NOVEL NEXT Chapter 34: (1)
The Time Has Come
The western part of Purin Kingdom.
Wastelands with so little greenery stretched as far as the eye could see. Three suspicious-looking shadows could be seen moving through such wastelands, they were team Tanaka.
Although he was at first a little aversed with the idea of venturing through the wastelands due to its drastic difference in nature compared to the rich mountainous area around the border, Tanaka was a man of a strong will and a tenacious spirit. Thus he chose to continue to press forward.
「So hot~… Looks like we should have stayed in some town along the way and waited for the climate to cool down somewhat….」
In the dry, sweltering heat unique to inland areas, Tanaka was trudging on while grumbling. The enthusiasm he had back when he vowed to make a fresh start in the Purin Kingdom was already nowhere to be seen. He was truly a man of swift mind.
「That’d be troubling. Well, I’m a spirit, so the heat doesn’t really matter to me all that much, though.」
Kaku-san boasted in his signature side-chest pose. In such a sweltering air, Tanaka felt as though the temperature had suddenly increased by five degrees.
「I don’t mind the heat much either-degozaru.」
Suke-san happily coordinated with Kaku-san and stood across from him in the similar side-chest pose. The two of them were getting more coordinated by the day. It was a truly useless improvement, however.
The cooperation between the two of them served only to double the sweltering heat Tanaka was suffering. At this point, Tanaka’s feet finally ceased to move. Tanaka, whose excitement had fallen to the rock bottom, couldn’t even bring himself to muster up anger at the two, as he wished for nothing but to get some refreshment.
「Ah~… We can’t go on like this. This is as far as we go for the day. We have to to replenish ourselves….」
Team Tanaka promptly moved to a suitable shady spot and took a rest. The next instant, Tanaka proceeded to take some ice out of his item box. However, the stockpile in his item box turned out to have already dried out.
「They’re all gone already, huh…. Oh well, I guess I have no choice then.」
Tanaka invoked two live-support magic, Ice and levitation magic at the same time. A gigantic chunk of ice suddenly appeared in front of Tanaka, but it did not immediately fall to the ground and simply remained floating in the air.
「Suke-san. The usual, please.」
「Roger-degozaru.」
Tanaka asked Suke-san, the person in the team who could use the least dangerous attack magic, to cut the ice. Suke-san, who was asked to do this, invoked wind blade magic one after another to turn the gigantic chunk of ice into smaller blocks. Once Suke-san was done with the task, Tanaka swiftly put a few pieces of ice into his mouth while storing the rest into his item box.
「So good. As expected of you, Suke-san, you’re very skilled.」
「Compared to you, Tanaka-dono, I still have a long way to go-degozaru.」
While enjoying the ice, the energized Tanaka praised Suke-san’s magic. In fact, Suke-san’s magic skill had already improved to the point where he could be called a top-notch magician. However, as the two of them were completely oblivious of such a fact, they were simply chatting jovially. Only Kaku-san, who possessed extensive experience and knowledge pertaining to magic, was aware of how absurd the power possessed by his comrades was.
「What a terrifying waste of talent… Oh well, whatever. By the way, what about our training?」
「Let’s see… Let’s get to it, then.」
Team Tanaka, even in the middle of their journey, had never failed to hunt monsters should the opportunity arise, as well as to spend half of the day time conducting their respective training.
The fact that he was able to persist with his training despite his low spirits showed how deep the Afro incident had cut into his heart. However, even with the injuries on his spirit, while entertaining the thoughts such as ‘The me lurking in the shadow might actually be cool’ as the nourishment of his future popularity, Tanaka continued to stay positive and moved toward tomorrow with his head held high. The day when this devious plan of his made its move to deceive the will of the world and even overturned the law of causality itself might be just around the corner… Well, there was no way to be the case, huh.
At any rate, team Tanaka proceeded with their daily training regimens. And then, speaking of Tanaka’s training, he was receiving guidance from Kaku-san about how to master Grand Magic, which he had somehow obtained before he even noticed it
Grand magic was a high-level skill that normally could only be performed by the administrators of the world, Gods and spirits. However, there had been a few precedents where heroes or high priests managed to learn it as an acquired skill. And then, in their case of performing Grand Magic, the theory was that they had to begin with performing a magic ritual in order to accumulate a large amount of magical energy.
However, in Tanaka’s case, while the reason might be unknown, he was capable of drawing out a large amount of magical energy off hand to begin with, thus he came to the conclusion that performing such a ritual was unnecessary for him. It definitely wasn’t because he found performing such a thing was too much of a trouble that Tanaka decided to omit it… There was no way for Tanaka, the cool protagonist who spared no efforts in his endeavor, to ever entertain such a thought.
And then, the next step was to focus on controlling the magical energy. Tanaka, who had tirelessly trodden the path of magic control since days ago, had been training in nothing but it for a while now in order to perform Grand Magic.