Katie was sulking.

    Thanks to her pale skin, her puffed-up cheeks looked almost like rice cakes. While I was admiring this, Katie muttered a small "hmm" and leaped up onto the vine ladder.

    Anyone could see she was sulking as she darted upward. Surely she wasn''t upset because I offered to escort Irene but not her. If I treated Katie that way, she''d be annoyed at being treated like a child, especially given her dreams of being a storybook knight.

    But her plump, puffed-up cheeks clearly showed she was sulking... but why?

    "What are you doing? Come up!"

    "Alright!"

    I was thinking we should talk, but the beast-kin had already started running toward the gate. With Grace urging me on too, I couldn''t say anything and just climbed up the ladder after them.

    I''d expected the roads built in the trees to be flimsy, but the planks were laid more securely than I thought. Rather than being placed with gaps like a cloud bridge, the floor was solidly built so that even a child wouldn''t fall through.

    Well, in a deep forest, timber was abundant, so material supply wouldn''t have been an issue. As Han Se-ah said, they were so systematic that the word "native" seemed inappropriate. Of course, digging deeper, they''d been moved to the Tower and might have food problems...

    "Hey, I have a question."

    "What is it?"

    "What do you eat to survive?"

    Come to think of it, the stone dwarves literally ate dirt, but what did these beast-kin eat? Even the harpies had only begun trading with humans after trembling in fear when their livestock turned into mana stones—an unprecedented event.

    Wouldn''t the beast-kin who seemed likely to hunt in the deep forest face the same problem? While dealing with the Orc Champion was important, we should also think about activating gates to supply food.

    With this in mind, I asked the beast-kin running beside me. Judging by the long spotted tail and pointed ears, they seemed to be a feline beast-kin like a cheetah. They looked like they''d enjoy meat, and since they were leading us to the gate, they were clearly a warrior class.

    "We eat fruit, of course. Why do you ask?"

    "...Fruit?"

    "Yes. In this forest, almost everything except a few monsters lives on fruit and honey."

    Now that I thought about it, didn''t they say even carnivorous animals ate fruits and honey, so they didn''t attack herbivores? It seemed like only those who had tasted blood, like the ones that attacked our adventurer party, were called monsters.

    As I was talking with the beast-kin warrior, Katie, who had been running ahead, slightly slowed down to come beside me. Although the road was well-built, it wasn''t very wide, so the feline beast-kin naturally sped up to make way.

    They probably thought Katie had something to say to me as a party member, but she just ran alongside me without saying anything.

    ''...What''s really going on?''

    As I''d felt before, I was too clueless about understanding complex female emotions. Although it sounds a bit crude, the overheated society ladies who targeted Roland''s body weren''t looking for romance—they wanted to satisfy their lust.

    They didn''t hide their feelings or speak in roundabout ways; they just wanted to spend time listening to my adventure stories like decorating a trophy, then demand a hot night. So expecting me to understand the female heart, which even ancient philosophers gave up trying to comprehend, was asking too much.

    What do you expect from a middle-aged returning student who was reincarnated because of a mobile game he played in his room?

    "Is something wrong, Katie?"

    "No, nothing."

    The fortunate thing was that she didn''t seem particularly upset. Her cheeks were a bit puffier than usual, but she didn''t seem displeased.

    If I had to describe it, she wasn''t in the "don''t you know what you did wrong?" state, but more like a romantic comedy character in the "why am I feeling bad?" state. ...With no romantic experience and only sexual encounters, my comparisons remained extremely nerdy despite my experiences with women.

    Of course, there was a bit of an excuse for this.

    It was because of Katie''s usual behavior that earned her the nickname "Kiddo." She got this nickname partly because she showed interest in fairy tales, chivalry, and various other things, but also because she was so energetic.

    Just look at her behavior in the deep forest.

    She talked with forest fairies, petted the shadow fang tiger, cared for the starlight finch, fed the jewel dragon among the mages, and chatted with beast-kin girls while handling sacred relics—she''d been moving non-stop.

    She displayed the quintessential energetic spirit, like the saying "three Korean high school girls could take on a tank." It was a completely different charm from Grace, who chose to stay by my side rather than interact with the beast-kin, or Irene, who quietly followed, ready to help when needed.

    She wasn''t like Grace, who teased me and hovered around, nor like Irene, who silently stayed nearby when help was needed... but who wouldn''t like a beautiful girl with a bright smile moving around energetically?

    ''Am I wrong? Did she get upset because I left her alone since she seemed to be having fun?''

    As I felt confused watching Katie running beside me, matching my stride, I heard the voices of Grace and the wolf beast-kin running at the front.

    "There''s the gate!"

    ※

    To be honest, though I was too distracted by Katie''s strange mood to pay attention, the state of the mages was quite a spectacle.

    They had used plenty of mana to follow the beast-kin ahead of me and Katie, but they were fundamentally old men who only did research in their rooms. There were a few young mages too, but that didn''t change the fact that they were scholars locked away in their studies.

    They could strengthen their bodies with mana, but they were the type who avoided exercise. Being mages who didn''t even take walks after meals, they had collapsed around the gate despite enhancing their bodies with mana.

    "Huff, keh- the fi, ahem, finch."

    "Ugh, kuhk, I''m dying here..."

    "Theoretically, the enhancement was perfe, ect-hek."

    Panting heavily with trembling legs, the old men were supported by the few adventurers remaining as escorts as they headed toward the gate. If you didn''t know they were mages who could incinerate an ordinary adult man with just a finger, they''d look like old people being taken into the deep forest to be buried.

    -This looks like sending the elderly to die in the mountains lol

    -That whole abandoning the elderly thing was a Japanese distortion, let''s call it "Nippon burial"

    -Mages, if they''re high rank, should have superhuman bodies, so why are they dying after running?

    -They can enhance their bodies to near-superhuman levels, but they''re just experiencing breathlessness and muscle strain for the first time lol

    -Their bodies are just sturdy, but they''re people who haven''t exercised for decades so they don''t know how to breathe lol

    "What, they don''t know how to breathe? This isn''t some mass-produced isekai nonsense... Ah, this is called deep breathing. It supplies oxygen when moving vigorously. Something like that?"

    The mages being supported while observing the gate were the better ones. Han Se-ah was startled to see mages, who were treated as honorary nobles, sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath with no regard for dignity.

    Though Han Se-ah was also a mage, she possessed remarkably good reflexes and balance. As someone with enough athletic sense to deploy a shield when arrows suddenly flew at her, she would find it hard to understand people who collapsed as if fainting after running on a well-maintained path.

    Well, what can you do? That''s just how mages are.

    "..."

    "Hmm, what?"

    "Nothing."

    While waiting for the gate to activate and looking at the sprawled mages with pitying eyes, Katie quietly approached me again.

    Normally, she would have been observing the starlight finch and the gate among the mages with sparkling eyes, but now she was tiptoeing around me. I wasn''t the only one who found this awkward—Grace was grinning at the sight.

    On my left, Katie kept circling at a distance that was close but not close enough to hold hands. On my right, Grace smiled at me after seeing this, then went to Han Se-ah and poked her side.

    ''This is getting troublesome... though it could be useful. Maybe Han Se-ah''s chatter will reveal the answer?''

    Grace had committed the atrocious act of throwing me as bait to a broadcaster. Unlike Katie, who was annoying but cute, Han Se-ah''s broadcast was just annoying. I could hardly like her hundreds of thousands of viewers either.

    But on the other hand, couldn''t I borrow the collective intelligence of the extremely small number of female viewers among those hundreds of thousands? It''s embarrassing to say, but Roland''s body and face were quite famous on the internet.

    Even if female viewers were only 1% of the audience—an extreme 99:1 male bath—that would still mean ten thousand women out of millions of viewers.

    "Hanna, Hanna?"

    "So now the 67th floor should be the Stone Hoof tribe, so the shield? Can Teacher use... Huh, what?"

    I watched Grace and Han Se-ah as they began talking, carrying my small hope.

    Please, whether it''s a female viewer or a Casanova male viewer, someone tell me the answer.

    Enjoy the chappy!