After I catch the falling fruit, everyone gathers around me.
“Your reaction was perfect, Shouta!”
“I recorded it, so we can watch later.☆”
“The others told us about this in secret, so we were watching, but your reaction speed was really great!”
“That’s the result of training.”
“That is wonderful, older brother. Wild instincts displayed even towards vegetation with no hostility.”
Everyone praising me at once tickles, but this is the surprising part, right?
“Exactly, master.”
“I checked with True Appraisal, but it doesn’t react to people going down.”
“Apparently. That is why you need a guide to go up the mountain.”
“It would be bad if it hit a customer on the head.”
“Ah, I see.”
I guess it’s okay then.
I’m sure the guide adventurers are used to it and have a good grasp on the situation. And they wear full face helmets. So that’s why?
“And it said the juice is good for the skin.”
“Really!?”
“Yes.”
Izumi reacts strongly. I guess she likes this sort of thing.
“Eh, I heard it was tasty, but it has that added value?”
“But it’s strange. It would make sense for that to have spread more if it was known. Could it be that even the association doesn’t know about it?”
“Yes, but this place is full of activity with people coming here every day, right? It feels like it would be researched…”
“Apparently this fruit spoils fast. It’s no good about an hour after it falls.”
That is fast! I guess that’s why they don’t examine it.
But that peculiarity should have shown up on True Appraisal.
“Oh, but maybe it will be good because you caught it?”
“That’s true. Maybe it slowed down the speed at which it decays.”
“I’ve heard of this type of material over there too. Ones that spoil depending on how you handle them, or lose potency, all sorts of things. The effect of being good for the skin might have come about because you caught it, older brother.”
“It could be… Then Shouta, sorry but…”
“I get it. I just have to dodge the next one, right?”
“Yes, please do!”
This sort of investigation is in my area, but I wonder if the skin beautifying effect caught their attention. They seem more serious than me.
‘Dododododo…’
…Hn? What’s that noise?
As we go up the mountain, I hear a strange noise a bit far away. But I don’t feel danger.
I turn around, but no one seems concerned about it, and it might be quite far away.
We continue going up while paying attention above us. I feel the noise is getting closer the more we walk, but I still don’t sense danger. I wonder what’s up ahead.
Normally it would be dangerous to go up a mountain path while looking around to the sides, because we might trip and fall, but the girls are high level. They not only have high stats, but their trunks have been trained too, so there’s really no danger. I’m a little worried about how Ayane and Irina move, but at this distance, I can step in and cover for them.
After about ten minutes, I finally find the next falling tree. Maybe they don’t really grow on the side of the path. I approach it alone, and the fruit detaches and falls before I can even get directly below it.
I knew it was coming, so I could’ve just stopped and watched.
‘Thud!’
That was a nice sound.
This hard fruit falling fast from a few meters might kill someone if it hits them. Even if there are no monsters, the guides on the third floor have it tough.
And the result…
“True Appraisal.”
Name: Falling fruit (degraded)
Grade: Normal
Classification: Food
Description: Fruit of a falling tree from a dungeon. Reacts to people climbing and drops fruit. The fruit is delicious, but the impact has degraded it, and it spoils fast.
“You were right, it says nothing about the skin beautifying effect, and it spoils fast. But it still says it’s tasty.”
“Ooh!”
“Well, anyone here can get them at that speed, so do your best.”
“Yes!!”
It’d be a waste otherwise, so Enril cuts the degraded version, and I have it with Iris and the others.
It looks like a seedless watermelon, and I bite into it as the girls look for them with more enthusiasm than before.
A skin beautifying effect…
People’s bodies are perfected as they level up, like how my mothers-in-law’s skins have not deteriorated at all, so I feel like they don’t need it. But it would be a boorish thing to say. They can’t turn away from their instinct to be beautiful.
…But if skin stays youthful like my mothers-in-law, I wonder what happens to life span. I’ve never heard anything about it other than that genes evolve so people can have the best possible body. Leaving me aside, my fiancees are probably up there in terms of level compared to the rest of humanity, so I’d like to see if there was research about that.
In that sense, I wonder what my mothers-in-law’s levels are. I wish they’d stay beautiful forever, so could I take them along to my boot camp?
“Darling?”
“Hn? What?”
“We are here!”
As I think about all that, it seems we’ve reached the end. Normally customers climb leisurely, but we walked at the same pace as regular adventurers.
There’s a viewing platform here with a simple fence, and a large waterfall that reminds me of Niagara. Is this where the noise was coming from? There’s so much mist, and the water is coming down hard.
“Beautiful…”
“Wow!”
“My heart is being washed.”
“Being able to see this casually makes me understand why this would become a date course.”
The girls are enamored by the sight, and I think about something else entirely.
I wonder if there are monsters in that big lake under the waterfall…
Join my patreon to support me and read ahead.
<<Previous Chapter Index Next Chapter>>
