Or was it even appropriate to call it “growing stronger”? Regardless, the existence of levels was a dangerous phenomenon.
“Humans being strong is one thing, but I think another factor is how this world quantifies your experiences and immediately turns them into something useful,” Zelos said. “At the same time, the monsters here are extra strong, though.”
“Well, yeah, it’s not like you can take down a dragon with a knife,” Ado said. “It’s pretty balanced, in that sense. If you want to beat a big monster, you need a big weapon.”
“It may be balanced as a system, but it’s hard to believe it’s natural. Killing a dragon shouldn’t require a big sword—it should require a siege weapon, like a ballista or something. You’d really need some incredible firepower.”
“Feels like there are a bunch of question marks with the skill system too. Especially the way special effects get added to weapons and armor. You can’t exactly aim for specific effects.”
“Ah, yes; they’re just about completely random, aren’t they? The materials and the processes you use affect the outcome, but there’s no way of knowing with certainty what sort of weapon you’ll end up with. It’s much easier to just make a magic sword.”
Crafting weapons with special skills was mostly random, in other words. Sometimes, you could end up creating a weapon with a skill that made it less effective. If you crafted over and over again, you could identify some kind of trend in how it worked, but those trends weren’t deterministic or fully understood.
Conversely, making a magic sword—which could activate a spell you’d loaded into a magic stone or similar item—allowed the creator to put a specific, desired effect into the weapon. It was a far more user-friendly process.
“Even if you used the same materials to craft two different weapons, they’d end up with totally different skills most of the time. That randomness can make two weapons that would otherwise be the exact same perform completely differently,” Ado said. “Plus, when we can accidentally make a legendary weapon, we have to be careful about selling the stuff we craft.”
“I’ve gone through that myself.” Zelos nodded. “Even simple weapons can be considered exceptional by this world’s standards, so you get people being insanely grateful... It’s bad enough that I end up feeling like... Huh? You’re getting worked up over this?!”
“And our weapons would pretty much be the stuff of mythology here. On par with sacred swords. I wanna collect all my failed attempts at making stuff and just get rid of them, but they’re too dangerous to sell, so I don’t know what to do with them...”
Zelos and Ado were both jacks-of-all-trades, not only Sages but also spectacular craftsmen. But since anything they made—weapons, magic tools, or otherwise—could have terrifyingly powerful effects, their creations seemed likely to cause untold suffering if used in something like war.
Aware of that, they were hesitant to put their all into making weapons or other gear.
If this world were Swords & Sorceries, there’d be level requirements for equipping powerful weapons and items, so low-level players wouldn’t be able to equip the strongest gear.
But this was a real-life fantasy world, where there was no such rule. Even the lowest-level individuals could equip the most powerful gear.
“The problem is,” Zelos said, “at our levels, we can make deadly weapons that even complete amateurs can handle. I loaned one of my weapons to this low-level girl a while back, and she took out a big monster in one hit.”
“Uh... Isn’t that bad news?”
“Sure is! It just means we have to be careful, really. But we do have a habit of getting carried away from time to time...”
A while back, Zelos had loaned one of his weapons to a girl in an abandoned mine near Arhaus. Her level hadn’t been anything to write home about, but with the help of Zelos’s weapon, she’d managed to take out a war ant—a monster higher than her in level—in a single hit. Frankly, it’d been abnormal.
Seeing her do that had shown Zelos just how different things here were from Swords & Sorceries.
Weapons that could make level gaps meaningless were incredibly dangerous in this world; one could only imagine the sorts of ambitions they’d rouse in a society ruled by royals and nobles. A single weapon could turn a regular person into a mighty champion.
Of course, then, those royals and nobles wouldn’t be able to ignore Zelos and Ado’s existences any longer—not with them able to create such weapons whenever they wanted. If they played their cards wrong, they could end up being captured, imprisoned, and forced to craft weapons for the rest of their lives.
Even if things didn’t go that far, the risks were enormous. Just one of them selling off some failed attempts could spark chaos across the world.
Zelos and Ado’s strength meant they’d need to exercise the utmost caution just to throw out some duds.
“Urgh, what a headache,” Ado sighed. “By the way...”
“Mmm?”
“Can you hurry up and tell me where Yui is already? I’m worried about my kid too, y’know...”
“Whoops. It’d completely slipped my mind. She’s in a village called Hasam—it’s to the south of Santor. The mayor there’s taking care of her.”
“Uh... I actually passed through that village on my way to the library at the Istol Academy of Magic...”
“Oh? So you’ve sort of been there, eh?”
“Well, I was in a carriage with this super amped-up driver... We basically blasted through the village, from one end to the other, before I even realized there was a village there. It was this guy with two sleipnirs pulling the carriage...”
“Ah. High-Speed Jonathan. Jeez, that guy gets around!”
It sounded like the very intense carriage driver was keeping himself busy even when Zelos wasn’t around.
The way he tore along roads with no regard for anything but speed, carrying everything from deliveries to people, reminded Zelos of a certain crazy taxi.
Zelos couldn’t even begin to imagine how many victims the man had left in his wake.
“I swear, the moment that guy starts, he just doesn’t stop...” Ado said. “It took everything I had just to cling on and not get thrown off. Honestly, I was half expecting to die that day.”
“Oh... I know. He ran me over once.”
“With that thing?! I’m amazed you’re still alive.”
Zelos and Ado continued to drink as they talked about their shared trauma. After they returned to the room for the night, they got “one last drink” each from Zelos’s inventory, but that turned into one more, and then another—and so they drank the night away before finally, eventually, going to sleep.
The men made so much noise that they woke Lisa and Shakti, who’d already gone to sleep in the adjoining room. The women burst into the men’s room the next morning to give them an earful about it, but the men couldn’t remember anything about the previous night.
Apparently, Zelos and Ado had had a great time drinking and making merry, but they couldn’t actually remember anything from the night, including all the things they’d talked about. It was enough for Lisa and Shakti to give them both cold glares.
If nothing else, the men had learned that they were both annoying drunks.