Quest Debrief

The next day, we gathered at Penpen's Home again.

"Man, yesterday was rough… The danger was way out of proportion for 10 SP."

"Oh really? Ours was an emergency quest with a time limit."

"Ours didn't have a time limit, but leaving it alone would've let the contamination spread, so we had to rush anyway. Did you know? If you touch Defilement with your bare hands, this awful taste spreads through your mouth…!"

What the heck? That's terrifying.

"After half a year of training, Nika-chan learned to purify it by touching with her hands and bare skin, but even then she still somehow tastes bitterness and harshness on her tongue. It's probably a rejection response showing up in her taste buds…"

"That's… how do I put it, my condolences?"

"Anticipating something like this might happen, if not for the steak I got from Penpen-shi, we wouldn't have endured it."

"Happy to be of service!"

I see, so they'd prepared a palate cleanser in advance.

"But purifying by hand alone takes forever, so I actually considered just having her eat it. Holding it in the mouth is way more efficient for purification."

"Hey now, eating dirt would wreck your stomach."

"The Defilement kills all microbes and bacteria, so that's not really a problem. It's just that the taste, texture, and total lack of moisture are the worst… It's just that slurping muddy water would be hundreds of times better… It's just that it drains massive stamina and willpower to counteract…"

Isn't that a huge freaking problem? Stacking "it's just" after "it's just" while the issues keep piling up… sounds exactly like our workplace.

"Because of all that, it took about 3 days to fully purify a 2-meter radius of land. If I hadn't had the hotcakes from Penpen in my inventory, I wouldn't have made it… Right, Nika-chan?"

"That's right, Spirit-sama. Penpen-sama is a lifesaver…! The person I respect most after you, Spirit-sama."

"Oh right, it took you two a whole day to finish the quest. Oh, and Tria-chan and Alto-chan both said 'Spirit-sama is calling me today' and vanished off to your side."

… Come to think of it, I hadn't checked how much time had passed on this side, real-world time aside.

"On our end it felt like a few hours? I'm starting to get used to the time discrepancy… or maybe not…"

"Nika-chan's events seem to have a higher time acceleration rate…! And a higher suffering rate too…!"

"They say fun times pass quickly and painful times feel longer～."

"Physics has been defeated."

"As long as we're not jumping to the past or future, science can still explain it… probably."

Probably. We're not jumping… right?

When I talk to Coworker in real life later, he's not going to say he's still in the middle of yesterday's quest… right?

"You called your 1st character, Alto-chan, to help with the quest too, right?"

"Yeah. Monsters kept swarming us during the purification, so I needed an escort. On top of that, the things were in a tattered zombie state from the Defilement, so I couldn't even harvest materials from them."

"Purifying disgustingly foul Defilement while getting attacked by monsters that don't even drop materials… That was rough in every sense."

"You must be exhausted～. Here, Nika-chan, have some hot chocolate."

"Thank you, Penpen-sama. I'm so happy that tears are coming out."

Any for us too? There is? That's Penpen for you!

"By the way, I tried accepting an SP Quest from the Adventurers' Guild today too."

"Oh, you took one… You took it today?"

"That was quick."

"Well, that's just the usual time-space distortion. It was herb gathering and delivery."

She snuck into the depths of a Chimera-inhabited cave as Gin-chan to gather rare herbs, then switched to Penpen to handle the preparation before delivering them.

Apparently it was helping out an alchemist working hard to save their sick childhood friend.

"That was 5 SP, so it was probably a pretty sweet deal!"

"Nice～. I wanna take more low-reward easy quests too. Grinding the easy ones is way more efficient."

"A lot of the quests being offered to you seem to be Nika-chan related, though."

"It is a unique skill after all, being able to purify Defilement."

"Antitrust violation!! You guys can take purification quests too!!"

No way. We can't even stomach Defilement purification.

"Still, one way or another, quests we can actually handle have been coming our way as SP quests."

"That's just how quests from Ms. Receptionist work. She matches you with jobs that suit your skills. That's the Guild's whole thing."

"Ooh… true, but how does the Guild even know what we're capable of? I don't remember ever reporting that we could handle Defilement before accepting the quest."

"Well, it's a game, so…"

"Right right, easy to forget, but it is a game after all."

"… Oh right! I was starting to lose track of where the game ends and reality begins. Close call, close call."

The protagonists' stats are probably shared automatically. It's a game, after all.

And it's not like getting quests tailor-made for us is a bad thing.

Alright, let's get some more quests done today too. Alto, keep working towards getting a Home. The storage is actually seriously convenient.