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“Mh… g’morning, Alim.”
“Good morning~, Mika.”

Mika and I had woken up. Karua was next to me, but she was still sleeping soundly, with her breathing steady.
That said, the arm that Mika has been clinging to hurts. But I don’t mind that at all.

When I looked at the clock, it was half past six in the morning. It looked like we both had woken up too early by coincidence.
It should be fine to wake Karua at 8 am… so, should we go to sleep again?

“We woke a bit too early Mika. Do you want to sleep some more?”
“Hm… I’m going to get up… Please do too, Alim.”
“Huh? Well, fine…”

I had no idea what she was planning, but did as she had asked me to and got up. For the time being, I made tea for the two of us, placed it on the table in front of the sofa and sat down there. Mika also joined me. This relaxed atmosphere was rather pleasant.

“Hey, can you turn my way, Alim?”
“Hm?”

The moment I turned my head towards her, she kissed me.

“Eh-heh-heh, it’s been a while since we did this in the morning!”
“You’re right! Is this what you wanted to do?”
“Yeah. Should we do more?”
“Let’s brush our teeth or take a shower for now.”
“Grr…”

With that being said, Mika and I brushed our teeth and then sat down on the sofa again.

“Still, Mika. Both when Rose was here and back then with Karua, you kissed me normally, didn’t you?”
“That was different. I can’t do something like this in a relaxed manner when there are other people watching.”
“Well, certainly.”

I turned into Ayumu temporarily and we spent an hour making out. Mika looked as if she was satisfied, at least within limitations… When we… or rather, I had enough, Karua woke up. I think it was a bit past 7:30 am¹.

“I wish you a good morning, Alim, Mika!”
“Hm! Good morning, Karua.”
“Morning~, Karua.”

We ate breakfast and talked about our plans for today. Mainly about cooking practice.

Right, I should ask Karua how much SKP she has. Mika and I are good at cooking due to our skills.

“Let’s practice cooking today, as we said yesterday, right, Karua?”
“Yes!”
“By the way, Karua, how much SKP do you have currently?”
“Huh… my SKP? Well… I never touched both my SKP and STP since I was born… so, it is still the 10 I had from the start, you see.”

I other words, she’s at level 1, isn’t she…? So, that’s why it was so easy for Mephistophales to kidnap her.

But why would she still be at level 1? After all, the king is a former SSS-Ranker, you know? You’d think he’d know how crucial one’s level is…

“Karua, your level is important, you know!”
“Is that so!? B-But my dear brother told me, that you only get experience points when you defeat magic beasts… and that everyone, except for those in a profession that requires them to fight, like adventurers and soldiers, stays at level 1. And your level doesn’t increase very often… ”

Oh, I see, that does make sense! I feel like one thing that confused me since coming to this world has just been explained.

In other words, even though you can easily level up in this world, no one thinks that the level is important in the first place. Therefore, only SSS-Rankers, who defeat lots of magic beasts due to their job, notice how important it really is. The king is probably among those.

If so… rather than having Karua gain SKP by making her level up recklessly, it might be better to rely on her skills improving automatically with training².

“Well, alright. Let’s start practice cooking”
“Y-Yes!” Karua agreed.
“What will we make, Alim?” Mika asked me.
“How about stir-fried vegetables first?”

We went to the kitchen, where I created several vegetables. We also had Karua wear an apron.

“Great, please wash these first, Karua.”
“Yes! Uhm… Where do I find the soap?”
“…Karua, can you eat soap?”
“R-Right! You cannot. I shall wash them with just water.”

Karua washed the vegetables rather thoroughly. She kept washing them until Mika and I told her that it was enough. She would’ve kept washing them forever if we hadn’t stopped her.

Once we finished washing³ all of them, next came the task of cutting them. Mika taught her how to do that.

“Good, that’s how it’s done, now peel the skin, alright?” Mika slowly demonstrated how to peel the skin of a Kaba, the local specialty of PiPi Village, to Karua. “Then, cut it in half once so it’s easier to work with… When you cut from there, you hold your hand like a *meow* cat magic beast⁴.”

While she was meowing and imitating a cat, Mika showed Karua how to move her hands. It was cute. Super adorable.
Next time the two of us are alone, I’ll have to ask her to do that again. Though I’ll probably end up having to do it, too.

“You try it now!”
“Y-Y-Yes!”

Karua cut the vegetable properly, as Mika had shown her. Her hand holding the kitchen knife was trembling and she occasionally was close to forgetting to hold her hand like a cat’s paw, but after repeating it several times, she managed to cut all the vegetables in the room.

With that being done, the next task was to fry them.

1. It says 6:30 am here in the original, which is probably wrong, seeing Alim and Mika woke up at 6:30 and then spent an hour being intimate.
2. While this makes sense at first glance, I see two big issues:
   1. Although it’s apparently possible for skills to evolve due to practice, you still require magic cores to derivate and synthesize those skills and you need to kill magic beasts for those.
   2. As Alim has experienced, both dexterity and quickness are really important for crafting, so craftsmen would want to level up, simply for those stats.
3. It says “cutting” here in the original. Clearly a typo.
4. I think that’s what it means. The original is more like “do like a cat magic beast towards hand”.