New Skills

“Get a hold of yourself.”

Nishino called out to Yodai in concern.

“I’m perfectly sane. I really can see something like a game’s status screen inside my head. Maybe it has something to do with that strange voice we heard last night.”

Nishino gave him a strange look.

“You mean that voice saying something about levels?”

“You heard it too, Mr. Lawyer? That’s right. The voice that said, ‘The Level System has been implemented.’ I think it’s connected to what’s happening.”

Upon arriving at City Hall, Yodai and the others discovered that a large number of citizens had taken refuge there. When the municipal employees learned that the mayor’s nephew had arrived, they escorted him to the office of Mayor Yoshinori Mitarai.

“I’m glad you came. I was just worrying about what had happened to you.”

His parents had probably asked his uncle to search for him. His uncle, who was in his early sixties, had sagging bags beneath his eyes and a face resembling that of a gang boss.

“Sorry for making you worry.”

“Never mind. As long as you’re safe, that’s all that matters.”

“By the way, Uncle, what do the Japanese government and other authorities make of this situation?”

The mayor sighed.

“I don’t know. We can’t get in touch with them.”

“What about the internet?”

“No good. We’ve sent emails, but no replies have come back. However, about an hour ago, we managed to get through on a landline once. I spoke with the prefectural governor. Apparently, the Self-Defense Forces base in the prefecture has been completely destroyed.”

“N-No way…”

It was shocking information. According to the mayor, the police had also suffered numerous casualties, prompting the prefectural governor to issue a stay-at-home order. The governor had acted relatively quickly. In other prefectures, large numbers of residents who ventured outside had reportedly been attacked and killed by monsters.

“What are you planning to do from here, Uncle?”

“I intend to wait for the Japanese government to send help.”

“Are you sure we’ll be all right just waiting?”

“I can’t tell unarmed civilians to fight those monsters. Even the police have suffered casualties, you know.”

From that day onward, the civilization humanity had built gradually began to collapse. One contributing factor was the massive emergence of giant lizard monsters called Oil Lizards in oil-producing countries. The Oil Lizards disrupted petroleum extraction, preventing oil from being distributed to countries around the world.

Deprived of oil, humanity lost many of its means of fighting the monsters. For some reason, those monsters seemed to prefer appearing in urban areas, forcing people to flee from cities into the countryside.

However, only a small number managed to escape safely, and more than half of humanity perished. Most of them weren’t killed by monsters. They died from a mysterious disease. It took a long time for humanity to discover that the cause was a toxin released in the monsters’ breath.

When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the floor of the air-raid shelter. Still groggy, I tried to remember what I had been doing.

“Oh, right. I’d acquired a skill called Flame Manipulation.”

When I checked my Status, I found that a new skill, “Flame Manipulation: 1,” had appeared under Active Skills, and my Skill Points had dropped to “09.” Apparently, acquiring this skill had cost nine points.

Now then, what could this skill actually do? I examined the information about Flame Manipulation that had been imprinted into my brain. According to that knowledge, it was a technique for generating and controlling particles called Flame Refinement Particles.

I had no idea where these Flame Refinement Particles were summoned from. The quantity a practitioner could control depended on their proficiency, and at Skill Level 1, producing a flame about the size of a candle’s seemed to be the best I could manage.

The Flame Manipulation technique available at Skill Level 1 was called [Ignition]. Apparently, activating it was as simple as pressing something resembling a switch embedded deep within my mind.

I began training to raise my Flame Manipulation Skill Level. The method was simple: I just had to repeatedly create flames in midair and extinguish them. After several days of practice, my Skill Level rose to 2. I could now produce a jet of fire resembling the flames from a flamethrower.

Apparently, the amount of Flame Refinement Particles I could summon at once depended on my Skill Level. I could make the flames thick and short or thin and long. I could even extend them into a long stream while making them spiral through the air.

However, making the flames spiral didn’t seem to increase their destructive power.

“It certainly looks cool, though.”

The technique for producing flamethrower-like flames was apparently called [Flame Jet]. I considered whether I could defeat the Minotaur with it. Probably not. That was the conclusion I reached. I might be able to burn it, but I doubted I could inflict enough damage to deliver a fatal wound.

I decided to continue training to improve my Flame Manipulation Skill Level. At the same time, I defeated Lizardmen to raise my Club Technique Skill Level.

When Heartstone Processing Technique reached Skill Level 3, I gained the ability to transform Heartstones into resin. It was probably easiest to think of this resin as something similar to plastic.

However, since all I could do at that stage was generate resin sheets, the ability wasn’t particularly useful. When Heartstone Processing Technique reached Skill Level 4, though, a new ability called Shape Processing was added.

This ability allowed me to process thread, cloth, iron ingots, and resin sheets generated from Heartstones into items such as clothing, needles, knives, and cups. Using Shape Processing, I made myself some clothes.

The season was turning to winter. The harsh food situation and my daily battles against Aberrant Beasts had left me painfully thin. The clothes I wore had been replaced with garments fashioned through Shape Processing from small pieces of cloth generated from Heartstones.

The Shape Processing ability produced effects that were practically magical, and I found it fascinating.

At night, I honed my Heartstone Processing Technique by creating various objects. During the day, I practiced Flame Manipulation while continuing to circle the island clockwise. I defeated the Aberrant Beasts I encountered along the way and pressed onward. When I had made it roughly seventy percent of the way around the mountain, I encountered the Minotaur.

It caught me completely off guard. I had expected to encounter it eventually, but this was sooner than anticipated. I’d assumed it had remained in the forest near the sandy beach the entire time. Apparently, I had been wrong.

It happened just as I emerged from the bushes onto a rocky stretch of coastline. Worse still, at that very moment, my eyes met the Minotaur’s.

“Ah, crap.”

An embarrassingly foolish exclamation escaped my lips.

“MOOOOOOO!”

With a thunderous roar, the Minotaur raised its enormous axe and charged at me. In a panic, I unleashed [Flame Jet]. Orange flames erupted like the exhaust from a rocket engine, scorching the Minotaur’s chest.

A scream burst from the bull-headed creature’s mouth. Its face twisted with fury as it used its axe to shield itself from the flames and charged forward recklessly. No good. Just as I’d suspected, [Flame Jet] wasn’t powerful enough to finish off this monstrous bull. The sheer ferocity of the approaching Minotaur was enough to give me goosebumps.

I slowly backed away while considering my options. I thought about retracing my steps, but the creature looked faster than me. That left only the sea. Could this thing swim?

I decided to take my chances in the water. I stopped using [Flame Jet] and sprinted toward the sea. It was about twenty meters away. I ran desperately and threw myself into the water.

After swimming a short distance offshore, I turned to look behind me. The Minotaur had pursued me as far as the water’s edge but hadn’t followed me into the sea. It probably couldn’t swim.

It was winter, and the seawater was freezing. I began swimming toward the air-raid shelter. Once the Minotaur was out of sight, I climbed ashore onto the rocky coastline and walked back to the shelter.

“Ugh, it’s freezing.”

With trembling fingers, I stripped off my wet clothes and started a fire. That had been a terrible experience. The Minotaur really was a monster in a league of its own. I needed a proper weapon. There was no way I could fight it with a little hatchet.

After changing clothes, I took out the Heartstones I’d been stockpiling. My Heartstone Processing Technique was currently at Skill Level 4. I had a feeling it was close to leveling up, but my progress had stalled because I’d been prioritizing Flame Manipulation and Lesser Heavenly Circuit.

Because I’d needed clothing, I’d focused on improving Heartstone Processing Technique by practicing cloth generation and processing. From now on, I decided to concentrate on generating and processing iron instead. If I did that, perhaps I’d be able to make weapons.

I shut myself inside the air-raid shelter for about two days, continuously generating iron, until my Heartstone Processing Technique reached Skill Level 5. As a result, I acquired a technique called [Effect Imbuement].

Before testing Effect Imbuement, I decided to try making a throwing knife. Holding one of the iron ingots I’d accumulated, I pictured the shape of a throwing knife in my mind and used Shape Processing to reshape the ingot.

The lump of iron bent and warped, transforming into the throwing knife I’d envisioned. It turned out much better than I’d expected. Apparently, the Heartstone Processing Technique skill had assisted me.

The finished throwing knife measured approximately twenty centimeters in overall length, with a blade about ten centimeters long, and weighed roughly two hundred grams. Since the original ingot had weighed about two hundred grams, the resulting knife was somewhat thick.

I went outside and tried throwing my newly made knife at a tree. The knife completed half a rotation before embedding itself firmly in the trunk. The fact that I’d managed to stick it on my first attempt was probably thanks to my Throwing Technique skill.

“Not bad in terms of power. It should work against Lizardmen, but I wonder about the Minotaur. I get the feeling it wouldn’t be quite enough.”

The tip of the throwing knife had penetrated about five centimeters into the tree trunk, but considering the thickness of the Minotaur’s chest, I doubted it would reach its heart.

For the time being, I decided to make ten throwing knives before moving on to crafting my main weapon, a Japanese sword. In a game, a regular sword would probably be the more common choice, but as a Japanese person, I felt a katana was the way to go.

However, my attempt failed. The blade I produced was warped.

“What went wrong?”

After experimenting with various approaches, I discovered that the problems were the amount of iron and the length of the blade. With my current proficiency, four iron ingots and a blade length of thirty centimeters seemed to be my limits.

Under those conditions, I could only make something like a short sword or dagger. So I decided to make a mountain knife similar to one I’d once seen at my grandfather’s house in the countryside. It was a heavy-duty mountain knife measuring fifty centimeters in overall length, with a thirty-centimeter blade approximately seven millimeters thick.

I successfully completed the mountain knife exactly as I’d intended.