Princess Fischl

Chapter 71

The next morning, I was awakened by sunlight so treacherous that it managed to find a small gap in the curtains to fall directly on my eyes. To be honest, it was hard to force myself to open my eyes when I felt such a comfortable softness in my arms and under my head, but the memories of the previous day gave me the much-needed motivation.

Opening my eyes and looking around, I noticed that I was holding Saeko in my arms, while my head was comfortably resting on Kyoko sensei's thighs.

"That feels good," I said, focusing on the feeling of Saeko's chest pressing against me.

- Haah. I have to get up. - I sighed heavily and regretfully carefully rose from the sofa, trying not to disturb the sleeping girls too much.

After walking a little towards the kitchen, where I felt Oz's presence, I still stopped and looked at Takashi sleeping on the floor. Although I was angry at him, but looking at the marks left on his face, I still took pity on him, lifted him up and sat him in a chair, and began to check his condition.

Apart from his slightly changed appearance, I didn't find any negative aspects, rather the opposite. His body had clearly become much stronger, and in the area of his heart, something like a source of anemo energy was felt, from which energy passed through the whole body in something similar to blood vessels.

Having become interested in this, I decided to check the two girls as well. And the result was almost identical, except for the absence of external signs of what happened yesterday. Having seen three similar examples, I took up checking myself.

Unlike the others, I haven't changed in terms of reserves or anything like that. I've only received changes in my physical characteristics. I don't know how much it affected, but my body has clearly become stronger and more robust.

- Good morning, my lady, - Oz greeted me in the kitchen. - It seems that what was planned did not go as planned.

- "yawn", yes. But everything seems to be in order. - I yawned sweetly and sat down at the table. - Did anything interesting happen while we were sleeping?

- Actually, yes. - the raven nodded. - Based on my observations, zombies become more active at night. They start moving and seem to gain the ability to track people. Which was not observed last night.

- That is, they are developing. - I came to a conclusion that was not very pleasant for the inhabitants of this world. - It seems that my goal of helping the settlement of survivors has just become more complicated.

"You can still help with the survivors' initiation," Oz made a sensible suggestion.

- Maybe so. The main thing is to find out what went wrong yesterday. - I nodded before getting up from the table, deciding to start cooking.

Since it seemed appropriate to make a very filling breakfast, I decided to cook one of my favorite meat dishes, called "rasti gora". Not a single birthday of mine in this life has passed without it.

First of all, I took 16 medium-sized potatoes from the inventory and peeled them, cut some into strips and some into cubes. Then I fried the potatoes in a heated frying pan with olive oil.

After finishing the potatoes, I moved on to the beef steaks, each about the size of a palm. To make sure there was one serving for each, I rubbed each of the 12 steaks with salt and pepper. Then I added butter and rosemary to the pan and heated the pan over high heat.

Once the pan was hot enough I put the steaks in, frying them for 3 minutes on each side. Once the steaks were cooked all I had to do was put them on the plates correctly.

After almost an hour of cooking, I finally started to set the plates on the table. And from the hallway I heard footsteps.

Turning towards the newcomer, I saw Takashi, who, under my instantly cold gaze, froze for a moment in the passageway.

- Good morning, Gojo-san, - the guy greeted me.

- Good morning, - I answered coldly. - Busujima and Hayashi, are you awake?

- Yes. They are in the restroom. - Takashi answered.

- So. What the hell happened yesterday? - I looked at the guy intently and only a fool would not understand that I was angry.

- The magic circle was overloaded. I underestimated how much energy you could give out at once. - The guy grimaced, running his palm over the traces of his failure.

"You know, right now I really want to hit you in the face," I said confidentially.

"I'd prefer if you didn't do that," Takashi smiled tensely. At the same time, wincing in pain, he unconsciously reached for his face again.

- Hm? Does something hurt? When I checked you, everything seemed quite normal.

- Everything is fine with the body. As I already said, this circle nourishes not only the body but also the soul, for which such a pressure of energy was too strong. - running his fingers over the black marks on his face, he continued. - These marks appeared not from damage to the body, but from damage to the soul.

"Are Saeko and Kyoko okay?" I frowned, worried.

- Yes. I don't know what you did, but they look like they should after a proper initiation. - Takashi nodded.

- I pulled you out of the circle, and then went into it with the others to take some of the load on myself.

"It was a dangerous decision," Takashi said, wincing in pain again. "We're very lucky that everything ended well."

- Haaah. - I sighed heavily and sat down at the table, finally losing the mood to start a scolding. - I think you've punished yourself enough. I doubt that the soul is easy to heal.

"Not simple," the time traveler nodded before also sitting down at the table.

"Mr. Takashi, why don't you tell me how the initiation was originally supposed to go?" Oz asked.

- In essence, it's all the same, only first the magic circle had to gradually fill with energy, and when it was filled it would need to be fed for 20 seconds, that's all.

- To put it simply, you simply forgot to instruct me on how much energy to supply at a time? - To be honest, I was already starting to boil again from how stupid this mistake was.

"Even gods make mistakes," Takashi shrugged.

- In that case, if one day my arrow hits your ass instead of a zombie's head, you won't mind? Everyone makes mistakes, right? - I asked with a sweet smile.

My words clearly made the time traveler feel uneasy. However, before he could come up with an answer, the girls came into the kitchen.