RE:WRITE

4.0 Zero_Chapter 4: Smile

I woke up at dawn.

I looked at Clare on the other side of the smoldering campfire and made sure she was asleep.

Looks like it worked, I thought.

Last night I experimented by putting a longer 'nested' code on myself. I set it so that I would wake up if anything came less than 20 feet close to us, if Clare woke up or if dawn broke.

I sat up inside my sleeping bag and faced towards the East but instead of appreciating the beautiful sunrise, I began to think about several questions that had popped up inside my head after yesterday's events.

Firstly, when I saw everyone's status yesterday I was quite shocked. Odog had an ability called "Reloader" that let him reload his crossbow really quickly, and most of the bandits had abilities like "Divine Ironing" or "Fast Laundry", which were really quite depressing.

Clare had an ability called "Sunshine" that made her feel bright and cheerful and spread
it's effects to anyone that saw her...

I sighed.

None of these were in the original game but even more surprisingly, everyone seemed to
have abilities! In the game, only the hero and the demon king had special abilities
which were based on the results of a personality quiz.

Secondly, there were some weird skills that were making me a little nervous, but I guess I'll have to think about them later.

"You can stop pretending to be asleep now" I said, without turning around.

Clare jumped, clearly surprised at being found out so easily, but my heightened senses made it pretty easy to notice when her breathing changed so I instantly knew when she had woken up.

"I'll make us some breakfast and tidy up the camp so you should go clean up at the stream down there" I said, pointing towards a patch of trees a few feet away.

Clare hesitated a little before nodding and going towards the stream. By the time she was back, I had cleaned up the camp and made breakfast using Re:write.
Clare was slightly surprised by the amount of food laid out over the table that had appeared out of thin air but she sat down on the seat on the other end. She only started eating when I did but I guess it's understandable to be cautious in this sort of situation.

"So Clare, will you be returning to your village now that the bandits have been dealt with?" I
asked.

"Yesh" she said with a mouthful of bread. She swallowed. "But um, Kai. I wanted to ask you a question, if that's alright?"

"There's no harm in asking, so go ahead" I replied.

"Well, I know it's rude to ask about someone's status but what did you use to beat those bandits? I've never heard of anything like it before! Was it an ability or a created skill?" she asked, eyes shining.

Created Skill? Don't tell me!

"Uh, well actually I don't know what created skills are..." I replied sheepishly

"Eh! You don't know about created skills? Um, Kai, you wouldn't happen to be some creepy hermit or something right?" she raised an eyebrow

"Haha, well you see, I come from a really far away place and we don't have created skills there so of course I wouldn't know!" I said.

"Far away? Everyone on Erath knows about created skills you know." she raised her other eyebrow too.

"Oh, my home's across the ocean so we don't really interact with other people that often" I said with a perfect poker face. I'd always been a talented liar.