Portent

That same evening, after finishing the usual session of playing knight with Krena, Allen was helping out with dinner while mulling over what to do with the distribution of cards in storage.

"Rodin's late today," Theresia murmured worriedly.

Normally, Rodin would have been back from the fields quite a while ago.

And yet, he was nowhere to be seen.

***

Another hour passed by. Because they could not make Mash wait any longer, the family decided to start eating first.

However, even after they finished, Rodin was still out.

The six o'clock bell rang. Allen played with Mash, then tucked him into bed.

Just before Allen himself drifted off, Rodin finally came home. He had a conflicted look on his face. "I'm back."

"Late day today, hm?" Theresia asked, setting out the belated dinner for her husband. Allen perked his ears to catch what he could from the nursery.

"Mm."

"Did something happen?"

"I was called to the village chief's house."

"Yeah?"

"And he said he wanted us to accept a few commoners into our great boar hunting party."

"Is...that a problem?"

Rodin paused, then said, almost as if to convince himself, "No, there's no problem. Our whole group will still be there. It's just that four or five new youngsters will be joining us, that's all."

That was the end of the topic, and the conversation returned to the usual exchange between the two. Allen burrowed under his blanket and allowed himself to fall asleep.

***

Splash!

Allen woke up to the sound of the water in the family's jug being poured out and refilled.

"Good morning, papa."

"Oh? You're up. Good morning to you too."

Ever since coming to the world, Allen had been having trouble waking up early. It was only recently that he had managed to consistently get up at six in the morning without an alarm clock.

He watched as Rodin performed his usual morning routine.

"Here you go, honey."

"Thank you."

Theresia was also awake. She handed Rodin a jute bag filled with dried meat and potatoes and a leather waterskin. He draped it over one shoulder and secured it.

There was a two-meter-long pole with a large, broad blade secured to one end currently propped against the wall in the room with the sunken fireplace.

This was a spear tailor-made for great boar hunting that Rodin had borrowed from the village's weapons shop the day before.

He had spent all of last night carefully checking it and making sure there were no problems with it.

Rodin picked up the spear. "Well then, I'm off."

"Are you going to be back late?" Theresia asked.

"We have newcomers today, so the plan is to do the hunt close by. I shouldn't be out too late."

With that, the man walked off into the slightly biting cold.

'I wanna join the great boar hunt someday too. I need to level up, after all.'

Allen's level was currently still one, despite it having been six years since his reincarnation.

The reason was simple: there had been no way for him to encounter any monsters. All serfs needed their village chief's permission to step foot outside their village, and village chiefs almost never gave it.

Events such as the great boar hunts, which were crucial to the village's survival, were an exception. As a general rule, serfs had almost no freedom of movement.

After seeing Rodin off, Allen resumed his daily stone-throwing regimen.

'It's pretty much confirmed by now that it'll take a million throws to reach the next level. I've already done more than 200,000 throws since the last level up and Throwing still hasn't gone up.'

By now, the stones that Allen used had become entirely smooth from all the throwing, but he still continued throwing them.

Come rain or wind, he still threw them. Even Rodin and Theresia had not expected him to keep it up so religiously. When Rodin went to consult Gerda, he learned that Krena played knight every day as well and so was convinced that this was perhaps just how all children were.

'With things being like this, normal skills are clearly not suitable for me.

'What I can gain from them is not worth the effort I have to put in.'

By now, Allen's Sword Mastery and Throwing were both at Lvl. 3.

Based on what he knew, it would take repeating something 10,000 times to gain a skill from scratch, another 10,000 times to raise it to Lvl. 2. 100,000 times for Lvl. 3, with the numbers going up tenfold for each successive level.

At this rate, it would be difficult to get any skill to Lvl. 5 even if Allen spent his entire life working at it. In all likelihood, Lvl. 4 would be the best he could achieve.

If each level up doubled the effects of the previous level or some other equally tremendous boon, then it might indeed have been worth all the effort. However, this was clearly not the case.

'It's true that the damage I'm dealing is greater than back when I didn't have the respective skills. I don't know for sure since there aren't any damage counters, but going by feel, I'd say it's only double what it was originally now that I'm at Lvl. 3. Given the case, it would be best for me to focus solely on Summoning. I can use a sword and throw stones when I need to in a pinch, but it's about time to dial down how much I'm focusing on them. Especially now that I know the effect of Grass F's Ability isn't to just make a nice smell.'

Allen looked toward the one-meter-tall sapling giving off an essence-oil-like fragrance that he was standing next to. It emitted a pure and relaxing scent that he wanted to continue smelling forever.

He looked down at his grimoire.

'Yep, the time it takes for my MP to recover has definitely gone down from six hours to five hours.'

Ever since Allen first planted the Grass F tree in the garden, the number of times that he could gain Skill XP by using MP each day had gone up from three to four.

For the past five years, he had been earning Skill XP in cycles of once every six hours. If he really pushed himself to do four reps in a day, he had to do it once late at night, once early in the morning, once right after lunch, and once in the evening. However, he would have no choice but to revert to three reps or fewer the next day.

After planting Grass F, however, Allen had managed four repetitions every day for three days in a row. Upon careful observation, he determined that the time it took for his MP to recover to full had changed to five hours.

This was huge for his leveling progress.

'Well, I think I've learned everything I can about Appo's Ability.'

Allen did a final once-over of his notes on Grass F inside his grimoire.

___

-It releases a nice smell that induces restful sleep.

-It shortens the recovery period of MP to 5 hours.

-After its Ability is used once, both the card and the Summon disappear (turns into a tree).

___

One thing different about Grass F was that its Ability could only be used once. After being activated, it was no longer a Summon nor a card. It was quite literally just a tree. Of course, it was fully visible. It could be touched. It could be replanted.

***

"Allen! It's almost time for lunch!"

"Coming, mama!"

Although the Rank F Summons had been unlocked, there was still quite a lot about them that Allen could not explore in full.

For example, Beast F had an Ability named Chomp, but he could not very well direct it to go bite a random person or even himself. As such, there was no way for him to confirm the effectiveness of the attack.

"A'en, no mo'!"

"Okay, Mash, I'm sorry."

Because Allen had been outside by himself for more than two hours, Mash glomped onto him as soon as he came back inside.

There were still two more months until he turned three and could join Allen out in the garden. If he was left inside the house by himself for too long, he would get huffy.

'It doesn't seem like I'm going to get much out of throwing stones for more than an hour each day. It would take more than five years to reach the next level, plus I have to look after Mash too, so I guess it's about time to move on.'

Allen dug into a steamed potato while racking his brains for something that he could do together with Mash.

***

"Today was fun, Allen! Did you get stronger?"

"I guess."

'Though I'm still no match for her. A Sword Lord is just way too strong.'

The afternoon playing knight session had just ended. Just as she had been doing for the past three years, Krena dashed off back home.

Only on the rare occasions when she got express permission to sleep at Allen's house did she stay overnight.

After the total number of cards that he could stock went up to thirty, Allen had promptly Created more cards to fill in those newly added slots.

Now, although he was still carrying out various experiments and had reserved a significant portion of those slots toward increasing his MP, his fighting strength had also been bolstered quite a bit.

His current card distribution was as follows:

___

Beast F x 11

Insect F x 2

Bird F x 2

Grass F x 15

___

Consequently, the buff to his Attack had reached as high as +55. Krena, who had been playing knight with Allen for three whole years, had felt the slight change.

Now that Allen had finished studying the Rank F Summons to the extent of his abilities he had taken to focusing solely on leveling Strengthening.

'Hmm, Strengthening is almost Lvl. 2. I should level up tomorrow at this rate.'

Allen was absolutely over the moon at how much faster he was earning Skill XP thanks to Grass F.