Riot Grasper

The sharp claws that swung down at me were quite hot, and the bright red weapon, reminiscent of burnt iron, would inevitably burn me if I touched it directly.

But as expected, the sword that caught it did not melt down.

This. oh!

I dont have enough confidence in my eyesight to continue a staring contest with my opponents attack stopped.

Although it was a sword and claw attack, I did my best to kick my opponents unprotected abdomen with my knee to break up the fierce clash.

Rook! Now!

Guoooooo!

Reacting immediately to my voice, Rook the Scaled Dragon opened her jaws wide and concentrated her consciousness to focus the grains of light in her mouth.

In the next moment, a dazzling golden breath laid waste to the enemys body.

The enemy, burned by the high heat of the light, may have become unable to support its own weight and fell directly to the ground.

Apparently Im completely out of it.

Whew good job Rook. Youre getting good enough to use it in a real battle.

Guo!

I approached Rook, who squealed in triumph and praised her while gently stroking her throat.

The thing emitting smoke on the floor is a demon called Nail Blaster. The nail blaster is a monster with large claws, and the vibrations it produces within its body cause its claws to heat up.

I think the best way to describe its appearance is lizard man. They have eyes that are stretched out vertically and dark green scales covering their entire body. The claws are as long as half the length of my own sword.

Well, youre really good at it. I didnt think that cavalry beast you have with you had such a great means of attack.

A man emerged from the shadows, his clothes stained with dust and dirt. There were also several people behind him, looking at us.

Well Im still an adventurer you know, I can also rely on Rook here too.

This time, the request I received was for their escort.

Their job is to discover and reuse useful resources from ruins and other places, and they are apparently called excavators.

The magical tool bag that I had received as a reward from Old Worm was also apparently excavated from ruins. So it was likely found by these people.

The current location is an ancient ruin in the lands east of the Royal City of Horn.

Actually, Ive been to this place several times since I heard about the ancient ruins from Old Worm. Although I didnt have any special business, I hope someone understands how I feel when I hear the words ancient ruins

Of course, Ive had other requests for rank C, but this time I happened to see a request on the guilds bulletin board for an escort for these excavators.

The interior of the ruins is quite vast and demons appear, so an escort by someone skilled in combat is necessary.

Its not a huge underground labyrinth of a hundred layers, but apart from the buildings on the surface that are crumbling due to weathering, there are ruins that continue underground.

It was my job today to make sure that they could concentrate on the excavation work without worry.

And it looks like thats going to end well.

We went underground, not to the surface where all the excavation had been done, but to the dark and damp underground, and I could already see the light of the ground.

Its so bright

I felt a stabbing pain in my eyes, but the sunlight was gentle and warm. I crawled up to the surface for the first time in hours and slowly stretched out to let the sunlight soak into my body.

Thank you for accepting my request for an escort today. Thanks to you, I was able to find a few interesting items.

Im tempted to use theThiefs God Eyesto see what the excavators bag is full of, but Id be disappointed if I ended up wanted it, so Ill refrain.

At any rate, the request was successfully completed, so I got the request form signed and then drove the excavators to the nearest town.

They would also have to hire a separate escort to travel the streets.

As for me, thanks to Rooks healthy legs, Im scheduled to return to the Royal City of Horn by the end of the day.

Rook is running me down the streat at breakback speed, but on the way I ask her to turn off the street for a bit.

Making sure that there were no people or monsters around, I got off of Rooks back and spoke to her.

Oh yeah. I thought Id give it to Rook before we get back to the capital(TL: MTL saidKings Landinginstead of capital. Not sure if Im just forgetting what that is, but I assumed he just meant the capital.)

Touching the beautiful scales, the color of his wet feathers, I slowly focus my attention.

The warmth in my body is flowing into Rook from where Im touching her. Such a strange sensation is flowing through my body.

After ensuring that the process was completed safely, I focused my attention on Rook.

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The skills Rook currently posses are

Claw Technique

Light Magic

Fire Resistance

Water Resistance

Wind Resistance

Earth Resistance

Hmm Im not sure if Im just naive or growing up.

Its only been a week since I got to the Royal Capital of Horn, but weve gotten much stronger.

If this is the case, and even the Claw Technique reaches Lv3, I think hes going to be an opponent that even I cant easily beat.

Such a dangerous pleasure. Following a monster that is stronger than you is very fun, but it also seems to be a bit disrespectful to ride it.

Master Rook, may I ride on your back again today?

Yes!

Yeah, shes not a cavalry animal anymore, this one.

And Rook is a girl, for one thing. That is definitely not going to happen.

By the way, I didnt pay much attention to the order of skills, but as the number of skills has increased, I thought about it being easier to see and they organized themselves.

The Thiefs God Eye seems to be quite powerful.

To briefly explain the process of bringing Rook up to this point, the first thing I did was transfer the light magic skill I had to her. (TL: I thought he couldnt do this. Was this always allowed?)

As an origin-magic holder, I had double light magic in a sense, but the light magic was Lv3 and origin magic was Lv2.

Since skills are prioritized by Lv, I thought the versatile Light Magic was best kept in my posession.

Since this was my first time doing a skill transfer, I thought I should use a skill that I didnt care about and try it first, but I didnt want to fill Rooks skill slots with something weird.

If you take the skill you gave back, you will get the skill slot back, but if you fail to take it, you will be left with an unimportant skill forever, because once you fail to take it, you will never be able to take it again.

Given those concerns, the Light Magic skill was the perfect one to try.

As a result, my light magic skill has been safely transferred to Rook for use.

TheThiefs God Eyewas released at Lv2. The Skill Transfer that became possible at Lv3 was the ability to hand over skills, including my proficiency. (TL: I dont recall this, but whatever.)

I dont want to have to take all of my proficiencies with me when I try to return a temporarily borrowed skill later, so I guess I need to use return and transfer differently.

Alright, so Rook who now possesses Light Magic was allowed to practice imagining magic.

Its only because we can communicate that we can do this kind of training.

The first thing he had to learn was Dragon Breath.

No well. because hes a dragon.

It may not be a real breath, but the light-attribute pseudo-dragon breath is a technique that was perfected from the image of burning enemies with high heat from light particles.

The power is satisfactory, as it obliterated the Nail Blaster

Now I can say that I have taken another step in refining myself as a dragonrider.

A dragon knight galloping across the battlefield the dragons high-heat breath splits a large army in two, and a hundred thousand soldiers lose their will to fight due to the unconventional knights sword flash. Im not sure what to do, but Ill do it.

Im practicing some other magic, but thats okay for now.

As for the Claw Technique, its a result of my continuous transfer to Rook of what Im taking from the Nail Blaster during all of our visits to the ruins, including today.

I gave it to her thinking that a scaly dragon with sharp claws would be able to use it, and she is able to handle it without any problems.

I tried to take him on with my sword a few times, but when I was gouged by the claws on Rooks strong back legs, I felt that it might be rather fatal

We would like to apologize to you as soon as possible from our side when we have a fight.

I was a bit curious what would happen if I used the nail art myself, but I dismissed this as it would probably just end up in a disastrous way, like the removal of my raw nails.

The fire and water resistances were also originally in Rooks possession, but I added the earth and air resistances, thinking that we should add all attribute resistances anyway.

I have no remorse or regret.

Im satisfied.

The earth resistance was taken from a rocky monster called aGargantuan Rockthat also lived in the ancient ruins, and the wind resistance was taken from a large insect-type monster calledWindzebulthat we killed in another request.

This is how my cavalry beast Rook has been steadily enhanced.

The important things to note about my status are

Name: Seiji Agatsuma

Race: Human

Age: 18

Occupation: Adventurer (Rank C)

Special Ability: Thiefs God Eye

Skills:

Thiefs Divine Skill

Swordsmanship

Body Arts

Origin Magic

Physical Ability Enhancement

Abnormal State Resistance

Vitality Enhancement

Monster Taming

I hope you understand,

Almost nothing has changed, except for the loss of the light magic skill.

Even though I admit that I was bored with strengthening only Rook.

Its so hard to find a monster with the physical ability enhancement skill.

It would be nice if we could conveniently encounter a monster like the Geegwolg again and again, but it doesnt work that, unfortunately. (TL: Geegwolg is theForest Wolfmonster in case you forgot. I sure did.)

Oh. by the way, we havent had lunch yet today.

Noticing that my stomach was sending me signs of hunger, I pulled out a large package from my tool bag at my waist and unfolded it, revealing a large lump of meat.

Obviously, the mass exceeds the external capacity of the tool bag, but no matter.

I could definitely say that this magic tool bag given to me by Old Worm was very useful.

It can store much more than it looks like, so I can prepare Rooks entire meal like this. It also contains the nails that I ripped off the nail blaster that I just killed, my lunch, a change of clothes, a water bottle, and a map.

And the quality of the ancient technology, that it does not feel heavy, is just mind-boggling.

Id like to know what the limit capacity is, but I dont think Ill be able to recover it if Im too reckless and tear it up.

Im going to gradually add more stuff like this.

One thing that we found out is that you cant put living things in this bag.

I couldnt fit a captured monster in there, and I couldnt stick my head in out of curiosity as to what was going on inside the bag. (TL: Some dangerous curiosity. Hes the type who would help figure out which mushrooms were edible.)

Its really strange that its okay to stick your hand in the bag. (TL: I take that back. I mightve tried to stick my head in too.)

However, it is still useful, and I am grateful for its use.

So after filling our bellies with a late lunch, we headed back to the capital.

In the evening, we arrived at Horn and I rode Rook through the waterways as usualy to Bellyful Flavors.

I took Rook towards the barn and gave her a pat on the head. Good Job!

Well, Im not that hungry yet, so I think Ill do some training.

In the large space outside the barn, I drew my sword from the scabbard on my hip and held it up to my right eye.

Keep going, and swing slowly a flash.

The blow that cuts through the sky is, as they say, just a bare swing.

This is how Ive been attempting to train myself in my spare time lately.

There are many reasons for this, but since the physical ability enhancement skill is a percentage correction of the bare body, the effect should increase as my own muscle strength increases. It is important to increase skill proficiency, but this kind of stead effort will not go to waste.

And I thought that if I trained my body, my skill proficiency might also increase. but after all, proficiency in sword fighting and physical enhancement skills is not so easy to increase in a day or two.

Surely the people of this world are making more of an effort.

As for the abnormal state resistance and vitality enhancement, I might be able to expect an increase by chugging down poison purchased at a store or cutting myself up, but Im afraid my mind would get sick if I did that, so I rejected those ideas.

For these, I try to take them from monsters and such.

Huh!

With these thoughts running through my mind, I finished my pretend swing.

It should have been early evening, but the area was completely dark. As you can imagine, after several hours of wielding a sword, even a body strengthened by skills would be exhausted.

As I began to walk back into the inn, moderately hungry, I heard the sound of wind-swept wings above me.

I stood where I was, unhurried, staring at the black shadow that fluttered down to my shoulder and called out to it.

Good job, Kuroko too!

Pecking at the meat I took out of my tool bag is the monster I tamed, apart from Rook, which I bought at a shop, Bloodravens Kuroko.

Faithfully fulfilling her duty of following Lim, and keeping a warm eye on her from above, she came to me like this for a regular report.

Hmm. So you arrived safely at Grania? It looks like you have a girl traveling with you and are having a good time.

After passing through the border city of Bernica and relaxing at the hot springs in the city at the foot of the mountain (*no detailed report by Kuroko), I received a report that they arrived safely at the city of Grania in the south.

Guah.

Yeah, like I said before, this is something Im doing out of concern for Lims safety. Im sure that Arnolds character is such that he believed in his daughter and sent her off, but there are some times when things go wrong. Its not something that can be concluded with such words, you know?

Perhaps understanding my point of view, Kuroko, who had been resting her wings from the fatigue of long-distance travel, took off from shoulder once again.

Blending into the pitch-black darkness, Kuroko quickly disappeared from sight.

Well. I think Ill have a later dinner

I slowly resumed walking towards the entrance of the inn.

By the way, what Kuroko was talking about earlier was

I feel like youre acting like a perverted stalker

was it

Kuroko has a very strong personality, and she doesnt wrap what she wants to say in an ostentatious manner. Im grateful that she[s honest enough to understand if I explain the situation properly, but I wonder where she learned to say things like that.

Is that the former master? That lowlife bastard.

I put my hand on the door of Bellyful Flavors and looked around the dining room on the first floor.

Im late for dinner, but the fire in the hearth hasnt been turned off, and theres an appetizing smell in the air. There were only a few customers, and a few drunken people could be seen here and there, as the place as served as a tavern.

We sat down and called out to the kitchen, and, unusually, Uran brought us our food.

Hey is Stella not here?

Normally, Stella, the signature girl, would be cheerfully carrying the food.

Ive got a lot going on today. Stella once told me that my food tasted bad when I carried it, but I hope she was joking.

Uran-san, who was somewhat listless, gave me, his customer, his best smile.

Normally, the two of them give off an air that would make a spicy soup sweet, but todays soup had a slight tang of sourness to it.

Its definitely tasty, but something is different from usual.

After finishing my meal, I took the dishes to the kitchen myself and called out to Uran-san who was drooping the back.

Um you dont seem to be doing well. Whats wrong?

Uran turned his face toward me, but he seemed to want to say something and then stopped talking again.

Choosing not to pry, I was about to head back to my room, when

Uran. Sometimes its just easier to have someone listen to you, you know?

It was Magdalena, the proprietress of the inn, who spoke up. Her dignified silhouette as she came down the stairs looked just like a mother.

What is it? Did Uran-san and Stella-san have a fight?

Then I dont think you have anything to worry about.

Because I can see them making up the next day.

However the words that Uran-san said as he stood up as if he made up his mind were a little different from what I had expected.

Magdalena-san, I think Im going to quit working here.

AN:

Im going to use the same specifications as in V2C2 for the return of skills in this episode, but the amount returned will only be the amount of the skill taken from them.

TL Note:

More perspective issues in this one, but I think its more the fault of my being an MTL rather than the author being a poor writer. Will just assume Seijis chapters are always 1st person and other stories are 3rd person unless I can be sure that its not.

Also, as of this chapter, Ive decided to only keep the important part of author notes in, if they exist at all.