Translator: Charlotte

I walked back and forth between the ends of the village"s biggest street, looking around as I went.
Compared to Remut, there were a lot more carpenter"s shops, and shops dealing in crops and livestock were a lot more prosperous.
Well I suppose that"s to be expected. There had to be a difference in scale between a town and a village.
There were a lot of stalls along the street too.
By the way, it didn"t look like Mio"s stall was there. Maybe she hadn"t arrived yet.

A facility that more or less made use of adventurers was set up and available.
But I guess a contact point to the adventurer"s guild was too much to expect.
Well, that"s just how it is.
I kind of get the gist of this village now. Guess I"ll return to Master"s home.

On my way back, I tried my best to do some hunting while trekking through the forest. A way to kill time.
To raise my movement speed I toggled on【Physical Enchant: Wind. This way the skill was always in effect.
Helix the hawk was on my shoulder, cautiously watching my surroundings.
Flying around in this forest might be dangerous.

Volff was off chasing game around.
Mainly targeting female Wild Pheasants.
Without any real intent to hunt, the night closed in.
We weren"t pressing them too much, so the pa.s.sive monsters ignored us.
But even if it was pa.s.sive, I went and took down a racc.o.o.n!

What was quickly becoming an issue was that the evening was coming close, and the male Wild Pheasants were starting to group up.
I happened to catch sight of one group of Wild Pheasants, a flock of 10, to be exact.
I should dodge these guys, they"re nothing but trouble.
It was a coincidence, but I"ve seen players get killed after being surrounded by a flock of pheasants with my own eyes.
The males were pretty scary.
They"re so violent it"s impossible to compare them to the females.
Well, they"re not called "Wild Pheasants" for nothing.

My surroundings have gone dark.
This is bad, I should hurry on my way back.
"That"s weird, the night is closing in way too early," I thought, but then I realised I just forgot that today"s weather was going to be cloudy.
Completely my mistake.
Evil Ants were starting to appear.

After defeating some Evil Ants I gave Volff a recovery pill.
The damage wasn"t serious, but I figured I would run into these ants a couple times again later.
There was still some distance to my master"s house.
When I get there I should have him teach me the best healing methods.

Helix was luckily unhurt at first, but after getting surprise attacked by a bat, his HP bar wasn"t looking so good.
I"ll give him a potion so he can pull through.
Of course, I didn"t make it out unscathed either.
I realised that if I didn"t take all of them out as soon as possible, I would definitely get overrun and turn into an "ant sphere".
Leaving recovery for later, I decided to keep throwing attacks and force my way through them.

Even in that kind of situation, I still couldn"t stop having to tear them off of me. It was really annoying how persistent they were.
When I finally reached my master"s house, my HP bar had dropped to half.
But it still wouldn"t end.
In front of me a monster I"d never seen before was walking towards me. I used【Identify】on it. Seemed pretty strong.

b.l.o.o.d.y Wood Lv.3
Monster Enemy Target Active

It was about as tall as me… I think.
Looked like the roots of a tree tangled together and took form. Looked like a puppet monster.
What should I do?

It was blocking the path between us and my master"s house, so I decided to【Jump】over its head first.
While making sure I could run off to the door of the house if I had to, I hit it once.
I didn"t like the response that my rod gave me.
What kind of monster is this guy?

The tangled roots its body was made out of contorted, and then shot out at me like a tentacle! But I dodged it.
Its movements were rather slow.
I attacked again with my rod.
The collision of wood on wood resounded around me.
It didn"t seem so effective.

Volff was repeatedly biting at it, but the roots of its body warped and dodged every time.
It looked like Helix was wondering how to go about attacking.
This monster started to seem like one of those guys that just took a lot of time and trouble to defeat.

The monster pulled back its tentacle-like roots and held them around its body.
It looked pretty dumb.
Hmm?
Its movements were starting to get a bit dull.
My MP was starting to run a little low too… Let"s try it.

I let go of the rod, dropped my hips, and grabbed one of the roots.
Got one.
And, with all my strength, throw!
The monster was slammed against the ground.
No matter how much it spread its roots around. I could see that its HP bar decreased.
Better than hitting it with the rod.
No, a lot better.
The real weapon here was the ground.
Let"s put that into practice.

This "b.l.o.o.d.y Wood" monster looked like it would use its roots to suck the fluid out of its prey.
The roots were constantly trying to reach for my wounds.
What an annoying enemy.
But I could make use of that. A sort of guidance/bait so to say.

Match the timing of the coming roots and throw.
But I missed this time. Why?
Now that I think about it, I could"ve taken the【Throw】skill but I didn"t.
I quickly learnt the skill and activated it.

Another try. This time I have a hunch it"ll go well.
This monster was a pretty good enemy to encounter.
Grab one of the roots. Check.
Sweep its legs off the ground. Check.
And throw. Check.
While I had the chance I decided to try one of those jiu-jitsu throws but I was surprised to actually see it work.
No, it"s just because this monster"s movements were too simple that I managed to pull it off.

As the damage on the monster started to acc.u.mulate, I saw its outer appearance start to break down.
Eventually, its torso started to sound hollow.
Volff and Helix stopped interfering at some point, and the whole fight turned into my personal judo throw practice.
Ooh, it"s been a while since I"ve had this kind of training.
Can"t forget that this is a real fight though!

Finally, the monster was reduced to a scattered pile of roots on the ground.

《Summon Magic Level Up!》

Ohh, finally my summon magic leveled up.
Now I can add another summon monster to my party.
I"ll do it tomorrow.

The monster lay scattered on the ground. Using my knife I tried to dig into its core, cutting away the roots as I went.
I pulled out some strange item, and the rest of the roots faded away.

【Material】b.l.o.o.d.y Burdock Raw Material Grade C+ Rarity 1 Weight 0+
b.l.o.o.d.y Wood"s core. Fibrous and hard but can be used in cooking.

Bu- Burdock?
How could this kind of monster yield something edible?
Are there some guys into cooking on the development team?
Looks like it.

When I reached the gate, Master"s Magi Owl came out to greet me.
I might have just missed dinner.

Master was waiting in the workshop.
Food was already prepared.

「Looks like you used another strange way of fighting」

「Huh…」

So he was looking.
Seems that with his Monster Summons he could look almost anywhere.
I couldn"t pull that off yet, but I wondered if I would learn that skill someday.
It looked pretty useful.

「Finish eating quickly. I"m brewing potions.」

「Will do.」

I hurriedly finished my food and helped out Master with his potion brewing.
I say "helped out" but all I really did was scoop the potion liquid into bottles with a ladle.
It was the first time he brewed this much.
"You know Master, you should make the potions with the number of empty bottles in mind," is what I wanted to say.

Since those who can finish work quickly usually do, they end up with more spare time than others. That"s to be expected.
But usually your superiors, upon seeing that kind of situation, would go and a.s.sign you some more work.
Even though it"s the boss"s job to teach you how to get work done faster in the first place… That"s reality for you.
And afterwards being considered shameless and insensitive for going home at the regular time while everyone else is doing overtime work too.

With those kind of thoughts, I finished filling most of the empty potion bottles I was handed.

After I finished helping out Master, I filled my own bottle that I used earlier in the forest.
Just a poor man helping himself.
We as humans all have our own circ.u.mstances and reasons.

Without checking the potions, Master entrusted placing all of them in the《Item Box》to his Summon Monster Metalskin.
Then locked himself up in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the tower.
Yeah, there"s something off about him today.

In the house"s second floor, I recalled Volff and Helix.
Ahhh, I remember now.
Before I logged out I wanted to see the candidates for my fourth Summon Monster.

I pulled up the list and saw something rather… Strange.

Wolf
Horse
Hawk
Owl
Wood Puppet
Bat
Wood Golem
Beast Ape
Demon
Red Fox

At some point the variety in the monsters I could summon had increased.

What"s this all about?
I didn"t get any info about this.
But when I thought about it something came to mind.
They were all monsters I"ve encountered before.
To be more accurate, they were all monsters I"ve used【Identify】on, or at least their lower forms.
The only exception to this was the first monster I summoned, Volff.

Horse. I encountered that Stray Horse once. But I didn"t defeat it.

Hawk. I saw it that time I took another player"s drops.

Owl. Master"s Magi Owl.

Wood Puppet. Probably Automaton, Metalskin, or Silverskin. Master"s puppets.

Bat. This would be that Hunter Bat I met in the forest.

Wood Golem. The Stone Golem acting as the gatekeeper of this house.

I"ll a.s.sume Beast Ape, Demon, and Red Fox were the lower forms of Master"s Monster Summons.

So that"s how it works…
So the more I move around, and the more monsters I encounter, the higher the variety of monsters I can summon will become.

Made sense.
Although in that regard, a rather scary thought came to mind.
Master"s Roc Bird.
There should be some kind of lower form of that… Right?
Could it be the Hawk? Nah, that"s impossible.
But I couldn"t come up with anything else that made sense.
So after all that raising, Helix is going to turn into that monster-like thing?
I"d love it if he could stay cute though.

Oops.
I"ve got to get back to the issue of my fourth Summon Monster.
Guess I"ll read all their explanations.

【Wood Golem】Summon Monster Battle Position: Land
A wooden golem. Its main method of attack is close combat with its hands and feet.
Its movements are slow and fine movements aren"t its strong suit. But it"s tough and strong, suited to being a vanguard.
A faithful servant to whom tiredness is a foreign concept.

【Beast Ape】Summon Monster Battle Position: Land
A beastly monkey. Its main method of attack is close combat with its hands and feet.
With a human-like build, it"s tough and strong, but also nimble. Suited to being a vanguard.
It"s possible to teach it to use a simple weapon.

【Demon】Summon Monster Battle Position: Land
A humanoid monster. It"s method of attack depends on its weapon.
Its build is slightly smaller than a human"s. It can demonstrate effectiveness and skillfulness at both the vanguard and the rear guard.
It can use any weapon a human can use, and it can see well in the dark too.

【Red Fox】Summon Monster Battle Position: Land
A fox. Its main methods of attack are biting and light elemental special skills.
It has a small build, but its movements are fast, and it can act as a support using its light elemental special skills.

Hmm… I can only summon one but the candidates have increased by so much. It"s really gotten difficult to decide.
Well at first I was thinking one that was suitable for moving at night would be good.

Thinking about it in that light, an owl or a demon…
For now I doubt I"ll get to fight in a cramped place like a dungeon anytime soon…
I guess an owl would be alright.
It"d be great if it could pull off support lightning attacks like Master"s Magi Owl in the future.
I"ve really become a fan of those.

After deciding I felt like a huge burden was taken off my back. It was really refreshing.
A good note to end on. Let"s log out.

Protagonist　Keith
Race　Human　Male　Racial Lv4
Job　Summoner Lv3
Bonus Points Remaining 9

Skill Sets:
Staff Lv3　Punch Lv2　Kick Lv2　Joint Lock Lv2　Throw Lv1（New! ）　Evade Lv2　Block Lv2　Summon Magic Lv4（↑1）
Light Magic Lv2　Wind Magic Lv2　Earth Magic Lv2　Water Magic Lv2　Alchemy Lv3　Pharmacy Lv2
Cooperation Lv3　Appraise Lv3　Identify Lv3　Cold Resistance Lv2　Grab Lv2　Horsemanship Lv1　Precise Manipulation Lv1　Jump Lv1

Equipment:
Beginner"s Rod　Wild Rabbit Skin Breastplate+ Series　Snow Ape Armguard　Cloth Shoes Rucksack　Item Box x2

Items:
Survival Knife

Monster Summons:
Volff　Wolf Lv3 (Asleep)
Zangetsu　Horse Lv2
Helix　Hawk Lv2