Why play in a band if not for life?

"So Spartan..." Nijika flinched. But Yukina was immediately pushed from behind, stepping into the tent. The others rushed in right after, bombarding her with concerned questions. The tent instantly became noisy.

"Sorry, I could have recovered faster, but the [Pure Salvation from Suffering and Calamity Perfect Precious Light] is all used up, and Lisa couldn't feed you her cookies while you were asleep, so..." Shiko explained.

Hearing the name, Nijika's cheek twitched: "What is that thing?"

The others were also chattering. While everyone being there to see her was touching, it was undeniably a bit noisy.

"Nijika still needs to rest. Could everyone wait outside for a little while?" Lisa, being considerate, persuaded the others to leave. "Yukina, it's not like we're short on time. Let's wait a bit longer."

Yukina looked somewhat anxious. "I don't know when the upstream will collapse... Alright."

Now, only Nijika and Lisa were left in the tent. "Thank you, Lisa. But I don't think I need to rest." Even as she said that, Nijika lay back down.

"It's not that you need it, it's that I need it. And everyone else does too." Lisa said playfully, lying down next to Nijika and yawning. "Everyone was so scared by the earthquake last night, none of us slept well."

However, despite saying they needed to rest, Lisa continued to talk. "That was amazing, Nijika. I didn't know you had that move."

"I don't usually get to use it, after all." Nijika closed her eyes.

"I'm so jealous~ I wish I had a trump card skill like that~" Lisa's voice trailed off into a mumble.

"Lisa's original skill..." Nijika looked at Lisa. She had already fallen asleep.

After everyone had rested, they all sat in a hot air balloon and headed upstream. This was the best option given the shattered surface and the uncertainty of aftershocks.

"Ahahaha, I am the Ruler of the Dark Night, the Apostle of Darkness, the Fallen Angel who descended from heaven—Ako Udagawa!" The feeling of flying through the sky made Ako incredibly excited.

"The river... it's broken." Yukina focused on the state of the waterway. The formation of the landslide lake upstream had blocked the water source for the lower reaches, and the river's flow had already begun to decrease. In a little while, it wouldn't be able to carry ships. Not to mention, the landslide dam upstream was unstable and could collapse at any moment, unleashing a massive amount of water that would cause a new disaster. Although they would mostly be traveling by hot air balloon from now on, such a disaster could still affect them, so it was best to eliminate this hidden danger as soon as possible.

The members of Roselia had no experience riding in a hot air balloon, and most of them walked to the edge of the basket to look out. Lisa, however, was an exception. She kept conjuring all sorts of cookies, taking a bite, and then switching to another.

"Didn't you eat breakfast?" Nijika noticed her.

"Ah, it's not that I'm hungry," Lisa said. "I'm trying to develop new cookie varieties."

She had initially thought Nijika was purely a support like herself, but after seeing Nijika's [Stardust], she couldn't sit still anymore, eager to have some ability beyond support in critical moments.

However, after so many attempts, Lisa had only managed to make cookies with different flavors; they hadn't undergone any substantial functional changes.

And her stomach was already full.

She pinched a cranberry cookie and began to worry.

Her skill of creating various cookies wasn't strictly a skill, but rather an application of the [Goddess's Hearth] ability. Since she couldn't expand on the ability itself, should she try to develop skills? She asked Ako for advice. Ako's situation was similar; her original ability was only magic release, and all her other skills were self-developed.

"Oh, oh! Lisa-senpai wants to change jobs?" Ako's eyes lit up. "Ako thinks that to have output as an alchemist, you still need to learn poison, right? You can poison individuals, or create AoE, make bait..."

"Speaking of poison..." Lisa picked up a small bag of cookies. They were all purplish-black, looking ominous. "I haven't dared to try the effect of this bag..."

"Then how about we try it on that?" Shiko pointed to a monster lying on the ground, almost buried by rocks. It seemed to have survived the earthquake, but it wasn't in good shape either; at least it couldn't move.

So Ryo and Kita steered the hot air balloon in that direction. Lisa took out a cookie and threw it towards the monster.

"It kind of feels like feeding a cat," Yukina commented.

A half-crippled paw reached out, fumbled on the ground, grabbed the cookie, and quickly retracted. The group waited for a long time, but there was no movement.

"Did it... did it really eat it?" Lisa couldn't help but doubt.

"It ate it." Only Yukina could clearly see the monster's movements in the shadows.

Lisa threw a few more cookies, and the monster ate them with the same speed.

"It really is like feeding a cat..." Kita also started to complain.

After waiting for a long time, there was still no reaction. Instead, the monster let out a few barks at them, as if begging for food.

"..." The group even found the monster a bit cute.

"Maybe I should try it myself?" Lisa picked up the last cookie. "Nijika, support me immediately if anything goes wrong." Seeing Nijika nod, Lisa took a small bite of the cookie.

Her expression immediately turned strange. "What's wrong?" Nijika, startled, immediately activated her ability, and Lisa was enveloped in starlight.

"N-no, it's fine," she replied within the light. "It's grape-flavored."

"Huh?" Everyone was stunned for a moment.

"This cookie is grape-flavored, that's all." Lisa couldn't even feel any special buffs.

A strange expression immediately spread across everyone's faces.

Then, Lisa took out another bag of cookies. This bag was all blood-red.

As expected, this bag was strawberry-flavored.

There were also gray cookies with black pepper flavor, pale white cookies with vanilla flavor, and even a rainbow-colored cookie with lollipop flavor.

"(Cookies... there are so many flavors?)" This was the thought of everyone present.

Chapter 26: The Warmth of Rose Quartz

The new cookies Lisa made had no other effects besides their bizarre flavors.

But, enriching everyone's menu was a good thing, right?

"Poison and the like can wait for now..." Lisa covered her face.

The hot air balloon ascended again.

"What do we do about this monster...?" Rinko pointed at the monster still trapped in the rock crevice.

"..." For a moment, no one spoke. Logically, they should kill any monster they encounter, but asking them to attack a monster they had just fed, one that was described as "cat-like," felt a bit...

"Let's... just leave it here?" Yukina made a difficult decision.

"Meow--" At that moment, the monster, seeing the hot air balloon rising, let out a timely meow.

"Mhm." Yukina and Sayo both turned their faces away.

"Ahhh, I can't take it," Kita was completely unable to resist the allure of such cuteness. "At least let it out!"

"A~n~d~ s~o~, t~h~e~ m~o~n~s~t~e~r~ w~a~s~ n~a~m~e~d~, a~n~d~ f~o~l~l~o~w~e~d~ t~h~e~ h~e~r~o~ t~e~a~m~ o~n~ t~h~e~i~r~ j~o~u~r~n~e~y~ t~o~ d~e~f~e~a~t~ t~h~e~ d~e~m~o~n~ l~o~r~d~..." A voice with a similar pace to Rinko's, tinged with a slight laziness, interjected.

Lisa looked in surprise towards the source of the voice. "Moca?" It turned out to be Shiko wearing a white wig, imitating Aoba Moca.

"Ah~ Shiko, if you have something to say, you can just say it directly. This is startling... And why are you so familiar with Moca? And with Kasumi and the others too."

"A~f~t~e~r~ a~l~l~, S~h~i~k~o~ i~s~n~'~t~ t~h~a~t~ k~i~n~d~ o~f~ p~e~r~s~o~n~." Shiko only answered the first half of Lisa's question, pretending not to hear the second half.

"Alright, change back now." Nijika criticized, but with a smile playing on her lips. "If we keep this up, we'll just be padding the word count."

"Padding the word count?" Lisa asked, bewildered.

In the end, out of a strange sense of pity, they managed to move the boulder pinning the monster. The monster didn't pull any classic tropes like immediately pledging loyalty, but instead it scurried off somewhere, showing no signs of injury. Skipping this small interlude, the hot air balloon continued forward, though one person looked somewhat regretful.

"Still, I can't figure out how to learn skills." Lisa sighed, slumped over the luggage. After encountering NFO, she had also started using terms like "learning skills."

"How about you try what I did, and just throw a massive amount of cookies down? Look," Shiko waved her hand, and numerous iron spears materialized in the air, smashing into the ground with a loud noise, kicking up a cloud of dust.

"That many... I can't do that. And the efficiency of attacking like that is too low compared to you guys, right? I want a powerful and special ability, like the one Nijika had yesterday," Lisa said.

Everyone brainstormed ideas for Lisa, but nothing came to mind for a while. Then, Ryo spoke up.

"Why are you fixated on 'being like Nijika'?" she said. "You have things you can do."

Nijika chimed in beside Lisa. "Exactly, I have things I can do, and Lisa-chan has things Lisa-chan can do."

"You mean..." Lisa seemed to grasp something, but before she could finish, Yukina, who had been watching the distance, interrupted them. "We're here."

Here? Where is here? Everyone looked outside. On the river, a landslide had formed a natural dam, blocking the river and creating a small lake from the water flowing from upstream. Whether it was due to silt or something else, the water in the lake was murky.

"What do we do?" Everyone looked at Yukina. Yukina thought for a moment. "Let's blow it up."

Directly blowing up the dam and letting the accumulated water drain before it built up too much might prevent a greater disaster.

"Gulp." Kita looked at the lake below and swallowed. "Are we really going to blow it up?" She couldn't imagine what it would be like when the lake water poured down.

"Then let's do it." Shiko didn't think too much and took out the crimson [Ten Directions Illumination Sun Purification True Talisman].

"Let's fly higher first, so we don't get caught in the blast. Also, eat this first." Lisa handed Shiko and Kita some cookies that increased stats. To blow up the dam, they would be the main force.

Once everything was ready, they began their attack. Two explosions, capable of igniting the sky, echoed across the land. The lake water evaporated, and the rising steam formed small mushroom clouds. The hurricane stirred up by the explosion tore at the hot air balloon, nearly throwing them out. Fortunately, Ryo reacted in time and kept the balloon stable in the air.

"Cough... I've never used this move in the sky before, I was careless... Cough, cough..." Kita was most affected by the steam, and coupled with the exhaustion from using her ultimate skill, she had to support Ichiri with one hand and cover her mouth with the other to cough. Ichiri was also leaning on the luggage. Everyone involuntarily started coughing.

"Cough... Cough!" Kita realized she seemed to have coughed something out. Looking at her hand, she immediately screamed and threw the object to the ground.

"W-w-w... worms..." She shrunk behind the others, pointing at the thing on the ground. Shiko took a look; it was clearly a worm, and it was still moving!

Did Kita cough that out? She felt a wave of nausea, something rising in her stomach. She gagged a few times, and something fell out of her mouth. The others looked; it was a few more worms.

Shiko's face turned green. "What is this? Should I be holding a kitchen knife and shouting 'You're lying!'?" she joked, still trembling. The others covered their mouths, not knowing what else they might cough up.

"Ugh!" Ako was also affected. Worms fell to the ground before her horrified eyes. "Hehe... this is just bug magic..." she seemed to be trying to comfort herself.

"Bug magic isn't something you can just say, Ako... Ugh..." Shiko forced herself to lean on the box.

"Is it the steam?" Yukina, who was in relatively better condition, noticed something strange in the still lingering smoke.

"Cough... Could it be that there was something in the lake water originally, and we blew it into the air?" Shiko thought of the murky lake water.

"Probably," Yukina said. "Let's get out of here first!"

The hot air balloon swayed and moved again. After being torn by the hurricane, it had also sustained some damage, and Shiko couldn't repair it for the time being. The floodwaters were surging down the river, and it seemed to have affected the groundwater system as well. The surrounding area was unstable. The hot air balloon landed on a high ground far from the scene.

Everyone's condition was already dire; they could barely stand without supporting each other. Yukina, Nijika, and Lisa were in the best shape. They moved everyone to the ground and had them lie down. Nijika, while coughing, tried to heal everyone with starlight, but the effect was poor.

"What on earth is going on..." Nijika had never seen such a situation. Everyone kept spitting out worms from their mouths, several were starting to develop fevers and talk nonsense. Yukina looked like she was about to collapse too.

Lisa stood blankly in place, seemingly at a loss.

"Lisa-chan, quickly try your cookies... Cough!" Nijika urged her.

"No." Lisa snapped back to reality. "I think I've learned something new." She opened her hand and produced cookies none of them had ever seen before. White, and worm-shaped.

"Uh? Are you sure?" Nijika looked at the shape and was very reluctant to eat them.

"Certain," Lisa said. "After encountering that steam, I naturally learned this. I'm fine, aren't I? This is the antidote for this illness." With that, she forced the cookie into Nijika's mouth, then went to the others and fed them the cookies.

"Pfft--" A moment later, they spat out a mass of bloody fluid, and the illness was instantly cured. The worms all over the ground turned to ash.

"That's amazing," Kita felt healthy again.

"You've gained a new skill, Lisa," Yukina said.

Lisa finally realized. She had learned a new skill without even realizing it? She gave a wry smile. "It's a shame this skill is only useful at times like this, and it's not as strong as Nijika's."

But then her expression brightened. "But, this is something only I can do, right?"

Nijika smiled at the words, "Yeah, that's something only Lisa-chan can do."

Ryo teased, "After all, she's the 'Warm Rose Quartz'." Anyone with even a little knowledge of Roselia could tell who their song was about.

Hearing this, Lisa's face turned bright red.

"Ahhh, don't talk about it, it's so embarrassing!"

Amidst everyone's teasing, Shiko finished repairing the hot air balloon.

It was time to depart.

Chapter 27: Tidal Bore

Flying in the sky over the broken land inevitably made one feel down. Fortunately, after a few days, they left the earthquake-stricken area and returned to a place where it seemed like nothing had happened. They preferred to believe that the lush forests, rivers, and mountains were nature's delicate skin, its most normal appearance, and the devastation before was just a small patch of eczema on the earth. Leaving the disaster zone felt like the eczema on their hearts had also been healed, giving everyone more motivation. These past few days, they had explored more areas.

"The hot air balloon should be safe now, right?" Kita muttered as she controlled the balloon's ascent and descent. They hadn't used the hot air balloon at first because they were worried Shiko's balloon couldn't handle the weight of ten people plus a pile of luggage, but judging from their experiences these past few days, the balloon was very reliable.

Even though they were flying in the sky, they were generally following the river. After all, if Poppin'Party were in this river basin, they would likely live near the water source too.

A thick, three-headed serpent leaped out of the river below, nearly biting the basket. Startled, Kita quickly controlled the balloon to ascend a little. Several sounds came from below; others were taking action. The severed body of the giant serpent crashed onto the water's surface, creating waves almost as high as the basket, visible even to her. The giant waves stirred up new splashes, which eventually canceled out the roaring tide that was approaching from a distance.

"Looks like we won't see the tidal bore today," Lisa said with a hint of regret.

"Wasn't that just now big enough?" Shiko comforted her, though she also felt a little disappointed.

As the river gradually widened, they began to notice the phenomenon of the river's twice-daily tidal bore. The tide came from downstream, initially just a faint white line, but the mighty roar of a thousand troops was already audible. As time passed, the white line gradually took on a clear form. The waves, carrying mud and sand, surged upstream, rebelling against their source, their chaotic mud battering the riverbanks. Disregarding the small insects flying overhead, they continued their conquest further upstream until they were worn away.

The others were initially bewildered, thinking it was a strange attack like the previous worms. It wasn't until Shiko explained that it was merely a geographical phenomenon occurring under special terrain.

"There's a tidal bore like this in my hometown; it's famous nationwide," Shiko said, a rare hint of nostalgia in her voice.

The principle behind this tidal bore, in brief, is that the river mouth is shaped like a trumpet. The tidal fluctuations are compressed, with the back wave pushing the front wave, creating a spectacular tidal bore. There is no moon here, yet there is a tide; some things cannot be overthought. However, by the time the tidal bore reached this point, it was no longer spectacular, its height comparable to ordinary sea waves.