Editing Skill Tree Goddess:Volume1 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 1===

The capital city of Marbalsonde was a comfortable place to live…but maybe that was misleading.

It would be more accurate to say that cheap but nice inns were comfortable no matter the city. Gilbezos Overridge pondered this upon waking. With such comfortable places spread across the entire kingdom as a chain of inns, he could see how they had more or less dominated the industry.

For one, these inns were the only lodging facilities with running water in each individual room. …A hot spring or large bath would be one thing, but his disappointment was immeasurable whenever he was shown to a cramped shared bath. At an inn filled with adventurers muddy after a day of rough adventuring outside, the bathwater would quickly become visibly filthy and he got the feeling anything he left in the changing room would be stolen as soon as he turned his back.

“Mgh.”

And for some reason, this was an unusually soft morning. The goddess, who looked to be around 18, was smiling at him while embracing his head on the pillow.

“…Why are we in the same bed?”

“Good morning, Gilbezos. Maybe it’s some weird preference of yours, but why do you insist on sleeping on the sofa every night when such a kind and gentle goddess is willing to share a bed with you?”

Queen Size had begun as textile dealers with a focus on bedding, but they had since developed in many other directions.

In addition to running these inns, they were a powerful presence in shipping, transportation, restaurants, and clothing. They arranged wagons and ships traveling to a wide variety of destinations, they supplied sandwiches and other portable food for bringing into dungeons, and (although Gilbezos had never used this service) they would, for a hefty fee, build small rest stops in the middle of dungeons. …So in the fields of food and cold-weather gear made of cotton or silk, they were rivals of Shirayuri and her Necessities Emporium that dealt in just about everything.

Now, this was a single room since that was the cheapest option, meaning it only had the one bed. So the small boy always let the goddess use the bed while he slept on the sofa.

“That business with Shirayuri yesterday must have worn you out.”

He would normally wake up before it reached this point, but he must have slept too soundly last night. And so she managed to carry him from the sofa to the bed.

“Hungry?” asked the goddess. “Then wash your face and take a shower before we head down to the dining room.”

“It is nice that each room has its own bathroom. How about you go first?”

“Fine,” was all the goddess said as she got out of the bed and reached for the bathroom door.

But then she turned back toward Gilbezos for some reason.

“Hee hee. Maybe they didn’t care so much since it’s inside a guest room, but these bathroom locks are so much cheaper than the rest. Do you know how to force one open, Gilbezos? You’re more than welcome to barge in and join me☆”

“Please just hurry up and shower, Lady Seliphenia.”

Her smiling face vanished behind the door and he eventually heard the water running.

Alone in the room, Gilbezos sat on the bed and sighed softly.

Goddess Seliphenia had been like this as far back as he could remember. But he still had no clue why she was so obsessed with him.

She claimed Gilbezos Overridge wasn’t his original name and he had been reincarnated after dying in some other world, but he had no memory of this. As far as he was concerned, his only life was the one that began with him being born here and raised by his current parents. Seliphenia was concerned something had gone wrong in carrying over the “saved data”, but Gilbezos himself didn’t really care. Nothing he had heard about that past life made him want to know more.

“Ahh, all clean. Gilbezos, go enjoy surrounding yourself in a goddess’s sweet steam.”

The dining room was downstairs on the first floor. Requiring washing up before breakfast was one unique trait of living in an inn.

Yes, living here.

However, Gilbezos was not being pursued by debt collectors and his home village hadn’t been destroyed when some old custom got out of hand.

He had made a promise. So he couldn’t back out now.

That was nothing special. He was only human, so he would run late and forget things and he would fail jobs for the combat guild. But he made sure he kept the promises that really mattered.

…He had tried to live his life as simply as possible, but in the process of keeping a few promises, he had found himself leaving home and going on a journey. The details will be omitted here, but it was the kind of reason that led his parents to secretly accept his leaving. Or rather, they supported his decision so much he couldn’t help but notice it. Admittedly, their support was conditional on Seliphenia going with him. So even now, he would write letters home or send them gifts whenever he found the time.

And so the boy entered the bathroom, took a shower, and dressed. He wore a sword of 50-60 centemetora at his hip, but he barely ever had a chance to use the blade Shirayuri had made for him.

It did come in handy though since, unlike his skills and magic (which tended to produce an excessive amount of force), it would send bandits and thieves running scared without having to actually use it.

The goddess was drying her hair by the fireplace and applying a beeswax lotion to her skin, but he hurried her along and left their second floor room. A beeswax lotion sounded like it would be tasty, but she insisted it wasn’t sweet at all. After descending the stairs, they found Enoisa waving at them while leaning on the counter with her elbow.

“Morning, Gilbezos. You like a hot sandwich, vegetable sticks, and hot milk in the mornings, right?”

“…So I’ve been here long enough you know my order.”

“I have to show the proper respect to our long-term guests.”

The inn’s manager didn’t look the goddess’s way. Not even once. But not because of any mystery about Seliphenia’s identity. She simply had no time for someone who slept in one of their rooms without paying.

Enoisa Holysign was a capable young woman of around 18 who could make small adjustments to the inn’s food instead of just following the menu. For example, she was even willing to swap out the bitter bell pepper for asparagus even though he never asked her to. She had wavy pink hair and an adult look that perfectly matched her dress’s ultra-short tight skirt, but what were those? He couldn’t help but wonder about the horns on her head or the black tail emerging from the back of her blue skirt. He wanted to say the triangular tail was decorative, except it was slowly swaying side to side even now.

She always seemed to be lazily resting her weight on the counter while wearing high-heeled pumps without socks. And…

“Oh, dear. What’s this passionate gaze I sense? Gilbezos, are you an ass man?”

“?”

“You can learn what that means when you’re older, Gilbezos,” said the goddess. “Besides, you’ve always been more of a fan of your goddess’s boobs, haven’t you?☆ C’mon, if you keep zoning out here, I’ll start wiping off your face with this cloth here. Jiggle, jiggle.”

“There is one thing I understand: that this stupid goddess is making fun of me.”

Still smiling, Goddess Seliphenia stuck her arms underneath Gilbezos’s and…

“Up you go, little Gilbezos☆”

“Gyahhhh!?”

…Did she have to lift him up like a small child right here at the inn counter where everyone could see them!? And that smile said she knew full well this would damage his pride more than anything. She always got like this the instant he insulted her even a little!

The small boy and the goddess ate breakfast and discussed their plans for the day at a round table in a dining room full of ordinary tourists and merchants. The same as always. He just wished the chairs weren’t so tall his feet didn’t reach the floor.

“If you get any on your clothes, I’ll suck it right out for you, okay? But anyway, what are you going to do today, Gilbezos? Another job where you beat up a naked girl statue to delight a shut-in little girl?”

“That isn’t all I’m good for.”

Besides, he had only learned the Hyper Golem’s core was a naked statue after the fact. And even if she was a girl, she was still a hunk of rock, so it wasn’t as bad as it sounded!

The Queen Size inns that had been spreading across the kingdom lately always promised a comfortable sleep – in fact, these mysterious establishments would heal all of your HP, or Health Points, (if that dropped to 0, you died) and MP, or Mystery Points, (if that dropped to 0, you couldn’t use magic and such) no matter how badly injured you were – but the inns themselves weren’t free. To continue staying here, he needed money.

After eating breakfast and paying, he resumed speaking with the blonde goddess (whose hair actually changed color and shine depending on the angle).

“You just don’t listen, Gilbezos. How many times do I have to tell you to focus on earning LAW instead of money. That way you can learn more skills.”

“You’re the Skill Tree goddess. I feel like you’re biased there.”

“Besides, the better your skills, the better the jobs you can take. Continue chasing money from your childish perspective and you’ll spend all your time earning just enough to barely scrape by.”

Gh.

“Also, have you given proper thought to how you want to develop your skills? Don’t forget that the magic earned through the Skill Tree is-”