The next day we headed to Samaki Cave.

　The cave was just a few minutes' walk from Samaki town.
　We went inside. It was dimly lit, so we used our magic to turn on the light.

　The objective is to harvest Samakiki mushrooms.

　Samakikinoko are in high demand as they can be used to make low-grade magic potions.
　Strangely enough, they only grow in dangerous places where there are a lot of demons, so the adventurer's guild seems to often ask for them.

''Where are the mushrooms?''

　Lenya asked as she scurried about, looking around the cave.

'They say it's in the back, so it's not around here.
Oh, yeah.

　Lenya stops looking for it.

　And there, a demon appears.

　Kobold, a demon in the form of a dog. Its strength is almost equal to that of a goblin. In other words, they are small fry.
　Three of them came out. As they pounced on me, I drew my sword and easily cut them down.

　The rank of this request is D.
　It's not a very difficult request.
　Well, Kobold is probably the weakest enemy in this cave, but even the strongest of them won't be able to come up with anything that strong.

　Absorbing Kobold's body.
　Three of them.

　MP increased by 6, attack power increased by 6, speed increased by 6, and skill points gained by 6.

　HP and defense still doesn't go up.
　Now I'd like to go to a place with a difficulty level there, regardless of the request, and try to defeat a strong demon once and see if it will go up if it's a strong demon.

　We proceed to the back. There are fewer monsters than we expected, and after the first three, we only defeated two slimes.

We've come a long way. There might be mushrooms soon.

　Mek came over and said so.

'Yes. 'Well, we'll have to keep looking for it from now on.'

　We walk around, gazing around.

　Then I spot something buried in the ground.
　Mushrooms? No, no, it's not... it's like a box...

　I dug it up.

Is that a treasure chest?

　A box that looked like it contained treasure was dug up.

'Nuh? It certainly looks like a treasure chest, but it could also be a mimic. Open it carefully.
Okay.
I don't know what's in this thing.

　I'm going to open the box.
　It's locked.

"If it's locked, it must be the real thing. Do you think you can get it open with all your might?
I'm going to try.

　I put all my strength into trying to open the treasure chest.

　I put all my strength into opening it, and wham! And then there was a broken sound and a treasure chest opened.

　Inside was what looked like a red colored gemstone.

'What is this? Is it expensive?
A skill stone. You can't tell what they are by looking at them.
What are skill stones?
If you have enough skill points to acquire a skill, you'll be able to get it. The skills you can get are different depending on the stone. You can get them by excavating them from treasure chests or defeating monsters in this way, which is very rare. But you can't get it from the weakest monsters. Skill stones that allow you to learn useful skills are sold for a high price. However, I think you should learn those skills yourself.

　Essentially, it seems that skill acquisition is done with this stone.

　I've been meaning to ask you this for a while now.

It's a good idea to learn it without selling it. I'm a corpse-absorbing person, so learning the skill is rather easy for me, and Meku or Lenya should learn it.
"I can't learn skills in my body. Rainier will learn it. You don't have much skill, do you?
Are you sure?
Yeah, it's reassuring for me to know that Lenya's going to be strong.
Okay, thank you.

　I hand the skill stone to Lenya.

　Raina takes the skill stone and meditates for a while.
　And then the stone goes poof! And when I thought it glowed brightly, the stone was gone before I knew it.
　Will it disappear once it learns the skill?

Did you get it right?
Meow! Fejikaruappu? And that was a skill.
Physical enhancement, huh? That's a pretty good skill. It goes well with your fighting style. It was fortunate that I found the treasure chest.
I'm glad you listened to that fortune teller.

　That fortune teller might have been a pretty credible fortune teller.
　Well, that would raise my anxiety about the mark on my right hand, but....

Well, let's resume the search for the mushrooms.

　We resumed our search for the mushrooms.

Here it is.

　Raina found some samaki mushrooms, harvested them and brought them to me.
　That was pretty easy to find.

　Apparently there is a poisonous mushroom that is very similar to Samakikinoko, so I'll evaluate it.
　The results confirmed that it was indeed a Samakikinoko.

　Then we continued harvesting.

　There were the occasional poisonous mushrooms mixed in, but since there was a lot of them growing, it was pretty easy to gather them.
　The amount we asked for was 30, and we gathered that number quickly, but we gathered them sooner than we expected, so we decided to harvest more.

　In all, we harvested 50 bottles.
　I'll give 30 of them to you by request and sell the rest as normal.

'We've finished collecting them, let's go home.
Meow.
No.

　We walked towards the exit of the cave and came to the exit area.

　Then.

!

　There's something near the exit.

　I've never seen it ... probably a demon.

　It walks on two legs and is humanoid.
　Its color is reddish-black all over.
　It has a face that looks like a potential fear monger, hands with sharp claws, and large wings on its back.

　A demon with a demonic appearance was standing at the entrance of the cave, blocking the entrance.