Actually, that thought made me realize something. Even though it was only temporary, the fact that I had teamed up with such a pretty girl like Akari meant that I was on the winning side, right? I bet there’d be plenty of guys gritting their teeth in envy at the sight of us. Of course, it was so clear to me now. I was someone people were jealous of! Mwa ha ha ha ha! Sucks doesn’t it? To be unpopular with women even here in the game!
“You’ll protect me, won’t you, Takkun? ♪”
“You bet I will, Mami. ♪”
“Grrr...” I growled.
Oh no! At this rate, I was going to turn into one of those people from the “Couples, Get Lost!” thread! I needed to calm down and ignore them!
“Yuto?” Akari called my name gently.
“I’m going to try using Yokai Summoning.”
“Huh? Why do you look so down all of a sudden? Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine. Just feeling a little miserable about things.”
“O-Oh...”
It was time to put aside my jealousy as an unpopular man and put some serious effort into summoning a yokai. I was fortunate to have the help of such a famous and strong player as Akari, so I needed to make the best use of our time and test out this skill.
“Okay, I’m going to go ahead and use it,” I said.
“You’ve got this!”
“Thanks!”
My excitement started to rise the moment I decided to use the skill. I was astonished at my own egoism, but the sooner I was able to summon yokai, the sooner I could pretend to be an Onmyoji. There was no way I couldn’t be excited about that.
“Who will you summon?” Akari asked.
“I guess I should try one I haven’t summoned yet.”
That would be either the Hanami Vandal or the Tea Kettle Tanuki. The Hanami Vandal had two attacks: Whip and Peach Smoke. Both were pretty self-explanatory. The first was a physical attack that the Hanami Vandal dealt using its tentacles, and the second was a smoke attack that inflicted status ailments.
But how about Kettle? The tanuki also had two moves: Calling Blessing and Tea Tricks. I already possessed the skill Calling Blessing, but maybe Kettle’s version had a slightly different effect? Though it would probably still provide some sort of luck-boosting effect.
So what was Tea Tricks? Would it pour piping hot tea on the enemy? Or use its iron kettle to give it a good wallop? I couldn’t get a good idea of what either skill was capable of. The only option was to summon the yokai and find out.
“I summon you, Tea Kettle Tanuki!”
“Poko-pom!”
Kettle appeared, and for real this time! Without vanishing right away! Success!
“Kettle, could you use Tea Tricks?”
“Poko!”
In response to my command, Kettle started dancing in place. The yokai was on its tippy toes, spinning around like a ballerina. Tea was flying out from the ladle it held with both hands, scattering around like water from a sprinkler.
It wasn’t an attack. As I watched, wondering what was going to happen, my body started to glow faintly and I healed a little HP.
“Wow, look at you! You can heal!”
“Pom!”
And Kettle hadn’t used any ordinary healing skill, but one that could heal within an area. Although it didn’t heal much, the fact that it could heal the entire party at once was amazing. That meant that Kettle could heal us while also raising the rarity of item drops with Calling Blessing. I had been kind of regretting learning Yokai Summoning, but maybe it had been the right move after all.
I decided to keep Kettle around for a little longer to keep testing things out.
“Kettle, can you use Calling Blessing?”
“Poko.”
“No?”
“Pom.”
Kettle shook its head. So, it couldn’t use Calling Blessing right now. It must have needed to wait until it could use another move. Instead of each individual ability having its own cooldown time, it seemed yokai needed a break in between each skill they used.
“Okay then, how about a direct attack?”
“Pom!”
Kettle put its tea ladle in its mouth and dashed off. Apparently, a regular attack was no problem. This was my first time seeing the yokai run, but as I expected, it ran on all four legs.
You’d think it’d be slow, since it basically looked like an iron tea kettle that had sprouted short legs, but the tanuki ran surprisingly fast. Something about its scampering little legs was amusing and adorable to watch.
Right before Kettle reached a Fat Horn, it leaped up high, took the ladle out of its mouth, and then struck it against the enemy.
“Poko!”
“Mooo!”
The ladle made a cute bonking sound as it hit, and the Fat Horn’s HP dropped by a tiny amount. It was a super weak attack, but it was enough to anger the cow.
“Mooooo!”
“Pokooo!”
Ah, Kettle got sent flying with a horn attack.
“Oh no! Kettle, you all right?!”
“P-Pom...”
Crap! Kettle only has ten percent of its HP left! That attack just now wasn’t a critical hit, though. Were yokai just that weak? Kettle appeared even weaker to physical attacks than Fau was.
Wait, should I really be surprised? My yokai were only as strong as my summoning skill was. Right now, my skill was at level 1, so my yokai were also considered to be at level 1. In fact, I should consider it lucky that Kettle hadn’t died in one hit.
“Will potions work on you?”
“Poko.”
“Great, at least I can heal you the same way I can monsters.”
I still wanted Kettle to use its area heal spell and Calling Blessing while we progressed through the wilderness. My only choice was to stick the tanuki in the rearguard until I had leveled my skill up a bit.
“Kettle, stay in the back line and support everyone else. Can you use Calling Blessing yet?”
“Poko!”
Kettle moved to the very back of our party and brandished two fans, holding them at the ready. The fans looked like celebratory fans, with a crane and a tortoise drawn on both.
“Pokooo!”
Kettle started to dance and its body emitted a faint light. The tanuki looked to be having a lot of fun waving its fans up and down.
Then, Kettle started dancing around in a circle, and now my body began to glow faintly. I guessed that Kettle had to dance for a certain length of time before the skill activated, which meant it might be hard to use it in the middle of an intense fight.
“Oho, interesting. This feels sort of the same as when I drank the Bizarre Tea.”
“What does?” Akari asked.
“Calling Blessing.”
When I checked my stats, I saw that I was currently under the status effect “Calling Blessing.”
Similar to Bizarre Tea, its effects weren’t useful for combat, but it supposedly increased drop rates as well as had an effect on crafting and gathering. It was hard to say what the concrete effects were, but it would be beneficial to use during boss fights. Calling Blessing wasn’t among the buffs that Fau could cast, so I could summon the yokai at the start so it could use Calling Blessing, and then afterwards it could use Tea Tricks to heal and tank.
Eventually, the Fat Horn fell to one of Akari’s attacks, and we continued making our way through the Great Wilderness. Kettle and Akari’s Sunekosuri were still in our parties.
It cost some MP every hour to have them stay in our parties, so we were worried it would be unfeasible to keep them around for the entire time. This, too, was similar to a Summoner’s Instant Summon. For now, though, we decided to keep our yokai with us to see how things went.
Kettle could only use its Calling Blessing during battle, being unable to activate it before gathering or doing other actions on the playing field. It was safe to say that Kettle’s Calling Blessing was, in essence, an enemy drop rate booster. Also, its effect stayed active the entire fight after using it once, so it was best to activate it at the very start of boss battles. Meanwhile, Tea Tricks could be used whenever. The two abilities didn’t have the same restraints on when they could be used.
I felt I had learned a good amount of information about Kettle, so after a point I swapped in the Hanami Vandal. The pink sea angel that was even bigger than me. Plus it floated, which meant it stood out quite a lot.
It also moved very slowly, so it probably wasn’t the best yokai to summon when I was progressing through an area. Although it did have an advantage of having considerably high HP. Even though it was essentially at level 1, it only lost about thirty percent HP when taking hits from monsters here in the Great Wilderness.
If I could raise my Yokai Summoning skill level, then the Hanami Vandal had the potential of turning into a tremendously strong super tank. An unbeatable tank that could absorb enemy attacks as it scattered status ailments over the battlefield—now that was a tank I wouldn’t want to mess with.
Yokai Summoning was looking to be pretty powerful if I trained it up a bit more.
As we continued walking around the Great Wilderness testing out our new skill, something caught Lilith’s attention.
“Kee-hee?”
“What is it? Did you spot something?”
“Kee-hee!”
Night had already fallen, so the rest of us couldn’t see very far ahead. But Lilith, with her handy Night Vision, could see much farther.
“Is it the yokai?”
“Kee-hee?”
“Guess not, then?”
“Kee-hee-hee?”
“Let’s just go over there so I can see for myself.”
Lilith guided us through the dark wilderness, and eventually, I started to see a dim figure in the distance.
And it did not look like a yokai.
“Oh wow, travelers!” said someone.
It was a little girl with gray hair and gray dog ears. Judging by her marker, she was an NPC. But what was she doing in a place like this so late at night?