Man, she sure takes responsibility for everything. She’s making me sad just listening to this.
What she was really showing was her will to be useful to us, though. It wasn’t a bad thing for her to use this series of events as the backbone for her comeback, but it also wasn’t good for the mood to be so somber.
I tried to change the subject. “Let’s take a break and get some food. Can’t train on an empty stomach.”
Gabriel nodded at me when I glanced at her. “There are plenty of rations in your inventory, sir. What would you like to eat?”
Off to the side, Tsukuyomi was as carefree as ever. Being in a giant snowfield apparently wasn’t enough to stop her from donning a black bikini and sunglasses and lounging in a beach chair with an electric blue cocktail in one hand. Looking at her made me feel like I was on vacation in a southern kingdom.
Is she just here to play around?! Though I guess her being like this means things are peaceful right now, so...
“Ah, oh yeah! You liked the meat from the Holly Holly Birds, right, Master Shinobu?” Alice sounded a bit brighter.
“Hey, you remembered! Yup, I like it ’cause it tastes like fried chicken.”
Gabriel shook her head, disappointed. “We’re out of that at the moment, sir. It’s hard to find that meat in the markets as well. My apologies.”
“I’m fine, Gabriel. You’re doing great.”
She really was so good at taking care of us. I wasn’t going to complain about our equipment or rations either. It still hadn’t been that long since I’d come to this world. Gabriel was doing great considering how little time she’d had in the town and our current situation.
Alice chimed in. “That’s not what I meant, Lady Gabriel, Master Shinobu.”
“Huh? Then what?”
“Look, above the forest... They’re flying up there. The Holly Hollies!”
We looked to where she was pointing, and about three kilometers out, the field ended and the grand forest began. I had to use Far-Sight Magic to see what she was talking about. I was surprised to see Holly Hollies flying up there, just as Alice had said.
“You’re right, there they are. Did you notice them, Gabriel?”
“My apologies, Master Shinobu,” said Gabriel. “I can only now see them with Far-Sight Magic.”
“Did you use a spell to see them, Alice?”
“No sir, I can see them with my bare eyes. My people lived in the forest, and we’re demihumans, so we have stronger senses than humans of your build.”
I was too stunned for words.
Wait, this isn’t really that weird, is it? This girl has cat ears and a tail. Of course she’d be different from humans like me.
That’s when the light bulb went off in my head.
Her senses are stronger than those of normal humans?
I gulped down my new, daunting idea. “Say, Alice, were your people better than other humans at using bows and stuff?”
“Not just bows and arrows—long-range tools in general were our specialty as well. Our eyes and ears work well, so we can discern the direction of the wind with just our senses. Though that’s why we were called indigenous.”
“In what specific way did you use bows?”
“The cat-eared adults who went to battle could fire them at a range of about five hundred meters. That wasn’t especially impressive, however, because long-range mages can use Ritual Magic to achieve the same feat.”
As she laughed bitterly, I couldn’t contain my joy and threw my arms around her.
“Wh-What are you doing, Master Shinobu?!”
“I found it!”
“Found...what?”
“What you can do for us in battle, Alice!”
†
The icy campgrounds were illuminated by the snow. I let out a small sigh after filling all the bullets with magic.
TAC-50 anti-materiel rifle, M2 Browning, M134 Minigun, M4 carbine, M84 stun grenade, and several types of bullets... I’d exchanged all of my guild coins for these guns. They were absolutely necessary for Alice’s power-up.
Of course, we needed to test one out before using up all the guild coins. Turned out to be a bingo.
The TAC-50 anti-materiel rifle: a super long-range rifle that had a world record of hitting a target from over three thousand meters away.
What would happen if I had Alice use this? I made her try several different methods.
In just three days, she was regularly able to hit targets from over seven thousand meters away. I had no choice but to invest everything I had into her.
What is she, Go*go 13?!
Regardless of what I had to say about it, it seemed her people were naturally inclined toward long-range combat. Was that compensation from the game system? Or were her people’s senses really just that much better? I didn’t know.
I was able to confirm that the weapon buffing spells made both her bullets and the functions of her guns exponentially better. It even lessened the recoil upon firing. The whole thing was nothing but surprises.
Therefore, something as nonsensical as seven-thousand-meter shots were now possible for Alice.
I couldn’t help but feel suspicious at first. Why did this world need guns in the first place? But when I thought about it, these were the best things to give to natives if you wanted them to join you on the battlefield. It definitely wasn’t a coincidence that Scrolls were included in the exchange list either.
Putting that aside for now. I had Tsukuyomi summon a monster around level 40 to confirm whether or not Alice was able to shoot a fatal blow with the powered-up anti-materiel rifle. She was.
In this world, when a monster was defeated, the EXP was distributed based on the contributions of each person that fought it. When Alice defeated that Sky Dragon a while back, she’d been wearing the leveling item meant for beginners, so we could only do that once. With this new super long-range method, there was no better way for her to level up.
Strengthening a native was something only I could do, since I was the only one who needed to take an NPC to Agartha with me. Guild coins didn’t grow on trees either, so I was pretty sure hardly any other reincarnator had tried this before.
My reverie was broken by Gabriel arriving, with Alice in her arms.
“We’re back, Master Shinobu.”
Seeing how limp Alice was, she’d probably reached her limit and passed out. Imagining Gabriel’s usual Spartan training made me wheeze in a bad way.
“Really going all out from four in the morning, huh? You can heal her physical exhaustion with Recovery Magic, but try not to cause her too much mental stress.”
“I had intended to end our session at midnight, but Alice insisted otherwise.”
“...She did? Herself?”
I looked over at her. A rag doll was the only thing I could liken her current state to. Did she actually push herself to the point of collapsing?
“She seemed to be motivated by her failing of the selection exam as well as your magic control training with her earlier today.”
“Meaning she didn’t want to be a burden on us.”
“As it stands, she is currently useless to us.”
I wheezed again at her biting words. Gabriel, Tsukuyomi, even Cerberus—my familiars all had extreme personalities, no exceptions.
“However...”
But from her expressionless face came a soft smile.