Chapter 5: Skill Testing

When I returned to my room from meeting Marquis Karazuka, the servants had already prepared a meal for me.

The dishes served were a soup packed with meat and vegetables, potato salad, and black bread.

I know this.

Black bread is supposed to be really hard, and you soften it in soup before eating it.

That’s what I thought as I picked it up, but it was surprisingly soft, with a slightly sour taste—yet pretty good.

The soup had vegetables that looked like eggplant and cabbage, and the meat was probably from some pig-like creature.

It had a bit of a gamey smell, reminding me of the wild boar meat I once ate.

The seasoning was mostly salt with a bit of spice.

Just like I imagined, spices seem to be quite valuable here.

As for the potato salad, the texture was sticky, and the potatoes were sweet—definitely not regular potatoes.

But it wasn’t quite sweet potato either.

Some kind of unknown tuber.

Still, it tasted good.

There was also something like cucumber mixed in, but it had a sweetness to it as well.

I bet it would taste great pickled.

Actually, this isn’t mayonnaise, but there’s something similar being used here.

Maybe olive oil or something like that, but my taste buds aren’t refined enough to tell.

Well, as long as it tastes good, that’s all that matters.

But as I ate, it really started to sink in that I’d come to another world.

“Well, anyway.
Now that I’ve eaten and calmed down a bit, time to get to work.”

The thing I absolutely need to do right now.

Yes, it’s time to test my Skill.

I sat down on the bed, stretched out my hand, and called out the name of my Skill.

“‘Gacha Meister’—open!!”

Well, I don’t actually need to say it out loud, and the screen had already appeared before I even finished speaking, just like a status window.

But atmosphere is important.

“Hmm…
Yeah, it really does look like a mobile game screen.”

The window that appeared in front of me showed something like a map of a town, with several icons surrounding it.

However, more than half of them were dimmed out, and some of the buildings in the town were even chained up.

In other words, they’re locked.

The selectable options were a house-like building in the town, a human-shaped silhouette on the right side of the screen, a warehouse-like icon also on the right, a capsule machine icon at the bottom, and a menu icon in the bottom right.

Well, let’s go through them one by one.

I started by tapping the human silhouette icon on the right side of the screen.

…Yeah, just as I expected, this seems to be the “Friends” icon.

That’s what the explanation text on the next screen said.

According to it, you can register up to 100 friends, and each friend grants you 10 “Friend Points” per day.

These Friend Points can be used for a “Friend Gacha,” which costs 100 points per pull.

So if you have 100 friends, you can do a 10-pull every day.

Can I make 100 friends!!

On top of that, it seems you can also chat with your friends.

Seriously?

Isn’t that kind of dangerous information?

I don’t know how communication works in this world, but from what I’ve seen so far, it doesn’t look like they have phones or anything like that.

Just having a communication function like this could be enough to get me detained by the country.

“……………………Yeah, better keep this quiet.”

I’m leaving here tomorrow morning anyway.

Marquis Karazuka seemed like a decent guy, but even so, this feels like something I shouldn’t share.

And besides, having my very first friend be some tough-looking old guy… how is that?

I don’t necessarily need a beautiful woman, but at least someone I can actually be friends with would be nice.

Yeah, I’ll put that on hold.

Next, the warehouse…

Well, no need to check that.

It probably just contains snacks, a wooden stick, and the running shoes.

So I skipped that and tapped on the house-like building instead.

The screen changed, revealing the interior of a dimly lit bar.

Behind a counter lined with stools stood a refined middle-aged man with a beard, polishing a glass with a white cloth.

“Welcome.
Haven’t seen your face before.
Welcome to the Meister Bar.”

“Oh… it’s talking to me…”

“This is a place where you can accept and report quests, as well as buy and sell useful information.
So, what will it be today?”

“Quests?”

There are quests?

This really is like a game.

Do I complete things within this Skill?

As I tilted my head in thought, several options appeared on the screen.

Accept Quest, Report Quest, Search Information, and Sell Information.

For now, I selected Accept Quest.

“Here are the quests currently available.”

With those words from the master, several quests appeared.

Among them were things like “Perform gacha ○ times” and “Register ○ friends.”

The rewards listed included familiar mobile game items like “Gacha Stones” and “Guaranteed Tickets.”

By the way, quests like “Perform gacha 10 times” and “Equip a gacha item” were already completed, so I reported them.

Apparently, the rewards would be sent to a “Gift Box.”

…But putting that aside, among the quests listed separately from those, I found something unbelievable.

There was a category labeled “Story Quest,” and most of the quests under it were hidden.

However, only the very first one was unlocked.

And it read:

“Leave the Telgen Kingdom.”

A quest that was almost too perfectly timed.