Chương 100: Chapter 29 Are We Sure This Is Okay? (Part 2)

(Part 2)

"Difficult... isn't getting a Class too difficult...? If you image poorly, you get dragged along by it, and if it is absurd, you lose track of what it means."

"For now, I'll wait, so take your time and think, okay? How about you, Tachibana-san?" Tachibana was still playing with the ball while opening and closing the scissors. However, his complexion seemed much better. The face that had been furrowed with pain from the headache was now completely relaxed.

"It is really good. The headache is gone, too. More than anything, being able to edit memories and appraise past memories is excellent. Chloe, when you said 'demonstration' at the Gate the first time, you were scared, weren't you? Even if I can't appraise you directly, I can tell from the atmosphere." This guy had acquired a rather unnecessary ability. Indeed, at the time I had no plan, and it was my first encounter with an Artillery type. It would have been impossible not to be scared.

However, I had to turn my back on them and lead them forward...

"Tachibana-san, I'm giving you the title of Peeping Tom. You peeked into a maiden's secret. Please accept it with due respect."

"I respectfully decline. In the first place, you... said that being treated as a woman was fine, didn't you...? I'm sorry. That was careless of me." During the meeting, Tachibana had been unsure whether I was a man or a woman, but I was the one who had told him that treating me as a woman was fine. Even if he knew from the paperwork that I was a man, my appearance was that of a girl.

Besides, he had never met me in my male form, so there should be nothing wrong with me calling myself a maiden when talking to Tachibana! And my family registry had become female, too.

"However, having both hands occupied is troublesome. I wonder if it can be combined with the Sphere of the Martial Artist... Maybe I should ask a Blacksmith." The Blacksmith I had yet to meet. He, or perhaps she, had accomplished the great feat of creating dog tags. If I could meet them, I wanted to convey my thanks. To tell them that there were people who were able to return because of them.

"Tachibana-san, could you let me meet the Blacksmith, too? I want to thank them."

"All right, it's decided. My image is, without a doubt, sound! If this were a microphone, that would have been great, but it's a flute, after all... I'll have to practice if I'm going to fight in a cool way... Making some silly sound on the battlefield would be..." Even after Tachibana agreed, he continued muttering to himself beside me, while Mochida cheerfully raised her voice. Her image was sound... sound? Not playing an instrument, not vibration, not sound waves, but sound itself. I see.

I had grasped her image.

"You want to deliver it, don't you?"

"Yes. If it's sound, it can reach even from far away. Besides, if this ball has an amp? It should probably spread the sound and deliver it. This is interesting, you know. When I image it, it flies around with a whoosh." Saying that, Mochida happily demonstrated the baseball-sized ball, moving it up, down, left, and right. A ball attack in close combat, sound attacks at long range. On top of that, the Class's characteristic was defense, making it quite a well-rounded Class with few openings.

Once she continued solidifying her own image, she would probably be able to clean out everything from the fifth floor onward by herself.

"Now then, Tachibana-san, are you ready too?"

"I'm ready. Chloe, stay in the rear. Mochida-san and I will handle the monsters. Is that all right?"

"I don't mind."

"I want to try it out, too, so let's go with that. Mochida-san, you choose the branches. If it's me or Chloe choosing, it won't be exploration anymore." The three of us proceeded to the fourth floor. Perhaps thanks to Akihabara, no monsters had appeared so far. If one appeared and we were going to test the new abilities, I'd be happy if it were a Mitsume, something we could deal with like a goblin. However, there were also Artillery types, so there was no telling what might appear.

Along the way, we opened several boxes and collected the boxes themselves as we proceeded. The contents were, as usual, gold and silver coins, some kind of resource, and weak medicine. Occasionally, Decomposition Rods appeared as well, so we stored them in our rings.

"There really is quite a distance, isn't there? With the scenery all looking the same, I feel like I could get lost."

"Once you pass the fifth Gate, everything changes completely. The deeper area becomes something like a safe space and a mountainous region. That's probably where the real dungeon starts. It's pretty huge, so we might need tents or something. The only way to get out is through the Exit Gate... Tachibana-san, what did the appraisal say?" Mochida looked around restlessly while clutching the flute. Indeed, it was a structure that made it easy to get lost.

However, once you had a Class, there were various ways to deal with it. In my case, I could spread smoke around and search for the correct path. For Tachibana, he could probably appraise the walls or floor and have the correct route revealed to him. As for Mochida, once she became accustomed to her ability, she would probably be able to find the path through echoes or something similar. In the first place, the Sorts had said that once you acquired a Class, you would understand the structure.

But all the structure I'd been able to understand was simply that the floor number was displayed. There was nothing else. There should have been more, like the locations of items and things like that... No, forget it. Those guys had no interest in what was inside a trash can.

"It's an escape item. It's charge-based, and if you leave it alone, it automatically becomes usable again. However, there seems to be a setting for its scale. Or perhaps I should say the number of people it can accommodate." Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Scale?"

"Probably the Class, I think. Things like upper and lower ranks. Chloe, what happened when you used it?"

"No, I don't remember using it in my current form, so I can't really say." The only time I'd used it was right at the very beginning, when I was still in my male form. After that, for one reason or another, I'd gone into the Gate from the beginning every time without ever skipping ahead. The Witch hadn't been particularly troublesome over the Akihabara incident, but whenever I entered a Gate like this, she would start getting restless and ask me to go deeper.

I wanted to start cleaning soon, so it might be a good idea to find some time to go deeper and let her blow off some steam. More than anything, though, I also wanted to indulge in some entertainment myself. Still, if I were going in, it would probably have to be alone... For better or worse, the Witch didn't particularly like having monsters—her prey—taken away from her.

"Probably Mochida-san and I could use it without any problems, but it might not work with three people. In fact, I can't see any information about Chloe at all."

"Really? What can you see about me?" Mochida seemed curious about what Tachibana could see and asked him, but that was probably poking a sleeping dog. Tachibana stared at Mochida when asked, then looked away and opened his mouth with an awkward expression.

"... I'll tell you first that I can turn it on and off. Rather, if I couldn't, my head would explode. Forty-two kilograms... You know what that means, right?"

"... If it's sound, then you can lose weight through vibration, right?" So... Mochida weighed 42 kilograms... I didn't think she was fat, but perhaps that was something a woman worried about. Since my body didn't change, I didn't really understand that sort of thing. As I watched with a sympathetic gaze, Mochida looked at me with tears in her eyes and hung her head.

"Yakiniku... eating contests... 22 kilograms... Light, white, slender, cute, and even though you smoke that many cigarettes, you don't smell like smoke... A con artist?"

"That's an accusation."

"Chloe, you should eat more. You're way too light. I thought so during the pool, too... Once we get out, shall the three of us go eat something? Mochida-san has been walking around inside the Gate, too, so she should be fine. I'll treat you."

"Well, let's think about that after we get out. Kaori, it's time to work." In the darkness ahead, there was a single Mitsume, wandering around with a spear in hand. Normally, I'd kill it instantly, but this time I'd leave it to Mochida and concentrate on supporting her. Tachibana, too, simply held his scissors beside me and didn't seem inclined to move.

"My first monster hunt. It was supposed to be an image, right?" Mochida put the flute to her mouth and, while looking at the monster, produced a high-pitched ting. The monster bubbled up and melted away. I had no idea how she managed to produce that sound from a flute, but was that... an attack using sound? She should have been using it with an image of sound. But indeed, eliminating an enemy immediately was the foundation of defense. If you struck first, you wouldn't have to defend yourself.

For Mochida, sound probably equaled waves. Rather than thinking about complicated things, it was simply a wave—not a microwave, vibration wave, or sound wave, but just a wave.

"Oh~, amazing. I microwaved it."

"Microwaved it? Like heating something in a microwave?"

"Yes. You know, the sound it makes when it's finished heating." Tachibana was beside me, desperately holding back his laughter. Apparently, without realizing it, my own thinking had become rigid as well. That's right. Sound was, in the first place, something that conveyed information. If you were defending, you had to let people know that an enemy had arrived. That's why there was the sound of a warning horn. And Mochida had imagined the result from the sound. When a microwave went ding, the food became hot.

Then if a gunshot rang out, a bullet would fly. If the sound of a slash rang out, something would be cut. What exactly was defense...? Ah, if the method didn't matter, then a sound of something bouncing would work, too... If she could imagine onomatopoeia and make those sounds, she should even be able to evade attacks, and perhaps fly through the sky. I had no idea how she was producing the effects, though.

"Kaori, rather than learning music through correspondence courses, you should listen to sounds in manga, movies, and anime."

"Eh? But I want to blow the flute with an image like a battlefield musician..." Eventually, she'd probably be able to do that. Right now, her image of onomatopoeia might be particularly strong, but in the first place, sound was a sense that developed in humans earlier than sight. After all, a fetus grew while listening to its mother's heartbeat. However, it was probably still too early for her to reach that point.

"You can do that once you're more accustomed to it. For now, you'll be able to fight more easily if you increase the number of images you have for sounds. For example, can you form an image of what you need to defeat Kobone?"

"Hmm~, Kobone is that Unique that Tsukasa went around defeating, right? That one, huh~." Mochida began groaning again, probably searching for an image she could use to defeat it. Tachibana had his eyes closed while repeatedly opening and closing the scissors. I hesitated over whether I should talk to him, but nothing would start unless I asked.

"How about you, Tachibana-san?"

"Yes. I appraised the current record, edited it, and pasted it onto the memory I had been managing. I don't know whether I can defeat it, but if I can form the image, I should probably be able to manage somehow. I'd like to record Chloe's magic eventually, too. Would you mind producing a fireball or something as a test?"

"Sure. How about something like this?" The fireball I produced in my palm was about the size of a fist. It wasn't particularly powerful, and since this was an experiment, it was simply floating there. Tachibana made a cutting motion with his scissors toward the fireball, thought for a moment, and then a fireball emerged from the tips of his scissors.

"Oh, is this the same as mine?"

"Not exactly. I don't have an aptitude for Magic Classes, so at this stage, it's more like a phantom image. It does have heat, for the time being, but if you blow on it, it disappears, and it burns out quickly. If I appraise it, its durability increases, but appraising magic is... how should I put it? It feels like someone dumped paint all over the inside of my head. It's unpleasant. Perhaps this will be alleviated as I train and reach a higher rank, too."

Just as Tachibana had said, the fireball soon faded and disappeared. However, Appraisal Tactician and Scripter seemed to have an extremely high affinity. After that, an Artillery type appeared, but thanks to Mochida's flute and the reproduced records Tachibana had pasted, we made it out from the fifth floor without any danger. According to Tachibana, the reproduced records were consumed when used, so he apparently had to wander around the battlefield carrying his scissors at all times.

Increasing his trump cards and increasing his stock both seemed to be difficult, and apparently Mochida's "microwave" attack had also disappeared after a single use. However, things that had been appraised seemed to have greater durability, allowing them to be used about three times. Also, if a record was pasted into the management records, unused records would remain. So either way, he would have to act together with someone and record attacks, defenses, or other abilities.

"And so, is this yakiniku restaurant really all right? It's not to brag, but the amount the two of you eat and drink isn't enough to hurt my wallet. We could even go to a high-end restaurant, you know?"

"Eh?... We can eat Wagyu beef and everything? I won't hold back, you know? As payment for your butt."

"Tachibana-san, no! You'll go bankrupt!" In the end, after we got out, we held a celebration at the yakiniku restaurant we'd gone to the other day. Tachibana looked shocked by the amount we ate, and his face was red, but perhaps it was because he was hot. Well, it was all-you-can-eat, so no need to worry about it. If anything, the employee who had changed our grill the other day changed it frequently again this time, so we were able to cook our meat on a clean grill, which was nice. The alcohol flowed freely, too.

This time, I had used Mochida as a test case for what happened when I took on the role of advisor. But as expected, if I was going to give advice, it had to be done face-to-face. Even after talking this much, there was still a difference between her image and mine. If that was the case, then I needed to meet the person and talk with them before giving advice.