Dripped out

Sitting by a cozy campfire surrounded by your friends, everyone having their own gifts. The only thing missing was the milk and cookies and it would truly feel like Christmas.

Well, if there wasn't a threat of their demise looming over the group it probably would've felt like it.

The first person to look at the items was John. The burly man must've never seen one nearly jumped out of his seat when a shield made of a light brown wood appeared on his lap. His eyes then started to move back and forth, as if reading something. Once his eyes stopped moving, they started to gleam with a child like excitement.

Not wasting any more time, Kai opened his status menu to see the two items he was so graciously gifted by Failure.

The first one was a doozy.

Tunic of remembrance (common)

Crafted from the fur countless moon wolves, this tunic provides the wearer with minor resistance to the cold and minor memory enhancement.

Looking at the description, the tunic didn't actually seem that bad. Resistance to the cold, even if only minor, was bound to be useful in some situation, and Kai always thought he had bad memory, so having a tunic which passively helps with that was quite a good boon.

Summoning the tunic from his soul, Kai feels the mana dissapear from somewhere inside him and manifest into a pure white tunic. The garment had a soft texture and kind of felt like Umbra's fur.

I hope Umbra doesn't mind... but why is it white?

As if sensing her master thinking about her, Umbra groggily lifts her furry head of the hardwood floor and sniffs. She then turns her head towards Kai and freezes, only for a moment though. Then, a nearly inaudible whimper escapes from her snout as she trots over to Kai, resting her head on his lap.

Kai smiles softly and pets his familiar head, earning him a soft purr in response.

Huh.... I guess moon wolves turn white when they die... Does that mean Aldred is close to dying?

Pushing away the thoughts for now, Kai slips the tunic on over his gray bodysuit. The fabric of the tunic feels soft when on his body, though its a little loose, it almost looks like a-

"Nice dress." Sofia snorts as she puts on a pair of fingerless gloves, the gloves have a soft blue colour to them and seem to resemble the sea.

"It's not a dress!" Kai retorts, already feeling the blood rising to his face. "It's a tunic, it's in the name, tu-nic."

"Whatever." The pale woman snickers as she goes back to admiring her gloves.

Exasperated, Kai slumps back in his armchair and opens his status to look at his second item, hoping it isn't a pair of high heels to match his new dress.

It was.

... Kind of.

Pretty good boots (uncommon)

Hey, these boots are pretty good, and it's even better they increase the rate at which the wearer recovers from fatigue and also keeps your feet comfortable. If you want to buy the full set, visit ???

The boots were an ad, and a pretty underwhelming one at that, the salesperson must have sucked if they ended up in a who knows how old treasury. And since there is question marks it must mean that whoever runs the tutorial isn't a fan of self promoting.

Summoning the boots, a pair of normal looking brown boots appeared on his lap. They looked the exact same as any you would expect to see on Earth, except for a small insignia on the side which was a symbol he had never seen before. It kind of resembled if the moon was mixed with the sun, it was also a pale orange colour.

There was one thing bothering Kai though.

That kinda sucked, why do I feel like I got stiffed? Sofia got a bow, John got a shield, Noelle probably got something useful, just she won't share, as always. I just look like I'm about to go out to a fancy dress party.

Inwardly complaining, Kai takes off the dirty shoes he was given at the start of stage three and slips on the boots, almost letting out a groan of comfort. Saving himself from further embarrassment, Kai closes his mouth and just savours the moment.

Maybe the salesperson isn't that bad, these really are pretty good shoes.

Overall, the two items were pretty good, but they seemed a bit lacking in comparison, Kai wasn't going to kick up a fuss about it though, its two more items than he had an hour ago.

Just as he is about to close his status screen, he catches something in the corner of his eye. Frowning, he scrolls to it and sees...

A third item?

He had already given the bracers to Sofia, so he shouldn't have three.

Maybe Failure gave me an extra one, I mean, Sofia did technically get three items.

Kai's lips curve upwards into a smile as he starts to read the description of his third and final item.

Beast pellet (uncommon)

A pill developed by ???. This pill allows a contracted, slaved or binded familiars to unlock one random skill from common to rare rarity.

It's a gacha.

While Kai was very happy with this final item, it did have some drawbacks. The rarity only went up to rare, and he could just get a terrible common skill for Umbra. Back on Earth, his luck in any gacha game was horrible so he didn't have high expectations.

Looking down at Umbra, who still has her head on his lap, he summons the beast pellet and holds it in front of her snout. The pellet doesn't really look like a pill like the description said, it looks more like a bright green meatball.

"Wanna eat it?"

His familair sniffs in a few times before she opens her jaw and swallows the meatball looking pellet in one bite. What Kai expected to happen was that Umbra would glow, or something would change, but nothing did.

Frowning, Kai opens his status screen and scrolls to Umbra's section and looks at her skills. Thankfully, he spots a new one, but...

[Stalker (uncommon)]

This... doesn't sound good.

[Stalker: Allows the user to hide in the shadow of living being.]

Is that it? It's a bit anti-climactic... But it could've been worse, I guess.

After consoling himself, Kai asks Umbra to try and hide in his shadow, which his furry familiar does. Her pitch black form slowly molds into his shadow and dissapears completely, earning him a confused glance from Sofia.

A moment later, a furry head pops out of his shadow. Kai leans down and pets Umbra on her head, careful to avoid her third eye.

"Good girl."

Standing up and looking towards the rest of the group as Umbra crawls out of his shadow, Kai spots everyone looking at him.

Oh... I must've been the last to finish.

"Is everyone happy with their Christmas presents?"

John chuckles.

"They're great, and this shield is something else."

The shield in question is the light brown on Kai saw a few moments earlier. Similar to Sofia's bow, this shield had small, intricate lines etched all over it.

"Yeah, they're great. Hey, Kai, is there anyone else in this place who would be willing to be a sugar daddy? You seem to have the nice life here."

Scowling, Kai ignores Sofia's comment and adjusts the sleeves of his brand new tunic.

"Well, alright then, that concludes our super important team meeting, everyone is now free to... just go do whatever you want."

Watching the group leave the cabin was a strange sight. Never in his life did Kai think he would end up in a situation like this. A father who looks straight out of an action movie, a pale undercover cop and a messed up Arabian girl, those were his friends now, vastly different to the people he messed around in school with.

The whole situation was way too weird. Just another reason to praise Nonchalance for everything it's done so far.

Looking down at Umbra, who is lolling around on the floor, Kai sighs and mumbles:

"At least I still have a dog... kind of."

After a few more minutes of relaxing in his chair and collecting his thoughts, Kai pushes himself out of the comfort of the seat and exits the cabin, walking towards the edge of the Dome, towards a certain tree with bright, pink leaves.

About twenty minutes and a sore ankle from accidently falling in a small hole later, Kai arrives under the shade of the cherry blossom. Crouching down, he uses his hands to dig up where you can tell the dirt was disturbed.

With a mess of papers in his hand and the artificial sun shining down on him, Kai sits back against the tree with a groan and opens to the page he left of at.

This page is... different.

Some of the pages before this one were blotted with tear stains, but not to this degree, the page is basically unreadable.

'... diary

I don't... dream... gave me...only way...'

The rest of the page is impossible to read, no words are able to be made out except for parts of the final line.

'Please... I don't want to die.'

The page ends there, so the immensely curious Kai quickly turns to the next page and sees-

It's blank.

Kai quickly turns to the page after that-

Blank again.

What? No! It can't end there, what happens next? It has to be in here somewhere, it's not like there's going to be a next volume.

Page after page, each one being blank. Hope of finding out what happened starts to dwindle, until Kai reaches the final few pages.

Instead of just having more empty pages, the last few have a small square cut out, creating an empty space reaching the very end of the diary. Two small spheres lying in the hole, one has an incredible golden glow to it and the other a pale white.

Slowly reaching out a finger to touch them, Kai watches the two bead sized spheres flicker as his hand edges closer and closer. Just as his finger is about to connect with the golden bead, they vanish. No flashing, no warning, no nothing, they're gone.

What-

Just as Kai is about to complain, the sweet, feminine voice he has grown to know and loved rings in his ears.

Items obtained.

An item?

A grin grows on Kai's face as he rapidly opens his status screen and scrolls to the item section.

What a great haul, three items earlier and a possible two more. Maybe overleveling my luck stat was a good thing.

And it is, two brand new items can be seen in his status, and the first looks incredibly strong yet incredibly peculiar.

Miracle bead (Legendary)

Allows a miracle to occur when eaten. There will be a 1000 year cooldown for the consumer before they can consume another Miracle bead.

What... the hell? A Miracle bead? What does it mean by allowing a miracle to occur when eaten? And a thousand year cooldown? I won't even live that long!

A bead which causes miracles should be powerful... right?

Deciding to just come back to it at a later time, Kai looks down to the other item he got.

What... the hell?

Will of Ethania (???)