Chapter 35 -
Izuku, not having much to do, found a fishing pole in the shed where the umbrella was taken from and decided to try and gain a new skill.
His first attempt ended in failure because of a particularly curious pixie. When the line went taut, he started reeling it in and ended up pulling out Shiki. The pixie was holding on to the fish hook and the small critter he used as bait was gone. Looking at her, he raised an eyebrow at her frown. 'Nasty.'
He smiled while Misaki started laughing. "Don't eat what I put on this okay? Go find some fish to terrorize." Letting go, she dropped back into the water and left him alone.
Both second and third attempts ended in the fish getting away. It was on the fourth that he succeeded and earned the fishing skill. All it allowed him to do was pull large fish and lower the chance of breakage. Considering that he wasn't planning on becoming a master fisherman, he was content to just let it slowly level as he caught stuff. Letting the fish go, he recast and continued this for some time before Mandalay woke up and decided to sit next to him. "How's it going?" Hearing her voice was strange, it always sounded like she was straining herself to talk.
"Good. I got a new skill."
She hummed and stared out at the water. "Any idea what happened to the other two."
He shook his head. "I didn't bother trying to find them either though. If they were in trouble, Aki could just message me." That seemed to solidify an idea for the woman. "What?"
"How about we go make something to eat?"
"Sure. Give me a second." The line was tugged on and he started reeling it in. He got maybe 10 meters before the line snapped and the rod whipped back smacking him in the face. Shino started laughing, Misaki cussed and he just rubbed the feeling of it off his skin. "Not what I had in mind."
Continuing to snicker, she grabbed his hand and started leading him back to the house. "Put the pole away and meet me in the kitchen."
(Akito)
Walking on the seafloor up to the beach, she led Ochaco by the hand. Their makeout session was just that, but after gaining the skill from making out with Izuku, she practiced on body doubles she made of him. The skill had reached level 36 yesterday and the effects of it were fairly obvious. Ochaco was sporting a stupid smile and was perfectly content. She couldn't wait to see if the skill would work on Izuku.
Walking around a boulder, they saw the slope that led up to the beach. Her connection to water only barely saved her from smacking into said boulder. That damned Pixie was controlling the current and trying to send them out to sea. Pulling her girlfriend behind her back, she put her hands up and started countercasting the damned thing.
"White Whale Strike." Like a massive whale surfacing and slamming its tail back into the water, a current of water smashed into the small creature. Shiki was sent flying backward, but didn't go too far, unfortunately.
Seemingly copying her, the small thing copied her shout in it's own language. The water didn't do anything for half a second, which made her think the casting failed, but the ambient magic was just building. She turned her head slightly so Ochaco could hear her. "Hold on tight." As if on cue, the water started to violently spin. 'Cascade of Glacial Melt!' At her command, the water around them lifted into the air and after going up by at least 10 meters, froze into ice and fell right over the pixie.
The hit caused the vortex to end and for the pixie to be swept out to sea. Quickly commanding the water to pull them out and to the beach, she spun in Ochaco's grip and held onto the girl. The ocean obeyed her, but with her only commanding it to get them to the shore, they were sent flying by the tidal wave that picked them up. Rolling onto the sand, she let go of the other and quickly got to her feet. "[Deep Freeze]!"
The ocean in front of her turned to solid ice, no doubt killing anything caught in the attack, but she didn't care right now. When the pixie didn't come back up for a while, she looked at Uraraka and noticed the girl was snickering. "What?"
She smiled at her. "Two things. First, you got into a water fight with something only barely bigger than my hand. Two, Izuku will like the view." She pointed at her and giggled again.
Looking down, she noticed the damn Pixie had washed away her bikini top out into the middle of the ocean. With a sigh, she snapped her fingers creating a replacement with mana and helped the girl up. "Let's go find that boyfriend of ours and teach him a lesson." Turning to the beach, she didn't see anyone, but that didn't stop her. '[Sight of the Hunter].' The world went grey and several spots of color appeared in the forest. She saw the almost invisible life force of Hopper, who had wanted to go exploring, and not seeing either of them there, she looked up at the house. Two bright lights of mana were in the kitchen.
The Next Day
(Izuku)
He released Shiki back out into the ocean, but not until after he forced her to find Aki's top and to apologize for attacking them. She apologized with her head down and a sad sounding noise, which his girlfriend accepted with a sigh. Now the only thing left for them to do was to find something to occupy them while they were around here.
"How about we go explore the ocean floor? I can show you all the reef and we can go even further than that."
"There's more to that place?", asked Ochaco.
Aki nodded with a smile. "There's this huge underwater canyon that was dug out by some ancient fish and now it's used as some sort of hatchery. There's so many fish there, that if you threaten them, they won't even run, they'll team up and fight ya."
'What's in the jungle?'
She shrugged, "No clue. We've never explored it." At Shino's raised eyebrow, Aki sighed and explained. "Mom had some sort of attachment to the ocean. She never explained why, just that she preferred exploring the seafloor vs the jungle."
Shino yawned and stretched across his lap. 'How about we explore the jungle then? Izuku has told me about some of the creatures here.'
"If you all want to, I don't really care."
Misaki gave him an idea. "Aki?"
"Yeah?"
"Is there a place to surf here?" That seemed to make her remember something. Snapping her fingers, she made a portal to somewhere and jumped through. He looked down at Mandalay, signalling to get up but she just smiled and snuggled into his lap. Sighing, he picked her up with his quirk and threw her into the portal. For his effort, he earned a few choice cuss words and a yelp of annoyance from the woman. He offered Ochaco his hand, which she took with a reddened face and led the other two through.
When they landed, it was on another beach, but nothing like they had ever seen before. Mountains that went beyond the clouds, made a half circle across their backs and off in the distance? A massive floating rock was bobbing just above the waterline. When it hit, it created massive waves that crashed further down the beach. Hearing a whistle, they turned to see Aki at a small shed waving them over.
Making it over, she answered the question that was on his mind. "Behind the clouds over there." She pointed to the bobbing island that was indeed surrounded by clouds. "There's a collection of floating islands with these weird goat looking things. That island that's bobbing is one of two that does that."
"Where's the second?" At Ochaco's question, they heard something that sounded like someone was dumping rocks. All of them looked out toward the island and saw another island appear just behind it and then watched it drop. When it hit, a massive wave built up and created a menacing looking wave that pulled all of the water away from the beach. When it made landfall, he felt the ground shake from it. He saw Ochaco go white as a ghost and take a step back. "No."
Aki nodded. "Fair enough, I think only Izuku and I could survive the landing anyway. That wave only happens once every hour."
"What causes it?" He asked.
Handing him a surfboard, she pulled out another for Mandalay, who had a crazed look on her face. "The islands absorb some sort of magic from the water and fill up enough to float for a period of time and then fall when they run out. That one is different from the rest because it seems to drain it's magic instantly."
"How high does it go?"
She shrugged. "You ready?"
With a smile, he nodded. "Ready."
They spent the day learning to surf from Aki and after a bit of coaxing, she was able to get Ochaco onto her board and ride along with her. He managed to gain the skill, which increased nearly everything to do with a surfboard, and leveled it enough to the point where Aki said he could try the mega wave with only two more chances before nightfall. His first attempt ended with him being slammed into the beach, but on his second he managed to stay on his board, but had no idea how to actually stop so he had to wait for the wave to subside.
When they got back to the beach house, he decided to go see how Shiki was doing with what little daylight was left.
"Shiki!" It took a minute before the pixie showed back up and happily hopped into his hand. She started talking rapid fire in her language outloud but not through their link which made the gibberish just that to him. Nonetheless, he smiled and asked her. "Did you have fun?" She nodded and was about to jump off again, but he stopped her. "Food?" That stopped her in her tracks and she made out like a speeding bullet toward the house. Laughing, he followed her in and was pleasantly surprised to find a cute scene of Ochaco and Aki cooking together.
'Do you mind helping me find the movies? I have no idea how this magic stuff works.' With his newly leveled [Scent] skill, if he was familiar with a person, he was able to track them via their unique scent. Not based on their hair products and stuff, but their pheromones and sweat. The first time it happened was with Ectoplasm during their training. His clones didn't give off the unique smell at all and allowed him to not waste his complete attention on them. Following her scent, he found Shino in a side room next to the living room.
Walking in, he saw her touching the walls like Aki and he had done, but having no luck. "It requires you to channel some mana into it."
'How do I do that?' He didn't even know if she could.
Filling his hand with mana, he tapped the strange rune scheme causing it to open the drawer and show all the movies the Hales had stored here. "I don't know if a normal person can."
She grumbled, 'So I can't do anything without either of you two?'
He smiled. "You can get naked and take a shower perfectly fine."
Raising an eyebrow, she leaned forward and whispered to him. "Maybe later." She gave hima quick peck and turned back to the movies.
"Which sounds good?"
Standing back up, with her cheeks dusted with pink, she peered over the movies. "Ever watch Se7en?" He shook his head. "It's a little dark, but it's a pretty good movie."
Finding the movie in question, he looked the case over and looked at her with an unimpressed stare. "It's also over 50 years old."
Shino smiled. 'Is a little age a problem?'
Squinting his eyes, he literally swept her off her feet with a wave of gravity, and held her bridal style. "Do I have to punish you?" She smiled after the shock of the maneuver passed. When she opened her mouth to say something, they heard Aki clearing her throat.
"Foods nearly done, find a movie?"
He let her down and smiled at Aki who looked like a mother. "She did."
"Then put it in and sit down, we'll eat on the couch." With her piece said, she walked out and back to the kitchen. He looked at Shino and both of them shared a small laugh.
"-hat was in the box?"
The scene continued and like a revelation hit her, Aki jumped from where she was laying. "I forgot the chest!" Opening a portal, she jumped through and left the three of them there, confused as to what she meant.
Pressing pause on the movie, he got up to get the four of them fresh drinks, but was stopped mid way from Aki falling through the sky and landing in his arms. Not far behind her, a chest came through that he had to dodge. "What is it?"
She slapped her hands onto his cheeks and smiled. "It's the box dad was going to give to you! He forgot about it, with everything that happened and then I kept forgetting because of stuff."
Honestly? He had forgotten about that completely. "What's in it?"
She shrugged, but gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Find out! Only you can open it."
Setting her down, he turned the chest so the front was facing him and found a simple lock with no key slot. "Observe."
[Locked Object! Please solve the puzzle.]
Tapping the window brought up a window that took most of his sight. Misaki and him started to instantly analyze the window and quickly figured out that it was. A massive timeline of every single hero born in Japan. Swiping at the window revealed even more names and dates, which didn't help the situation. 'Solve the puzzle.' He looked at Aki, minimizing the window. "None of you could open this?"
Aki sighed. "Trust me, we spent nearly a week trying to crack this thing, but we never figured out what was wrong with it."
He sighed and looked at the girls. "Looks like I'm not sleeping tonight, we'll finish the movie and then I'll work on it."
Shino groaned. 'And tonight was my cuddle night.'
"Sorry hun. I'll make it up to you." He walked over and sat back down between Ochaco and Mandalay. With a pillow on Ochaco's lap, Aki laid down across the three of them. He pressed play and they finished the last bit of the movie.
They had just finished going through a quarter of the timeline and didn't find any irregularities. Misaki was getting impatient. 'There has to be a simple way to solve this. She must have left a solution somewhere.'
"Go through my memories and search for anything you can find, start at our earliest memories of her and go forward." She sighed, but did as he asked. In the meantime, he continued to look through the timeline.
An hour went by before Misaki shoved a memory into the front of his memory.
"Izuku, your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to get into UA as the #1 student, and to become able to wield my power in your own name."
It was his first mission. Wait. He opened his mission window, it wasn't. The first mission he ever received was technically from Kat herself, The First of Her Line. He hummed as he looked at the timeline. "Should I spell it out?" Misaki shrugged. Sighing, he scrolled back to the start of the timeline and started finding the heroes with a middle initial. The middle names were all capitalized and stood out like a sore thumb. The Japanese didn't have middle names, officially, so all the heroes who did, were foreigners. Tapping out the letters he found, he only found a single middle name with the letter 'E'. Katherine E. Hale. He wondered what her middle name was as he tapped it.
With a flash of green, the window disappeared and was replaced by a new much smaller box.
[Puzzle Solved!] With a click, the lock opened. He did it! He smiled for a second, but it faltered. 'She really believed in me didn't she?'
Misaki nodded. 'Out of everyone in this world, she chose you.'
Calming himself down, he reached out and undid the lock. Nothing happened when he did that, which was a good sign. "Here it goes." Flipping the latch, he lifted the top and got bombarded with notification windows. "Holy shit."
Closing all the windows, he picked up the first object. It was some sort of hourglass made of blue tinged glass and framed in a ridiculously light white wood. The borders of the object were embossed in gold. "Observe."
[Hourglass of Found Time (Single-use)
Item Rank: S
Use: When shattered, time will reverse by one hour.
An item created by an ancient time wizard from the kingdom of !% #. The wizard has put the following condition on this item.
Condition: Only a being of pure good may use this item, breaking this rule will result in a leap forward.]
"Holy" 'Shit.' This thing was like a do-over for any major catastrophe. He honestly couldn't believe he had this power at his fingertips now. Sure it was only one use, but it was a freaking rewind button. Eager to see the other items, he gently placed the hourglass on the coffee table and pulled out another. A bottle that shook and rattled in his hand.
[Storm in a Bottle (Single-use)
Item Rank: C
This is a standard item used on the continent of ! #$.
Use: When shattered or uncorked, a hurricane force storm will appear and ravage the area around the detonation point.]
'Huh, not too useful, but I'm sure we'll need it someday.' The next item was a scroll of some sort, he tried using observe on it, but nothing came up. With his curiosity building, he unrolled the heavy scroll and found coins? "Observe."
[Coin of Arcing Fury (Single-use)
Item Rank: D
Coins gifted by ! #$, and enchanted by both the gifter and Katherine Hale.
Used: When thrown, the coin will release their stored energy onto whatever is struck.]
Taking a coin from one of the slots, he inspected it with eyes vs the window. The coin wasn't worth anything, as stated on the thing. It read, 'No Monetary Value' and had the image of some sort of chibied mascot. It took a second, considering he hadn't been to one ever, but it was an arcade token. He almost flicked it into the air, but stopped himself when he realized that may be considered thrown. Not wanting to be hit by whatever energy was in the thing, he put it back and looked at the last few things in the chest. Three books were stacked on one side.
[Skill Book: Ritual Magic Lvl: 1]
[Skill Book: Battoujutsu Lvl: 1]
Obviously Ritual Magic was the skill that Sei displayed for him and he was more than happy to select yes, consuming the book. Battoujutsu was the art of the sword draw, he had read quite a few ancient military books and even watched videos on current masters of the skill. Selecting yes on the prompt, it turned into particles and disappeared. The next book had a question on it and the answer was just the date of the day she died. When it unlocked, a smile slowly split his face.
[You have found a lost skill tree book!
This book contains the skills associated with the lost class - Spartan
Do you wish to unlock this skill tree?]
Selecting yes, it dissolved and granted him a new skill.
[New Skill! Bronze Plated Skin Lvl: 1
From a young age Spartan males were taught to take pride in the pain and strife they endured. Your skin now reflects this and reduces all incoming damage. The last master of this skill died during the fall of Sparta.
Reduces all incoming damage by 1%.
This skill is the first step in a skill tree! Reach level 10 to unlock the next skill!]
And that settled it, the next chance he got, he was going to the Shadowscape and leveling the hell out of this skill and the Berserker skill. With his mind made up, he was about to start putting all the items away, but he caught a glimpse of a paper that had got caught between the corners. Pulling it out, he was surprised to find a list of the items and where each was found.
Hourglass - Won in a bet against the wizard while on vacation, the condition was added before he gave it to me.
Storm in a Bottle - Bought while on vacation, thought it was cool.
Coins - Met a woman while I was dimension hopping and became quick friends with her. Spent a week hanging out with her and we worked together on the coins. Maybe I should go back someday?
Ritual Book - Already had the skill and got the book from a drop.
Sword Book - Already developed my own style.
Skill Tree - Sexist Book, wouldn't let me use it.
'Izuku?' He hummed. 'Look at our hand.' Focusing on the appendage, his eyes widened as his skin had turned a few shades darker than his normal skin tone. 'Hmm, I wonder how dark we'll get when we max it?' Sighing, he put the items away and looked out the window. It was almost morning time, and since he was awake, he decided to pop over to Earth and pick up breakfast. There was no way he was cooking by himself.
The Next Day
Apparently when he had gone to get breakfast for everyone, a massive wave swept across the house. The magic embedded into the place saved it and the occupants from a watery doom, but it did flood the land around it.
"What caused it?", he asked.
Aki shrugged as she flipped an egg. The food he had gone to get was destroyed when he opened a portal in the middle of the flood. Not even a mini sun could save the soggy bread and salty eggs. "Probably just a current. Mom and Dad did make it so the place could survive during the floods, so I assume it happens a lot."
'So what do we do for the last day then? We can't explore the jungle and I'm still sore from surfing yesterday.' He did offer to heal her, as did Aki, but she said she was fine.
Ochaco yawned into shoulder and curled further into him. She had been woken up by the girls when they jumped out of bed at the sound of the wave crashing against the magic barrier. "Why don't we explore the ocean then?"
He heard Mandalay's groan in his head. Luckily Akito came to her rescue. "We probably shouldn't, we have no idea what state the ocean is in." Aki plated one serving of food. "I personally don't feel like trying to fight the ocean currents."
'So what then?'
The youngest of them smiled. "We can go to a zoo!"
Mandalay raised an eyebrow. 'A zoo?'
"Yeah! Have you ever been to the Berlin Zoo or the one in the US?"
'No?' Aki finished plating the food and ran over to Mandalay, jumping onto her lap. A few silent seconds passed before Aki got back up with a smile. 'Zoo it is then.'
A quiet whisper reached his ear. "What time is it on earth?" It had just reached noon when he went back.
Looking down at Ochaco he answered her. "Noon, why?"
She shrugged. "Just wanted to know, spending days here has been off putting."
He smiled at her. "Not any more weird than spending a week jumping dimensions and being gone for 6 months."
'Still mad about that.' The sentiment was repeated by Aki.
Ochaco looked at him with confusion. "What?"
"I'll tell you while we eat."
The rest of the day went pretty well, they locked up the house and went back to earth through a portal that sent them to Omaha, Nebraska dead center in the middle of the USA. At first he was internally freaking out about the implications of teleporting so close to a major airfield in the US, but Aki said she had dual citizenship thanks to her mom. What that meant for him and the girls he had no idea, and luckily they didn't seem to notice his presence because they left a few hours later and got a hotel room in Tokyo.
The attendant did give Shino a weird look when she requested just one room, but he just shrugged and handed her the keycard.
Closing the door, and locking it, he turned to see Aki dropping their bags on the ground. "I think I'll head home for tonight." Giving the other two a hug, she walked over to him and wrapped her small arms around his neck, forcing him to lift her. She whispered into his ear. "Try to have a bit of fun tonight. Both of them got a bit jealous when I told them about our make out session."
He gave her an annoyed sigh, which she smiled at, and dropped her into a portal back home. Turning back to the other two, he watched the both of them walk into the bathroom. 'We're taking a shower, you can go right after.'
"K!" Laying back on the bed, he closed his eyes and talked to Misaki while he waited.
(Ochaco)
"Are we really going to?"
Shino smirked at her. 'Nervous?'
She wasn't actually. She felt light, excited even. Absent-mindedly tapping her fingers together, she shook her head and smiled. "I'm happy actually."
Her older girlfriend gave her a raised eyebrow but shrugged with a small shake of her head. 'Well let's get clean and we can go get ready.'
Nodding, she started undressing.
(Shino)
'Something is wrong with her.' She thought this as Ochaco undressed without a problem and walked into the bath area, waiting for her.
Taking off her shirt and undoing her bra, she focused in on the girl's emotions. She normally hated doing this, but she practiced whenever she was close to Izuku. His normal emotions of calmness and slight lust when he was near her made him the perfect test dummy.
Opening up her third eye, she allowed the many small emotions a person had to fill her eyes and mind. Lots of pink, love and lust, oranges, energy and potential. There was a lot of blue, and that would have confused her if she was still a student, but she knew blue not only meant calm and sadness, but also trust. There was also the color green, which for Ochaco meant joy and not torment.
It was looking through all the colors and separating them that she saw the weirdness. Her girlfriend had a huge amount of grey that was being washed out by the colors around it. If the girl was a psychopath, this wouldn't have concerned her. The problem was that she wasn't.
Part of her training at UA was to sort through the emotions of killers and rapists. Those people had different shades of grey and lots of black. She figured that meant the emotions were being canceled by the person's mind. Apparently that was the case though.
Making a mental note to mention it to Izuku, she finished undressing and joined Ochaco in the bathroom.
(Midoriya)
When the girls finally finished and he went in to clean up, he was assaulted by so many notifications, it actually started to give him a headache. Thanking Misaki when she cleared the UI of all of them, he looked at the sole survivor of the wipe.
[Gamer's Mind has blocked the following effect:
Allure of Aphrodite]
He wasn't even in front of a girl! He internally growled, he was seriously getting annoyed by this pop up. Venting his annoyance through a sigh, he undressed and started to clean himself. 'Misaki? Can you message Aki and ask her if there's a way to hide from a goddess?'
She snorted. 'Sure, why not?'
A reply didn't come back before he finished, so he assumed she was talking with her father. Pulling a fresh clean shirt over his head, and a fresh pair of underwear and shorts, he walked out of the bathroom.
[Gamer's Mind has blocked the following effect:
Allure of Aphrodite]
A heat rushed through his entire body and was almost instantly evaporated by [Gamer's Mind]. Misaki let out a whistle in his head as he blinked like an owl.
Fade to black (too lazy to write smut)
The next day
As soon as he made it home, his phone, which he left in his room, had gone off and told him it was time to welcome his classmates back. That task and other various things he needed to do, namely bringing Momo back, was a fairly quick set of chores. Racing his way over to the train station, he was greeted by Aizawa.
"Hope your vacation was fun, because tomorrow it's time to start working."
He nodded with a smile. "It was, I look forward to working with Class 1-B."
"That reminds me." Aizawa reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded packet, holding out to him. "For you."
Taking it, he nodded. "Thank you."
His teacher nodded and stood there as he read through the rough dossier on 1-B.
'There's going to be some interesting ones in here.' He could see it, he had met and talked with Shinso plenty of times during the meet ups with the Class 1-B reps. He was interested to see what Vlad had in store for his class.
A small chime, the sound of a small bell, rang from Aizawa's phone. "Midoriya."
Folding the paper back up, he stuffed it into his pocket and snapped his fingers when Misaki gave the go ahead. A second later, Momo came walking through, a small red wagon being pulled behind her. "Izuku!" Dropping the handle, she rushed him and pulled him into a giggly hug.
"Hey Momo." He hugged her back and let her go when she pulled away and bowed to Aizawa.
The teacher gave her an angry hum and held out his hand, which caused the girl to blush. Going to her wagon, he watched as she went through the forty or so notebooks in it. A second of searching later, she pulled out a folder an inch thick. She hesitated to hand it to Aizawa, but after his foot started tapping, she relented. Not waiting to hear what he had to say, she grabbed the wagon handle, pulled out her phone and waved it at him. He got the signal, 'I'll message you.'
When she was out of sight, Aizawa sighed and tucked the folder under his arm.
He raised an eyebrow. "What's in it?"
"33 accident reports." His eyes widened and he quickly sent a text to the girl in question. The message was simple, '33?!'
Pressing send, he looked up to see Iida's group. Waving with a smile, he, alongside with a bored Aizawa, greeted his classmates as they funneled in.
Nearly an hour later, because of some sort of delay due to a villain attack, the last of his classmates showed up. The last person to hand in their paper was Hagakure. He couldn't be sure, but she seemed, angry? 'Pissed more like it.'
He gave the girl a small smile, but received an angry huff of air as she walked away. "Did she seem-"
"Angry? Yes, no I don't know why and yes you can go home. Prepare for your class tomorrow, stay safe and if you run into a villain? Run toward your nearest hero, please."
He sweatdropped as Aizawa walked away. "Have a good night sir." Said teacher waved behind him and walked out of the station.
When the teacher disappeared, he opened a portal and went back home. His mom and Katsuki's mom went out to dinner to celebrate their last day freedom, which left him free to do what he wanted.
'You ready?' He picked up his sword from the bedside and a shield that he had borrowed from Aki.
'We're doing the Ravine right?'
He smiled, 'We'll be repeating the Battle of Thermopylae without the dying part.'
'Let's do this!' Snapping his fingers, he opened a portal and dropped into the Shadowscape. The entrance to the Ravine was at a (comparatively) small crack on the side of a massive cliff face. Letting himself in, he took a breath and did something he saw in movies. Smacking his blade against the shield, he psyched himself up. The entire run today was going to be nothing but sword and board unless he was in danger and at the boss. There was no way he was going to fight the damned worm with these things.
Taking a step forward, he passed the threshold for the armies to start. When the first enemy crawled out of one of the holes, he held up his shield. He didn't have the shield skill yet, and needed to level it quickly if he was going to finish this. He had watched a video on the basics of using a shield during combat and copying it was his source of practice so far. The weird shadowy creature didn't quite seem to be intelligent and just charged his shield.
With a clang it bounced back, allowing him to take a gliding step forward and counter. After the first one died, he saw the small army making its way toward him. Stepping back and getting back into his starting position, he used his sword to mark the ground with [Line in the Sand]. The first wave hit and stopped at his shield. 'Let's do this.'
Chapter done!
If you're curious, because you're a degenerate, no Shino didn't partake in the "grinding". She made out with both of them, but no more than that. Nothing super illegal!