Strangers
My eyes flew open.
"Gahk!!"
Uuugh... what the hell happened?
Looking around, I found myself in some dark, gloomy forest.
Going by the last message I'd seen before losing consciousness, this was, in all likelihood, the Demon Realm.
"Are you kidding me—what good does dumping 300 points on me do?! The academy isn't the problem, I'm about to die right here and now!"
...is what I wanted to scream, but I held it in. I knew well enough that bellowing my head off in a place like this could get me killed at any moment, and no one would blink.
'Still, I suppose I should count myself lucky this is the outermost fringe...'
Ugh. Seriously, that Flama girl can't do a single thing right.
And yet—
*Ba-dump, ba-dump.*
there were things I had to do.
'Status Window!'
*Ding!*
So these were my stats.
"Hmmm..."
Virility, huh...
"Aaah, my hand—it moved on its own..."
As if possessed, I'd gone and pressed it. In the very next instant my whole body shivered with a single tingle, and then a rich sense of fullness spread through me, as though vitality were welling up from somewhere deep in my gut.
"O-Ohhhh."
The fatigue that had been hovering somewhere between there and not-there seemed to melt away too; I even felt a touch refreshed.
'And my vision seems sharper as well... not bad?'
Never mind that I'd raised it in a completely impulsive fit.
...Either way, it looked like it would help me survive, so yay me!
'As for checking out Beginner Lightning (Lv.1)... hmm. Something tells me it'll be loud—noise, light, the whole production—so let's shelve that for now.'
Surviving came first, after all.
Checking my status window had excited me so much I'd forgotten where I was for a moment, but lingering in this gloomy forest clearing was quickly becoming unbearable...
Now that I'd noticed it, everything around me suddenly felt twice as frightening.
*Whiiiish~*
A desolate wind swept across the nape of my neck, and goosebumps burst out across my entire body.
"Yeesh, wh-what is this atmosphere..."
I'm the kind of guy who can't even handle a horror movie's trailer or poster, let alone the film itself...
If the outermost fringe was this bleak, did the heart of this place hold some demon lord's castle or something? ...Stocked with magic beasts, too?
*Shudder!*
Reading about it in novels, I'd never thought twice—but actually picturing myself face to face with monsters that would chew a person up and swallow him made my knees go weak.
"Guh... I need to get out of here, fast..."
In case I lost my way and had to backtrack to find another route, I decided to pick up small pebbles nearby and mark my path as I went.
Every direction looked much the same, but I set off toward the one patch where the trees grew at least somewhat sparser.
"One stone every five steps. One... two..."
Yeah. If I just kept walking in one direction, something was bound to show up eventually...
Oh, and once dusk rolled around, I'd need to scout out a place to sleep.
I'd been so certain this was a munchkin harem academy story, and now, out of nowhere, I was shooting a survival film instead.
"Heh... that's just my lot in life, I guess..."
Six... seven...
For now, straight on we go.
*Ding!*
"Oh."
A stat gain from training—there it was!
The moment it landed, my body didn't exactly feel lighter... it was more that everything simply felt a little less draining.
As if the upper limit of my fatigue had been extended, maybe. So that's what Stamina felt like.
Anyway, I kept walking.
I walked for a long, long time after that stat increase.
As proof of which—
"1,000,021, 1,000,022..."
All right, that's a lie.
My stat went up mid-count and I lost my place, so I'd just been leaving stones behind and counting however I pleased.
"Still, the trees are even sparser than before, so I'd say my heading was roughly right—outward, toward the edge."
A million... what was it again? Forgot it again.
*Drip.*
"Ack—cold!"
A droplet of water fell from above and smacked me right on the crown of my head.
*Plop. Plop-plop-plop!*
"Huh? Rain, out of nowhere...?!"
The patter swelled louder and louder, and in under ten seconds it was pouring down.
Seriously? This was, by anyone's judgment, a temperate climate—what was with the sudden squall!
And all the while the rain only kept building, hammering down in earnest.
*SHHHAAAAAA!*
"I'm fuuucked!"
There was nowhere to take shelter, my outfit was the only set of clothes I owned, and I had no fire going either.
If this kept up, a single day after being dumped into another world, I was at serious risk of shivering myself into hypothermia and dying right there.
"No! I can't die like this! I haven't even made it to the academy yet!!"
*Tat-ta-ta-TAK!*
I bolted headlong down my path with no plan whatsoever—carrying nothing but the flimsy hope that if I kept going a little farther, I might run into someone.
"Hahh... haahh..."
How long had I been running?
The rain was still falling.
My hands and feet had gone properly numb with cold, and my lungs ached like they were about to tear—breathing that hard would do that, I supposed.
That was when I saw it: far in the distance, a wavering scarlet flame.
'A fire? People...? No, more importantly—that's a cave!'
Without even a moment to weigh my options, I was sprinting toward it.
*Tap-tap-tap-tap!*
It turned out to be closer than I'd expected, and I reached it in no time.
Up close, I could make out two women with sturdy builds and weapons at their waists, sitting beside a campfire built near the mouth of a cave.
One was a middle-aged woman with bronze skin and a ponytail, a forbidding expression, and a massive frame to match; the other was a slight young woman with short hair and a rather sly, snakelike face.
*Squelch, squelch....*
Dragging my waterlogged shoes along, I crept toward them as cautiously as I could manage.
"E-Excuse me... pardon the intrusion..."
Both women fixed me with wary eyes and let their hands drift toward their weapons—and I yelped in a panic.
"No! I'm not a bandit! I-I was just wondering if maybe I could share your campfire... Please! I-I'm honestly going to freeze to death like this..."
I dialed the pathos up to its absolute maximum. Come on, take me in!
The two exchanged a brief glance, and then the middle-aged woman spoke to me.
"Warming yourself by the fire is fine. Come, sit over here."
"Y-Yes! Thank you so much!"
I scurried over and plopped down on a conveniently placed boulder.
"Haaaahhh...♡"
Melting. I was melting.
The women studied me for a while, and then began murmuring quietly to each other.
"...Could it be a trap...? ...He's too..."
"...Doubt it... one look and you can tell he's a beggar..."
I couldn't make out much of it, but I didn't much care.
I'd just stay until the rain let up, and that was that.
Sleeping here... I had no reason to trust people I'd met two minutes ago.
But right now, I couldn't bring myself to refuse this warmth that felt like it was thawing the cold right out of my fingers and toes.
"Ah, whatever."
*Fwip.*
The clammy feeling was getting on my nerves, so I peeled off my shoes and socks and spread them out by the fire to dry.
*Wiggle, wiggle.*
I was savoring my liberation from the damp, wiggling my toes in contentment, when I felt an odd gaze from beside me.
The snake-faced girl.
*Gulp....*
"...?"
When I looked over at her in bewilderment, she shook her head rapidly a few times, then found her voice.
"Um, would you perhaps need a towel and a blanket? I can lend you mine."
"...! Oh! Yes! I'd be grateful for that!"
How could anyone be this kind? Was this the standard personality setting for fantasy worlds?
"Here you go."
"Thank yooou!"
The moment I received it, I scrubbed my whole body down with the towel.
Hair first, then face, arms, legs, all the way down to my feet.
My torso was out of the question, since I wasn't about to strip off my clothes.
After that thorough once-over, I sat back down in front of the campfire cocooned in the blanket—and it was paradise on earth.
"Mmmmmmmmnnn...♡"
Contented purring just came welling out of me.
Ah, bliss. It felt like compensation for wandering around all day.
'Come to think of it, though, I'm not even that tired anymore.'
Right up until I'd stumbled into this cave, I'd felt half-dead.
'Is that the Virility at work? So Stamina is the absolute pool, and Virility governs things like recovery rate and vitality, I guess.'
There—one piece of knowledge acquired. Virility was unconditionally a good thing.
'As for Strength, Agility, and Stamina, training those up is the classic move. Mine did just go up by one, after all.'
Virility training...? No idea how one would even go about that.
Which meant—
"Okay, settled. From now on, every stat point goes into Virility."
With the buy-one-get-one Magic Power event on top, it was an absolute jackpot. Heh heh heh.
I was killing time poring over and analyzing my status window, while the two beside me had been bustling about for a while now—and had apparently started boiling something.
'Looks like they're making dinner.'
*Grrrowl.*
Watching them, I realized my own stomach was growling too.
Come to think of it, from around lunchtime until now I'd done nothing but walk—catching the odd mouthful of rainwater when thirst hit, but not a scrap of food.
But asking for a meal on top of everything felt like one bridge too far shameless, so I simply pinned my gaze to my status window.
'Ah... that smell.'
*GRRROWL!!*
The cave, which until then had known nothing but the occasional quiet clink of utensils, was suddenly filled to the brim with the roar of my gut.
The snake-faced girl gave a slightly sheepish smile and spoke to me.
"Haha... would you like some stew?"
Accepting right away felt a bit much, so out of sheer conscience I declined—once.
"No, I'm fiiine... slurp"
Ah. Drool.
"We couldn't finish it all between the two of us anyway. If there's any left over, it'll just go to wa—"
"WastingfoodisabadthingI'llgladlyeatit!!!"
The snake-faced girl... no, from this moment on, she was Slender-Super-Babe-Noona.
I snatched the bowl and spoon she held out and, quite literally, inhaled the stew, which had cooled to precisely the perfect eating temperature.
"Phwooooop! Kck—cough!"
"Here, water."
"Cough, cough... thank you."
*Gulp... gulp....*
Though the water tasted... a little fizzy...?
Then Noona curled her lips into a sinuous, distinctly serpentine smile.
"You drank it...?"
"N-Nooooona? Whawrongmybodymrrph..."
Starting from my tongue, my entire body froze in an instant, and the bowl and spoon tumbled from my hands.
Thud! As the dull knock of wood striking stone reached my ears, a single thought flashed through my mind.
'What the hell, Noona, you goddamn bitch...'
I'm fucked!