“Now...” I sighed.
I’d successfully melted the ice in her heart.
Long hair, traditional kimono. Plumbum’s appearance hadn’t changed─she was still the spitting image of an old Japanese princess─but she looked so much prettier now. I had a feeling that gentle smile was closer to her true self.
The phrase true self reminded me of something, however.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Yes? Presuming it’s something I can answer.”
“Yeah. I think you’d know better than anyone else in the world, actually. Have the monsters in this dungeon always split like they do now?”
“Urk...” She clammed up. There was an uncomfortable look on her face.
It was just as I’d suspected.
I hadn’t been in Tetramine for long, and though it was deserted now, its layout made me think that it had been quite prosperous not long ago. There was a time when it flourished─and I doubted the dungeon was as crappy back then as it was now.
So when I asked the question, her face told me everything I needed to know.
Her face was down, but her eyes turned up at me like a child being scolded.
“I thought he’d betrayed me,” she said. “Something dark started swirling around in my mind, and I decided to show those dastardly humans, and, well...”
“I understand. Can you change it back?”
“Umm...” She clammed up again.
“Not as easy as it sounds?” I guessed.
“To be honest...even I don’t really know how I did it.”
“Oh. Well, that’s fine. I’ll just have to use the dungeon master.”
“That may not work...”
“Huh?”
“You mean to use the dungeon master to change the monster types, yes?” Plumbum asked me.
“Yeah.”
“Making them split was an action of mine. No matter how you change them, you will only get monsters that split.”
“Well, that’s a problem.”
She’d said that there was no point in trying to use the dungeon master, but I understood what she was trying to say.
Up until this point, I’d used dungeon masters to change drops specifically. And though I’d changed the drops, they still stayed in strict categories. Lanthanum drops were always alcoholic drinks, and Silicon always dropped vegetables.
A dungeon’s inherent properties can’t be changed. Not by me, at least. Only a spirit, an even higher being than a dungeon master, seemed to be able to do that.
And since Plumbum didn’t know how she’d done it, it was impossible to stop it or revert it back to before.
“Hmm...” I thought to myself.
“H-How about this?”
“Oh?”
“Weapons made by parts of my body can stop them from splitting,” she said, summoning a turtle. Using her fair white fingers, she karate-chopped the turtle. It did not split. “For example.”
“I see. In this case, we’d use...your hair, I guess?”
In stories where people made weapons out of body parts, they typically used hair. And Plumbum was a girl, after all. Even in my world, there were stories of women’s hair having mysterious powers.
From a more practical point of view, hair could be continuously cut off and grown back, so it was easy to mass-produce. With all that in mind, it’d be best to forge her hair into steel and use that steel to make weapons.
“Okay, then.” Without a moment’s hesitation, she grabbed her hair─that beautiful cascade that flowed all the way to the floor─at the root and prepared to chop it off with her hand.
“Wait, wait, wait!” I screamed and caught her wrist.
“What now?”
“Uhh...”
How could I not be hesitant? She was about to cut off all that hair without a second thought. Back in Japan, we used to say hair is a woman’s life, but that wouldn’t exactly be appropriate right now.
“Do you not need my hair?”
“I mean, we do, but it’s so beautiful. It feels like too much of a waste to just lop it off.”
“Beautiful...” She froze up, wide-eyed.
I furrowed my brow and thought for a moment. “Just one strand will do,” I suggested.
Yeah. Just one strand. That’ll be two birds with one stone.
“W-Will that be enough?”
“It won’t, but let me take one per day. Then we won’t have to leave your beautiful hair in such a sad state.”
“One per day...”
“I’m coming every day, so that’ll be enough.”
Plumbum faced down and turned her eyes up at me again. The same act as before─but why this time? After a while, she finally spoke up with a gentle air, “Thank you.”
“Huh?”
“I am no fool. You said one per day... because you wanted to reassure me that you would come every day, no?”
“It’s a little embarrassing when you put it that way.” Really embarrassing, honestly. I felt like my face was burning.
I’d had the idea to get one strand of hair every day. That would let her keep a full head of hair, yes, but it would also let her live with the knowledge that I’d be back every day. This came to mind because I was already going to the monster village Ryota to pick up an acceleration round daily.
Like I said, two birds with one stone. But it felt awkward now that she’d put it into words.
“Thank you...”
Still, she looked happy, so my embarrassment was a small price to pay.
☆
After Ryota left the spirit’s chamber, Plumbum combed her fingers through her hair.
“He said my hair was beautiful...” she murmured as she blushed from joy and embarrassment.
Suddenly, she looked up to the ceiling. And she thought of Ryota─the man who promised that he would come see her every day.
“I wonder...if spirits can mate with people...”
After not even a day of knowing him, she had fallen for the man.