“I’m telling you, it’s fine!” Kurushimi shouted as if she had been forced to repeat the same phrase a hundred times prior. Adamant and dogged, Kurono was surprisingly persistent on getting an answer out of her. Meanwhile, Atelier sat on the sidelines watching the whole thing. It was amusing to watch, however, she felt like an audience member; unaware of how to go about inserting herself into this. Although, she was unsure if she actually wanted to insert herself…

“You looked even worse than you did when you collapsed after your first day of training!” Kurono shouted back, annoyed by Kurushimi’s constant refusal. It was like trying to force a dog to open its mouth to see what it had eaten.

“I don’t want to show it just yet!” Kurushimi stubbornly said. Kurono was simply worried about whatever caused her to end up in that state. The strange aura that loomed behind her that night… In the case it was malicious, she needed to know what it was. For now, its presence had disappeared. However, who knew when it would come back? In fact, it was scarier that it could no longer be felt in the slightest bit. Was it gone for now? Or was it just that good at hiding, that two gods couldn’t sniff it out from right under their noses. But despite that, Kurushimi wasn’t empathetic enough of others to tell all that, so she continued to keep her lips sealed.

“Urgh…” Kurono clenched her teeth. She was visibly annoyed, seemingly losing her patience. Atelier looked on and could only smile. She’s normally cold and indifferent; especially when talking to me… Atelier reminisced about their few lone conversations – when Kurushimi wasn’t there with them. If Kurushimi was like a dog, Kurono was like a cat that refused to give back any sort of affection. But when it comes to Kurushimi… a whole range of emotions blossom. As she was stuck in thought, she suddenly heard a voice call out to her: “Would you stop smiling and say something?!”

Atelier snapped out of her trance. Dragged into the dispute by Kurono, it seemed her worries about how she’d insert herself were unfounded… Unable to deal with Kurushimi herself, Kurono had called for backup. Briefly interlocking gazes with Kurushimi, Atelier explained: “With her type, you need to be a little more direct~”

“Huh?” Kurushimi was confused by this statement; that was until she suddenly felt a twinge and a chill running down her spine. After experiencing it a good few times, she had figured out what this sensation meant. Her visage becoming distressed, she waved her arms around, exclaiming: “No, that’s not fair! Stop it!”

Atelier had used appraisal!

Unfortunately for Kurushimi, waving her arms around wasn’t enough to dispel Atelier’s appraisal. And her appraisal wasn’t nearly levelled enough to even think about challenging it. She could only lay victim as her status was leaked for the world to see.

A few seconds passed … Kurushimi’s last hope was that she’d be unable to find anything.

“Living shadow?” To Kurushimi’s dismay, the exact words she was hoping wouldn’t be said came out of Atelier’s mouth. ‘Living shadow’ was the name of one of her new skills, one that she was hoping to show off in battle as it was something she was rather proud of. However, it had been exposed prematurely!

“A skill? What about the entity?” Kurono asked, still left in the dark.

“The skill is the entity.” Atelier replied.

“What do you mean by that?” Kurono asked in confusion.

“I’m saying she’s spawned some kind of creature solely by the creation of a skill. Not that I’m sure how she’s managed that.” Atelier was a little dumbfounded. The only time she’d heard of life coming from a skill was summons. And they were only a pseudo form of life, this one was something else entirely.

“Do you know anything about it? Is it hostile?” Kurono had directed her intention fully on Atelier. Meanwhile, Kurushimi idly stood behind her guilty as charged.

“It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before…” Atelier shrugged her shoulders.

“You’ve lived for 5073 years, surely you’ve seen something of its likeness.” Kurono was beginning to consider if what Atelier had told them was the truth or not.

“Afraid not… I’m not even sure what species it belongs to. It may even be an entirely new one!” Whilst Kurono was trying to find out for Kurushimi’s sake, Atelier seemed to be having different motivations - judging by her excited tone. From the looks of it, she appeared to be enjoying this exposure to new knowledge and information. Kurono sighed… unfortunately, she didn’t have anyone else to rely on at this point.

“At the very least, is it hostile?” Kurono asked the main question she was concerned about. In the end, Kurushimi’s reset meant a straight-forward threat wasn’t too hard to deal with. However, a skill would follow her back. The ability Kurono’s presence gave her was one that could easily be seen as unbeatable at first. But there were quite a few variables that could catch her out if she were to get conceited – one of such variables was the god in front of her.

“It seems to be in an infantile state. It shouldn’t be hostile … for now.” Atelier replied as ambiguously as ever.

“...And the skill description?” Kurono sadly had to rely on Atelier for this as well, not owning the skill appraisal herself. With her own separate levels, she also had the ability to buy skills now. Although limited in what she could purchase, she would probably be able to learn appraisal. Still, it wouldn’t help her to learn it at this moment as the skill level would be too low.

“Empty.” Atelier said.

“What?” Kurono dumbly replied.

“The skill has no description. Being a skill of her creation, she needs to give it a description … and she’s yet to give it one.” Atelier explained. With that, they were back to square one with Kurushimi refusing to tell them anything. Still, she had gotten the main information she was looking for, so Kurono wasn’t too bothered anymore. For the actual skill and what it did… they would need to wait to see.

Kurono shot a look at Atelier and sighed loudly. “Hah… what good is your appraisal if it can’t find anything out?”

“It doesn’t matter how good the appraisal is if the information doesn’t exist in the first place.” Atelier replied.

With that, the majority of worries that Kurono held had been resolved. Now Kurushimi was finished with her skill power-leveling, she finally was free to do what she wanted. She didn’t try to hold back her excitement and immediately started planning her next move. There was a lot of hunting she wanted to do, originally for the purpose of increasing her level and stats, however it was no secret her main intention at the current time was to test out all her new skills. A strange collective wariness grew among the canisfangs in the immediate area.

Somewhere deeper in the large crystal zone, a group of canisfangs gathered. It was in a dip in the ground, similar to where the vengeful spirit had situated itself, however it wasn’t the same area. There were a good few of these sunken zones where water gathered. A lot of creatures, though mostly monsters, coveted these parts for they were akin to lakes in volume of water. Where there was water, there was life.

Although unlike usual, the canisfangs were more active and were moving around – some of them leaving the dip. The reason was due to the seismic activity not too long ago. They were wary of the cause, as it was unusual for the location, but most canisfangs didn’t spend as long nor were they as coordinated in their information gathering.

“Grgah!” A heavy growl unique from the high-pitched shriek of a regular canisfang. The canisfangs moved around and carried out orders as if they understood something from it. Whether it was actually telligable language or a vague instruction via primitive communication wasn’t known, however it didn’t seem to matter. One canisfang stopped before the origin of the heavy growl before letting out a shriek.

“Grgh…” The giant monster didn’t sound happy to hear the news. Looking off into the distance, it let off a quick growl of dismissal to which the canisfang only moved away after.

Unlike these canisfangs, Kurushimi had already long forgotten about the rumbling from yesterday. Although, to be fair, seismic activity was nothing new to her who had come from Japan. And such an event was far from the craziest things she had seen upon arrival on Kraltigrr.

For now, the main thing on Kurushimi’s mind was her new set of offensive options. It wasn’t until now that the sheer amount she had actually gained hit her. It was a little overwhelming, however, she was the type to derive mostly excitement from this. The extent of her worries were what to use first!

“Say, the movement of these canisfangs has been a little strange lately…” Kurushimi said as she picked an arrow out of a canisfang she had shot with ‘contempt’.

“What do you mean?” Kurono asked.

“I mean—“ Kurushimi paused for a moment as she stuck her fangs into the canisfang flesh, sucking out some of its blood. The taste was still off putting, but it was beginning to get better. She wiped her mouth before continuing: “They’re not as random. Like… they were just aimlessly roaming about before and now it’s… different?”

Since she had been hunting in this area for around a week now, she had subconsciously gotten used to the patterns and behaviour of local canisfang. That was why she noticed immediately that they were acting differently. Along with that, she noticed their levels were a little higher than usual. However, Kurushimi wasn’t too good at explaining that.

“Atelier, you’ve been around this area for a long time. You can see that they’re acting weird too, right?” Kurushimi looked to Atelier. Her old shrine wasn’t too far away from here. As she had been trapped there for a long time, Kurushimi thought she would also be able to spot this change.

“Hmm, I stopped caring about canisfangs a long time ago… my information on their behaviour would be decades old.” Atelier replied.

“Ah…” Kurushimi didn’t have a response for that.

Sadly, she was left alone in this conjecture. But it wasn’t something she was too bothered about, it was merely a curiosity. All kinds of reasons could be behind a change in behaviour. What she wanted to do right now was to find more canisfangs and hopefully find some other kind of monsters. Her aim was to find an enemy that she could better see the effects of her new skills on as currently it was simply overkill when facing the odd canisfang. A stronger enemy or a larger pack of canisfangs was what she was hoping for…

“But this place is so overrun with canisfangs!!” Kurushimi slammed her fist against a tree, hanging her head low in dejection. She wasn’t simply referring to the large crystal zone she resided in, the whole forest was sprawling with canisfangs. How that came to be when they were by far the weakest monster she had met was a mystery. The hellish scorched land, which had been the source of her last two deaths, was now beginning to look appetising. At the very least, she would be free from canisfangs for a while.

However, she had already decided long ago she would get stronger before going there. The place was crawling with annoyingly strong monsters, all posing some kind of significant threat. Even the less deadly salamanders were potentially dangerous if they grouped up and covered the area in flame. And that was all without mentioning the rock golems – the main target and reason for this whole exercise.

Truthfully, Kurushimi felt she was already strong enough. Her training already made her strength incomparable to then. She was at a point where she should be fine to head over now. However, she chose not to. The reason why was because of the various physical activities she had done throughout her life – of which she was forced to do by her parents. One teaching she took to heart was not to cut out the last part of things as it easily becomes a habit in all parts of life. At the very least, she was going to follow through on that principle.

Kurushimi had gone into a bit of a freeze when it came to exercise before she suddenly ended up in another world. Using her studies as an excuse, her parents who were oddly strict on this had let up and allowed her to stop. She always scorned them for making her do those physical activities, but in the back of her mind she kind of missed them. It was sort of nice becoming active again – even if she were forced to for her survival.

“My thoughts are getting off topic…” Kurushimi recollected herself, looking at the task at hand. The strange canisfangs came with one advantage at least – other than a slight increase of stat yield from ‘What’s yours is mine’. They were gradually increasing in numbers, seemingly running in more coordinated packs. Finding the source of them should lead to a big enough group of which she could go all out against.