“Oh my. Good eye, as I expected. I certainly have many pairs with magic cast on them. The one you hold right now, my dear fairy, is enhanced with Magnification.”
“Magnification?”
“If you slide your finger along the temple of the glasses, you can magnify your vision.”
Leen did as Glassie told her, and then her eyes widened.
“What a convenient tool. You can basically use it like a telescope, yes?”
She was sliding her finger along the side while gazing out the window. She must’ve been playing about with the magnification.
“Mother, let me try them on too!”
Naturally, her artifact-loving daughter couldn’t keep quiet with this in front of her. Quun was practically jumping at Leen to get the chance to try them on. Leen had a wry smile on her face as she handed the glasses to her daughter, who immediately put them on and was excitedly sliding her finger along the temple as she looked out the window herself.
“You’re not spreading enhanced glasses everywhere, are you?” I asked.
“Of course I’m not. I want to spread glasses, not magic items.”
I was relieved to hear his answer. If glasses like this were spread without regulations in place, there was a chance they could be used to commit crimes.
“I have plenty of other types of enhanced glasses. This is Appraisal, this is Heat Sensor, and this is Beam,” Glassie continued, placing three more glasses on top of the table.
Okay, Appraisal and Heat Sensor are easy enough to understand, but what the hell is Beam?!
“As the name implies, these let out a light beam. You could burn away something as trivial as an Orc in a flash with them. The downside is that the beam is so bright that it damages one’s eyes...”
“Maybe put away the dangerous ones, okay?!”
A glasses beam?! It sounded cool, but it definitely came across more like a gimmick than anything practical. The other two at least seemed sensible...
I put on the Heat Sensor glasses, ran my finger along the temple, and suddenly I could see heat sources glowing red, just like thermography. I felt like I’d become the Predator like this. It seemed it was possible to switch between the modes, at least. When you tapped the frames, a visual would appear indicating the swap.
But when would you even use glasses like these? When you were out hunting at night? Then again, I could see intelligence knights making use of these. Perhaps I’d take them.
But what about the Appraisal glasses? I repeated what I’d done with the Heat Sensor glasses, putting them on and running a finger along the frames. Some kind of crosshair appeared in my vision, moving wherever I looked, almost like a mouse cursor.
When I lined it up with a painting on the wall, it beeped and an explanation appeared like a text bubble in a comic.
“Painting: oil painting.”
Well, yeah, I can see that.
I turned my gaze toward the door this time.
“Door: wood.”
And I can see that too!
Could these glasses only appraise things by their outside appearance?!
“It explains whatever it sees based on the wearer’s own knowledge,” Glassie explained. “As such, it cannot know what its wearer does not know.”
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of an appraisal...?”
If all that came out was information that you already knew, you wouldn’t need to appraise it to know what the item was. When I looked at that painting on the wall, my knowledge amounted to “that’s a picture” and “that’s an oil painting,” so that was the information the glasses showed me. If I’d known who the painter was, or what year it was painted in, the glasses probably would’ve gone, “Painting: oil painting drawn in XXXX by the artist known as YYYY,” instead, but if I had that info already, I’d have no reason to appraise it.
Was there any point in an enhancement like this? Maybe as something to pull forth any memories you’d forgotten, like if you met someone who seemed familiar but you just couldn’t remember their name. Use the Appraisal glasses and you’d know who they were right away.
You know, maybe these are useful after all.
When it came to all the royalty and nobles I had to meet on a regular basis, I was quite often faced with the situation of not quite remembering who they were.
I tested it out by hovering the crosshair over the spectacled Yumina.
“Yumina Brunhild-Mochizuki: Female. Divine ward. One of the Grand Duke of Brunhild, Touya Mochizuki’s wives. Maiden name: Yumina Ernea Belfast. Has an affinity for Wind, Earth, and Dark magic. Possesses the Mystic Eye of Intuition and the Mystic Eye of Foresight. Eldest daughter of the king of Belfast, Tristwyn Ernes Belfast, and his queen, Yuel Ernea Belfast. Her younger brother is the first prince of Belfast, Yamato Ernes Belfast, and...”
Okay, okay, stop already!
All the information I knew about Yumina came tumbling out. It really did just display the information you knew. Honestly, I couldn’t decide if I actually thought it was useful or not.
“You don’t appear to view them that favorably, do you? Then what about these?” Glassie asked as he handed me a pair of yellow plastic frame glasses. These didn’t have another weird enhancement, did they?
As suspicious as I was, I tried them on. They...seemed to be a normal pair of glasses. Was there a switch on the frames like with the Heat Sensor ones? I slid my fingers along the temple while I looked at my surroundings, but there didn’t seem to be anything—
HANG ON!
When I turned to look at Lu, her clothes looked...slightly see-through? Huh?! I slid my fingers further along the frames, and suddenly, her clothes disappeared entirely, leaving only her underwear.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
“Those are glasses enhanced with Transparent. You can look through obstructions with ease—”
“Hmph!”
“AAAAHHHH!”
I snapped the glasses in half.
“Wh-Wh-What are you doing?! To destroy a pair of glasses is a blasphemous act even for a god!” the god of glasses wailed with tear-filled eyes. He really didn’t understand that I’d just saved his ass.
“Touya? What are you doing?”
“I think I heard something about them being enhanced with Transparent...”
Crap!
Behind me were Yumina and Linze, looking at me with frigid glares. I felt as though I could see their menacing auras radiating from them. Even the god of glasses could only gasp in fright when he saw their eyes, sweat beginning to pour down his face.
“N-No, you misheard! Not Transparent but, uhhh, Talent! Seems like the glasses couldn’t withstand my innate talent and broke! I thought Elze would like to try them on, but guess that isn’t happening now! What a shame! You don’t have any more of these, right?”
“R-Right. I generally only keep one of each type of enhanced glasses. I...have no more.”
“...I see.”
“...Is that so?”
The heavy pressure exuding from Yumina and Linze disappeared all at once. They seemed convinced for now, luckily. When the two returned to the kids, both me and Glassie let out the breaths we’d been unconsciously holding.
“That was close...” I breathed out. “If the girls had learned these glasses existed, you’d have been a goner...”
“You have some frightening wives, Master Touya... W-Well, let’s be thankful that it never turned into anything worse, shall we?”
“Don’t act like you’re innocent here. You’d have been the one getting hung out to dry, you know?”
“Me?!”
I mean, yeah, I wasn’t the one who made the glasses. If I’d acted overjoyed upon learning of their existence, though, it would’ve been a very different story... I was pretty sure the goddesses would’ve gotten involved as well. Glassie would’ve had no escape. I doubted the girls would wear the glasses to the party after something like that either. He should be thanking me, seriously.
“Don’t make glasses like these again, okay?” I warned him.
“I-I understand...”
Sweat still pouring down his pale face, the god of glasses nodded his head. Whether human or divine, women were not to be made enemies of. That was the truth of the world.