“That tea? What do you mean?”
“When we were eating dinner, there were tea leaves on Renya’s table, so I figured it was his and dropped them in the teapot…”
“Who the hell would just leave a bunch of tea leaves lying on a table?”
Renya narrowed his eyes and glared at Shion, whose face twitched in fear. She hurriedly turned her back to him and pretended to be unconscious again. She fooled no one, of course, and he would have to have some harsh words with her, but that would wait until later. For now, he had more important issues to deal with.
“Have you heard of any drugs or poison that might do this?”
He doubted it was either of those, though, because one of the skills he had received from the girl god when he came to this world was Healthy Body. If his current condition was due to some sort of poison, that skill should be negating its effects. Rona’s answer, however, was not what he expected.
“There’s no poison like that, but drugs, maybe… Shion might have picked up a magic drug of some sort.”
“Magic drug?”
Something occurred to him: the girl god had told him that this was a world of sword and sorcery. Sorcery meant magic. However, he still had yet to see any magic in this world. Everything that resembled it was called magecraft here. That was strange. If magic existed in this world, so should wizards; someone had to wield the magic. Despite that, he had only ever seen mages and magecraft.
“Magic drugs, in a nutshell, are drugs that cause all sorts of crazy effects. While drugs used in magecraft have well-defined purposes such as healing wounds or curing poison, the effects of magic drugs are completely unknown. The only way to find out is to swallow some and see what happens. And what happens tends to be pretty ridiculous. Their potency is on another level entirely. They can flip genders, resurrect the dead, turn things into gold…”
A moment of silence ensued as Rona composed her thoughts. Then, a muffled voice was heard.
“But we drank the same tea…” Shion said into the bed. She still had her back turned, presumably because she was scared to make eye contact with Renya.
“I can only assume it was a gender-switching drug that only worked on males,” answered Rona.
“What? Can you just pick up one of these things anywhere?”
While he displeased with his current condition, based on what Rona just said, Renya was starting to believe that maybe things weren’t as bad as he thought. At least there was minimal harm to him. After all, if he had swallowed one of those drugs that turned things into gold, not only was he not sure if he’d survive the experience, but even if he did, he’d have to deal with the problem of having a literal golden body. In that sense, perhaps he should consider himself lucky to have gotten off with a gender switch. At the same time, it now made sense why his Healthy Body skill didn’t activate. Currently, his body was perfectly healthy; it was just female instead of male. He wasn’t harmed, so it didn’t trigger his skill.
“Normally, magic drugs are very rare and found only in ruins and mazes. And even there, you have to be lucky. They’re not even traded on the market, so you can be sure one won’t be just lying around for you to pick up.”
“Well…”
“The thing is… sometimes, magic drugs are discarded without ever being identified as one. In fact, they’re often thrown away even if people realize they’re magic drugs.”
“Why? If they’re so rare, they should be worth a fortune.”
Renya was pretty sure that the correlation between rarity and value was a universal truth, especially if the thing in question was so rare that few people in the world had ever gotten a glimpse at it. There were doubtlessly people — connoisseurs, one might call them — who would leap at the opportunity to acquire one.
“That’s because on top of having unknown effects, magic drugs come in all shapes and sizes. There’s no way to identify them by appearance. They’re dangerous substances that always come with the risk of causing something terrible to happen. According to legend, the purchase of a magic drug that was falsely claimed to resurrect the dead once led to the collapse of an entire kingdom.”
“They’re just too dangerous to handle, huh…”
“Yes, but it’s not common for someone to simply leave one on a table…” Rona glanced at Shion, who still had her back turned, and sighed before continuing. “And, of course, it’s even less common for someone to then pick it up and eat it without a second thought.”
“I mean, it was just lying there on the table. We can’t really blame her for thinking it was edible… though it wouldn’t have hurt to ask beforehand.”
He tapped Shion on the foot, and she timidly turned a little, glancing at him across her shoulder.
“Are you mad at me?” Her voice was meek.
“I might have lost some hope in you… but I’m not mad.”
Rona took a moment to ponder which of those was actually worse. Shion, however, did not seem to share Rona’s concern. Once Renya said he wasn’t mad, she sprung up on the bed and turned to face him.
“Really? You’re really not mad at me?”
“I’m not. We know the cause now, and turns out, it’s not really worth making a fuss over. Besides, I have a feeling this effect won’t last too long.”
He didn’t say it out loud, but he was already aware of a method to revert the change to his body. The Healthy Body skill was normally triggered automatically by abnormalities that harmed his health. During their conversation, however, he also realized that it could be triggered in response to something the user had deemed abnormal. More specifically, he learned of this fact when the Help Function conveniently kicked in and he saw rows of scrolling text out of the corner of his eye.
In summary, Renya had deemed the gender-switching drug to be a foreign substance, and the detoxification process had already started. Being a magic drug, however, it seemed fairly resilient, and the process seemed like it would take some time, which led to his prior comment about the effect not lasting too long.
“Is that so? That’s good to hear. In any case, I suppose we’ll simply have to wait and see,” said Rona. “There’s nothing we can do right now, anyway.”
In response, Shion made a fist and brought her face close to Renya’s.
“Just so you know, I’m okay with both male Renya and female Renya!” she said emphatically.
“Uh… Okay, sure. Thanks?”
“If anything, being the same gender makes skinship easier!”
“Hmm?”