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Great Sorcerer, Nurture (3)
The plan to make the humans and the dwarves stronger by summoning the slimes got canceled. Still, Evan acquired a small new world connected with Miraseul’s necklace…he didn’t understand why things turned out this way. He did his best to explain what happened, but even Mirole couldn’t understand it.
“How could such a vast world exist within this tiny necklace…? Ah, thank you for the meal.”
“This is a reward for completing your morning training.”
“Ha, aaaah…! It looks delicious…! Thank you for the meal!”
Mirole’s eyes sparkled as she looked at the panna cotta which Evan put on her plate. Panna cotta, where cold whipped cream was put on top of sweet and sour peach, was more valuable than a sparkling jewel for people in this era, where sweet deserts were precious and rare.
“Hmm, I was the one who made it, but it really is delicious. Whip cream is the key to make a great panna cotta.”
Maybell smiled in satisfaction as she took a bite. FYI, good whipping cream needed good milk, and Mirole might freak out if she learned the milk source, so Evan decided to seal his mouth. The hint was Minotaur. However, Mirole froze as she heard Maybell’s words although the milk’s source was still hidden. The food fell from her mouth.
“You mean you made this?”
“Why are you surprised? I’m Evan’s personal maid. This much cooking skill is nothing.”
“Are you still insisting on that nonsense?”
“Ma-maid…? Weren’t you a demon…?”
Mirole was seriously lost. It surely was very tasty food, but it seemed to feel weird after hearing that she was the one who made it. Was it through the Demon’s Touch that the food was unforgettably delicious!?
“I know what you are thinking, but don’t get it wrong since it’s simple food. Look, I’m eating too.”
Evan took a big bite of the whipped cream and puree as proof for Mirole, who misunderstood things. Cold, sweet, soft, and sour. Its taste was just perfect.
“You aren’t a simple human…!”
“…Well, I do have resistance to poison, but you are being mean. It’s just a simple dish. Why don’t you ask the spirits for that?”
“But it’s way too delicious! It’s unforgettable!”
“Hmm, hmm. You are right, of course.”
Maybell became arrogant at Mirole’s honest expression. And Mirole felt utter defeat by her reaction. She was stronger than her, more attractive (it was hard for Mirole, who was still a girl, to win over the attractiveness of the Succubus Queen), and cooked better than her, too!
“These are the abilities of Evan’s personal maid!”
“Well, you aren’t my maid anymore.”
Although her cooking skill was incomparable to the owner of the Brotherhood Skewers, whose dishes were magical, Maybell and Belois tend to create more delicious desserts, like cookies, since the owner’s expertise was monster meat. Furthermore, their master was the strict head maid who was famous in the Marquis’ household, so the skills of those two, who were honed to become Evan’s personal maids, had already exceeded that of a professional pâtissier. And they had reached their own peak with Evan’s modern desert knowledge added to their collection. However, most people in the world wouldn’t know about it.
“A demon that can cook this kind of a dish, and a human that made such a demon into his maid…I’m starting to get lost in knowing your identity.”
“I feel the same, so don’t worry.”
Evan told himself that his amnesia alibi was really convenient. He could just say he didn’t know when it comes to explaining his innate knowledge!
“Us, us too…”
Then, a voice was heard from somewhere. It sounded like a voice from the dead that crawled up from the surface of hell. When Evan turned around and looked, the voice came from those still practicing Evan’s training techniques.
“Dear God, we want to eat it, too…!”
“Please share with us, your grace!”
“Arggggh…!”
“It’s too early for you guys. If you come back with satisfying results, I’ll think about it in the evening.”
The humans, in agony, cried out to Evan, Mirole, and Maybell, enjoying their tea time. It sure was a strange group for a tea party in God’s Era.
“Mirole came up with achievement with her superhuman concentration in just a few hours, so I’m giving her a break. I’ll give you guys whatever you want from panna cotta to puddings and many more if you come up with something like that, so try harder.”
“Why are you so obsessed with the jellylike desserts!?”
The current time was 3 pm. The dwarves ran towards their tents to research magic tools after they finished their lunch. Their hearts in researching the magic tools were sincere for sure, but Evan also got a feeling that they wanted to avoid the harsh training that would come next.
‘But dwarves have different starting points than the humans in the first place.’
They are the earth fairies with the blessings from the ground, although the forest fairies in the Mother Forest had stable lives. They have naturally superior bodies, and they also had talents in crafting weapons. So, they had a good reason to only spend their morning on training.
‘But humans are weak.’
Weak. So weak. Weak in all aspects. He wanted to put them in a spiritual training room if it ever existed. Their skills would fall behind if they trained like the dwarves, but many of them collapsed out of fatigue in the first half of the morning training due to its difficulty. The remaining people failed in maintaining their posture, which would deny the meaning of the training.
“You won’t get the pudding or even dinner if you guys keep doing what you are doing right now. I’m not here for a free service. If you want to survive, make your posture right and do as I taught you.”
“Ah, understooood…!”
The reason why Evan was enjoying the fabulous (in their eyes) desert in front of the humans was to motivate them at all cost…and in fact, the achievement made by Mirole after starting her training in just half a day was too superb. She barely stayed low on the ground after depleting all her mana after her hard training.
Maybell offered her another plate of panna cotta since she ate it so well. Mirole answered with a happy smile while receiving it delightfully.
“I came to realize after training, just like what Zero told me. My archery skill, which hit a dead end, was improving at a tremendous speed.”
“As expected from the guide of the New Way…ouch.”
“Be quiet.”
Evan punished Maybell for mumbling in admiration, but she wasn’t all wrong. Evan’s second job, the Guide, amplified the abilities and the growth speed of those following him. And its effectiveness depended on how deeply they trusted him. So, it wasn’t a surprise that Save was able to catch up with the Astray members in just a short period. He expected Mirole not to benefit much from that effect as she just came to know Evan, but perhaps he was wrong.
“And that is how I started to think about the meaning behind my actions. Then I realized the movements that I do are the compressed version of the ultimate archery technique.”
“Hyah.”
Did she come to understand that the movement in pretending to move around the scattered arrows and pluck them was, in fact, the training for the ultimate archery skill, the Iron Barrage!? He thought that she wouldn’t notice the meaning behind it since, for just archery training, canceling the movement after its first stage wouldn’t merit the user with any experience, so the user had to mix it with the last stage right after canceling the first movement!
“I’m not sure what you are thinking, Master, but it probably isn’t.”
“For sure, I haven’t pulled the bow even once, but I can understand the possibility of a technique after learning the direction of the bow, the method on how to process my line of sight, and the movements I’ve done so far. The reason why you haven’t told me about its origin is that you know I can’t afford to cast it completely just yet, am I right, Zero?”
Nope. Going through that technique from the beginning to the end would render the ability training useless, and it devastated everything around it.
“I still don’t know your identity. Yet, I am trusting you fully. My belief in you became even more solid during the training which you’ve taught me.”
“That’s…a relief. Sure, that’s right. I’ll teach you a different technique in the afternoon that doesn’t require any mana.”
Iron Barrage was, bluntly speaking, a special skill. It couldn’t be cast normally if the archery skill and the mana didn’t reach a certain amount. If basic conditions weren’t met during the training, it couldn’t even be started. So, acquiring mastery in archery with the training was high. Still, one side effect was that even the canceling training consumed mana.
The best basic technique in archery training was the Tiger Hunt, which didn’t require any mana, and it was completed when the user just shook his bow a few times without an arrow. Beginners that didn’t have mana would start with the Tiger Hunt, and it was the right path for them to interchange between the Tiger Hunt and the Iron Barrage once they accumulated enough mana. Even Jhin of the Astray Knights was taught the Tiger Hunt in the beginning.
“As expected, there was another technique…I was thinking that it was too complicated for training.”
“You’ll be surprised. It doesn’t even require arrows.”
Evan smiled bitterly as he spoke. The memories of Sherden suddenly came up. When Mirole, who came to Sherden, entered Astray, Evan showed her the Tiger Hunt…or rather the technique on canceling the Tiger Hunt. And it was her first time looking at it, but she precisely copied the move. Evan was very shocked but had it pass by thinking that she had mastered the archery skills, but come to think about it, it was because she has already learned it from the Great Ancient Sorcerer…from Evan, at this point. He recalled the memory and simply wanted to trick her, so he didn’t teach her the Tiger Hunt, which was way easier than the Iron Barrage. And as a result, he yielded to the potential of the high elf.
‘But…… has she continued with her archery training which I’ve taught her from this point until that day?’
No way. She would have stopped it once her archery skill maxed out. Even if she maxed archery skill turned into a unique skill, she would have stopped after maxing that unique skill. Once the unique skill was learned, the effectiveness of the former attribute training falls behind a bit. However, half of the effects were still retained since it shared the same skill root with the one before the unique skill. Most of the unique skills didn’t have attribute training, so there were many cases where experiences were learned through basic attribute training…and unique skills weren’t something people could acquire that often.
“Whoa, I see. So. Well, well, she was able to become that strong through master’s specific intervention.”
“What are you murmuring about, Maybell?”
“Secret.”
The look that Maybell gave as if she came to understand something somewhat irritated him. Come to think about it, they did mention a secret which only Maybell and Mirole knew prior to coming to God’s Era. Wouldn’t know about them be important in surviving through the unknown circumstances of God’s Era? Evan spoke as he looked at Maybell in a strange way.
“You have to tell me everything tonight.”
“Eeeeeh.”
Maybell intentionally acted coquettishly, a provocation that aimed to make Evan suffer. Evan decided to play by her scheme, but he didn’t realize that Mirole was secretly looking at them with a blushing face.
“Shall we start with our afternoon work?”
“Is there new work to do? Oh, even Zero is planning to train.”
“No. No way.”
Evan smiled subtly while opening and clenching his fist at the word ‘training.’
“Then what is it? Ah, the dungeon?”
“Wrong again. I’m thinking of rearranging the environment.”
“Rearranging the environment…?”
He asked Mirole, who was tilting her head.
“So, I’m wondering if it’s all right to pluck out some of the trees in this forest. Can I?”