Kio and Miyu were both charmed by how sweet her voice sounded, as if a harmonious melody was being played in the background.
Kio assumed that the cheerful personality of the dryad girl had something to do with Miyu, since that is also how she normally acts. Although he had no proof, his gut feeling told him that the dryad girl was infused with a part of Miyu's personality.
"Why are you calling me Master?"
"Because you are my Master, silly. Anyways, please don't call me 'you'. I want a nice name after being summoned."
"..."
Miyu was speechless listening to the beautiful dryad's words. Luckily, Kio was carrying her on his back, otherwise she would've fallen way too far behind and got caught by the mutated zombie.
The dryad had been using the branches from the trees to lift herself up, following along without the need to run.
"Well?"
"Um… Give me a moment to think of one."
"Kay!"
Miyu took some time to think of an appropriate name for the dryad girl, as she didn't want to come up with something that didn't suit her.
"What about… Flora? Since you have so many pretty flowers all over you, I think this name should suit you really well."
"Flora… That sounds pretty nice. Thanks for the name, Master!"
"Can you call me Miyu instead of Master?"
"Nope!"
"Then, what are you going to call him?" Miyu asked as she pointed at Kio.
"Master's husband!"
"..."
Kio wanted to refute Flora's words, but he didn't want to upset Miyu because he did promise to marry her in the future. Miyu on the other hand, was delighted at how Flora called Kio. She couldn't stop giggling as her imagination ran wild, causing a lovely smile to appear on her face.
"Hehe. Okay, you may call me Master then!"
"Yes, Master!"
Their conversation further led Kio to believe his hunch earlier was correct because they acted like a pair of close sisters.
"Girls, can we save the chatting for later? We need to figure out a way to stop that mutated zombie behind us first. We're going to reach the end of the staircase soon."
"Flora, do you have any way to help us?"
"Yep! Leave it to me!"
Flora used the branches to extend her body away from the tree to bring the zombie into her field of view. Then, she focused and used her skill to extend many vines toward the zombie. The vines quickly entwined itself around its limbs, immobilizing it.
"Wow! Flora, you're amazing!"
"Hehe. Thanks, Master! This was a piece of cake… Urgh…"
"What's wrong, Flora?"
"Ugh… This zombie is too strong... It's struggling and trying to break free… I won't let you!"
Flora shouted as more vines entangled around the zombie, causing the slight vibration from the zombie to fade.
"Huff… phew… Looks like I managed to stop it. I definitely can't try this again as I'm almost out of mana."
However, as soon as she said that, the vines around the zombie began to shake intensely.
"Wha?!"
Since Flora was just recently summoned, she wasn't accustomed to using her skills yet. The vines didn't receive any form of strengthening, but due to the sheer number of them, it managed to disable the zombie for a short moment.
*Snap*
A few seconds later, the vines around its arms ripped apart due to the strength of the zombie.
"Ugh!"
"Flora! Are you okay?"
"I-I'm fine. I just got a splitting headache after he broke out while my power was still connected to it."
"Come back to us. It's dangerous to be out on a branch by yourself."
"Kay~"
Flora controlled the thick branch she was standing on to bring her back to them. Although the mutated zombie broke most of the vines entangling it, there was still a fair amount coiled around its leg, hindering its movement.
"Flora, how much mana do you have left?"
Kio had a hunch that her skill required an excessive amount of mana due to how many vines she controlled at the same time. Kio already knew that mana existed in this world, since he looted some mana potions in addition to the health potions earlier.
"Err… not so good. I have about 25% of my mana remaining."
"Eh? Is it because your previous skill has intense mana consumption, or do you have low mana capacity?"
Flora blushed a little as she replied, "...Um. It's a little bit of both. I'm not used to using my skills yet, so I accidentally used too much mana at once… Hehe."
"Sigh… Well, we can't blame you for that. You did help us trap the zombie for a moment. Here, take this mana potion. We might need to rely on you again."
"Kay~"
"Kio, is mana the kind of thing that appears in games? Like how certain spells cost mana to use it?"
"I'm not sure. I just had a suspicion that there's mana in this world due to the potion we found earlier. I don't even know if my skills use mana."
"Oh…"
"Well, don't worry too much. I never expected to be summoned into an easy world where all your questions are answered. We'll just do our best to survive in this world."
"Mkay."
After Flora finished drinking the mana potion, she felt refreshed.
"Fuwa… That potion was delicious. May I have another one, Master's husband?"
"...No. Maybe if you do a good job later, I'll give you a tasty snack."
"Okay!"
"For now, can you help us get down from here? I don't want to hit a dead end when the zombie starts chasing us again."
"Sure!"
Flora extended a thick branch from the staircase that reached all the way down to the ground. As they were walking along the branch, Kio suddenly came up with an idea that he wanted to try out.
"Hey Miyu, Flora. Do you girls want to try to kill that mutated zombie?"
"Huh? I don't think we are strong enough to kill it though. Why not just escape?"
"Well, we can escape if we really have no other options. But we also need to level up to 30 as fast as possible, to see if we can get our advanced class. Don't you want to revive your sister sooner, Miyu?"
"Yea… You're right."
"Anyways, if we really can't handle it, we'll use the Return Stones. For now, there's something I want to try. Can you girls hear me out?"
"Sure!"
"..."
After Kio shared his idea with them, he separated from the two girls. He wasn't as worried about Miyu since she had Flora to protect her if they ran into any zombies.
While the girls moved to an ideal spot, Kio walked a bit closer to the zombie, as he was in charge of luring it.
A moment later, the mutated zombie broke free of the vines holding it back and fell from the stairs. Even though the zombie was at least 50 meters above ground, Kio didn't expect it to take any damage, since even his gun couldn't kill it.
*Boom*
When the zombie crashed onto the ground, a huge cloud of dust was raised all around the area. Although Kio was right outside the dust cloud, he felt something coming towards him, so he quickly leaped backwards.
An arm covered with bone spikes punched out from within the dust cloud, stopping at the spot where Kio was just at.
As Kio successfully attracted its attention, he threw a few knives towards its head before running away. By chance, one of the knives managed to pierce its eyeball, causing Kio to realize that the zombie didn't have tough skin throughout its body.
The zombie didn't even feel any pain as it chased after Kio. There were less than 5 meters between them, but this time Kio was slightly faster than the zombie since he wasn't carrying any extra weight.
When Kio finally reached the grassy fields where the girls were hiding, he turned around and shot with his pistol before diving back into the shadows.
'2 charges left…'
Kio's pistol was aimed at its remaining eye, and he managed to successfully destroy it. He didn't know if the zombie was even able to see with its eyes, but there was no harm in destroying it.
After he exited the shadows about 25 meters away from his current position, he yelled loudly.
"Miyu, now!"
"[Overgrowth]!"
All of a sudden, all the weeds in a 10 meter radius around the zombie began to grow out of control. From their initial height of 5 centimeters, the weeds grew wildly and reached up to a dozen meters.
Next, Flora controlled the weeds and wrapped it all around the zombie, completely stopping its movements compared to last time where the zombie could be seen struggling against the vines.
Miyu then used [Overgrowth] again, but this time it was casted on the trees around her, causing their branches to expand. With Flora's skill, she then sharpened the branches before directing them to pierce towards the zombie.
As the branches reached the zombie, most of them snapped the moment it made contact. However, Flora had merged half of them into a single thick spike as it managed to pierce through its stomach.
As Flora retracted the branches, a dark liquid started oozing out of the wide gaping hole, as if its blood had been contaminated.
Immediately after, Kio threw a few cans of hairspray, which he found in Yuki's luggage, into the hole.
He didn't know why she packed such useless items in the apocalypse, but at least he will make good use of it.
The moment the items landed inside the zombie, Kio took out a fire stone and lit it up before tossing it into the hole.
As the fire stone reached the hole, Kio took out his pistol again and shot at one of the canisters that he could still barely see, causing a huge explosion to erupt within the zombie.
*BOOM*