12 – White lies

Lightning crackled from my hands and lit the wood on fire.

I stood up and brushed my hands off. When I did, I checked the reactions of the girls.

Lia was stunned while Sylvia had starry eyes.

“As expected of Master!” Sylvia said. “Being able to use magic without casting… how great! Are all legendary heroes that strong?”

I scoffed. “As if. This is something unique to your master. Now, go wash yourselves up. After that, come warm yourselves by the fire. You two have done well for the day, so it’s time to rest.”

Saying that, I pulled out some towels from my inventory and handed them to Lia and Sylvia.

The two girls grabbed the towels and dove into the river to clean themselves.

Meanwhile, I focused on fishing to prepare dinner… or getting the means to. I opened up the synthesis menu to create a fishing rod that would draw in any passing fish without fail. It used up a level, but with how worthless those were to me these days until level 10, I didn’t bother.

The entire time, I kept Guard active. While the two were stronger, I didn’t want to risk any miscalculations or unexpected variables.

Ten or so minutes later and I had a dozen fish descaled and filetted via my shield and roasting on a metal grill, seasoned with cilantro and dill.

Leaving that to cook, I set about messing around with alchemy. I had a huge stock of herbs from all of my gathering, along with a mountain of monster parts that I didn’t sell out of concern for gathering attention.

Maybe I could come up with a use for them…

Time passed as I experimented. From what I found, alchemy combined traits from various materials. However, the success rate and the effects of said combinations varied quite a bit. That might just be from a lack of practice though. The process of Alchemy was through matching patterns, kind of like drawing circuits. There was an underlying pattern there, I just didn’t know it yet.

“We’re back, Master!”

Sylvia’s cheerful voice called out to me. The young fox-girl was wrapped in the towel I gave her and tugging along a timid Lia.

“Did you clean yourselves well? I don’t want you to get sick anytime soon.”

Lia answered. “Y-yes, Goshujin-sama. We made sure to.”

“Good. Then take a seat and warm up. Dinner won’t be long.”

“Alright!”

“Y-yes.”

The girls took a seat on either side of me and stared into the fire.

In a few minutes, the fish filets were finished cooking. I sketched out some rough plates and silverware before serving them to the girls. “There you go.” I handed a plate to Lia, along with a spoon and fork. “It’s not the best, but it shouldn’t be too bad.”

I handed another plate to Sylvia.

She took it and smiled. “Even if Master served me poison, I would be fine with it!”

“…That’s some confidence you have in my skills, Sylvia.”

Perhaps realizing what she implied, Sylvia flushed. “U-um! I didn’t mean that Master’s cooking would be bad, but-“

“It’s fine. Just eat up.”

Sylvia nodded and started doing so.

I turned to Lia to check on her, only to see that the young racoon girl wasn’t eating.

“Is something wrong?”

Lia frowned and then stared at me. “Goshujin-sama. Aren’t you going to eat too?”

On hearing that, Sylvia froze. She turned her wide violet eyes to me and said, “Master?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m not hungry.”

Lia’s frown deepened. “But-“

“Just eat. Or do I have to make it an order?”

She shook her head and started eating. Even so, while she did Lia kept sneaking glances my way, especially at the remaining fish and my lack of a plate.

I decided to ignore her, as well as Sylvia, and focus on preparing for the future. Homeostasis kept me in top condition no matter what, Guard kept my comrades safe… now I just needed to improve upon that.

Hm…

After tinkering around and upgrading some shields and swapping out spells, this was my current loadout:

===

Shields:

Homeostasis Shield Mk II: A shield that emphasizes the user’s health and maintaining a peak performance regardless of any external changes. Prevents lethal blows as long as there is 25% health or more remaining. All negative status effects are nullified. Regeneration fixed at 10% health per second. 100 capacity.

Potential Amplification Shield: A shield that focuses on improving the abilities of the user’s allies. Latent growth is increased by ten fold. 100 capacity.

Sentinel Shield: A shield specialized in defending. Defense multiplied threefold. Automatically redirects all damage to the user’s allies to the user through the usage of quantum entanglement and mana resonance. 100 capacity.

Detection Shield MK II: A shield specialized in detecting hostile and malicious intent as well as potential dangers. User can detect all falsehoods within sensory range. Focused intent, hostile or otherwise, is detected within a mile radius. 50 capacity.

---

Spells:

Intimidate: Convey murderous/killing intent directly into the user’s mind through a medium. Can be done with words, glares, or mana itself. 5 capacity.

Restoration II: Through parsing the genetic code and ‘status’ of a target, reject all negative status effects and damage and restore the body to an optimal state. Mana can be infused to increase restoration speed. 25 capacity.

Lightning II: A powerful electric bolt is created using the understanding of static electricty and mana transformation. 10 capacity.

Laser: Forms a laser from ambient mana. The intensity is directed at the user’s will. 10 capacity.

Capacity 400/400

===

There. That should be enough for the time being. While my level was low, I was confident in surviving long enough to escape pretty much anything.

…It was still a bit jarring on how cheat-like the system was in parsing my ideas into usable forms, but I decided to ignore that for the moment. The problem was the end game. The cause of everything was a goddess wanting to level up by combining worlds. I needed to stop her if I wanted to get out of here alive. But how?

That was something I would have to resolve in the near future. I had more than a few ideas, but they would need time and could potentially show my hand if I wasn’t careful.

“Um… Goshujin-sama?”

“Hm?”

I glanced up to see Lia holding out her empty plate.

“What. Still hungry?”

She shook her head. “No. But… are you really not going to eat?”

I took her plate and put it back in my shield. After that, I smiled at her. “You worry too much. I’m fine. You just focus on resting up. I’m not going to go easy on you tomorrow even if you’re tired, you know?”

Syliva tapped my shoulder and held out her empty plate as well.

I took it and put it away. After I did, Sylvia said, “Master is too kind.”

“Kind?” I shook my head. “If I was kind I wouldn’t be forcing you two to kill monsters for me, would I?”

“Master has his reasons. And besides…” Sylvia let out a bright smile and leaned against my side. “Master used a valuable medicine to save me. Not only that, but you spent a gold coin to buy me as well.”

Perhaps feeling left out, Lia immediately grabbed my left arm and said, “G-Goshujin-sama spent money to buy me too, Sylvia! And, and he gave me two valuable medicines! One to protect me from the diseases in the slave market and then one to heal my illness!”

Rather than getting jealous, Sylvia looked even more impressed. “Wow! Master’s amazing!”

I sighed and gently unpried myself from the girls. “I’m not kind. I’m practical. Since it’s troublesome for me to kill monsters by myself, it’s logical to find people that can do that for me.”

Sylvia tilted her head. “And Master chose two girls to do that?”

“I chose two slaves with great potential that I can mold to the comrades I want at my side. Your backstories have nothing to do with it.”

Despite saying those cold words, I couldn’t help but rustle the hair of the two girls before saying, “Now go to sleep. There’s a long day ahead of us.”

Sylvia nodded and shifted off to a place nearby to sleep. Lia, however, stuck to my side.

“Lia.”

She shook her head. “I won’t sleep until Goshujin-sama eats.”

I sighed. “I don’t need to eat.”

“Then I don’t need to sleep!”

The young raccoon girl stared at me with determined eyes.

I sighed. “…Fine.” I reached over to the remaining fish with a spoon and started eating.

It was… alright. Nothing special. It could probably use some lime, actually. I made a note of that for next time.

When I finished eating a filet, Lia finally let go. However, the young girl was already fast asleep when she did.

I sighed and made a pillow for her before setting her down.

That done, I turned my attention to my parallel system.

…Hm. I’d been creating shields with the parallel system and items with synthesis, and now I had alchemy which could combine traits from different items into one. The regular system already allowed for the shield to unlock new lines by absorbing material. Wasn’t this a recipe for success? I could synthesize the items with the traits I wanted and combine them with alchemy! Like this, if I just kept at it then-

“No…”

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