Haruka’s top priority right now is ensuring the girls’ safety—since the delinquents are sure to come after them. To do that, he needs to get them out of the forest as soon as possible.
A little while later, Haruka encounters a giant Orc. Seeing this as a good training opportunity, he decides to teach the girls how to defend themselves properly. He tells them to stand back and watch as he takes care of it.
Haruka charges at the Orc with his stick, and in response, the Orc raises its club to smash him into the ground. However, when the monster looks down—it realizes Haruka is gone.
Where did he go?
Turns out, Haruka is hiding behind a tree. With how slow the Orc is, there’s no way it can hit him. But if Haruka wants to defeat it, he needs a plan.
He remembers the nerds telling him that physical attacks aren’t effective against Orcs. The safest way to defeat them is by using magic.
Haruka quickly pulls up his status window to check his available magic. Thanks to his Packing skill, he has access to all elements. But before he can cast a spell, the Orc finds his hiding spot and destroys the tree with its club.
Haruka is forced to dodge a series of attacks until he finally has enough. Appearing behind the Orc, he strikes it with his stick—and just like that, the Orc drops dead.
…Wait, what?
Haruka is shocked. He wasn’t expecting that, considering physical attacks aren’t supposed to work against Orcs. The girls, however, are upset—because they didn’t actually get to learn anything from watching him.
So, Haruka apologizes and promises to use magic next time.
The next time Haruka spots an Orc minding its own business, he prepares a flame spell and casually throws it at the monster.
The fireball hits the Orc’s face, and—just like that—the Orc goes down and never gets back up.
The girls are even more frustrated. If Haruka keeps instantly killing everything, they’ll never learn how to defend themselves properly.
Later that night, the group has a lot of Orc meat on hand, so they celebrate with a barbecue. While everyone is having fun, Haruka is busy in the background, setting up traps around the area to ensure they won’t be attacked in their sleep.
His magic tent has stealth properties that prevent detection by enemies, so with this setup, he thinks they’ll be safe.
Next, he plans the route for the journey tomorrow. Activating his Math skill, he starts analyzing the best path ahead when suddenly—
His Perception skill alerts him to someone nearby.
Curious, Haruka goes to investigate.
From the shadows, he sees four male figures emerging. At first, he fears it might be the delinquents, but as the figures step into the light, he recognizes them—
It’s the Gym Bros.
Haruka lets out a sigh of relief. At least he won’t have to fight them.
Meanwhile, the class rep has been looking for Haruka and notices him talking to the four guys from a distance.
Even though they aren’t hostile, Haruka still wonders what the Gym Bros are doing out here. He assumed they were after the girls, but the Bros adamantly deny it. Instead, they reveal that they came here looking for Haruka.
He decides to believe them—but he still doesn’t understand why they went through so much effort to avoid the girls.
The Bros explain that they don’t trust the girls. They also inform Haruka of a skill even worse than Charm and Puppeteer—one that the delinquents were desperate to obtain.
Haruka remembers something—he recalls seeing an ability called “Hijack” in his status window.
That’s exactly what the Gym Bros were referring to.
The delinquents had been extremely vocal about how they wanted to use their mind-control skills. However, not once did they mention Hijack.
And she’s keeping it hidden from everyone.
Haruka decides to mess with the Bros a little.
He casually tells them that he might be the one with the Hijack skill.
However, the Gym Bros aren’t even fazed. In fact, they actually seem relieved.
Why?
Because they know Haruka is such a loner that he would never actively seek out people just to hijack their skills.
Haruka chuckles and admits that he doesn’t have the Hijack skill.
However, he does have a Subjugate skill—one that lets him turn people into his pets. But since he prefers not to use it, it doesn’t matter.
The Bros simply wanted to warn him about the dangers of the Hijack skill. Before leaving, they tell him they’ll keep an eye on the delinquents—since they seem suspicious.
Before they go, they also ask Haruka to apologize to the class rep and the rest of the girls for them.
The next morning, the girls seem more energetic than usual, draining Haruka’s patience. As he steps away, the class rep approaches him, clearly nervous. She’s about to confess that she has the Hijack skill, but Haruka cuts her off—he already knew.
She’s shocked since only the nerds were aware of her skill. She asks why he never said anything and why he still chose to help her. Haruka simply shrugs—it wasn’t a big deal to him. She worries that he should be afraid of her, since Hijack lets her steal another person’s skills by killing them, but Haruka isn’t concerned. The nerds knew about it too, yet they sealed the delinquents’ skills but left hers alone—which means they trusted her.
Haruka trusts her too because he knows she’d never kill anyone. Moved by his words, the class rep tears up, and Haruka finds it amusing—she’s been crying a lot lately. She blames him for that.
After traveling a good distance, Haruka calls for a break and pulls out juice to sell. The problem? None of the girls have money. One of them offers to pay in “other ways”, but the class rep shuts that down immediately. No money, no juice.
Back on the road, they’re ahead of schedule but won’t reach the village before nightfall, so they’ll have to camp again. Near a river, Haruka sees an opportunity to test something out. He asks the class rep to watch over the girls while he scouts alone.
She wants to come, but Haruka speeds off before she can follow.
Running through the woods, Haruka activates Magic Boost to enhance his body and casts Weight Magic to make himself lighter. With this combo, he’s faster than ever.
He suddenly has a brilliant idea—if he jumps high enough, maybe he can fly.
So, he launches himself into the sky.
…And then plummets straight back down, crash-landing into the forest floor.
Almost died. Definitely not trying that again.
When he stumbles back to camp, injured, the class rep freaks out. He casually explains that he jumped too high, gravity happened, and he almost died. Furious, the class rep scolds him for being an idiot.
To make up for it, Haruka offers to make her some berry juice (since he at least spotted berries while falling). She refuses—but Juice Girl immediately asks for some.
The next day, the group sets out again. Things go smoothly—except for one girl getting lost and some surprise Orc encounters—but despite these hiccups, they finally make it out of the forest. The girls are ecstatic, since the village isn’t far now.
Haruka, however, stays on edge. Being out in the open makes them vulnerable. With the hills blocking his view, he checks his stat window to see if he has any skills that might help.
To his surprise, a new skill appears—Air Walk. He must have unlocked it from his failed flying attempt.
Testing it out, he starts walking on air.
The class rep panics when she realizes Haruka is missing, only to look up and see him floating in the sky.
He waves down at her. “Just scouting ahead.”
From the air, everything seems peaceful at first—but then he spots a group of villagers being attacked by wolves.
Haruka descends and informs the class rep that he saw some people being attacked by wolves. She insists they go help, but Haruka is cautious—what if they’re bandits? The girls want to rescue them, but they’re too far away to make it in time. Haruka suggests ignoring them and moving on, but the class rep grabs his arm, pleading with him to reconsider.
She promises that if they turn out to be bandits, she’ll fight them off, but if they’re innocent people, she wants to save them. Haruka knew she’d insist on helping, even at her own risk, but the girls still suck at fighting.
So, he decides to handle it alone.
The villagers are too far away to run to, so Haruka tries something new.
He casts Magic Boost and Weight Magic, then adds a powerful wind spell to launch himself forward. The spell is so strong that it sucks in the class rep, but Haruka doesn’t notice—he’s too focused on Air Walking toward the village.
Mid-air, he feels something tugging on his cape.
Turning around, he’s shocked to see the class rep clinging to him for dear life. Terrified, she explains that she got caught in the wind spell and now can’t let go without falling to her death.
Welp. She’s coming along for the ride.
As they approach the fight, the class rep yells for Haruka to stop.
…About that.
He never actually planned a way to stop.
They crash-land right into the battle, instantly wiping out all the wolves and knocking the class rep unconscious.
The surviving villagers are stunned.
While the class rep is still out cold, the leader of the group thanks Haruka for saving them. He introduces himself as Ofter, and his friend as Gatech.
Turns out, they were hired by the Adventurer’s Guild to exterminate wolves attacking merchants, but they underestimated the danger and nearly got wiped out. Their carriage was destroyed, so they’ll have to carry everything back to town.
With nothing to do until the rest of the girls catch up, Haruka shares some roasted mushrooms. Gatech is shocked—these are Stamina Cap Mushrooms, an extremely rare type that instantly restores stamina.
Soon, the rest of the class arrives and are thrilled to meet Ofter’s party. They all get along well, and Ofter offers to guide them to town.
Before long, the group finally arrives at the town of Omi, overjoyed to be back in civilization.
The delinquents have been leveling up nonstop for days. Now, with their newfound strength, they plan to get revenge on the girls.
But first, they need their Puppeteer and Charm skills unsealed.
Their next target? The nerds.
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