Didn't I Say To Make My Abilities Average In The Next Life?! Volume. 2

by Funa

  “Mavis!”

  Mavis had been drowning in the sea of her own thoughts, but she snapped back at Reina’s shout, rushing toward the golem she and Mile had felled. From behind, they slashed, pierced, and twisted the hip and shoulder joints away.

  Snap!

  Rumble rumble…

  One after another, they demolished the joints until the rock golem couldn’t move. None of this should have been so easily accomplished with a normal sword—no matter how sturdy.

  Reina watched, slack-jawed, before snapping to attention. Hastily, she issued another command. “Change of plans! Forget running. Let’s take down the other one! Pauline, blast the head with fire! Mile and Mavis, that one’s done—come take care of this guy!”

  Reina fired off a quick fireball spell at the other golem, creating a diversion. A moment later, Pauline’s Fire Wall obstructed its vision. Mavis and Mile ran toward the blinded golem at a dash, brandishing their swords.

  Thunk!

  Snap!

  Rumble…

  “……”

  The rock golem’s knees broke, and it toppled to the ground. Mile and Mavis shared a momentary glance, then silently destroyed the other joints.

  As they pierced the rock golem’s head, it ceased to move, seemingly devoid of any further function. Just in case, they returned to pierce the skull of the first golem as well.

  Though this was easy enough, no normal sword would be able to pass through the skull of a rock golem. At best, the blade would break. It was just common sense. When striking a golem’s weak points, you aimed at the frail joints. The head was strong and difficult to reach.

  “Are we just…super strong?”

  “Assuming that the golems weren’t weak, then…I guess so.” Mile muttered doubtfully.

  “……”

  Reina and Pauline appeared equally perplexed.

  “A-anyway, we should see what we can harvest. I think we can call quits on the hunting for now, so after this we’ll go back to camp…”

  Reina spoke quietly, all the pep gone out of her, and the other three nodded silently.

  It seemed like there was a lot on her mind.

  As it turned out, the only things that were worth gathering from a rock golem were the spheres of its joints. Mile puzzled over what these could possibly be used for, but Reina explained that if you sorted them by size, they could be used for some sort of tool.

  I guess there’s not much use in taking the body home. You can’t eat it, it doesn’t have the size or shape to be useful as building material, and it’s not even especially durable…

  However, the spheres were fairly large and heavy. Furthermore, there were several of them on each body. If they didn’t have storage magic, carrying them would be quite a hassle.

  At least there was no worry of them rotting or getting damaged as time went on. If they had a cart or wagon, they could leisurely drag them back home.

  It would be great if these fetch a high price, Mile thought, but she was not especially hopeful.

  ***

  The members of the Crimson Vow returned to their campsite and began preparing dinner.

  They’d finished hunting a little earlier than planned, but had plenty of prey.

  The roasted rock lizard from earlier would serve as their main dish, accompanied by the fruits, vegetables, and dehydrated soup blocks they’d purchased in the capital. It was fairly luxurious, as far as camping went. In celebration of a job well done (as well as their victory over the rock golems) a feast only seemed suitable, and rock lizard was what they had—excepting, of course, the enormous store of food Mile had stashed away in her loot box.

  Besides, the rock lizard meat they’d eaten that morning was so delicious. And the price of meat that had been burnt to a crisp on the outside would be considerably lower. Saving it to sell was a fool’s errand. It was a no-brainer that they should just eat it themselves. Rock lizard was a mildly luxurious ingredient and would cost a pretty penny in any normal restaurant.

  But the meat of even one lizard was still an immense amount, and no matter how diligently they tried, they could only manage small portions. Still, they should be able to sell some cheaply to the inn—or even offer it as a gift. They had plenty of other lizards that were still completely intact. Either way, Mile couldn’t keep taking the meat in and out of the time-static loot box if she wanted to hide her abilities from her companions.

  Unlike their unintended lunch, this time they had plenty of time to prepare. Therefore Mile didn’t merely roast the meat, but tried her hand at a number of different cooking techniques. It was not often that you got a chance to have a leisurely meal of rock lizard in the great outdoors, and she desperately wanted to find out more about what kind of ingredient they’d collected. More than anything, she wanted to eat some delicious food.

  Reina and Mavis could not cook. Mavis was the daughter of a noble family, so that was one thing, but it was curious that Reina had never cooked much—neither while traveling with her father on his peddling ventures, nor as a member of the Crimson Lightning, the party where she had been the only girl.

  When Mile had asked about this, Reina’s reaction made it very clear that they should not broach the subject again. And so Pauline was in charge of the main course, while Mile experimented.

  A while later, dinner was ready. Mile and Pauline laid the food out before the others.

  Pauline’s dish was just standard roasted meat. The only seasonings were rock salt and various herbs. Mile’s dishes, meanwhile, were rock lizard au vin and fried rock lizard.

  Since Mile couldn’t drink alcohol, the red wine she used for the au vin was only a cheap cooking wine that she’d stored away in the loot box. To that she added salt, garlic, onions, shimeji-like mushrooms, whole wheat flour, high quality spices, and a number of other ingredients, including vegetable oil which Mile had pressed herself, creating an enjoyable, complex flavor. It hurt not to have soy sauce available, but she made do as well as she could under the circumstances.

  And then there was the fried lizard. To the flour, she added salt, seasonings, and garlic, as well as leeks and egg whites that she’d freeze-dried and powdered using magic. She mixed those and various other things together into a breading mix, then dredged bite-sized pieces of the meat, using wind magic to mist them with a small amount of oil. If it were chicken, the fat in the meat would have been enough, but somehow she could tell that there wasn’t much fat in the rock lizard.

  Finally she fried it, without oil or a pan.

  In Mile’s previous life, her father had been given a hot air fryer for his thirtieth work anniversary. It was a useful cooking gadget that could make fried foods with just heated air, not oil. In that life, Mile—then Misato—used it now and then to make fried potatoes and gyoza as a snack. Mainly, though, her mother used it to make fried chicken. Now, imitating its principles, Mile whipped up a hot wind.

  180º C for 12 minutes. Half the work was just preparing the breading—the cooking itself went fairly quickly.

  Afterward, she took some vegetables out of the loot box, chopped them up, drizzled the dressing she had prepared, and added the fruit. Her dish was complete.

  “Th-th-this is delicious!”

  The outside was crunchy, but when you bit into the rock lizard, the inside was soft, juicy, and flavorful. It had the savory nature of meat and the tang of spices, as well as the warm fragrance of garlic. Together, these flavors satisfied the whole palate.

  “What is this?! Mile, have you always been such a talented chef?”

  With just one bite of Mile’s experimental fried lizard, Reina and Mavis were raving.

  The praise put Mile at ease. She was lacking certain seasonings, so she hadn’t been very confident. Pauline, however, appeared rather uninterested—Reina and Mavis hadn’t said a word about the dish she’d prepared. But the moment Pauline tasted the au vin and fried lizard, her eyes opened wide, too.

  “It’s delicious…”

  Mile hurriedly set
aside a portion for herself so that she would not miss out.

  “Mile, you’ve got to handle the cooking from now on—at least sometimes!”

  “Yes, yes, please!”

  “You have to show me how to cook like that! I’m begging you…”

  However, there was something they didn’t know. The seasonings she’d used were incredibly expensive, and it would be difficult to recreate the process without Mile’s magic…

  Eventually, they had all more or less eaten their fill, and their bellies were stuffed.

  “So, are we actually strong?” Mavis asked quietly. “Or are we weak?”

  “I guess it’s best to say that it depends on the situation.”

  “Such as?”

  Mile and Pauline listened as Mavis and Reina talked.

  “In terms of swordsmanship, we’re probably a low-level B-rank. In terms of magical ability, when we aren’t limited it’s a high-level C-rank. When our powers are limited by restrictions, like being unable to use fire magic in the forest, we’re probably a mid-level C-rank. We rely on magic for defense, so we’re weak against physical attacks that can’t be staved off with a sword…”

  They didn’t have a dedicated shield bearer, and given the size of their party, this couldn’t be helped. Still, it was a clear weakness…or it would be, if they didn’t have Mile.

  Though Mile had, to some degree, demonstrated her magical knowledge to the others, she hadn’t shown them her full strength. Nevertheless, the other three recognized her magical knowledge was considerable—comparable to a court magician—and her actual power was at least two levels above Reina’s. In terms of swordsmanship, she vehemently insisted: “Gren was just playing around, lowering himself down to my level,” but it was clear that she was still at least a B-rank.

  “If you include the value added by Mile’s storage magic, as well as factoring in our dearth of experience, our weak points, and whatever else, I’d say that we’re still a solid mid-level C-rank. Wouldn’t you? For novices we’re incredibly strong, but we’re still average as hunters. That’s about our current level.”

  “You don’t think our magic’s any higher than that?”

  “Only in terms of raw power. If you factor in our maneuvers and experience in magical battles as well as our various weaknesses, taking one-on-one combat into account, I think that’s about right. Hubris is forbidden here!”

  There was still one thing that Mavis couldn’t grasp. “But didn’t we just topple some rock golems like it was nothing—with only four people?”

  “That was just because we had an advantage,” Reina said, stopping Mavis’s objections in their tracks. “Rock golems are known for their sturdiness, not their speed, so against you two—with your god-like speed, and those ‘cheap swords’—they didn’t stand a chance. But what if it were something like a wyvern? Attacking from the air where your swords couldn’t reach? Or an iron golem that those swords couldn’t pierce? What if it were a toxic mouse, which is much smaller and quicker than you both? Can you really say that you have any special qualities beyond the strength of your sword?”

  “Er…”

  “I guess that’s how it is, then.”

  “That’s how it is.”

  Mavis seemed to have accepted this, but Reina continued to speak.

  “Actually, there is one more weakness in our party.”

  “What? What’s that?” asked Mavis.

  Reina looked all of them over slowly. “Well, have any of you ever killed a man?”

  “Uh…”

  “Those faces tell me all I need to know… when the time comes, if you can’t kill another person without hesitation, you’ll be the one to die. Even if they’re an acquaintance or a friend…”

  As Reina spoke, her eyes were fixed not on the others, but on her own hand, gripping a small stick pierced through a piece of meat.

  ***

  Late that night, a small form slipped out of their camp.

  It was Mile.

  A worry had taken hold of her, and she couldn’t shake it. She crept through the night back toward the place where they’d fought the rock golems.

  When she arrived, she approached the rock golem’s lifeless body and sliced off the pierced head with her sword.

  Were this any other monster it would have been grotesque, but thankfully, rock golems were nothing like other living things, so blood and guts were not a concern.

  “Hm…”

  The head was fixed solidly to the body, four eyes evenly spaced around the perimeter so there was no need for it to turn around.

  She cut the head into four parts and peered inside, scooping out one of the eyes…

  “I see… The head is just a sensor. In that case, destroying the cranium isn’t necessarily needed to stop its—”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Gaaaaaah!!!”

  Mile screamed as a voice emerged out of the night.

  Reina, Mavis, and Pauline stepped out of the shadow of a tree.

  “Wh-what are you all doing here?”

  “You went sneaking off in the middle of the night! We followed you so that you wouldn’t get snatched up by a monster!”

  “Huh? But you said we were coming to see what she was up to—”

  “So, what did you come here for?!”

  Reina took no heed of Pauline’s confusion.

  “Um, er, well, I was, picking flowers…?”

  “Oh? Picking flowers, hm…?” said Reina, staring at the extracted golem eye in Mile’s hand. “Well, it looks like you have an eye there. I suppose a tooth will be next, and then perhaps a nose to add to your bouquet?”

  Mavis let out a snort.

  Eventually, Mile confessed that she was so curious about the inner workings of a rock golem that she couldn’t help herself and came to investigate—thinking that perhaps she might discover a weakness that would help them defeat other golems in the future.

  “That’s stupid. You should have just told us. Wouldn’t it be better if we all came to investigate together?” Reina asked.

  As the night wore on, the girls dissected the rock golem’s body, searching for weak points. But the golem was stone through and through, without a weak spot to be found. All they found inside was a round object—a bit like a gold coin—which Mile stored away in her loot box.

  Despite their late-night excursion, the three girls got to bed at a reasonable hour and had plenty of sleep. They greeted the next morning with vim and vigor.

  All except for Mile.

  Something else had weighed on her mind the previous night, and she had barely slept a wink. In fact, it was because she couldn’t sleep that she’d gone to investigate the golem in the first place.

  What concerned her was the question:

  Am I…invincible?

  Until now, she’d avoided getting hit as much as possible, even in practice battles. She hated pain, so even when she lost on purpose, Mile made sure to take only weak blows on the thickest parts of her armor. It was probably why her opponent always saw right through her ruse.

  In any case, thanks to all this effort and scheming she hadn’t really known pain up until now… no, in fact, she had never known it.

  Never? Even when we were deep in physical combat training? Did I ever once feel pain?

  In the battle with the rock lizard the previous morning, she was struck by its tail and dashed against the rocks. But, despite the clever excuse she gave her teammates, she had not blocked with her sword. She hadn’t leapt back to neutralize the attack, and she hadn’t cushioned herself on impact with wind magic. She had taken all of that damage, full force.

  And yet, she was uninjured. It had barely even hurt. It was similar to getting local anesthesia, a feeling like: I know something is touching me, but it doesn’t hurt a bit.

  Did that mean all the effort she’d made to avoid pain had been for nothing?

  No, that wasn’t the problem.

  Just how durable is my body? I’m going to guess it’s at l
east half as impervious as an elder dragon. But then again, if there was something even sturdier, then…

  Mile couldn’t recall taking even a scratch since the day of that fateful migraine. Her mind began to race. If she revealed this fact to others, would they treat her as inhuman? Would they use her as a test subject? Or would they try to use her as a weapon that could smash even a rock golem? One after another, terrifying scenarios cycled through her head until she could not sleep at all.

  That morning, the four enjoyed a breakfast soup made of the now-customary roasted rock lizard. Then they packed up their camp. All that really meant was stowing their bags in Mile’s storage space and extinguishing their campfire.

  Eating meal after meal of roasted rock lizard probably didn’t make for the most balanced diet, but no one ever said that camping meant enjoying a variety of cuisines. Besides, the lizard meat was delicious. Incredibly delicious. And it wasn’t as though they would always acquire goods that they couldn’t sell—at least if they could avoid it. It was possible they might never get a chance to eat lizard meat again.

  Certainly, they could seek it out on purpose or pay money to eat it at a restaurant in the capital. However anything they caught that could be sold, they would sell. For the price of even a single plate of rock lizard meat at a restaurant, they could order a small feast of more affordable dishes.

  Poverty. That single word could quash all of their dreams.

  “All right! Back to the capital!”

  “Yeah!!!”

  Everyone cheered Reina’s decree, and finally, they were back on the road again.

  A lot had happened, but all four of them were beaming. They had safely completed their first job away from the capital and hunted enough to earn far beyond what the job had promised. It was decided: they would no longer take jobs for novice C-rankers, but those for mid-level C-rank hunters. Jobs that would test their mettle.

  Mavis was thrilled at the prospect of finally facing real battles.

  Pauline grinned at the idea of boosting their earning potential.