Evil Avalon - Volume 2 - Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Time to Chat and Relax

While waiting for the orc lord to respawn again, we sat down with our snacks and began chatting.

“I wanna be part of your circle too!” chimed in Kano. She’d wanted to hear about our time at school, so we told her about the circle. I tried to let her down gently, but she wouldn’t listen. She rolled around on the floor and whined, “But I want to come to the dungeon more often! You don’t want me around, bro.”

I tried to explain that we couldn’t let an outsider join one of Adventurers’ High’s circles, much less a middle schooler with no permission to be in the dungeon. That didn’t get me anywhere. Ultimately, she pulled the same trick she had an hour before, clinging to Risa and Satsuki while crying and making me out to be the villain.

“I don’t see the problem,” said Satsuki. “It’s just for training anyway.”

“And we’ll definitely need her help in the dungeon anyway,” added Risa. “I vote to let her join.”

“Yay!” Kano squealed with delight.

The two girls argued Kano’s level was as high as mine, and she knew just as much about the dungeon as I did. We’d need her in our party to raid deeper into the dungeon, so it would be best and safest if we used the time training in the circle as a chance for the rest of the party to get to know her better.

Kano ran over to each of the girls and hugged them with tears in her eyes. What annoyed me the most was that this set a bad example: it taught Kano that crying worked. It surprised me how close she was with the girls that she’d already exchanged contact details on the wearable tablet I’d bought her. Jealous!

I’d already bought Kano a school uniform and tracksuit to enter the school grounds without arousing suspicion, so she could probably participate in the circle without being discovered. After contemplating it, I concluded there was no harm in letting my family take part in the circle’s training sessions.

“What’s the circle called?” asked Kano.

“It’s not called anything,” I replied. “It’s just a temporary solution so our classmates can train together.”

“That’s no good,” she tutted. “I’ll give it a name! How about Shining Colors?”

Kano promptly came up with an extremely derivative name. You can’t just riff off a famous clan’s name. Anyway, I don’t exactly have good feelings toward Colors.

“I vote for The Beauty Squad!” suggested Risa.

“How about Meowy Family?” said Satsuki.

I wasn’t sure I’d still belong in a group called The Beauty Squad... Was this their way of kicking me out? Satsuki’s naming sense with Meowy Family was atrocious, so I put forward a suggestion to keep hers from winning.

“It’s for Class E students, so how about something beginning with the letter E?” I suggested. “Like Evolve?”

“E?” repeated Risa. “How about... End?”

“What about Exodus?” stated Satsuki. “Because we’re trying to escape from Class E.”

“Or we could go for Enigma, like we’re shrouded in mysteries!” Risa piped up.

Several more suggestions with the letter E rained down, but none sounded right. We settled on the placeholder name of Triple E, which made us sound like a secret organization. But we had to put something on the application form, and this would do.

“Now that I think of it,” started Satsuki, peering at my sister intently. “How old are you exactly, Kano?” She’d noticed how small my sister was, putting two and two together. Except for students of Adventurers’ Middle School, only people of high school age and above were allowed to enter the dungeon.

It wouldn’t help to keep her age a secret from these two, so I admitted that we got Kano into the dungeon by sneaking her through the gate. I also explained I’d centered my raiding plans on leveling up with my family rather than my classmates. Satsuki bought my explanation more quickly than I’d expected; maybe she’d expected as much.

“Looks like it’ll just be us four for the time being, then,” said Satsuki.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “The four of us will see more benefit from raiding the dungeon after school than from training on the school grounds.”

“Yep!” Risa said. “And I wanna get to level 20 quickly so we can be ready to handle any trouble at school.”

“Tw-Twenty?!” blurted Satsuki.

We would eventually invite more classmates to our circle. But it would be at least a month before we could get things up and running, even if they approved our application. In the meantime, it would be best for the current members to focus our efforts on leveling up in the dungeon using the gates.

In the game, the upper classes and older students interfered soon after the circle’s establishment. It would be prudent for us to level up quickly to be ready if the same happened in this world. The records in the school database showed that the strongest students in the student council and the major factions were around level 25. We’d be in good standing to defend ourselves if we all reached level 20.

Satsuki freaked out at the mention of level 20. My pip-squeak little sister was already level 19, so I was sure Satsuki would have no problem catching up.

Because of the level difference in our group, I decided that Kano and I should spend some of our time independently gathering equipment in between power leveling Satsuki and Risa. Kano wanted to explore deeper floors of the dungeon, and I hoped to take her to some raiding spots where we could also collect dungeon coins.

“Speaking of training,” said Satsuki. “Have you seen Tachigi’s email?”

“Yep,” said Risa. “I haven’t replied yet, though.”

Satsuki showed me the email on her terminal as she chewed on a candy bar. Tachigi wrote that he would hold several training sessions in preparation for the Battle of the Classes. He’d invited the classmates struggling the most with increasing their level. Risa and I appeared as level 3 in the school’s database, so we’d received an invitation. At level 4, Satsuki was above the cutoff for being urged to attend and had only gotten an informational email instead.

She was thrilled Tachigi was trying to support the rest of the class. Incidentally, Tachigi had been the student hit hardest by Satsuki being driven out of the school in the game’s main story. I could see the two forming a strong bond in this world.

“Hmm...” Satsuki hummed in thought. “You’re clearly not level 3, are you, Souta?”

“I’m not either,” uttered Risa. “I’m actually level 5, but I haven’t bothered to update my data.”

Students usually appraised themselves at school whenever they leveled up to record their level in the database. I’d avoided this because my level was so high that it would stir up trouble, and the same would be true of Satsuki now.

“You should hold off from updating your level in the database,” I advised Satsuki. “People will ask questions if you level up too quickly.”

“B-But we can’t keep that up forever, can we?” inquired Satsuki.

Refusing to update the database meant that Satsuki’s level would remain showing as level 4. Some of our end-of-term exams would require an appraisal, so Satsuki worried that the truth would come out eventually.

“It’s fine,” I said. “If you pick up the Thief job, you can learn the Fake skill that lets you fake your stats.”

“Fake?” echoed Satsuki, tilting her head while staring down at her terminal. “I didn’t know there was a Thief skill like that.”

One only needed to increase their job level by one as a Thief to unlock the Fake skill. I recommended to Satsuki to get the Thief job first, even if she ultimately wanted to become a Caster.

Still, I really can’t be bothered to attend the training session, I thought.

The sessions were due to start tomorrow, but I wasn’t happy that I had to go; I didn’t need any help leveling up. I’d thought about not showing up, but Kaoru had anticipated this and sent me a message saying she’d come to my house to pick me up and make sure I went along. Thus, it didn’t look like I’d be getting out of it.

“Kaoru’s coming to my house to take me to the session, so I sort of have to go along tomorrow,” I said.

“Hmm,” said Risa. “If you’re going, then I’ll go.”

“I wanna go too!” chirped Kano.

The training would only last about two hours, and I decided to get it over and done with. They meant well, so it was only fair that I tag along.

Also... You’re not coming, Kano.

Shortly after, we bridge-dropped a few more times and had to put up with some of Kano’s tantrums. When it was time for dinner, we called it a day. Fortunately, we could accomplish more on our next raid because we’d enter through the gate.

We gathered up our things, and I led the group to the fifth-floor gate room. The place was deserted, as always. After I’d explained how the gates worked and gotten Satsuki to register the gate with her magic, she looked at her terminal to say something that took me by surprise.

“This area isn’t on the map,” she remarked. “I wonder why.”

“It isn’t?” asked Risa. “Wow, you’re right.”

I loaded the map on my terminal screen to check, and sure enough, the area around the gate room wasn’t there. The terminal pulled its map data from the Adventurers’ Guild, which their survey staff created. Although the gate room wasn’t far from the fifth-floor rest area, I found it hard to believe that they’d simply missed it.

“Maybe there’s a reason...” I wondered aloud. “Like to keep people away?”

“Maybe,” said Risa. “But we can talk about it tomorrow when we’re less tired.”

She was right. There was no need to think about it right now. Risa’s suggestion stopped my mind from plunging too deep into a rabbit hole, and we left the dungeon.

***

“Bye, Satsuki, bye, Risa!” said Kano. “Let’s hang out again sometime!”

“Definitely!” declared Satsuki.

“Bye, Kano,” said Risa.

The girls hugged each other and continued to wave as we parted ways. Satsuki and Risa lived in the school dorms, which were close enough for Kano to visit whenever she wanted.

I walked down the twilit path between rows of trees on the school grounds with my ever-chirpy younger sister.

Today was a massive leap forward, I thought. Now that I had teamed up with the girls, I’d have a much easier time dealing with the game events at school and with my dungeon raids. They got on well with Kano too. Let’s see if I can create a plan to level up even quicker!