Day 8.

It's been three days since I've (Hideki) started going with the Scouting Party.

The Scouting Party now consists of a rotating team of people. Though none of the otaku are in it, it is otherwise quite representative of the different sects of the class. Everyone working together.

So far we've killed about 6 Caterpillars and 1 Slime. The slime gave us the most difficulty. Physical attacks hardly injured it. When it was killed by a lucky blow that hit the crystal in the center of its body, it gave almost no experience at all.

However, it was oddly pleasurable to see its ":3" slowly hacked away.

Kumi has ordered the kills to be distributed to the people with the most useful skills. For the most part, this is Chiho, Yoshi, and Water Filter Girl. My duty (as Hideki) is luring the monsters around and safely directing their attention away from the others. In this, I take turns with the others of the group.

The scouting party has scouted the area in either direction of the stream. Now we are beginning to head away from the stream, and down into the nearby valley. We no longer have the stream to mark the way back to camp, so Kumi is making sure everybody observes their surroundings closely.

Every hour we take a break to rest and relieve ourselves. Not everybody in our party is physically fit. Our progress is fairly slow. Our combat stats help, but not significantly.

 

Today, Kumi and I are left, I strike up a conversation with her. She was the manager of the basketball team that Hideki was a member of.

"You see where the rocks begin?" (Kumi)

Maybe a mile or so ahead of us, a large rock formation rises from the ground. It is covered with trees, but no soil. The surface of the rock shines bone-white in the sun.

"Let's try to explore that area a bit today." (Kumi)

Kumi is a girl with bobbed black hair, thin glasses, dark eyebrows, and skinny boy-like physique.

In Ikko's absence, Kumi and Chiho have become the de facto leaders of our class. Though Chiho is more charismatic, she does not like to force people to do things they don't want to, and is (therefore) more suited for an arbitrating role. Kumi, on the other hand, is that rare kind of girl who possesses by nature a hard dominant personality, yet lacks entirely the kind of vanity that usually accompanies it. She sticks to her judgments and follows her actions through to the end, no matter what people think. She pursues goals with an almost demonic obstinacy and single-mindedness. She speaks incredibly rapidly. She frightens academic rivals with her quick-wittedness, beginning her replies before you even finish your sentences, as though she already knew what you were going to say. She doesn't seem to ever let down her guard--perhaps she has no guard up at all.

Overall, she gives the impression of someone not so much close-minded as simply more "intelligent", who is able to reason beyond one's own capacities of judgment, and who is thus more licensed to make judgments. The quality of "intelligence", by the way, does not seem to interest or affect me the way it does others. But I have noticed people holding it as a foremost Value, of being glad to have it, of ranking human beings by their possession of it, of feeling intimidated by people with a lot of it -- much as they do money -- and, therefore, have striven to hold it as a value as well.

In any case, Kumi could be said to be a girl with quite a lot of "it".

Since her first year, she has been the manager of the basketball club. Dealing with boys older than her on a daily basis, she's learned both how to get under our skin and how to force obedience. In her club activities she seemed particularly to enjoy tactical planning, having basically (by the third week of her tenure) wrested control from our real coach. In our games, she would be the one drawing up plays, giving order to players, while our gym teacher meekly distributed drinks, brought her her clipboards, and consoled her when she was stressed out over a game.

Because she never fails or shows weakness in front of us, she gives the impression of that sort of extraordinary being to whom failure and weakness are alien. In one's middle school days, not being versed in the affairs of adults, nor knowing the types of human beings that were possible in this world, such hypothetical existences walked the earth like creatures of myth, known by hearsay, but always just outside the field of one's vision, of one's daily life... In the figure of Kumi, these childish ideas of the world find again substantiation. Though one has seen enough movies to know that inside she can't be so totally different, nonetheless, she exerts upon her onlookers an aura of distinction, exceptionality, even inhumanity... States of mind one attributed to others, one would not attribute to her. One respected her too much to judge her. Even now, so near to us, she seems oddly indestructible... Her combat power is not high, her cheat skill is not among the most useful...but just being with her makes one feel more confident. This alone would have made her a good leader.

Her only "weakness"--though it can hardly even be called that, especially now that our class has gotten used to it--is her habit of singing anime songs to herself when she is deep in concentration. No one knows why she does this. She does not watch anime at all, and on the few occasions someone begins a discussion about the anime whose song she's singing, she replies, with a voice dripping with disdain, that she "doesn't do that stuff". People have stopped asking her.

Really, it is not that strange at all when I think about it. Far more unusual quirks are prevalent in our school. It's really something of a humanizing trait in someone whose personality is otherwise so proper and impenetrable. Everybody at school has gotten used to it. And perhaps this might be partly attributed to her very conviction that it's nothing unusual. Perhaps it really is nothing unusual. Who knows? Even the otaku of our class have become blind to it, and no longer make a connection between those anime songs and the ones they love.

She had been quietly whispering one of these songs to herself as people trickled back to the meeting point. I had been tapping my foot to the beat when she began:

"By the way..." (Kumi)

"Yeah...?"

"Do you know if your sister managed to level up the Identification skill?" (Kumi)

-- Oh right. The [Identification] skill had a level beside it, didn't it?

"No it's still level 1. Did someone say she did?"

"Nope." (Kumi)

"Did someone level it up then?"

"Yeah... I did. I haven't found anyone else so far." (Kumi)

"You did?? How did you do it?"

"Not sure. I saw a notification pop up and it told me that the skill got to level 2." (Kumi)

"As expected of Kumi-san... So, what does it do at level 2?"

"I'm able to use it on other objects. It doesn't tell me much more though. Just the names of things. Using it on this log for example gives the species of tree. It's somewhat curious that the names are standardized... I wonder how the system gets updated..." (Kumi, musingly)

"Out of curiosity...what does it say when you use it on me...?"

"Lesser Human. Same as everyone else." (Kumi)

She gets up from the log and dusts off her skirt.

"Anyways. Just thought your sister might know something. Since she has the same skill, [Studious Advance]." (Kumi)

Hmm.

How would you level up a skill? Kumi is still level 1, just like me. She's given all the levels to people with the more useful skills. So it doesn't have to do with your level... What else could it be? Could just using it a lot increase its level? That makes a kind of sense. If you practice something, you get better at it, right? It doesn't hurt to try, I suppose.

Let's see... Each cast of [Identification] consumes 1 magic point. That means I can use it 5 times on each of Ayame and Hideki until I have to wait for magic points to regenerate.

Yosh.

[Identification]!

[Identification]!

[Identification]!

 

. . .

 

"Hideki? Hideki?" (Tomo)

"..."

"Daijobu?" (Tomo)

Ah.

I fainted.

It must have been from using the skill too many times.

You faint when your magic points go down to zero? Isn't that too harsh?

"Daijobu, Hideki? Do you need a rest?" (Chiho, concerned)

"No..."

"Are you sure?" (Chiho)

"Yeah..."

Pulling my focuses together, I manage to stand up and go on as though nothing had happened. Chiho watches me warily.

 

We've reached the rock formation that (in the beginning of this maybe a little boring chapter) we saw in the distance. It's been a while since we've walked on anything except soil and moss, so it's refreshing to all of us to be able to walk on solid ground again. Some of the boys jump about in enthusiasm. Yoshi, especially, thanks to his level ups, leaps well over a meter off the ground. Kumi watches him intently. Perhaps she's thinking something along the lines of "If only we can get him onto the basketball team..." After a few seconds, she shakes her head, as if to clear it of some thought...