That evening, Father came back with a big smile on his face. I had stuffed the ingredients that I had collected that day in a bag.
“Man, that was great,” he said. “I leveled up so much I could hardly believe it.”
“So what level are you now?” I inquired.
“I’m level 18, Keel’s level 19, and Sakura’s level 35.”
That’s all? Maybe it was because Sakura was a relatively low level, but that wouldn’t be nearly good enough.
“I’m going out with Sakura tomorrow to level her up, posthaste,” I announced. “We need to get her higher.”
“Really?”
“I should’ve leveled her up more before.”
I should’ve recognized that this was the more pressing issue. In order to level up Father faster, Sakura needed to be a higher level. But I had been more concerned with Yuki, so I focused on leveling her up first. I explained what I was thinking to Father.
“You can’t take Naofumi away from me,” Sakura protested. “I need to protect him.”
I burst into tears at the sight of Sakura’s heavenly display of devotion. How incomparably noble!
“Sakura, I have no words for your devotion. Only admiration.”
“So what are you saying?” Father asked.
“Make Yuki and Kou come with us!” Sakura said.
“It’s a good idea,” Father said, “but since only Motoyasu can level up Yuki and Kou . . .” He trailed off.
Sakura’s devotion was so noble that it was causing us all sorts of problems, I say.
“Well, in that case, I’ll go back to the carriage tomorrow,” Father said. “We can’t be gone two days in a row or it’ll be suspicious, and I can keep an eye on Elena instead of Yuki.”
Keel nodded with an oink.
“And I’ll pull the carriage!” Sakura chirped.
“Exactly,” Father said. “Then the carriage won’t shake and I’ll have no problem learning new compounds for medicine.”
“Yeah!”
“That settles things,” I said. Leveling up Sakura could happen later. “In that case, Father, I present to you these drop items.” I bowed my head.
“Uh . . . okay, thanks. Wow, that’s a lot of stuff.”
“Not nearly enough to make your shield stronger, dear Father,” I said regretfully.
“Yeah, we thought we were making progress today, but I guess it wasn’t good enough.” Father scratched the back of his head with a grimace.
My current objective was to secretly level up Father as fast as I could.
“It might be an obvious point, but I noticed that the medicine that they have around here is different from Melromarc,” Father said. “The monsters are different, so the item drops vary too. There are recipes for making medicine, which helps, but I’m not sure they’ll work when I actually try to make it.”
“You’ll just need to learn by trial and error, I say.”
Of course, since I was just making everything with my spear, I had no clue what I was doing. There might be a lot of small differences in the herbs and recipes, but there was no reason we couldn’t sell the medicine from Siltvelt. Only a hero with a holy weapon could tell the difference, after all!
As I thought about such important matters, Father put the ingredients that I had given him into his shield. Then Father asked me, as he had done before, about how to go about making his shield stronger. I advised him to use the items we had collected on his shield now, since we could always replenish our item supply later. I also explained to him what types of minerals he needed to strengthen his shield. Regardless, the most important thing was for Father personally to level up.
“I believe it’s about time to head back,” I said.
“Got it. Thanks, Motoyasu.”
“Of course, Father! Portal Spear!”
I prepared to send us flying to the place where we had planned to meet up with Yuki and the rest. As always, before we left there, I was able to vaguely see what was going on. The carriage was waiting for us, just as planned.
The timing was tricky. If I activated a concealment spell before we went, it might be misleading for Yuki and the others. And then there was Father’s order to not kill anyone if I didn’t have to, which, while being incredibly annoying, was an order from Father.
Things would be so much easier if we could just go and I could kill anyone who spotted us. Alas.
So I had no choice but to activate the concealment spell, use Portal Spear, and remove the concealment spell after we boarded the carriage.
Lazy Pig started oinking and squealing in mild surprise as we appeared, as listless and lazy as ever. The pig didn’t even stand up to greet us.
I nearly cooked a feast of lazy pig roast right then and there.
“We’re back,” Father called. “Did anything happen when we were gone?”
“There was no incident,” Yuki responded. “She didn’t do anything peculiar either.” Yuki nodded at Lazy Pig. “However . . . I did not feel the slightest hint of energy or enthusiasm from her either.”
Lazy Pig oinked some bored retort.
Father chuckled. “That’s all for the best. So there were no thieves?”
“None.”
“So maybe we didn’t need to be so concerned about security? Motoyasu, your plan really worked.”
“Thank you, Father, from the very bottom of my heart!”
“So let’s keep on secretly leveling up while we do our peddling,” Father said. “Then we’ll have no problem getting stronger. Of course, we can’t be too careful either.”
Father was as right as ever. So the next day I decided I would level up Yuki and Kou. Our first objective would be to class up. The problem was that Yuki and Kou were already quite strong. They needed to get special assistance from Fitoria-tan, the filolial queen, to class up again. It was going to be difficult for us to meet up with any other filolials in our current circumstances.
The first time I met Fitoria-tan was when I was peak-racing with Crim. So if we went running in that same area, would we run into her again? I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be quite so simple. The other place where it seemed possible to find her was on the way to Siltvelt.
It was all well and good to try to find her, but since we had to return via Portal Spear within a set period of time, it would be quite the endeavor.
Now that I thought about it, I remembered Father telling me in a previous go-around about the time that he met Fitoria-tan. Fitoria-tan was ridiculously strong . . . I think it was back when Father had been a wanted criminal and he was hiding in Melromarc.
But that whole series of events was in another time loop altogether.
So I thought that maybe I should just make our priority getting the class-up bonus . . . Oho?
“I remembered, I say. I remembered!”
Father leapt up in surprise. “Jeez! What are you talking about, Motoyasu?”
“I had completely forgotten, but in the seven star weapons’ power-up method, by trading away levels, you can get a weapon core power-up! With that, it’s possible to increase your weapon’s base status growth, I say!”
I explained the power-up method to Father. That was definitely how it worked with the seven star whip. By trading off levels, you could increase your overall growth rate. As a result, even at an identical level, you could end up much stronger than you would’ve been otherwise. With this method it wouldn’t be impossible to get by with a little smoke and mirrors.
I figured we could rely on this power-up method without having to find Fitoria-tan. Since this kind of core power-up makes you stronger even at a lower level, with our current cap at level 40, we would easily be able to dispose of powerful monsters. It was a strategy well within the realm of possibility.
In the end, our plan to focus on core power-ups advanced smoothly. Father took care of the money we made off of peddling and made sure to only spend it in Melromarc, and in Siltvelt we made money to spend off of drop items from monsters.
Still, we wouldn’t be able to use the core power-up method for Keel and Sakura’s weapons. Their strength would depend on raw leveling up. We also didn’t want to start waving around weapons right here in Melromarc, so we could only use them in Siltvelt.
We spent about a week continuing our medicine peddling and working on Father’s shield core power-ups.