"Spartans..." Nijika shrank back. But Yukina was immediately pushed forward by the people behind her and stepped into the tent, with everyone else surging in after her, each voicing their concern. The tent instantly became noisy.
"Sorry. You could have recovered faster, but the [Pure Relief and Suffering-Extermination Perfect Treasure Light] has already been used up, and Lisa's cookies can't be fed to you while you're asleep, so..." Shiko explained.
At the mention of that name, Nijika's cheek twitched. "What the heck is that supposed to be?"
Everyone else was chattering too. Although Nijika was touched that they had all come to visit her, it was inevitably a little noisy.
"Nijika still needs to rest. Everyone, wait outside for a while, okay?" Lisa considerately persuaded the others to leave. "Yukina, it's not like a little more time will matter. Wait a bit longer."
Yukina looked somewhat anxious. "We don't know when the upstream dam will collapse... All right."
Only Nijika and Lisa remained in the tent. "Thank you, Lisa-san. But I don't think I need to rest." Although she said that, Nijika still lay back down.
"It's not you who needs it. I do. Everyone else does too." Lisa said playfully as she lay down beside Nijika and yawned. "Everyone was frightened by the earthquake last night and didn't sleep well."
Although Lisa had said they should rest, she kept talking. "You were amazing, Nijika. I didn't even know you had a move like that."
"I don't usually have any use for it." Nijika closed her eyes.
"I'm so jealous~ If only I had a trump-card skill like that too~" Lisa's voice turned into a mumble.
"Lisa's original skill..." Nijika looked toward Lisa. Lisa was already asleep.
After everyone had rested, they all sat in the hot-air balloon and headed upstream. With the ground shattered and the possibility of aftershocks still uncertain, this was the best choice.
"Ahahaha! I am Ako Udagawa, Ruler of the Dark Night, Apostle of Darkness, Fallen Angel who has descended from heaven!" Ako was extremely excited by the sensation of flying through the sky.
"The river... has been cut off." Yukina was focused on the state of the waterway. The formation of the upstream barrier lake had blocked the downstream water source, and the river's flow had already begun to decrease. Before long, it would no longer be able to carry boats. To say nothing of the unstable barrier upstream, which could collapse at any moment. The huge amount of water accumulated behind it would cause a new disaster when it did. Although they would probably rely on the hot-air balloon to travel from then on, such a disaster could still affect them, so it was best to eliminate this danger as soon as possible.
No one in Roselia had ridden in a hot-air balloon before, and most of them stood by the basket's edge, gazing outside. Lisa was the exception. She kept conjuring different kinds of cookies, taking a bite, and then moving on to the next one.
"Didn't you eat breakfast?" Nijika noticed her.
"Ah, I'm not hungry," Lisa said. "I'm trying to develop a new kind of cookie."
Lisa had initially thought that she and Nijika were both purely support-oriented, but after seeing Nijika's [Stardust], she could no longer sit still. She desperately wanted to gain some ability beyond support that she could use at a critical moment.
However, after trying so many times, all Lisa had managed to make were cookies with different flavors. Their functions had not changed in any substantial way.
Besides, she had eaten herself completely full.
Holding a cranberry cookie, she fell into a worry.
Strictly speaking, her skill for creating cookies was not a skill at all, but an application of the [Goddess's Hearth] ability. Since she could not develop the ability itself, should she try developing a skill instead? She asked Ako about it. Ako's situation was similar. Her original ability was only Mana Release, while all her other skills had been developed by herself.
"Oh! Does Lisa want to change classes?" Ako's eyes lit up. "Ako thinks that if an alchemist wants offensive power, she should invest in poison, right? She could poison a single target, create an area-of-effect attack, make bait..."
"Speaking of poison..." Lisa lifted a small bag of cookies. They were all purplish-black and looked ominous. "I haven't dared to test what this bag does..."
"Then why not try using those?" Shiko pointed toward a monster lying on the ground, almost buried beneath chunks of stone. It had survived the earthquake, but not in good shape. At the very least, it was unable to move.
So Ryo and Kita piloted the hot-air balloon in that direction. Lisa took out a cookie and threw it toward the monster.
"It feels like feeding a cat," Yukina remarked.
A half-broken claw reached out and groped across the ground. It grabbed the cookie and swiftly withdrew. Everyone waited a long time, but nothing happened.
"Did it really eat it?" Lisa couldn't help wondering.
"It did." Only Yukina could clearly see the monster's movements in the shadows.
Lisa tried throwing out several more cookies, and the monster ate them at the same speed.
"It really is like feeding a cat..." Kita began complaining too.
After waiting for a long time, there was still no reaction. Instead, the monster called out several times toward them, as if begging for food.
"..." Everyone even began to find the monster a little cute.
"Should I try one myself?" Lisa picked up the last cookie. "Nijika, support me immediately if anything seems wrong." After seeing Nijika nod, Lisa took a small bite from the cookie.
Her expression immediately turned strange. "What's wrong?" Nijika was so frightened that she instantly activated her ability, covering Lisa's entire body in starlight.
"N-Nothing's wrong." Lisa replied from within the light. "It's grape-flavored."
"Huh?" Everyone froze for a moment.
"This cookie is grape-flavored. That's all." Lisa couldn't even sense any special bonus.
The strange expression immediately spread across everyone's faces.
Then Lisa took out another bag of cookies. These were all blood-red.
As expected, this bag was strawberry-flavored.
There were also gray cookies flavored like black pepper, pale cookies flavored like vanilla, and even multicolored cookies that tasted like lollipops.
"Cookies... can have this many flavors?" That was everyone's inner thought.
The Warmth of Rose Quartz
Aside from their bizarre variety of flavors, Lisa's new cookies had no other effects.
Still, expanding everyone's menu counted as a good thing, right?
"I'll give up on poison for now..." Lisa covered her face.
The hot-air balloon rose again.
"What should we do with this monster...?" Rinko pointed toward the monster, which was still pinned in the rocky crevice.
"..." No one spoke for a moment. Normally, they would certainly kill a monster upon encountering it. But attacking a monster they had just fed, one they had even described as "like a cat," was really a little...
"Let's... leave it here?" Yukina made the difficult decision.
"Meow—" At that moment, seeing the hot-air balloon rising, the monster let out a perfectly timed cry.
"Mm." Yukina and Sayo both turned their faces away.
"Ahhh, I can't take this!" Kita was completely unable to resist such cuteness. "At least let it out!"
"In the end~ the mon~ster~ was~ named~, and~ followed~ the~ he~ro~es'~ par~ty~ on~ their~ jour~ney~ to~ de~feat~ the~ de~mon~ king~..." A languid voice, spoken at about Rinko's speed, interrupted them.
Lisa looked toward the voice in surprise. "Moca?" Shiko had put on a white wig and was imitating Moca Aoba.
"Ah~ Shiko, if you have something to say, you can just say it directly. You startled me... And why are you so familiar with Moca? And with Kasumi and the others too?"
"Be~cause~ Shi~ko~ isn't~ that~ kind~ of~ cha~rac~ter~..." Shiko only answered the first half of Lisa's question and pretended not to hear the second half.
"All right, turn back." Nijika criticized her, though there was a smile at the corner of her mouth. "If you keep this up, you're just padding the word count."
"Padding the word count?" Lisa was baffled.
In the end, out of inexplicable pity, they found a way to move the huge rock pressing down on the monster. The monster did not follow the classic plot of acknowledging them as its master on the spot. Instead, it darted away in a flash, vanishing somewhere unknown, and looked completely uninjured. Setting aside this little interlude, the hot-air balloon continued forward, though one person looked somewhat regretful.
"I still can't figure out how to unlock a skill." Lisa lay on the luggage and lamented. After coming into contact with NFO, she had also learned to use terms like "unlocking skills."
"Why don't you try what I do and just hurl a huge number of cookies downward? Look." Shiko waved her hand, and a huge number of iron spears materialized in the air before crashing toward the ground with a thunderous boom. Smoke and dust surged into the sky.
"That many... I can't do that. And compared with you all, attacking like that would be far too inefficient, wouldn't it? I want an ability like Nijika's yesterday—something powerful and special." Lisa said.
Everyone tried to think of a solution for Lisa, but they got nowhere for the time being. Then Ryo spoke.
"Why are you so fixated on being 'like Nijika'?" she asked. "You have things only you can do."
Nijika backed her up from beside Lisa. "Exactly. I have things I can do, and Lisa-san has things only Lisa-san can do."
"You mean..." Lisa seemed to understand something, but before she could finish, Yukina, who had been watching the distance, interrupted them. "We're here."
They were here? What were they here for? Everyone looked outside. A landslide had formed a barrier across the river, blocking the water flowing from upstream and creating a small lake. Whether because of sediment or something else, the water in the lake was murky.
"What should we do?" Everyone looked at Yukina. Yukina thought for a moment. "Blow it up."
Blowing open the barrier directly and releasing the water before too much had accumulated might prevent an even greater disaster.
"Gulp." Kita looked at the lake below and swallowed. "We're really going to blow it up?" She could hardly imagine what it would look like when all that water came rushing out.
"Then let's do it." Shiko didn't overthink it and took out the crimson [Ten Directions Illumination Sun Purification True Talisman].
"Fly higher first, so we don't get caught in it. Also, eat these first." Lisa handed Shiko and Kita several cookies that increased their stats. They were the only ones who could serve as the main force for blowing up the barrier.
Once everything was ready, they began their attack. Two explosions that seemed capable of setting the sky ablaze thundered across the earth. The lake water evaporated, and the steam surging into the sky formed a small mushroom cloud. The blast-generated hurricane tore at the hot-air balloon, nearly throwing several of them out. Fortunately, Ryo reacted in time, allowing the balloon to remain stable in the air.
"Cough, cough... I've never used this move in the sky before. I overlooked that... Cough, cough, cough..." Kita was affected most severely by the steam. Combined with the exhaustion caused by releasing her ultimate skill, she had to brace herself against Ichiri with one hand and cover her mouth with the other as she coughed. Ichiri was also leaning against the luggage. Everyone began coughing unconsciously.
"Cough, cough... Cough!" Kita realized that she seemed to have coughed something up. When she looked at her hand, she immediately let out a scream and flung the thing to the ground.
"B-Bugs, bugs... Bugs..." She shrank behind the others and pointed at the thing on the ground. Shiko took one look. It was clearly a worm, and it was even wriggling!
Had Kita coughed that out? Shiko felt sick. Something churned up from her stomach, and she retched several times. Something fell from her mouth as well. When the others looked, they saw several more worms.
Shiko's face turned green. "What is this? Should I grab a hatchet and shout, 'You tricked me!'?" She was still trembling as she joked. The others covered their mouths one after another, unsure whether something else would come out.
"Eww!" Ako was hit too. A worm dropped to the ground within her terrified gaze. "Hehe... This is nothing but worm magic..." She seemed to be consoling herself.
"Worm magic isn't something you can just say, Ako... Urgh..." Shiko stubbornly held on to the luggage.
"Is there something wrong with the steam?" Yukina was in relatively better shape. She noticed something strange within the smoke that had yet to disperse.
"Cough, cough... Could there have already been something in the lake water, and we blasted it into the sky?" Shiko thought of the lake's murkiness.
"Possibly," Yukina said. "Leave this place first!"
The hot-air balloon began moving again, swaying unsteadily. It had suffered some damage from the hurricane, and Shiko could not repair it for the time being. Floodwater surged through the river, seemingly affecting the underground waterways as well. The surrounding area was unstable, so the hot-air balloon landed on a high ground far from the scene.
Everyone's condition was already terrible. They could barely remain standing without supporting one another. Yukina, Nijika, and Lisa were in the best condition. They carried everyone down to the ground and laid them flat. Nijika coughed as she tried to heal everyone with starlight, but the effect was poor.
"What on earth is happening...?" Nijika had never seen anything like this. Everyone kept vomiting worms from their mouths. Several had already started running fevers and talking deliriously. Yukina was also visibly close to collapsing.
Lisa stood blankly where she was, apparently at a loss.
"Lisa-san, hurry and try your cookies... Cough, cough!" Nijika urged her.
"No." Lisa came back to herself. "I think I just learned something new." She opened her hand and conjured a kind of cookie none of them had ever seen before. It was white and worm-shaped.
"Uh? Are you sure?" Nijika looked at its shape and was extremely reluctant to eat it.
"I'm sure." Lisa said, "After I came into contact with that steam, I naturally learned how to make this. I'm perfectly fine, aren't I? This is the antidote for this illness." As she spoke, she forcibly stuffed the cookie into Nijika's mouth, then went to the others and fed them the cookies.
"Ptooey—" The others quickly vomited up a mass of bloody filth, and the illness vanished at once. The worms scattered across the ground all turned to ash.
"How amazing." Kita felt her healthy body return.
"You gained a new skill, Lisa." Yukina said.
Only then did Lisa react. Had she gained a new skill without even realizing it? She gave a wry smile. "Too bad this skill is only useful in this situation, and it's not as powerful as Nijika's."
But then her expression brightened. "Still, this is something only I can do, right?"
Nijika smiled at that. "Exactly. This is something only Lisa-san can do."
Ryo teased her. "After all, you're the 'Warmth of Rose Quartz.'" Anyone with even a little knowledge of Roselia could tell who that song was about.
At those words, Lisa's face turned bright red.
"Ahhh, don't say that! It's so embarrassing!"
Amid everyone's teasing, Shiko repaired the hot-air balloon.
It was time to set out.
Chapter 27: The Rising Tide
Flying over the shattered earth inevitably put everyone in a depressed mood. Fortunately, several days later they left the earthquake-stricken area and returned to a place where everything seemed untouched. They preferred to believe that the flourishing forests, the great river, and the mountains were nature's delicate skin, its normal appearance, while the devastation before them had merely been a patch of eczema on the earth. After leaving the disaster zone, it felt as though the eczema in their hearts had been healed as well, and everyone gained more motivation. Over the past few days, they had explored more regions.
"The hot-air balloon should be safe enough now, right?" Kita muttered as she controlled the balloon's ascent and descent. They had initially avoided riding it because they were worried that the balloon Shiko created could not bear the weight of ten people and a pile of luggage, but judging from their experiences over the past few days, the hot-air balloon was extremely reliable.
Although they were flying through the sky, they were still generally following the river. After all, if Poppin'Party was in this watershed, they would most likely be living near a water source too.
A thick, three-headed monster snake leaped out of the river below and nearly bit the basket. Kita hurriedly raised the balloon a little higher in fright. Several sounds came from below as the others attacked. The giant snake's severed body crashed into the water, sending up waves nearly as high as the basket—high enough for even her to see. The enormous waves stirred up more waves, which eventually canceled each other out with the tide rumbling toward them in the distance.
"Looks like we won't get to see the tide today." Lisa sounded a little disappointed.
"Wasn't that one just now big enough?" Shiko consoled her. She was also somewhat disappointed.
As the river gradually widened, they began to notice the phenomenon of the river's tide surging twice a day. The tide came from downstream. At first, it was only a faint white line, but the mighty roar of thousands of troops and horses had already reached them. As time passed, the white line gradually took on a clear shape. The tide, like a sea wave carrying mud and sand, surged upstream, devouring its own source with a rebellious air and pounding the riverbanks with chaotic mud. Ignoring the tiny insects flying across the sky, it continued its campaign toward the farther upstream reaches until it was completely worn away.
At first, the others were at a loss, thinking it was another inexplicable attack like the worms before. It was only after Shiko explained it that they realized it was merely a geographical phenomenon occurring in certain special terrain.
"My hometown has a tide like this. It's famous throughout the country." Shiko was rarely nostalgic.
In simple terms, this kind of tide occurred because the river mouth was trumpet-shaped. The rising and falling tides were compressed, with each wave pushing the one before it and layer upon layer building up into a spectacular tide. There was no moon here, yet there were tides. Some things simply could not be overthought. By the time the tide reached here, however, it could no longer be called spectacular. Its height was comparable to that of ordinary sea waves.
Before you continue