Earth-san Level Up Vol 2 Chap 10 Part 1 (Patreon)

Sasara and Lulu also Got Jobs

By the time they reached the safety zone, the area was red and twilight.

Meiko was relieved to see the shift in celestial time that had not been present in the Loli-Musume Dungeon, which was a close call.

"It's often said that it's the time of reckoning, isn't it?"

Sasara muttered to herself as she gazed out the window of the Japanese house at the torii gates lining the mountain slope.

"Yeah. It sure looked like we were going to get lost in a godforsaken place."

Meiko picked up on Sasara's words as she lit the fire in the hearth.

Firewood was stacked next to the houses, but it seemed they had to provide their own fire, so Ruru ignited the wood with a lighter she had in her backpack.

"Omagatoki, desu?"

"Yes. The old people of Japan used to be afraid of dusk, when it started to get dark. They thought they might meet a demon or see a child going away. That's why it's called the time of meeting demons, or the time of meeting demons."

Meiko tells Ruru's question, who is standing by Meiko, staring at her work.

"Ha! Speaking of which, in Nippon anime, if everyone is playing together in Jinja at dusk, watch out Deeesu, if the background music is playing Kanakanakana, you're out Deeesu!"

"Ruru, that's not background music, that's the sound of a cicada called Higurashi."

"Ruru, you're right. I thought it was a Nippon-style horror show.

While the two of them were talking, Meiko was thinking of a scene like that.

She didn't come up with the name of the work or anything, but surely, such a scene seemed very likely.

Even Meiko, a modern person, feels something eerie at dusk like that, so people in the past must have been even scarier.

The dusk in this mountain dungeon accentuated the eeriness of such an encounter.

Vermilion torii gates cast their shadows on the reddish stone pavement, and outside the gates, the mountain trees rustled their leaves as if to announce the beginning of the time of the monsters.

This may be a scene of the time of meeting that Meiko and her friends do not know, but that Japanese people used to see.

Meiko and Ruru also stare at the mountain scenery beside Sasara as the fire is lit on the hearth.

They are not very talkative, but try to look wince-worthy for the moment.

However, the scenery captured on their phones did not have the eeriness that they were feeling.

Rather, the sea of clouds spreading out from the foot of the mountain was shining in a reddish-gold color, making it an ordinary beautiful scene.

Well, this is fine because it is beautiful, but for Meiko, who wanted to show everyone outside that there is such an eerie time of day, it was a bit of a failure.

An early owl began to hoot and hoot, and night was upon us in no time.

When the sun had completely set, the lanterns that were all over the mountain were lit.

The red infinity torii, illuminated by the lanterns, had a horrifying quality that seemed to take one to a land of ghosts, and a mysteriousness that reminded one of a place where a god resides.

"Maybe the enemies change at night."

Meiko said to the drastically changed dungeon.

The two of us were thinking the same thing, so we nodded back.

Whatever the case, they were too scared to go out into the field.

Night has come indoors as well, and the fire in the hearth that we had just lit stretched the shadows of the three of us on the wall. It should have been a safe place, but there was something atmospheric about it.

Inside the hearth, we roasted rabbit meat dropped from Pestle Rabbit from time to time.

Ruru dexterously sharpened a branch she had picked up from outside with her Sickle and stabbed it into the rabbit meat.

Each of us had one such weapon and interacted with the rabbit meat attached to the tip in a serious manner.

Sasara was the cautious one, working from a distance, while Ruru kept close to the burning wood, avoiding direct fire.

Meiko was a geezer.

Meiko's wooden skewer broke when it caught fire, and the rabbit meat dove into the firewood like a roasted sweet potato.

Three different meats were prepared.

The three of us gobbled up the rabbit meat, dripping with oil, and said to each other how delicious it was.

If we hadn't encouraged each other like that, I would have cried.

It was still better because we were all together, but the current situation of staying overnight in the mountains at night had planted the seeds of homesickness deep in the hearts of the three, who were only 15 years old.

By the nostalgic colors of the hearth fire, I could feel the seeds growing.

The three of us noticed this and distracted ourselves with idle chatter to prevent the seeds from germinating.

Meiko was the only one who was teary-eyed in a different way, as her meat had a lot of burnt bits on it.

After finishing the meal, we wiped our bodies with towels soaked with Ruru's water trick and had some free time.

Meiko didn't want to waste that kind of time, so she applied [Synthetic Enhancement] to her equipment and enhanced it.

She wanted to do as much as she could while she had the time, since her magic power would recover over time.

Ruru also wants to increase her magic power as much as she can, so she nin~nin~s out the window into the garden.

"Oh?"

Suddenly, Sasara speaks up with a question mark on top of her head.

"What's wrong?"

Meiko asks Sasara, stopping the [Synthetic Enhancement].

Apparently Sasara was looking at her status.

"Next to the job, it says it can be changed, Meiko, what does this mean?"

"What, seriously?"

Meiko's eyes widened.

On the one hand, it was a good thing, but on the other hand, it was also a bad thing.

According to the professor, it had been proven that jobs were available after entering the vortex gate on the first level.

The gate to enter could be either blue or red.

Conversely, no matter how long one adventures in the first level, if one does not enter the gate, one cannot get a job.

Meiko and her friends had not yet entered the gate in this dungeon.

And yet, the fact that I was able to get a job meant that this dungeon was not as clearly delineated from layer to layer as a gate.

What's more, it was also a discovery that you could get a job even if you straddled the layers like that, but that's not important now.

Meiko recalls a Japanese Doll that came out of nowhere.

The switchover point is likely to be near this safety zone.

Is there a return gate on the way?

Or is it a dungeon that you cannot leave until you clear it?

Meiko felt impatient.

But whatever the case, the first thing to do was to celebrate.

She felt sorry for Sasara if she got impatient because Sasara was able to get a job.

"Congratulations! Come on, Ruru, Ruru, give me your status too?"

"Nyah!"

"Now that you say you have a choice of jobs, tell me next to Sasara?"

"Fue?...Oh, really!"

Meiko turned to Sasara, leaving Ruru alone as he immediately began staring at the status.

"So, so...what can Sasara choose?"

Meiko put her thoughts aside for the moment and gave her honest blessing.