Chapter 19: The Beginning of Events

Once we had returned home, I went ahead and prepared dinner for the girls.

Since Claire was going to join us, I tried my best to impress her.

Although I'm not that confident in my skills in the kitchen, they seemed to make Licia happy, and I wanted to provide the same for Claire.

A nice place to sleep and good food to eat.

As long as I provided those, I felt she wouldn't have much to complain about.

And hopefully, if I did really well with the things I can offer her, she'll choose to stay.

I believe that would be good for us both.

Once I had finally finished, I waited in anticipation for them to start eating.

I was curious as to how Claire would react but... she seemed to enjoy my food as much as Licia.

Her surprise and enjoyment were a compliment in themselves, but she also made sure to thank me after she had finished.

Although seeing the both of them happily eating was already quite rewarding. It made me so proud that I wanted to learn more about cooking just to have more of those reactions in the future as well.

I also thought it would be nice to take to a restaurant one day as well. They would surely appreciate the dishes of a chef way more.

After dinner, I decided to go ahead and do the daily gacha rolls with the tickets available for me to claim.

Since Claire was our companion now, I felt no need to invest in the [Companions Banner] for a while.

We also had gotten another sword from the Goblin Lord on the first floor, and our weapons were enough to handle the monsters on the second floor, so there was no need for a roll in the [Weapons Banner] as well.

A super-powered weapon could be nice, but it wouldn't really do much more than what we already can do. And getting dependent on weapons is never good, so...

The last option was the [Skills Banner].

Somehow, I always end up going back to this one, but...

Its value gets increased with more companions, and with each skill that I've already acquired, as another "copy" increases its level.

And I know the importance of skills on the job we are doing. They are often the difference between a victory and a defeat.

Since [Gacha Kingdom Building] is so broad, it's hard to consider it a combat-oriented Gift, but this banner makes up for it quite well.

And so, I used the four tickets I had in this banner, which resulted in the following:

[Faster Tree Climbing

As the user already has this skill, its level has been raised to 3, allowing for even faster tree climbing. Please note that this is a passive skill, and as such it's always active unless the user decides to deactivate it, which can be done at any time.]

[Swordsmanship

As the user already has this skill, its level has been raised to 2, which further improves the user's technique when holding a sword or a bladed weapon to a lesser effect. Please note that this is a passive skill and is always active.]

[Mana Shield

An aura of mana envelops the user, allowing for better defense. This aura may be expanded, forming a shield big enough to protect allies. This is an active skill, and as such, drains the user's mana, the amount of mana to be used varies in relation to the size of the aura, and the minimum area costs 1 mana point per 5 seconds.]

[Greater Might

A simple increase in the user's strength. Allows for physical feats that the user was unable to do before. This is a passive skill, as such, it's always active. However, the user may decide to deactivate it at any time he so desires.]

The results this time were not so bad, aside from the faster tree climbing of course. I may share some of these skills with Licia, especially the [Greater Might] since it would complement her very well.

Licia: "So, what are you going to do now?"

Miwen: "Well, there's still the Kingdom points for me to claim... but there's something new in that menu that I want to check out too."

As for the other one, it seemed to indicate that the first step was to ally with one of the two nations that were at war.

Alas, there were no precise instructions, so I thought it was safe to assume that I'd be free to do whatever as long as it doesn't result in failure, be it the time running out, or one of the specific conditions.

Under such vague circumstances, it was possible that even doing nothing would result in an ending, albeit I doubt it would be a good one.

Alongside these two events, at the bottom of this menu, I could see another line of text:

"Time until the next selection of events: 5 days."

It seemed like they were going to cycle through if I didn't select any of them.

Meaning I'd probably not see them again...

This was a little tough.

I was definitely going to want to participate due to the possible rewards, but I'd like to get as strong as possible before deciding on which one...

And for that...

Miwen: "I'm gonna need your help."

Licia: "I was already planning on doing just that."

Claire: "It sounds interesting so why not?"

I was reading things out loud for them again.

Both were quite curious after all.

And so, we were basically all in agreement to try and get stronger for the upcoming event.

As for my move right now... one of the events was going to block the use of Kingdom Points, while the other didn't seem to have any restrictions regarding them.

Whatever the case, the important part was that I didn't have to use them immediately, so I decided to spend the ones I had.

Miwen: "Claire, did you do what I asked you to?"

Claire: "Yes, so, can you please take a look?"

I used employed the same system that I had used with Licia before to allow Claire to select her clothes.

While a little wasteful, this was also one of the incentives I could use to convince Claire and future [Citizens] to stay.

Thus, the two girls now had two changes each. It was too few for my liking, but I promised I'd work on it down the line, and since I was the one washing their clothes every day, it was going to be fine like this for a while.

This leaves me with 5 Kingdom Points, which I decided to use for sharing skills.

[Enhanced Drop Chance] is stackable and its effects are universally useful, so it was an obvious choice to give it to Claire. It wouldn't directly enhance our power, but it was valuable to have.

I also decided to share [Swordsmanship] that had reached level 2 with both of them.

Not only would this make both of them stronger, but it would also save them points as they wouldn't have to enhance them.

It's a skill that is easy to enhance through training, but a headstart was always going to be nice.

I also decided to focus tomorrow's Kingdom points on myself. I wanted to get Licia's [Ice Magic] and Claire's [Fire Sword Arts].

And before going to sleep, since I didn't use much mana today, I decided to do a roll in the [Mana Banners] hoping to get a weapon from it, but... truth be told it was done more so that I could keep naturally increasing my mana pool.

I wasn't going to suffer from mana depletion from a single roll anymore, and I could somewhat trust Claire now too since she didn't do anything yesterday, and even in the morning, she chose to be honest and actually gave me a warning seeking to protect me and Licia with it.

Once again though, this banner only gave me a single ring. It still wasn't useful, but it made clear that the odds of this banner were quite bad.

I had probably gotten quite lucky to get a dagger on it the first time.

Still, this was the last thing I had to do... well, aside from doing my best to not move in a weird way or touch the girls somewhere inappropriate while we shared the bed.