[TSSIM] Chapter 455: Hidden Panel?

"Good thing those two kittens' beds are by the back door... Haru-chan should be able to see them clearly."

While walking toward the living room, Fumino remarked with a smile.

"Hmm? How do you know that? Did you visit them or something?" Homura asked in surprise, raising his eyebrows.

"I saw it through my binoculars..." Fumino replied, embarrassed.

Homura: "..."

Using binoculars wasn't the real problem; it was more about the angle.

Did Fumino climb onto the wall or something?

If that was the case, it was certainly unexpected.

When they entered the living room, Homura greeted Rizu and Uruka.

Rizu responded normally, while Uruka, blushing, looked like she wanted to hide behind Rizu.

"Hey, Uruka, why are you ignoring me?" Homura asked while smirking.

Seeing Uruka not answering, he had a feeling that she was lost in her own imagination again.

As it turned out, he was spot on.

Since Uruka had realized she might have feelings for Homura, her mind often wandered, imagining things uncontrollably. Whenever she saw or heard him speak, her thoughts would go off on their own.

She hadn't even known she could feel like this, and her tendency to fantasize was hard to rein in, especially since it was so new for her.

As a result, the moment Homura walked in and greeted her, Uruka subconsciously began to fantasize.

"Oh, darling~ I just got here, and you already can't be without me?"

"That's right~! I really can't bear to be away from my honey~!"

Snapping back to reality, Uruka remembered the last time she had let some of her imagination slip out loud, which only made her blush even more, feeling too shy to speak to Homura.

Whether to help Uruka out of her awkwardness or not, Rizu suddenly asked something.

"Where's Haru-chan? Didn't Fumino say she'd be here too?"

Upon hearing this, Homura was a bit surprised.

If Rizu really intended to step in, it meant she had started to understand people's feelings a lot better.

"Haru went to the backyard and will be back soon." Homura replied with a smile.

In the end, he decided not to press Uruka any further.

If she kept drifting off into her imagination, it could indeed get interesting, but it would also be troublesome.

"I'll go open the back door." Fumino said to everyone before heading off.

"…Actually, Haru could just jump in through the window." Homura suddenly remarked.

Rizu: "..."

Uruka: "..."

'Could you have said that earlier?!'

Rizu and Uruka exclaimed simultaneously in their minds.

And so, once Fumino returned, Homura started their 'test'.

It was actually more like a simple Q&A session.

Homura had prepared three subjects with sixty questions in total, starting from easy ones. Each of the three girls wrote their answers on a blank sheet and then handed them to him for grading, with each question worth five points.

As expected, Fumino and Rizu each scored perfectly in their strongest subjects. Even in their weakest subjects, they scored sixty and sixty-five, showing great improvement. Apart from that, the last subject was world history, in which both scored quite high.

As for Uruka, she scored eighty in two subjects and eighty-five in one. Without the subject advantage that Fumino and Rizu had, her scores were more balanced, and she also had made great improvement since before.

Seeing how much they had progressed, Homura smiled in satisfaction.

At this moment, Haru finally returned.

"So, how's it going?" Homura asked while patting Haru's head.

"Meow~! (Hmph~ those two are so lazy, sleeping all the time! They didn't even notice when I went over!)" Haru flicked her head to the side, making her feelings clear.

Homura couldn't help but sense a hint of tsundere in her tone.

Haru had gone over, which meant she still wanted to see them, but she expressed her dissatisfaction in such a way.

If this wasn't tsundere, what was it?

"As long as things are good for them, that's what matters most…" Homura said with a smile.

Haru rubbed against his palm, then jumped down to lie beside him.

"What did Haru-chan say?" Uruka asked curiously.

"She called her siblings lazy, just sleeping all the time." Homura chuckled, shaking his head. "Honestly, it's normal for cats, especially kittens, to sleep during the day… she's probably just being a little tsundere."

"Tsundere, huh…" Fumino looked at Haru amusedly.

If only she could understand cat language too, then she could know exactly what Haru's tsundere tone sounded like.

At this moment, Fumino truly envied Homura's ability to talk to cats.

===

For nearly an hour and a half, Homura was on a roll, tutoring the three girls, and teaching new skills through the Mentor-Disciple System.

He had to admit that the more he used this feature, the more he enjoyed it, and it felt like everyone had suddenly gained some insane buff.

Regardless, he had a nagging feeling that there might be a hidden panel in the System that hadn't been unlocked yet.

What he meant was, couldn't mathematics be counted as a skill? 

Of course, it could, but it just didn't show up on the skills panel.

He had once experimented with this by trying to think of other skills using the knowledge provided by the existing skills, ultimately gaining a skill called 'Hacking', likely from the knowledge of hacking that was already embedded in 'Programming'.

According to this, it probably meant that before he consciously thought of it, the System wouldn't display it on the skills panel.

With such speculation, Homura tried to use his mind to see if he could get skills like mathematics or physics to appear on the skills panel, but unfortunately, it didn't work.

Nonetheless, this led him to speculate that there was probably a hidden panel where his basic skills were stored. He just wasn't sure if this hidden panel was permanently hidden or if it was sealed and needed a mission to unlock it.

Could it be that he needed to actually master related skills for a certain skill to show up?

If that was the case then Hacking was the best example.

With 'Programming' in his possession, he assumed that once he mastered the knowledge of programming, it also meant he automatically mastered the knowledge of hacking. Because of this, when he thought about skills related to hacking, 'Hacking' just appeared.

However, what about mathematics? What skills were related to it?

Unfortunately, Homura didn't know.

In that case, what if he made a calculator?

Homura pondered for a moment, but it felt like it would unlock something like 'assembly' or 'crafting' skills instead of mathematics itself.

In a way, programming could be considered an advanced form of mathematics, right?

In that case, the basic skills he learned in school might only exist on this so-called hidden panel.

If that were true, then biology as a skill might not show up, but advanced skills like genetics or dissection very well could.

Suddenly, just as Homura thought of this, the skills panel in front of his eyes flashed strangely before a new skill slowly appeared.

[Dissection LV6]

Homura: "..."

'What the hell?! You scared me to death—no, wait, how did this even pop up?! And why is it already at Level 6?! Am I even qualified for that?!'

Seeing the new skill and its level, Homura nearly jumped out of his seat.

Probably because he had been thinking about biology earlier, with all the images of white lab coats and surgical scalpels flashing through his mind, it caused 'Dissection' to appear.

However, after calming down, he realized that this skill had nothing to do with biology.

Homura tried to brainstorm what caused Dissection to appear until his eyes caught sight of a certain skill in the skills panel.

In an instant, his mouth and eyes started twitching.

In the skills panel, what he saw was 'Cooking'.