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Four days had passed since Rir registered as an adventurer. She did nothing but hunt goblins, and by handing in their magic stones, reached D-Rank.
You can get to D-Rank pretty fast, after all, don’t you?

Our plans to rent an apartment were close to becoming reality. Since we did requests that required us to subjugate lots of foes, just by the two of us, we often ended up earning thousands of bells at once. As a result, we had a lot of money.

On that note, since I had extended our stay at the inn for a week, two days ago, we would stay here for another four days after today. We had also bought several sets of suitable clothing.

…Still, I can’t get over the women’s clothes showin’ so much skin.
Well, nothin’ to do ’bout that. I’ll just chalk it up to cultural differences. Other than bein’ hard to look at (in a good way¹), there’s not much harm in it.

Also, I gave Rir between 10 and 20% of our rewards to spend on what she wanted. She stubbornly refused, saying she didn’t need it, but… to be honest, I was sick and tired of buying women’s clothes and underwear. I didn’t say that out loud, but it was super embarrassing… When I relayed that to her, she apologized to me and agreed to take the money.

I currently didn’t use a weapon, while Rir used an iron axe. Lately, I’d been thinking that it might be time for me to get a melee weapon, too. That was because I couldn’t shoot magic at enemies while Rir was fighting them.

However, when I thought about buying one… I found a three-part series titled “All About Skill Synthesis” in a bookstore. There were synthesis recipes for various skills written in them.

It ran me down 2000 bells, but… I ended up buying it on impulse. According to it, just by combining sword and magic skills, you could apparently temporarily create specific swords, so I decided to rely on that instead.
I’ll look into that next time I go over my status screen.

Furthermore, in the four days since she had registered as an adventurer, Rir had obtained 6200 exp and reached level 20. She was shocked at her rapid growth and the effectiveness of my titles. Also, from what she told me, it didn’t look like she received the STP and SKP increasing effect of those titles. My own exp, on the other hand, had increased by 9650 since I last managed my stats, causing me to reach level 36.

I was planning to manage Rir’s stats and skills first.

“So that’s the reason. I know it’s still early, but I thought ’bout allocatin’ stuff on our status screens today.”
“Understood, Master!”
“On that note, I was thinkin’ of using all of today for that and not doin’ any work, y’know.”
“Huh~!? Isn’t investing your points more like a snap decision?”
“Nah, I’m pretty sure you gotta properly manage your status screen, if you wanna get strong.”
“I-Is that so…? If you say so, then I’ll abide by it, Master.”

Once I had Rir’s agreement, I handed her paper and a pen.

“Then, could you write down what’s on your status screen on this?”
“Hm, understood.”

20 minutes later, she gave me back the sheet of paper.
…Hrm, her letters are kinda hard to read, but I can manage.

She has a ton of SK2 skills, don’t she? That a good thing? Though only Stealth is on a high level…

Then, her titles are “Sufferer”, “Endurer”, and finally “Eater of Strange Things”… This alone… kinda tells me everythin’ ’bout her, don’t it?

“What’s wrong, Master? Is there something weird about my status screen?”
“Nah… no problems so far…”
“I see.”

Now, how to allocate her points…

In any case, looks like beastfolk have higher values than humans in some stats. Still… there’s also some that are lower³. From what I can see, A and S are increased by 20%, while W and MP are lowered by 20%.

In that case, improving magic won’t play into her strengths. Guess I gotta have her allocate 50 STP each in HP, A, D, and S.

As for the SKP… I wonder what’d be best for now.

She could either invest ’em in a way that’d make her as helpful as possible as a slave from my perspective, or allocate ’em in a manner so she can get by, even if she’s on her own.
Personally, I think the latter would be better. Still, Rir’ll probably prefer the former, won’t she?

Assumin’ that, the best would probably be somethin’ that works for both. For the time bein’… I’ll have her invest points into Dismantling and Detection… and the rest into Axe Arts, right?

I proposed that to her.

“Understood, I’ll do as you say, Master! Still, you have come rather quickly to your decision, haven’t you? It hasn’t even been an hour, you know?”
“Ha-ha, you’re right, I guess. But we should still rest for today and not do any work. It’s important to take a break, every now and then… Ah, once you’re done allocatin’ points, add the new stuff onto this paper.”
“I will, Master!”

I looked at the paper once she gave it back to me.
…Looks like she got Axe Arts to max and can evolve it now.

From what she told me, she needed three D-Rank magic cores for that. Apparently, 30 E-Rank magic cores would also work⁴, so I had her evolve it with those. With this, Rir’s Axe Arts turned into a skill called “Axemanship”.

Well, seems like the remainin’ SKP weren’t enough to improve it by another stage. Looks like she can also evolve Detection, but we’ll hold off on that for now.

Author’s notes:
Detection requires 50 SKP to max out.

Rir’s status screen at the end:
Due to getting Axe Arts to max level, A has been increased by 10. Also, S has been increased by 10 due to Detection, and D by 5 due to Dismantling.

TL notes:
For the first time in the story, we’re seeing the status screen of someone native to Anazumu, and it sure looks like Rir wasn’t lying about focusing on SK2 skills. As I speculated in chapter 248, there seems to be a separate skill for Axes, so there are likely others for the more uncommon weapon types like morning stars. Although, from what was mentioned in chapter 157, it’s possible that you can only get the three standard weapons (sword, spear, bow) as dungeon drops.

Also, unless I’m forgetting something, these are the last clues we get about Rir’s past for the foreseeable future. With what we know, we can make some guesses:
-Until at least 6 years ago, she lived with her parents.
-Her Father was a lumberjack, so they likely lived in a village in, or next to a forest.
-Judging by the burn marks that Shuu saw, said village was then likely attacked and burned down (maybe by slave hunters as mentioned in chapter 203). Her parents probably died back then.
-She escaped into the forest where she hid and survived on her own (her Stealth skill being the highest, and her mentioning that she had to eat dirt and animal feces make that likely).
-She either lost her ear and part of her tail during the attack on the village or later when she was on her own.
-At some later point, she was captured and made a slave.

1. The original is 目に毒(良薬): “poison towards the eyes (good medicine).
2. This was a 2-star skill in chapter 29. It’s definitely the same skill, as we’ll see at a later point.
3. I guess this is the root of the beastfolk’s incompatibility with magic, which was mentioned in chapter 163. Though there still could be some additional invisible modifiers on skills, as Kemm theorized.
4. So, I guess you can also substitute lower rank magic cores if you don’t have the ones required. Though that still doesn’t explain Alim’s synthesis spree in chapter 29; even with this, he wouldn’t have had enough magic cores.
5. The original is 175 (50 +5), but the attack increase from Axe Arts should be +10.
6. The original is (115 (+15) but it should only be +5 from Dismantling.
7. The original is 170 (50), missing the 10 points from Detection.