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After Loukis had left, the two still felt some residual fear from being threatened, but they had calmed down somewhat. Sakura noticed that Kanata was holding her hand.

“Hang on… Kanata. How long are you planning to hold my hand?”
“Oh, sorry,” he stopped holding her hand.
“(…I wouldn’t have minded much, if you hadn’t stopped holding it.)”
“Is that so?”
“…Huh? Ah… no… that’s… aah~~, t-that’s it! Shouldn’t we be able to take our time looking at it, now? At the status screen, I mean.”

Kanata had sharp ears. Sakura knew that, but, just now, her true feelings had accidentally slipped out in a small voice. When he pressed her about it, she got embarrassed and changed the topic. This was an everyday occurrence for the two of them.

“Hm… You’re right, we should take a closer look at it. From what I could see, it was rather thought-provoking.

Sakura was relieved that she was somehow able to change the subject.

“Yeah… Oh, that’s right. Could I entrust to you how to manage my status screen? You’re probably better at such things than I am, aren’t you?”
“I guess. Unlike my big bro, who’d make several thousand rounds to level up¹ if he was in our place, I’m always considering what would be most efficient…”
“Sure, that’s great and all. But rather than regale me with that, let’s quickly take a proper look at our status screens, alright?”
“…Right.”

Kanata was a bit dejected for having his words brushed off so easily, but he immediately started examining his status screen. He was shocked by the description of the titles and the skill with five stars. It was the same for Sakura.

After around an hour, when they had both roughly finished at the same time looking at everything, they compared the contents of each other’s status screens.

“How did it look, Sakura? I saw the following stuff on my status screen…”
“Mine was almost the same. The only difference is that SK2 skill with five stars.”
“I see. I’ll tell you what my SK2 skill does, then.”

Kanata told Sakura about the effects of the skill; it mainly seemed to be a form of teleportation² and allowed the user, including other objects, to jump to another place.

“Then, couldn’t we also use it to escape from here?”
“True, but… the teleportation apparently consumes MP. If we try that now, we won’t get far and will immediately be captured, you see.”
“I see… What about mine, then?”

Sakura explained to Kanata the effects of her skill; it strengthened support magics, reduced their MP consumption, and eased restrictions³ on them. It apparently also allowed her to manipulate the growth of flora and fauna. Although, she didn’t understand the skill very well

“I wonder what it does,” she mused. “I think I somewhat get the part about controlling the growth of plants and animals, but the other parts…”
“Could ‘support magic’ be Enhancement Magic, Enfeeblement Magic, and Restoration Magic? There was an explanation that using Enhancement Magic causes side effects on the one it’s cast on, especially if it’s used too often, but… It’s probably safe to assume that it’s mainly related to such skills.”

“Oh,” after Kanata told her that, Sakura looked as if she finally understood it. “Gotcha. As expected of a dummy who always plays video games, right?”
“To some degree, but… Heh, if it were up to, how this world works, then…”
“…The latter part wasn’t meant as a compliment, you know?”
“Huh.”

Kanata was shocked by Sakura’s tone of voice, but he immediately recovered and continued his inquiry into the status screen.

“Regardless of that, we got 500 of these points from the get-go, but… I’m still not sure how we should spend them. So far, we haven’t fought anything at all.”
“Huh…But wouldn’t it be best to allocate the SKP to those five-star skills?” Sakura asked while inclining her head.

She didn’t mean anything special with the gesture, but it startled Kanata a little. He shook his head strongly, clearing his mind of any wicked thoughts towards her, and continued his deliberation.

“No… We currently shouldn’t do that either. I think if we allocate any points while still not fully understanding these skills, we might make a blunder. First, we should level-up, at least once…”
“Alright… Well, either way, I’ll follow your lead, Kanata. Just don’t get any strange ideas, will you?”
“I won’t, it’ll be fine.”

When Kanata told her that, Loukis returned and spoke to both of them.

“Looks like you had an intimate discussion. That’s good, but get ready, we’ll arrive soon.”

TL notes:
It’s interesting to see Kanata being more of a planner than Alim (though the latter also did his fair share of theory crafting). Maybe we’ll see a more min-maxed build with him than Alim and Mika’s rather even distribution of stats.

1. He sure knows his brother well.
2. Dang, that’s the teleportation ability Alim wanted. But I guess it’s still in the family.
3. I wonder if that’s about the side effects of stacking support magic or something else.