We’d traveled together, ate together, laughed together. Even if she really was just a game character, my heart wasn’t so simple that I could think of her that way.
“...That makes me very happy to hear, Master Shinobu.”
Strange for her usual stone face, Gabriel had thin tears lining her eyes.
“I needed to tell you that. Now you understand—I can’t throw any of you away.”
Don’t make me say this. It’s so embarrassing.
I had to though, since she was instantly willing to sacrifice herself the second I let her do as she pleased.
Tsukuyomi called out to me next. “Then what should we do, Shinobu? All I can see happening from here is our MP running out before we even get its HP down halfway.”
“We still have our trump card.”
Tsukuyomi giggled and Gabriel’s eyes widened at my words.
“I see...” Tsukuyomi laughed. “So that’s what we’re doing. The costs are extreme, though, and even then, we don’t know if it will be enough.”
“The only thing we can do is try. We’ll just have to weigh our options after the fact.”
Cerberus included, we all nodded at one another and glared at the giant beast together.
†
Alice Cecil
The first thing Joachim and Nathan did was disarm me, then they tied my wrists with rope. It was only natural, since they were taking me captive. It was quite disgusting to see them carrying the guns Master Shinobu had given me while the lower halves of their bodies were exposed.
“What do we do with these? We could sell them, but maybe we should use ’em ourselves?”
Nathan played with the gun while thinking about it, accidentally setting off a deep, heavy gunshot.
“We don’t need them. They’ve got some kind of magic buff on them, but they don’t seem to apply unless the little girl is using them.”
“Yeah. As far as I can tell, all they do is spit out metal stones at a decent speed.”
“I’m sure these would work well for, say, B-rank adventurers...”
“Then these are just long tubes that are useless to us. Okay, then we’ll say they’re in-game items from Gods and sell ’em to one of those grand nobles who like strange things.”
“They’ll sell for a high price for sure.”
They turned their vulgar leers and vulgar smiles to me.
“Now then, without further ado.”
“Time for the fun part.”
“Stop this,” I muttered.
“Don’t tell me it’s your first time. Haven’t you done it tons of times with that man?”
The blood rushed to my head and I yelled at him. “No!”
“No? No to what? There’s only one thing men and women—poles and holes—can do together.”
“Don’t lump him in with you. He’s completely different from you all!”
Their filthy smiles got even wilder.
“Me first!”
“Stupid, it might be her first time. I go first!”
“Then how about we do it together?!”
“It’ll tear if we do that! Wait, that might be fun.”
“Yeah, you like that kinda thing, don’t you?”
I couldn’t handle hearing such a horrible conversation. But it bought me some time.
Proper ladies carry razors with them.
That’s what Lady Tsukuyomi taught me. Apparently, she held a razor blade under her tongue at all times so that if an unpleasant fellow ever captured and forced a kiss on her, she could give him a painful retaliation.
Okay, so she was crazy. But at least razors were useful for cutting through rope, so she had me carry one too. Not under my tongue, obviously—I was a normal human being. But honestly, I’d never thought the razor under my wristband would come in handy at a time like this.
When I cut the rope and stood up, I armed myself and leaped toward my stolen knapsack. That would have been the perfect form for stealing their weapons in a surprise attack, but unfortunately, these two were way more experienced than I was.
So, on to plan B.
“She got outta the rope?”
“Was she hiding some tool on her?”
I tore open the knapsack, pulled out what I needed, and glared at them.
“Master Shinobu is different from you all. He’d never look down on someone as being less than him. In fact, he even respects and bows his head to people weaker than him if he can learn something from them.”
I had been so shocked when Master Shinobu lowered his head to Ms. Isabella. But thinking about it, he even treated someone like me as an equal human being, so that must have been how he was by nature.
“Thanks for the input,” one of the men scoffed. “So what’re you gonna do about us?”
“Your prized weapons are in our hands, you know.”
They threw my guns behind them and pulled out their own sword and knife. I’m sure that was the best decision they could make as first-rate adventurers—use their trusty weapons over ones they’d never used before.
“Indeed, they are. I don’t mind if you come at me fairly.”
I was going to go for their weak points. I threw what was in my hand at them, and a torrent of light exploded out.
A stun grenade.
No magic involved. I really had no idea how this thing worked. As far as I knew, this thing used physical light to steal away the opponents’ visions.
“Wha—?!”
“Agh?!”
They shielded their eyes and buckled over. Humans would naturally make their bodies form an arrow shape after taking a stun grenade. They’d stand still for a complete, frozen moment.
In just a few seconds, I didn’t attack but secured my weapons.
My finger was then on the trigger of the M134 Minigun.
“Sh-She got the weapon! W-Wait! Wait, wait, wait!”
“L-Let’s talk this out! We can’t see, so let’s talk! We’ll work it out!”
I took a few more steps back to gain distance. I was fairly safe at this distance already, but the more I gained, the more of an advantage I would be at, so of course I’d take it.
“Weaklings like me have our own way of fighting. This is what happens when you look down on us.”
“Okay, fine, fine, just put the weapon down!”
“W-We were just joking earlier. We weren’t really going to do anything horrible to you!”
“Hm? Joking? Did you just say you were...joking?” I asked, allowing myself to sound a bit confused.
Joachim took the bait. “Yes! We were just joking! Don’t take things so seriously! We never intended to do any— AGH!”
A steel bullet chocked full of magic shot from the muzzle of my gun.
“Oh, I’m sorry. It seemed you enjoyed jokes, so...”
The Minigun fired off magic 7.62-by-51-millimeter rounds. At an extreme speed of several thousand per minute, they spilled from the gun with a juggling sound.
“I pulled the trigger as a joke as well.”