I checked my stats with my portable status board.
After many zombie dragon kills, I’d bumped my dexterity up to D. Work had been inefficient due to a few 1-counter dragons, and before I knew it, it was evening. Time to go home.
Well, I know how to meet the spirit. Maybe I should keep pushing…
“No. Let’s not.” I quickly let that idea go.
Don’t push yourself. That’s the whole reason you collapsed back at the company. Don’t repeat those mistakes. Besides…
☆
The next morning, after breakfast, I went to meet Plumbum.
As usual, she was drawing pictures of me. She looked up and smiled happily. “Ooh! I’ve been waiting for you.”
The reason I hadn’t pushed myself yesterday was because I’d promised to come see her every day. If I went hard and stayed up all night just to raise my stats, I’d get too focused on it and forget to come see her. No doubt about that.
So instead, I’d finished up at the usual time yesterday for the sake of coming to see her on time.
I’d made a similar promise with Aurum, but despite her curiosity, she didn’t get resentful if I couldn’t fulfill it. Plumbum was different. She’d believed that she had been betrayed long ago, so I wanted to keep my promise to never let that happen again.
Happy that she was so happy to see me, I sat down next to her. She kept staring at me.
“What’re you staring for?” I asked.
“Did something…happen to you?”
“Huh?”
“Your face looks different.”
“Different?” I touched my face to try and figure it out. It felt normal to me. Same me, same face.
“Is something worrying you?”
“Why do you think that?”
“Do not underestimate me; I’ve kept a close eye on you. It’s not hard for me to figure out something so simple.”
The directness with which she said it made me a little embarrassed. “I see. Hmm, well, there is one thing I’m worried about─or rather, a thing that’s troubling me.”
“What is it? Tell me about it.”
“But…”
“I’ll have you know…”
“Hmm?”
“Just talking about trivial things with you is enough to make me feel better.”
“Oh… I see.” I was happy that I’d come today. I’d never said anything like that, so this must have come from Plumbum’s experience alone. She seemed to be happier when I came, so I was glad that I hadn’t skipped today. “Basically…”
I told her about my problem─about the zombie dragons with a counter of 1. Not as a means of asking for help, but just because she’d said that she wanted to know.
She listened in silence until the end, slowly stood up, and casually waved her hand. A turtle appeared in midair. It was big enough for a person to sit on, and its shell had an odd pattern reminiscent of outer space.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“One of the rare monsters of my dungeon. The Chrono Turtle.”
“Chrono Turtle…”
“Try defeating it. Its shell is hard enough to deflect any attack, but the bright spot is always the weakest.”
After the spirit herself had told me its weak spot, I took out a gun and fired a growth round into the spot as directed. It was super-effective; the bullet went straight through the Chrono Turtle, and like the other monsters of Plumbum, it turned into floating liquid.
“What’s the drop?” I asked her.
“Humans have called it the Bead of Time.”
“Bead of Time?”
She waved her arm again, summoning another Chrono Turtle. Then, she splashed the Bead of Time onto it, causing it to change color and stop moving.
“It froze? Wait, based on the name, did time stop for it?”
“Indeed.” She nodded slightly yet firmly. “This item stops time for whatever you splash it on. Why not try using it on those dragons of yours?”
I was awestruck.
☆
I went to B9 of Nihonium again, walked around the dungeon, and searched for a zombie dragon with a count of 1.
One showed up in no time, so I snuck over and splashed the Bead of Time onto it. Like with the Chrono Turtle from before, it lost color and stopped in place.
Its counter remained at 1.
Then, I fired normal bullets at it. Even when I unloaded the cylinders of both revolvers, its counter didn’t change.
“Nice!” I pumped a fist.
I tested yet further, using an eternal flame round on the time-stopped zombie dragon. Despite not working on dragons with counts of 1 before, the invisible flame burned it just fine now.
Its body was half charred, yet it couldn’t move from its previous position.
Eventually, time started moving again, and out popped a dexterity seed. The Bead of Time had worked perfectly against the dragon.
But one test wasn’t certain enough for me, so I decided to go again. I walked all around the dungeon, ignoring zombies with counts from 2 to 5.
“Mm?” I found a 1─two of them at once, in fact.
Having more than one around would interfere with the test, so I considered leaving one be─but then, I held up my gun.
“…”
I stopped moving. My eyes landed on the gun in my hand. Something ran through my mind─a flash of inspiration.
I knew that I could do it, but it hadn’t fully taken form yet. I desperately tried to catch the idea, like water slipping between my fingers.
I focused for a while, and eventually, it took clear form.
This time, I splashed the Bead of Time onto my gun. My favorite gun lost color, as if frozen; time had stopped for it. Then, I removed the bullets that had time-stopped, loaded new normal bullets in, and fired them repeatedly at the 1-count zombie dragon.
The counter stayed the same.
Firing with a gun that I’d used the Bead of Time on wouldn’t reduce the counter!