Kazuya wilts in disappointment. “Sure. Good for you. All right, then. Let’s turn to the profile pages for each role.”
He flicks to the pages, indifferent to my glee.
“Are you giving up on adventuring because you lack strength and stamina? Don’t worry, you have magic! Magi are the cornerstone of a party’s ability to attack!”
Oooh, I can use my mind to do magic! This is so exciting!
Kazuya points to the bottom of the page. “These sentences here are a spell. Apparently, it’s a copyright-free spell for beginners. ‘If flames shoot out of your fingertip when you read it, you’ll be able to join the ranks of wondrous mages…’ Wow, magic spells have copyrights.”
“Flames out of my fingertip? That’s awesome! Like a magic trick! Okay, I’ll try it.” I take a deep breath to still my nervousness, then say… “‘Nothing beats a flash of inspiration!’”
Nothing happens.
“‘Nothing beats a flash of inspiration!’” I’ve said it twice now, but there’s still no flame. Um… I don’t think this is how it’s supposed to go. Aw, this is meant to be my one true role.
“Doesn’t look like it works for you, but you don’t need to look so down. Even if you can’t use fire magic, you might be able to use magic of a different attribute— Hey, what are you doing?” Kazuya yelps.
I rub my thumb tip to my fingertips really fast. The goal of the spell is only to make a spark light up, so as long as I rub my fingers really fast to create friction, I’ll make fire easy.
Rub-rub-rub-rub-rub— See? Smoke!
“Stop it! It’s not even magic at this point, it’s just physics!” Kazuya grabs my hand.
I have to stop rubbing my fingers so I don’t burn him. “But I wanna use magic…” I whine.
“And I’m telling you there are different kinds of magic other than fire magic. Like water and wind, see? But don’t get your hopes up. The teddy bear said we’d get plenty of skills, but they’re based on our experience. So it might be tough for us to use magic, since we didn’t have it in our original world.”
That makes sense. I’m pretty pessimistic when I try casting the other copyright-free magic spells written in the book. In the end, none of the beginner magic works for either me or Kazuya, meaning neither of us has the aptitude to become a mage. What a shame.
Kazuya gives a troubled smile at seeing me so depressed. “It’s not that big a deal. You fit plenty of other roles with your current skills, like warrior.”
“No, not warrior. I’m dainty,” I insist.
“Yeah, yeah.” Kazuya flips through the book to a certain page, then shows it to me.
“Cook…?”
“Yeah, you’ve always been an excellent cook. Want to give it a go?”
“Now that you mention it… Yesterday when we were eating Marie’s cooking, something strange happened. I don’t know how, but I knew about ingredients I’ve never had before, and it only took me one mouthful to know for sure what was in each dish.”
“I knew it! You’ve got a cooking skill. Look, it’s written here. It’s permanently activated, meaning you don’t need to say any spells to make it work.”
I look at the book. It’s true, it describes what I felt when I was eating dinner yesterday evening.
A cook. That might be good. I love cooking, and above all, I’m sure that the guys in this world also love girls who can cook! But do adventuring parties actually need cooks? I glance back up the page to the heading summary.
“Cooks act in a support role to ensure their party maintains perfect health! Plus, if you hone your cooking skills, you’ll be able to create dishes with mysterious effects!
Oh, okay. I guess if you’re a highly skilled cook, you can make dishes that will increase people’s physical strength and attack power. That’s way better than I thought.
“Sakurako, look here. There’s a magic spell for cooks. Try casting it.”
“Oh! There is! It says that if you say this, you’ll be able to sense information on ingredients. I wonder what that means. Lemme give it a try… ‘Sizzle sizzle, bubble bubble, tap, tap, tap.’” I repeat the spell twice. It doesn’t sound much like a magic spell…
Suddenly, a mysterious voice speaks in my head.
“The Adventurer’s Handbook for Beginners is not edible,” it says, and I notice my hand holding the book is glowing faintly. What? Is this magic?
“Kazuya! It’s working! A voice told me this book is not edible!” Overjoyed by my first inkling of magic, I grab Kazuya’s shoulder.
He smiles happily. “It’s working? That’s great. Then, are you happy to be a cook?”
“Yeah! I’ll do it! Hey, what role did the flowchart give you?”
“It said to try something like locksmith or appraiser. I’ll have a look.” Kazuya turns to the page about locksmiths.
It tells us that locksmiths specialize in disarming traps and unlocking hidden treasure chests in dungeons. They are in high demand, as they are indispensable to parties. At the end, there’s a sentence that is a beginner-level spell for perception.
“‘If you find that your skill activates upon reading this incantation, you’ll have no problem working as a locksmith,’” Kazuya reads. “Okay, here goes. ‘Until it’s been revealed, the possibilities are endless.’ It’s kinda embarrassing to say out loud.”
“Kazuya, your hands are glowing!”
“Oh. I guess the spell works for me.”
“Wow! You can use magic?! Awesome!” I exclaim. “How does it feel?”
“I heard a voice in my head say, ‘This book—The Adventurer’s Handbook for Beginners—was published 40 years ago. It shows signs of wear. If you choose to sell it at a bookstore, it will fetch 3,000 gaul.’”
Are you kidding me?! That’s incredible! It’s not exactly worthwhile information for us right now, and I don’t know how this skill will help fight monsters, but wow!
“What else? Is there anything else listed?” I shake Kazuya to hurry him up.
He scans the page, smiling. “This is the only spell on the locksmith page, but there’s a sort of supplementary description… ‘As well as the temporarily active skill of magic, those who are suited to be locksmiths have permanently activated skills of moving with stealth, lockpicking, and auditory concentration.’ In other words, aside from casting spells to conjure up magic, locksmiths have technical skills, too.”
“Wait a minute, I wanna cast perception magic too! Let me try. ‘Until it’s been revealed, the possibilities are endless.’”
Nothing happens.
“Doesn’t look like it suits you,” he says. “Let’s look at other pages… The appraiser’s page lists perception magic, too. So does the merchant’s page. Oh, but the spells are different. Actually, wouldn’t it be faster to read the list of spells at the back to see what we can cast or not?”
We skip to an index of spells at the end of the book and figure out which ones work for us and which don’t. There are only about ten of them. Apparently, spells are often kept secret and handed down in families, or you can pay to learn them from their creator. The beginner spells in the book, however, have been around so long that it’s fine if anyone learns them. In other words, their copyright has lapsed.
I try them all, but unfortunately, only the one for cooks works for me. Maybe it’s lucky I can even use that one.
Kazuya, on the other hand, can cast perception of objects, map creation, monster identification, and storage magic. The map creation one is fantastic. It makes a map appear in your hand with info about the surrounding area. Monster identification’s cool, too. According to the book, there are two types of monsters—those that turn into magic crystals when they die, and those that turn into corpses. A sidebar says that monsters that turn into crystals spawn naturally, whereas ones that turn into corpses are their offspring. Naturally spawning monsters… Weird.
Storage magic is also super convenient because it allows for more space inside bags.
“Well, we now know magic, more or less,” Kazuya says. “I’m curious about the precise nature of my skills, even if it costs money to find out. But for the time being, I’ll stick to the role of merchant. The other jobs require a lot more skills, like picking and stealth.”
“And I’m a cook!” I giggle. “Hey, the book says I need to be equipped with cooking utensils, like frypans.” Right. If we go on an adventure, I’ll need gear so I can cook out in the wild.
“Let’s go shopping for some on our way home from the Guild,” he suggests.
“Yeah! Okay, if we’re all set job-wise, let’s head there now! Let’s go join the Adventurer’s Guild!”
We let Jabrin know that we’ve chosen jobs, and make for the Guild without further ado.