We decided to look for a place to move.

Once breakfast was cleaned up, we all stepped outside.

“For starters, I want to get up on top of this cliff.”

Normally, we would have had to either walk around looking for a way up or climb the cliff itself.

But we had dependable companions.

“If we ride Micron, we’ll be there in no time!”

Shouko was right.

Micron noticed me coming out, flew over, and curled her long body around me.

“There, there. Can you take us up there?”

When I asked while petting her, she nodded.

“But what about Mashiro? He obviously can’t ride Micron-chan, right?”

“Mmm. Mashiro says he’ll look for a place he can climb up on his own!”

If he found one, that would be useful information for us too.

“The chickens too.”

“Yeah, Chiyu. I’ll help.”

Just like when we captured them, she was probably planning to carry them in baskets.

We had ten of them now, so I stepped away from Micron and helped Chiyu.

Once that was done, I stored everything that made up the base.

“Sousuke, your ability really is incredible...”

Minori murmured as all of it vanished cleanly from right in front of her eyes.

“Sousuke! Mashiro pulled the fence posts out for us!”

Once they were buried in the ground, they counted as “connected to the ground,” which meant I couldn’t store them, so I’d been thinking it might be fine to just leave them behind.

Mashiro came over and set the fence post he’d been carrying in his mouth down in front of me.

“Thanks, Mashiro. Digging those out by hand would’ve been a pain. That really helps.”

I patted his head.

After that, Chiyu and I slung the baskets with the chickens onto our backs, and all of us climbed onto Micron’s back.

“Everybody, don’t fall off.”

“If you hang on to Micron, you’ll be fine!”

Micron slowly rose into the air.

Back during the event, I hadn’t had room to think about anything else, but now, as my viewpoint gradually climbed higher and higher, I felt the same exhilaration I’d felt the first time I rode on an airplane.

“...We’re flying.”

“Whoa. Mashiro-kun surprised me too, but th-this is incredible in a whole different way...”

“........................”

“Minorin, you okay? You’re shaking.”

Maybe Minori was afraid of heights.

“Sorry, Micron. Once we get on top of the cliff, fly low to the ground.”

Eventually, the top of the cliff came into view.

That said, it didn’t look that different from what we’d seen before. There was forest spreading out ahead of us.

No, there was a difference.

“Apples,” Chiyu murmured.

A tree bearing red apples had come into view.

“Wow, that means they got placed today, right?”

“There’s a whole bunch of them! Does this mean all-you-can-eat apples!?”

Shion and Shouko were excited too.

It was obvious by now that the environment on this deserted island was being manipulated by the mystery blackboard.

Over the past five days, we had discovered a certain rule.

The environment “restored” itself. Or maybe “regenerated” was the better word.

For example, on the first day after being transferred, I hadn’t harvested every mushroom and piece of fruit I found. Out of consideration for nature, I’d left some behind.

But everything on this island was under the mystery blackboard’s control. That kind of consideration turned out to be unnecessary.

The clearest example had been the trees we’d cut down.

We had left the roots—the stumps—alone, but when I passed through the same area on a later day, I was shocked.

The stumps were gone, and trees were growing there again.

Like in a game, where destroyed objects respawn after time passes.

That was probably how this island worked too—environmental changes caused by people eventually reset themselves.

The same went for gathered materials.

Of course, areas affected by new environmental changes—like the new “fruit” we had now, or the “water source” from before—were exceptions.

If a spot where mushrooms had once grown turned into a “water source,” then obviously mushrooms wouldn’t grow there anymore.

But aside from exceptions like that, just taking advantage of this rule would be enough to keep us from starving.

As long as you knew where edible mushrooms grew, all you had to do was keep collecting them every time they regenerated.

Whether someone could realize that and make use of it after suddenly being transferred into a forest, though... that was another matter.

“Finding a new place to move comes first, but let’s pick a few.”

Micron thoughtfully brought her body closer to the tree, so each of us grabbed one apple.

After wiping mine a little on my uniform, I bit into it.

With a crisp crunch, juicy flesh filled my mouth.

“It’s good.”

“So good!”

“It’s really sweet. It’s delicious just like this, but jam or apple pie would be great too.”

“We’ll come back for more later.”

“That’s right. If you put them in your Inventory, Sousuke, they won’t rot.”

Now that Micron was flying closer to the ground, Minori had apparently calmed down enough to say that.

And she was right. The island’s rules and my ability worked well together.

No matter how much gathered food regenerated, that didn’t mean it was safe from spoilage.

But inside my Inventory, time didn’t pass, which meant I could gather as much as I wanted.

In other words, I was probably the only one who could stockpile food and materials indefinitely.

Things were stable for now, but there was no guarantee the island’s weather would stay that way forever.

If we suddenly wound up in a situation where a blizzard kept going day after day, then as long as I had used my ability to store up food, my companions wouldn’t go hungry.

“Man, I’m really happy we got fruit added. I like melon. I wonder if there’s melon?”

As Micron swam through the forest, Shouko said that, still delighted by the apples.

“I’ve heard people say melons and watermelons are vegetables. I wonder how that works?”

“It apparently differs depending on the country. Botanically speaking, even tomatoes and cucumbers would count as fruit, but not many people in Japan would classify them that way.”

“So far, the mystery blackboard seems to be setting the rules based on ordinary common sense, so maybe it’s using Japanese standards? Whether that means household standards, seller standards, or shipping standards, I don’t know.”

Something could be officially shipped as a vegetable under national standards, but still end up displayed in the fruit section at a supermarket.

Then again, you also saw snack foods shelved with bar snacks and things like that. Stores changing where items were placed based on their own judgment wasn’t unusual.

“We can just look and test it.”

Chiyu had a point.

After leaving the apple trees behind, we eventually found—

a river.

“River.”

“Ah, now I kind of want fish.”

“Fish would be nice too.”

“But the vote picked meat. Doesn’t that mean there aren’t any fish on this island?”

“I wonder whether the option that doesn’t get picked shows up again later in another two-choice vote.”

I was curious about that too, but there was no way to know until it actually happened.

No—there was always the option of asking the mystery blackboard.

“Fish aside, this would be useful as a place to secure water.”

I nodded at Chiyu’s words.

“Yeah. Micron, see if there’s any open space around here.”

“In the worst case, I could always cut trees down with my magic.”

“Maybe Mashiro-kun could help dig the roots out.”

Minori and Shouko’s ideas were valid, but the environmental restoration rule still worried me a little.

If we put the house on land where the trees had been dug out, and then the trees regenerated and punched through the house, that «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» would be the worst-case scenario.

We headed upstream from the river we had just found, and after Micron flew on for a while, the view suddenly opened up.

“...A grassland?”

It looked like some kind of nature park—an open field stretching in every direction.

The breeze was cool, and there was nothing blocking the view.

It had the kind of atmosphere that made you feel like you could open a ranch here as-is.

“Isn’t this a great spot?”

“Mm. Great sunlight.”

“And with the river nearby, if fish ever do get added, we could go fishing right away.”

“The view is open too, so we’d notice animals or people approaching immediately.”

Everyone seemed to like it.

Micron lowered us to the ground, and I looked for a good place to set the house down.

“Yeah. Around here, maybe. Then we can have Mashiro flatten the ground...”

Come to think of it, he had flattened the ground below the cliff too, and that hadn’t “regenerated.”

So maybe it wasn’t that everything automatically tried to return to its original state...?

When I thought about it, if our time living on this island stretched out longer and we eventually decided to make fields, environmental regeneration would just get in the way.

If that was the case, then maybe the land itself didn’t regenerate.

If trees regenerated, though, then that meant we currently couldn’t clear a forest and build a village.

But open places like this grassland had been provided, so maybe we were meant to find and use spots like this.

“Mashiro-kun’s taking a while, huh?”

At Shion’s words, Shouko looked worried.

“Yeah. It’s Mashiro, so I’m sure he’s okay, but...”

And then, from the edge where the forest met the grassland, a massive white body slid into view. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

“Shouko, Mashiro’s back!”

“I knew you’d make it, Mashiro—! ...Huh?”

“He’s carrying something.”

“Could that maybe be... a person?”

What Mashiro had in his mouth, when I looked closer, was a female student with fluffy cream-colored hair.

She was wearing a tattered school uniform, so she was one of our classmates.

“M-Mashiro picked up a person!?”

I was shocked, but there was no way I could tell him to just take her back and leave her where he’d found her.

She looked unconscious, so first things first—we had to help her.