The Principle of a Philosopher by Eternal Fool “Asley”

“Don’t you want to fix your relationship?”

“Well, y’know, this kinda thing takes some resources to get working again. Like time, more time, and even more time…”

“Guess that will have to wait, then. Hahaha…”

“And you’d better spend YOUR time more wisely! Just because you’ll exist forever doesn’t mean everything else would!”

And then Betty winked.

What, now she’s acting like she’s my big sister? I’m technically about 4,970 years older than her though!

While I was thinking about that, I received a Telepathic Call from my glutton of a Familiar, Pochi.

[Master! It’s almost your turn now! Hurry and come back already!]

[Oh, finally. I’ll be there in a bit.]

On the way, Lina called out to me while she was in the middle of her training.

“Ah, Sir Asley!”

“Huh?”

“A-are you in a hurry? I didn’t mean to interrupt you, if that’s the case…”

“Well, I have to be back at the Resistance’s hideout pretty soon.”

Warren approached, perhaps intrigued by the conversation after overhearing it.

“Oh? Why do you need to go there?”

“Well well, nice of you to ask, Warren!”

“Oh-ho…?”

“Ahahaha…”

Strange.

Their reactions weren’t as… strong… as I’d hoped to see.

“Whenever you ham things up like that, you always end up doing something foolish immediately after.”

Irene said, lowkey interrupting Warren and Lina.

Looks like she was able to get here by distracting and slipping away from Lylia, Natsu, and Mana.

And speaking of which, those three are walking over here, too.

“So, what are you doing? All our personnel has already relocated to T’oued. There isn’t anything important left over there now, is there? “

“…Nothing I can think of, no.”

Lylia said, being the first one to answer after spending a moment to consider Irene’s question.

But then Warren realized something,

“Actually, there IS still one extremely important thing there.”

“…! That’s right! The Limit Breakthrough Craft Circle!”

Irene realized that too, of course.

And then Lina, looking troubled for some reason, spoke up with some reluctance,

“Um… Sir Asley…?”

Lylia proceeded to say right after her,

“Don’t tell me you’ve never used it ever since you came back to this era…”

Irene pulled an exasperated face.

“Not even once…?”

Mana facepalmed.

“…You haven’t, have you?”

And then Natsu dealt the finishing blow,

“Whoooaaa! I wonder how many levels you’ll get! I mean, that means you haven’t used it since beating Devil King Lucider, right!?”

Only Natsu showed the kind of reaction I wanted — curiosity.

The others, on the other hand, all stared at me with dumbfounded looks in their eyes.

That’s strange. I thought Lina would at least follow up with some kind of comment by now…

Oh, wait. Warren’s started grinning again.

I knew he was going to become a good friend someday! He must be the one to help me out in this time of need.

“Miss Irene…”

Strange. Why’s he talking to Irene instead of me?

“…He’s not doing a foolish thing after all.”

“Yeah, right!”

“But still…”

Everyone gave me the same exasperated look, as if they had planned this together beforehand.

That’s excluding Natsu, of course, but man… being looked at like this feels incredibly painful.

“”…He’s such a fool…””

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

“Damn it! Now everyone’s calling me a fool again! Do they have any idea how busy I’ve been!? Gimme a break!”

Ranting to myself, I stepped onto the Teleportation Spell Circle leading to the Resistance hideout’s mess hall.

Once there, I was that Pochi had been waiting, sitting in a chair.

“Pochi! You gotta hear this!”

“No, I don’t think so, sir. Everyone made fun of you again, didn’t they?”

“Ooh! You could tell!?”

“Of course! I mean, I would have been made fun of as well, if I was there! You saved me the trouble this time, sir!”

Oh? Suddenly I’m having difficulties understanding what Pochi just said. Was she talking in dog language or something?

“Well, as a Familiar, my duty is to keep you in check, Master! BUT I am a busy dog! You’ll have to cut me some slack every now and then! Thank you very much, sir!”

“……So you also forgot, and made me take the whole blow for it?”

“That’s exactly right, Master! You catch on so quickly, our minds are practically connected!”

“God damn it! You could at least suffer through half of the embarrassment I had to face!”

“No way! I’ll die of stress if I do that!”

“What the hell does that even mean!?”

“It means I know how bad the things you had to suffer through were!”

“Man, you’re such a good friend, you know that!?”

“Aww, thank you, sir!”

“All right! Follow me!”

“For your sake, I’ll go anywhere… except into water! And fire! I’ll gladly jump into a bucket of rice, though!”

…And so, after I came to the understanding of what Pochi’s priorities were when it concerned me, we both stood in front of the Limit Breakthrough Craft Circle.

“Man, I didn’t expect there to be such a long line for this thing.”

“I’ve been lining up for you the whole morning, you know…”

“I should’ve told Miss Irene about it first… She just told me she would’ve given us priority if only we’d asked.”

“You were the one who brought back the Awakening Stone and Limit Breakthrough magecraft, so that’s only fair… But even with that privilege, you wouldn’t cut in line, would you, Master?”

Man, Pochi understands me so well when it comes to this kind of thing.

“Well, yeah, it’s important that everyone gets their power boost. C’mon, you go first.”

“Yes, sir!”

Pochi stood up on her hind legs and placed her front paw on the Craft Circle.

And when the Circle started doing its work, Pochi’s face was painted over with surprise.

“Whawhawha–!? Whoa! I’m getting even more levels than that time!?”

Which ‘that time’ is she even talking about? …Oh, well, probably the first time we learned about the Limit Breakthrough Craft Circles, I guess. We leveled up in the Adventurers’ Guild in Sodom, and Pochi’s level just went WAY up.

And now she’s already getting more levels… I wonder exactly how many she’ll get?

Now Pochi’s holding her head, most likely bracing through the continuous fanfare. Taking one glance at her, I then reached my hand out to the Craft Circle.

“–!? Whoa–!?”

The level-up fanfare rang repeatedly in my head.

It went on for so long for both of us that we had to turn to look at each other.

“……Oh, mine finally stopped, sir.”

“…Yeah, mine too.”

“How many times was that?”

“I might’ve been off by a few, but… pretty sure it was fifty.”

“F-FIFTY!?”

Damn, no need to be so dramatic, doggo.

……In all seriousness, killing the Devil King probably gave her a ton of points.

Lylia didn’t seem to have changed all that much, though, which means the fact that Pochi dealt the killing blow was actually important to the point distribution.

It’s scary to think just how much a Devil — hell, a Devil King — could have, considering that he still wasn’t dead after being reduced to pieces, and Pochi had to vaporize his remains for it to actually count.

Using Pochi’s Magic Shift Circle, I invoked my Appraisal Glasses and looked at Pochi.

――――――――――――――――――――

POCHI

LV: 302

HP: 118,201

MP: 56,088

EXP: 1,277,152,866

SPECIAL SKILLS:

–Breath Attack (Zenith)

–Air Claw

–Gigantification

–Blinding Speed

–Fortify Strength

–Flight

–Fortify Resilience

–Attack Magic (Advanced)

–Support Magic (Advanced)

–Recovery Magic (Advanced)

–Arcane Drain

–Fortify Mind

TITLES:

–Advanced Familiar

–The Powerful

–Avian

–Advanced Mage

–One Who Requires Earplugs

–Godparent

–Sweet Tooth

–The One Raised by the Fool

–Wind Deity

–Diamond Senses

–Ancient Slayer

–Sweets (Tentative)

–Violet Phoenix

–SS Slayer

–Heavenly Beast’s Mother

–Archetype Error

–Iron Heart

–Familiar Chalice Champion

–Hero of the World

–Dragon Slayer

–Heifer (Tentative)

–Twice a Miss Popular

–Pocchie Mask

–Devil King Slayer

–Mathematics Proficiency Certification: Ninth-grader

–Great Heavenly Beast (Tentative)

–Boundless Stomach

–Cannibalistic Chicken

–Story Teller

–Cabbage Rolls Addict

–Survivor

–Utter Disgrace

–The Investigator

――――――――――――――――――――

…As I’d expected, her level’s gone up by 50 since the last time she used the Limit Breakthrough.

Her HP has gotten dramatically higher than before. Her being a Heavenly Beast plays a large part in that, of course, but going from 70,000 to over 110,000 like this is extraordinary.

Her MP is high, too. Maybe high enough for her to use Ultimate Limit, even.

She can only use basic magic and magecraft though, so it’s probably better to assume that it’ll only help her with arcane energy-infused skills, like breath attacks.

As for her titles… man, she’s racked up quite a lot of them.

‘Devil King Slayer’ is probably the biggest power-boosting title she has right now.

And what the hell is this ‘Mathematics Proficiency Certification: Ninth-grader’? Is it from back when we were sent to War Demon Emperor Sagan’s era, or more specifically, when she did some maths in her head while we were at the Adventuers’ Guild?

‘Grand Heavenly Beast’ was definitely from when we went adventuring with past Irene. I just said it as a joke, though… did it leave that much of an impression? Well, at least it’s most likely a positive title, so there’s no need to complain about it.

‘Boundless Stomach’… I knew she would get this eventually. And it’s probably what’s amplifying her already ridiculous appetite to an unstoppable level.

‘Pocchie Mask’… Man, the role she made up to put an act for Sagan became an actual title? She seems to like it quite a bit, so that’s fine, I suppose.

‘Cannibalistic Chicken’… Heh, fitting.

‘Story Teller’ is one of the ones that I don’t understand. Where did she get it from? Right after she went back to the hideout, maybe? She really does love to run her mouth…

‘Cabbage Rolls Addict’… Yeah, let’s just ignore that one.

And what’s the deal with ‘Survivor’? Oh, wait, could it be from that time I tested the Levitation spell by jumping off the cliff infamous as a suicide spot? We both survived that, of course — flew away smoothly. Or did I fall at the end? Hmm, my memory is pretty vague on that last part.

‘Utter Disgrace’ must have been from the magic classroom’s opening day. Enticed by Warren, we went on stage as Pocchie Mask and Leole Mask. I would assume that it’s a negative title, but there’s no way to know for sure now — I’ll have Kaoru take a look at it later.

Then there’s ‘The Investigator’… Where the hell did she get this from?

Yeah, for this particular one, I have no idea.

The rest of them seem to be generic achievement-based titles. Might be worth comparing hers with mine.

And with that, I invoked the effect of my Appraisal Glasses again and took a look at my parameters.

…What the hell?

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