Great, as if I needed more damage to my bruised psyche… Not that it mattered, since I’d suffered a fatal blow to my ego on accessory row.
I wandered here. I wandered there. I ambled down avenues, sauntered in and out of shops, moseyed my merry way along ways thronged with other merry moseyers. Midway through my merry moseying, I spotted a stall selling chicken skewers and bought a couple for Slimey ’n’ me. We enjoyed our snack and poked around the other stalls.
“Whoa. If I sold this to you-know-who, I’d be a rich man.”
Unfortunately, the “Fullmetal Worm’s Armor: Physical Nullification (large). Full-body Defense (medium). Hardening and Shapeshifting. +DEF.” would only increase in size when counterattacking. It, ah, did not add to its wearer’s assets by default.
“Vice Rep A can’t use this anyway since she wears one-piece, full-body armor. But Tiny Tanuki? She wears light armor, so this would be perfect for her. It’s also a great piece of gear in its own right. But…I have a bad feeling she’d run into foes nonexistent-chest-first in the hopes of getting attacked. Seems counterproductive for the purposes of defense.”
So, I said goodbye to the Fullmetal Worm’s Armor.
Next, I found a protective talisman in the shape of a hairclip, a consumable item. It had good Traits for a consumable. I would’ve bought it were it not to break after one use, but as it was, I didn’t like the idea of leaving its wearer undefended. And besides, I could never sell just the one.
“Consumables aren’t economical, but safety’s important. You know what? I’ll take it home, steal the schematic, and flood the market with my own copies! Who cares if this talisman is a little pricey? Let’s buy it.”
And so long as the design was cute enough, these clips would be big sellers for me. Especially because they were consumables! Hello, cash!
“Ooh, they have cloak clasp pins. And earrings!”
Wiggle wiggle.
With the old superstitions abolished, all the surviving alchemists were beginning to come out of hiding. They were flocking to the Kingdom in droves, bringing new equipment and potions with them.
That stupid church and its stupid oppression… Why did it oppress all the useful people—the alchemists with their brilliant inventions and the beastfolk with their fierce warriors? Oppression was perfectly pointless, nothing but needless, firmly futile. The people of this world lacked the strength to keep the monster hordes at bay, yet they’d divided their strength further for no other reason than greed. Self-interest had handed humanity a one-way ticket to self-destruction; short-term financial interests and plain old avarice had sent them tumbling to their doom, ignorant of the true value of this world their ancestors had laid down their lives to protect. They’d sold their futures for financial interests. They’d brought a bad ending, a dead end disaster, upon themselves. Only now were we beginning to turn the tide. Shame, really. Seems there’s no such thing as a perfect world, even in fantasy.
“Why the constant desire for more money, y’know? If you have enough to buy what you want, live where you like, and eat whatever sounds good, isn’t that enough?”
Jiggle jiggle.
“That’s more than enough! And what did you do now to make everyone look at you like a kicked puppy?”
Oh, hey, mean girls. The mean girls were mean (average) teenage girls but with a mean (excellent) mean (mean) streak. And a meaner fashion sense! The townsfolk couldn’t stop staring at their clothes—so stylish! So unlike anything they’d ever seen before!—nor could they avoid gaping at their doll-like proportions. The girls had great figures and an even greater sense of what looked good on them. Here in this backwater universe of bumpkins and yokels, their fashion sense drew every eye and then some.
“Hey, mea—”
“For the last time, we’re not mean girls! And none of our names start with ‘mea’ either!”
The mean girls had, or so I’d heard, sometimes been scouted by magazines to be featured as amateur models, but none of them had dreamed of going into modeling. They’d been interested in joining the fashion industry and had taken afterschool classes at fashion trade schools. Therefore, these budding designers and stylists dressed to impress, and impress they did.
“Hey, are those clothes new? The fit’s a little off, hon. Oh, but it’s custom-made? Clothesmaking Club Girl designed it and Sewing Club Girl put it together? Oh, I can so tell. It’s so them. This part could just be a liiiiitle looser, and then it’d be perfect.”
“Wow. You know your stuff.”
“Most people would never blink twice at those clothes.”
“And you saw all that with one glance? You should open your own luxury maison de prêt-à-porter.”
“Oh, but tailor-made is so in right now.”
“Handicrafts Club Girl and Clothesmaking Club Girl have yet to master draping fabrics, but really, that’s totally beyond the average high schooler’s capability.”
Uh-huh, uh-huh, I see. Ready-made clothing required a degree of universal applicability, which was why haute couture was judged much more harshly. An article of clothing made for one person alone could be so much bolder than a garment made to sit on half a hundred body types. The body types of the four mean girls were much like ideal mannequins themselves, with their small, shapely faces, long arms, and longer legs. All they were missing were the snipping and sewing skills to back up their cutting critiques.
“I woulda made them a dressmaker’s dummy if you’d asked.”
“That wouldn’t be good for practice. They would only learn how to make clothes for the dummy’s exact body type.”
“Plus, I don’t like the idea of a dummy based on our measurements. That’s just creepy!”
See, the mean girls wanted the Yggdrasil Fruit for themselves—but they chose to give them up in favor of the arts club girls. I never heard a peep of complaint out of them either—I only knew ’cause Class Rep told me. These girls had put serious effort into their command of couture, cramming every day after school in their trade school classes… Oh great. Now I have to go find another five pieces of fruit. Where was I going to find another ultimate dungeon full of ghosts? Still, if any of us had a chance of finding one, it was me. Drop items seemed dependent on luck, and I had the best luck of my whole class.
Just then, I stumbled upon a very familiar scene.
“Why are you always eating? Is it the psychological damage from being called the twin telephone poles? With the way your legs are bulking up, you each have a pair of twin telephone pol—aah!”
“Haruka-kun! You’re the source of that trauma.”
“Quit yelling that nickname at the top of your lungs! What if it catches on?!”
The sports club girls were buying food—oh boy, here came Slimey’s favorite part! Bunny Girl, Wolf Girl, and Tiny Tanuki wolfed down cotton candy as a trio of fast friends—whether that was ’cause of Tiny Tanuki’s chattiness or her animal magnetism, I couldn’t say. Behind her was Vice Rep B, window shopping with a very prominent boob wind—never mind, not finishing that thought! Class Rep and Vice Rep A were glaring daggers at me, morning stars at the ready!
“Hey! How did you get your hands on that Punishing Pummeler? I thought I banned it! Huh? Dancer Girl lent it to you, Class Rep? Well, I guess that makes sense. You two are close friends… Am I the only one who thinks girls sharing morning stars is kinda weird? Oh no, don’t mind me. The only sweet, sweet bouncing and boinging I was watching was Slimey bouncing and boinging his way through sweet, sweet cotton candy. That’s all I was looking at. Unrelated, but why is Vice Rep B wearing a dirndl? We need to call in the bomb squad, because that low neckline and fine bodice is the bomb. I mean, very dangerous! Due to morning stars!”
“You’re completely ogling her, Haruka-kun. That glazed-over look? It’s a dead giveaway.”
“I can see the lechery written on your face. Guilty, guilty, guilty!”
It wasn’t my fault! Vice Rep B and a dirndl was inherently a dangerous combination. See how all the male halves of the couples walking by had started drooling? See how their girlfriends were beating them up for it? Violence was breaking out everywhere; fights were forming in the streets; it was tragic, so tragic. So yes. More? Gimme gimme?
“Look at all the shops. Did you guys find anything cool?”
“Yeah, any good places?”
“What? There’s no manju stall!”
“You see that yellow pyramid-shaped tent back the way we came? They sell accessories with little talismans in them.”
The girls were starved for news of new merchandise. (Judging by their stomachs, they were not starved for food.) With their spoils of war (read: snacks) in hand, the girls roved the marketplace, ignoring the accessory shops and making a beeline right for the food stands. Whatever happened to the stereotype of girls watching their figures?
“Oh em gee. Are these cute, or are these cute?”
“Eh… Not my cup of tea, and I wouldn’t pay that much for a consumable. I pirated the talisman concept, so if you want the clip itself, go for it. We can add talismans to it later.”
“Sounds like a plan! Thanks, Haruka-kun. Put me down for a pre-order.”
Two’s company; three’s a crowd; thirty’s an…unholy terror? Yeah, it’d take more than an army to stop this pack of thirty girls. I would’ve worried about letting my young female classmates go off alone in a fantasy-typical crowd, but with three dungeon emperors in the mix, any would-be assailant would soon find himself the victim of physical assault.