Chapter 4
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After a few weeks of preparation, I was ready for my next dungeon experience. 

The dungeon I was heading towards this time was some sort of grotto which used to be a temple for the Sun and Moon goddesses.

A lot of undead seem to be roaming inside the Dungeon with the final boss being a Dark Knight.

The boss is said to be quite strong so I made it a goal to go in perfect body condition before attempting it.

 

I splurged a bit on my equipment too despite the fact that I might have to end up replacing it soon.

This time I was wearing adventuring equipment which was protected by steel.

Of course, I didn't opt for helmets since those don't look cool but on second thought, my face is probably less cool than a helmet...

Shrugging off these depressing thoughts I headed to the grotto to gain my rightful mask.

 

This was all or nothing. I either get the Sun Mask and have a chance for some successful romance encounters or I get trolled and end up with the Moon Mask.

I entered the dungeon which was full of mold and eerie cobwebs. As I headed forward I could hear a rattling sound.

What appeared before me was a skeleton with a few barbaric pieces of equipment worn by him.

I was at utmost caution as I crept towards it. My plan was to grab its skull first and then plunge my sword through its vertebrae.

 

With quick and robust movement I grabbed its skull and huh?

It's dead? Shouldn't it last a bit longer at least? I even skipped the goblin part too...

 

Even before I could plunge my sword, gripping its skull was enough to kill it.

I spent the rest of the dungeon just throwing stones at the skeletons or using magic at the off chance. 

Similar to before they ended up getting one-shotted.

I think I am levelling up also but I don't think dungeoneering is supposed to be like this...

 

Ignoring that, I still need to obtain the mask.

I soon entered an area more elaborate and designed than before. The entrance before me had many runic characters on it with a symbol representing the eclipse of the moon over the sun.

I readied myself as I entered the boss chamber. Before me was a larger than normal skeleton which was adorned in black steel armour.

It was sitting on the throne with blue will-o-wisp glowing on its socket. 

 

This guy surely fits the image of a cool boss. He took his sword out of the sheath before making a gesture as if it was beckoning me.

I respected his wishes and strode towards him. Soon there was only a few meters of distance between us.

We both clasped our swords, ready for action at any moment.

 

Suddenly both of us moved at explosive force, the Dark Knight did an overhand swing towards me but I was already prepared for it.

I planned to parry his attack and from the opening created through it, I would deal as much damage as possible.

 

As I followed suit and parried him... his arm fell off!

 

The heck, am I really that strong?

 

The Dark Knight looked puzzled for a second there and started running away.

"Hey get back here and gimme the damn mask!" 

After that, we happened to play a game of cat and mouse. How did a cool looking boss happen to be so damn shameless, what's wrong with this world...

After I landed a blow on him he instantly turned into a pile of broken bones.

 

And what I found within those piles of bones was a... black mask...

 

Sigh

 

I was hoping that I would get the Sun Mask but with my current unlucky streak of misfortune, I had already expected to get the Moon Mask.

I probed open it’s item window,

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

Item Name: Mask of the Moon

 

Armour: +1

 

Special Effect: Lowers the user’s presence, making him less noticeable. Allows alteration of voice also.

 

Special Skill: Disguised Moon:

For a stat reduction of 95% of your stats, you can completely remove yourself from others attention.

 

Flavour Text: Even a goblin can get l- wait, where did the goblin go?

_______________________________________________________________

 

The Moon Mask had a similar function to Sun Mask where it could affect one's appearance but it's more related to stealth operations.

It allows one to hide their presence, or change their entire existence

It's not a bad item but I don't expect to see a use of it anytime soon.

 

Sighing again I leave my 2nd dungeon in disappointment.

Hopefully, Seris wouldn't mind consoling me a bit, I might be getting spoiled on that.

 

---

 

I was soon reaching the age of 15. Recently my sister had started acting a bit weird.

She would now grind her body against me while we slept together and give me kisses which lightly brushed on my lips, sometimes even going as far as to licking at my ears.

When I confronted her about it she claimed it was because the curse weakened.

 

Of course, I didn't take any of those excuses and straight off rejected any of those actions. It ended up with me flicking her forehead.

Despite having become 16, she continued to try to take advantage of me by starting to weep and cry.

By this time I was already very used to it so I ended up playing along anyways.

 

"Okay, what do you want then. I can't allow you to do those things but you can ask me for something else."

 

She slowly stops weeping again and looks at me with teary eyes. A wide grin creeps on her face as she hugs me tightly.

 

"Big brother is the best! Hmm... I want you to only eat my meals from now onwards."

 

"Can't we just conjure our meals, and they also don't really taste that bad."

 

"No I want you to eat my meals, I am sure you would love it. I have been practising lots~!"

 

"Alright, I guess it won't hurt to try."

 

In joyous fervour, she heads off to the kitchen and starts to prepare the meal.

Honestly this girl...

 

After a few minutes of waiting the meal arrives. It was spaghetti with meatballs but she said something along the lines of a special added sauce.

Taking a bite out of it tasted pretty good. It did have slightly odd citrus like taste, slightly iron-like also which affected the meal's smell too but I think it just added more to the taste.

It was leagues better than the food which I conjured through magic for sure.

While panting slightly and having her face flushed she asks me how it was.

 

"It's really good, I would like to have more of it too."

 

The homemade food made me smile a bit. Seris ends up blushing further and starts fidgeting while leaking out a burst of soft but weird laughter.

 

"He enjoyed it..." Seris softly said.

 

Her behaviour seemed a bit odd but I didn't mind her. Seris was my sister after all who supported me throughout my life. Regardless of her good and bad points, I will accept her.

We soon headed off to school as usual. As of recent, my school life didn't seem so bleak.

The girls had slowly started speaking to me, albeit in a very slow and hesitant tone.

 

I even ended up hugging a girl by chance and she didn't immediately jolt from me.

Weird how such a simple thing could brighten my whole day so much.

Well though I mentioned that things didn't seem as bleak as before but I was still facing some problems.

 

Knowing that the gift harassment wasn't working they took to a new form of bullying.

Whatever possessions I would end up leaving behind would be covered in some sticky fluid by the time I returned back to school.

It gave off a citrus-like smell too. Tasting it slightly it reminded me of the sauce that was added to my breakfast but slightly different at the same time.

 

After telling this to Seris she immediately went ahead and disinfected all the stuff covered in the sticky liquid with water magic and rinsed it thoroughly. She ended up telling me to carry everything back home from now onwards.

I reassured Seris saying that it's no big deal but she rebutted, claiming the mystery liquid was very harmful to me.

I honestly think she was just being too overprotective after that harassment I went through.

Though it's understandable on behalf as to why she would want to protect her little brother also.

 

To be truthful it didn't even seem so bad getting bullied by these beautiful girls, every one of them was really good looking and had great bodies.

Even Seris was the same but she is my sister so it would be awkward to have feelings for her.

 

Today is supposed to be a special class. Everyone was told to attend today’s session in our batch.

 

The teacher soon enters and informs us what today's session is about.

 

"You all girls might've wondered at one point as to why men are so rare in this world. Well, there's a special reason as to this which we generally don't reveal until most students reach the age of 15 or above.

 

Well the first reason as to why we don't reveal this is because men are heavily related to our 'other' means of reproduction"

 

The whole class starts chattering and whispering at this point, a lot of intense glares were also directed towards me.

I kind of felt bad for men to be associated with sex itself, it's possibly due to how rare men are that such an association was made.

 

"Ahem, so where was I, oh yes. So men are related to sexual means of reproduction hence they are not mentioned in your early curriculum.

 

The real reason as to why men are so rare is due to the Demon Lord, Blut having cursed all races to lower their birth rate especially so for male children. Hence, the men are usually deemed as very rare and valuable to our race, often put under the protection of the Church of Palrene.

Currently, the only known way to get rid of this curse was to defeat Demon Lord Blut, the originator of this curse."

 

The teacher goes on to explain as to the history of this all occurring and some popular theory.

Apparently even demons weren’t exempt from this problem either.

The history basically went as Humans pissing off the demon lord because they stopped his conquest so he vented off by cursing all races with this skewed gender ratio?

 

"As a solution to our current problem, many races decided to biologically alter themselves through magic to gain means of asexual reproduction.

Which happen to be our foremothers in this regard."

 

I didn't think the world would end up having such a setting. So in simple terms, if I somehow desire for men to repopulate this world again, the demon lord simply needed to be defeated.

I guess it’s always nice for options to be available but I don’t think I want any more competition at this point. I am already incapable of even hand holding my classmates, just offering more difficulty towards myself at this point is just absurd.

 

Hopefully, this Demon Lord doesn’t happen to die soon. Even the slightest sliver of hope of me having a girlfriend would be ruined otherwise.

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