— This is actually… exciting.
By some twist of fate, I'd recently witnessed the literal end of the world — which had its own haunting beauty, but…
What I was seeing now was also breathtaking.
As soon as I stepped outside the city walls, I was greeted by a view untouched by civilization. Lush greenery, grass swaying in the wind, stretching almost all the way to the horizon. Flowers grew here and there... and balls. Yeah, further out from the city walls, actual living bouncing balls were hopping around.
Orange, yellow, blue... walking mushrooms... I even spotted something that looked like a rabbit a couple times. This world really was a fantasy brought to life.
— Alright... let's get started.
Adjusting my grip on the scythe, I moved forward. Following Ren's advice, I headed north of Melromarc, but I decided to start with the monsters closest to the city. After all, I had zero combat experience, and this was a good chance to practice using my weapon in relative safety.
Though even the balls could surprise you. Turns out they had actual mouths and knew how to bite – I found that out firsthand.
I offered my leg to the first one that noticed me. Stupid? Maybe. But now I had a sense of my pain threshold. And it... was impressive.
I was expecting something like a dog bite, but... I barely felt anything.
Poke.
Pop!
The ball, on the other hand, didn't survive even a light jab from my scythe's tip.
— Yeah... that was sad.
With a skeptical look, I tossed what was left of the ball into the round stone near my scythe's blade — which I figured was the core of the Legendary Weapon.
The stone flickered and absorbed the offering without a fuss.
— Now, the loot...
Upon mentally asking to see what I got, a small panel appeared before me, showing a single line:
Orange Ball Hide x1
I could have just instantly received the knowledge of what and how much I'd collected — which I planned to do from now on, but I was a bit curious about the system's interface.
To be honest, I wasn't a fan of these kinds of systems. Actually, I kinda hated them. Probably thanks to all the light novels I'd read, where "the system" was shoved in at every opportunity... Eventually, I developed a distaste for it. Maybe that's why mine manifested as a mental interface?
In the end, the balls weren't exactly challenging, but they were good enough for practicing basic swings.
And even that had its quirks. With every swing of the scythe, I intuitively understood more about how to move. Each slash became sharper, cleaner. I could feel myself syncing with the weapon.
After about an hour, I was mowing down packs of them without breaking a sweat. The swings came naturally. At some point, I even got bored and started showing off with flashy scythe tricks and...
Skill acquired: Scythe Mastery (Lv. 1)
That line hit me like a brick to the head, leaving me briefly stunned.
I didn't remember anything like this in the novel, which meant either the Shield didn't have this feature... or I was the only one with such a weapon-based skill system.
While grinding, I also spotted the Shield Hero with his temporary companion. And I got to witness Naofumi beating the crap out of balls with his bare hands while Myne just stood there smiling. Yeah...
Didn't spend too long watching. It was mildly amusing, but I'd clearly outgrown ball farming. Time to move on.
So I finally headed north, just like I was supposed to. Along the way, I entered a forest and ran into monsters resembling rabbits, mushrooms, birds, insects… Honestly, I was kind of surprised that so many different creatures were found so close to the city.
In the forest, I encountered my first... let's just say "emotional hiccup". A monster popped out – one of those rabbit-looking ones. Fat, fluffy rabbit.
It jumped out of the bushes so suddenly that I instinctively did a horizontal slash with my scythe.
Splurt.
As expected, the scythe didn't meet any resistance. It just cleaved the thing clean in half. And since it had been mid-jump... a good chunk of its guts and blood landed right on my face.
No idea how long I stood there, but I must've stared at the blood puddle and guts for at least five minutes with a dead-eyed stare.
It felt... weird. I was definitely grossed out by the scene, but at the same time... oddly satisfied. Especially when the following text popped into my head:
Skill Activated: Life Absorption
[EXP: 12 (+3)]
At first I didn't get it. Then I still didn't get it. Then I focused on the skill and mentally asked for an explanation. Eventually, I got this:
Life Absorption – a skill that allows you to absorb the Death Emissions of living beings, gaining bonus experience.
Now that was interesting. And kinda broken. What kind of experiments were those demons doing to create something this OP? If they'd summoned someone like me from the start, there's no way they would've lost.
I looked at the monster's blood again. And the longer I stared, the less disgusted I felt. Sure, it was still nasty, but... over time, I started seeing it as just part of the process. Something normal.
Until now, I'd never seen real blood like this before. I'd never butchered an animal or anything. So it was pretty normal that the sight hit me hard.
But just as suddenly as it hit me – It passed. Whether that was my own mental resilience or a trait of my race, I couldn't say. And did it even matter? I knew there were many more battles ahead — not all of them with monsters. In that sense, I was actually glad it happened.
So I spent the rest of the day grinding. Ren really came through – following the route he mapped out, I eventually reached a village in Melromarc called Ort, where I could spend the night.
By the end of the day, I'd reached level 12 without much effort, unlocked and mastered every type of scythe available from local monsters, and picked up a few professions.
I learned beginner-level Mixing, Cooking, Mining, Logging, and Fishing. Sure, all just basic stuff – but even that could take ordinary people months to reach. For Heroes, though, all it took was killing monsters and feeding their remains to the weapon.
I also unlocked a few combat skills:
Phantom Scythe – creates a phantom scythe up to 15 meters away.
Phantom Slash – a crescent-shaped slash that flies off the blade, just as sharp as the real thing.
And, somehow, my Scythe Mastery reached level 2.
I'd been feeding my scythe everything I could get: ore, stones, monster remains, tools... Some things immediately unlocked new variations of the weapon, others didn't (probably because I hadn't unlocked prerequisite forms yet). But the most surprising was the scythe's reaction to an ordinary garden sickle. That gave me not only the Phantom Scythe skill but also a handy compact version of the weapon.
Now people wouldn't immediately recognize me as the Scythe Hero. I could even wear the mini version on my belt under a cloak.
All in all, I officially declared the day a major success.
The village chief somehow knew I'd been responsible for the local monster genocide and offered me a spare room in his house. Worked for me, so I didn't say no.
The next day promised to be interesting, and my brain wouldn't let me sleep peacefully.
First, there was a certain raccoon girl on my mind. Honestly, I wouldn't mind taking Raphtalia for myself, but... she's really important to Naofumi. She's a core part of the story, and tampering with that was probably a bad idea. Still, I wasn't 100% sure. It's not like the world revolved around just one raccoon girl.
Second, I wasn't sure how much I should support the Shield Hero. Or how often I should even interact with him. The novel showed that Naofumi could handle everything on his own, but... maybe I could smooth out a few especially painful moments?
And third… I really had to hold myself back from killing Myne too early. The bitch princess was the most unpredictable factor in any plan I could make. Who knows what ideas she might get into her head – or if she'd decide to backstab me for fun. She probably wouldn't succeed, but she'd definitely cost me a few brain cells. And we all know they don't grow back.
Besides all that, I still had to keep leveling up, gaining combat experience, and eventually get into local magic. There was also something called Qi in this world — I remembered very little about it, but it'd be nice to figure it out. Not to mention the various professions – I needed to pick a few core ones to focus on.
Right now, I was leaning toward mixing and blacksmithing, with enchanting as a bonus. Seemed like a solid combo. But picturing myself working as a blacksmith... yeah, that was still tough. So, I was undecided.
I still had time to figure things out. And depending on how tomorrow goes... my Evil Plans may just begin to take shape.