was pretty relatable. But I already knew how capable everyone else in the group was, so I had stopped feeling any sort of uneasiness a long ti ago while exploring the forest.
After our first successful hunt, Reinar started looking more confident. We kept going out into the forest as a routine until he was able to gather his own materials and hunt down any B-ranked monsters or under without much trouble.
When we returned to End Town, we paid the knights a visit while they were training in the courtyard. However, Ichiro looked quite displeased when he saw them.
He ntioned that the knights were too weak and that if sothing bad were to happen to the town, there was a higher chance of the shadow dogs being able to protect the villagers than the knights themselves.
There were also all the little demon spiders that road around the city and the outskirts catching any monster that got too close. To be fair, he had a point.
Sending the knights into battle in this town would just be sending them to their deaths, so Ichiro offered himself to train them.
As soon as he started complaining about the knights, I could tell where this was going. Ichiro wasn’t the type of man to kick soone out of their town for being weak. Instead, he made everyone stronger.
We started training the next day, which was kind of a surprise since I didn’t expect to be sparring against the knights.
Ichiro also built what he called a "gym." Another word that sounded familiar to , but I couldn’t really rember from where. However, he said the gym was only for the knights since it was bad for children to lift heavy weights.
("Uhhh, aren’t you a kid, too?") I thought, but Ichiro sotis acted way too mature for his age, so I didn’t think too much of it.
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