Gun Girl from Another World

Nonsense

"Ah, is it really okay for me to have it?" Leuke asks uncomfortably.

"Well, you did do all of the work," I emphasize, holding the object that had appeared after the mock-up village was destroyed out toward him with both hands. "Besides, what use do any of the rest of us have for it? You are, objectively, the best choice to use it."

Korrigan leans in closer to examine the thing in my grip. "How do you know what it does? Do you recognize it?"

"Sort of," I cheerfully chirp, immediately setting Ayre to groaning as he rolls his eyes. "I mean, everyone knows what a Great Ogre's Heavy Belt must do, right?"

"Aren't you the one that's always bragging about finding that augmented Identify spell?" Ayre points out. "There's no reason to guess, Miss Three Hundred Mana Hedge Witch. You can just confirm what it does."

"Identify?" Korrigan repeats. "Hedge Witch? I thought you were a martial class?"

"Identify is what the Temple's soul orbs cast," I explain. "It's a spell like any other, it's just that there's no one that remembers how to teach it to others. As a Hero, I'm able to purchase knowledge of it directly from the System. When you use the Cleric spell Diagnose on the same target that you've already Identified, you can upgrade the Identify spell with the additional data. The upgraded version can even tell you about curses and corruption effects."

Poor Korrigan looks lost at this information. "Forgotten magic?! And it needs a class-specific spell to upgrade?! Isn't that too unfair?!"

Ayre nudges me with an elbow. "Actually, since you can learn the spell, can't you teach it to others?"

I frown thoughtfully at that. "Maybe? Teaching it to others would be hard, though. I've only ever learned one spell conventionally, so I don't really understand how to explain the process. I think I'd rather leave that to Benarou, he'll probably write a book on lost magic before long."

"Benarou?" Korrigan asks again.

It's Leuke that answers this time. "Oh, Benny's the Battlemage Hero! He's super smart! His Intellect's even higher than Rem's!"

That directs the girl's gaze back to me. "Ayre said you have three hundred mana. And you're a … Hedge Witch? So your Intellect is one hundred-fifty?"

"Ah, no, I'm a Gunslinger," I correct her, grinning as I rub the back of my head. "Hedge Witch is just a trait I have for knowing a bunch of spells. It gives me some of the bonuses of being a mage, but only at about half the strength."

"And her Intellect is two hundred," Ayre corrects with a huff.

I pout back over at him. "Hey, aren't a person's stats supposed to be a private thing?"

"Oh, sorry, it's not like you wave them around everywhere you go like a new doll you got from the toy store, anyway!"

My pout deepens, but the elf ignores it, motioning with his hands for me to hurry up. "Come on, Identify the belt, already, so we can get on to the other Hall!"

"Alright, fine," I sigh, and turn my attention to the belt in my grip. I remove one of my hands from it and hold my thumb and forefinger around my eye like peering through a monocle. "Identify!"

To my surprise, two windows pop up instead of the one that I was expecting.

ALERT

Due to a lack of attention,

the merchant personality

will be taking over

descriptive operations.

You only have yourself to blame.

GREAT OGRE'S HEAVY BELT

Introducing the Great Ogre's Heavy Belt! For those who want those GAINS while skipping leg day! Wear this TOTALLY MANLY belt to say OH YEAH BROTHER to any jabroni who thinks they're MORE MANLY than you! BUFF UP with the Great Ogre's Heavy Belt, available only at Essence Mart! Or wherever Great Ogre's Heavy Belts are sold. You picked this up off the ground, why are you reading this, anyway? Everyone knows what a Great Ogre's Heavy Belt does.

While equipped, grants the following effects:

* +50% to Strength

* Resistance to Sonic damage

* Increases two-handed weapon damage

* +50 MANLINESS points

I stare in long silence as I try to process what I'm looking at. Wow, she was bottled up. She didn't even bother spacing it in a nice, neat, little column like normal. She just sort of … gushed all over the window.

… Wait, why am I so sure it's a she? … Ah well, just a vibe, I guess.

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I suppose it's been a while since I shopped for anything new on the store page. Maybe she was getting lonely? Or bored? Was that a thing Essence could do? The more analytical screen seemed to disapprove of her, but Yorin insisted that Essence doesn't have distinct, separate personalities.

… Maybe I won't show this to her.

"... Hello? Remmi?" Ayre's face disrupts the windowed pop-up as he leans down into my field of vision. "You okay?"

"Ah!" I totally don't yelp and absolutely wasn't lost in my thoughts. "Sorry, yeah, I'm fine! I was just reading the, ah, description!"

Ayre's face twists into an expression of disapproving disbelief, so I turn my attention over to Leuke, instead.

"I was right, this is definitely best for Leuke! It increases your Strength by half, grants sonic resistance and increases your damage with two-handed weapons!"

Korrigan, however, frowns at that. "But that doesn't give him anything he doesn't already have. Is that really the best use of an item that powerful? You could shore up your own Strength without having to spend points. Ayre could use an even bigger bow. All it does for Hero Leuke is make him a little better at what he's already good at."

"We're not islands," I point out in return. "We don't need to do everything ourselves. In fact, making sure that Leuke is as good at his role as possible only helps us, because it frees us up from having to do things that we're not as good at."

Ayre crosses his arms. "Says the Hero that's determined to take every General Skill for herself."

"That's different," I insist. "I actually needed to know that stuff to do my stuff!"

"Yeah, your stuff being all of the crafting that you hate doing oh so very much."

I can feel my left cheek puffing out, and I wheel to my fellow Hero. "LEUKE! Ayre's bullying me!"

He gives a nervous laugh and scratches at his ear, reaching out his other hand to accept the belt. "Thank you for letting me have the reward from that trial, Rem. I'll take good care of it, and use it to do even more to protect everyone!"

I bop his shoulder with my knuckles as I pass the belt over. "I know you will, you big lug!" Then I turn toward the other end of the Great Hall. "Let's knock out the next trial, too!"

We make our way to the door on the opposite side of the Great Hall from the Hall of Strength, which, sure enough, is labeled, "Hall of Guile," as plain as day. To Leuke and I.

I have to wonder if maybe the Essence System is getting better at translating Dungeon Speak because of the effort I put in with the pirates. That has a double implication, that the System does not, in fact, know everything, and that it's capable of learning. Half of that seems like another thing Yorin would yell at me for, so it, too, goes in the pile of stuff I'll keep to myself.

The door opens before us, and this time, we find ourselves in a rough cave full of turns. If I didn't know any better, I'd guess it was hewn out of the hillside the temple was built into. Illumination is faint, but provided by holes in the ceiling letting sunlight drift down in spots and points.

The whole thing makes me wrinkle my nose. I could swear I've seen this setup before.

"This is ringing more Remmi Nonsense alarms, isn't it?" Ayre asks with a flat look at my expression.

I make a conscious effort to straighten out my nose again. "You don't have to call them nonsense when they're usually right."

"I call them nonsense because they don't make any sense," the elf counters. "That they turn out to be right, anyway, is a mystery for the sages."

Korrigan looks back and forth between the two of us, clearly confused by the exchange. "Does Hero Remmi have some sort of foresight ability?"

The question makes Ayre give a dismissive snort as he crosses his arms beneath his breastplate. "Not really. Apparently, her people design fake dungeons for fun, so she keeps seeing stuff they pull and managing to guess about things like layout and vulnerabilities."

That makes Leuke's eyes illuminate. "Oh, so what you're saying is that Rem actually has a whole bunch of experience with dungeons!"

The elf sighs at that. "Yeah, if you don't mind that it's all made up and none of it was by anything resembling an actual dungeon core."

I raise a hand. "Actually, that's not entirely true. We have an entire genre of dungeon dives called roguelikes that–"

And I'm promptly interrupted, with Ayre raising his voice over me. "And she always has an answer for everything! It wouldn't be nearly so grating if her success rate wasn't so aggravatingly high!"

I frown at my best friend's outburst. "Oh, gee, Ayre, I didn't realize you felt so strongly about it …"

That pulls out another sigh, this one more resigned. "It's not that it's so bad," he admits. "It's just that no one likes a know-it-all, and the fact that you're accidentally a know-it-all makes it worse because I can't be angry about your guesses being correct when they save us a lot of misery. But it's every [Parsing Error] time!"

I blink at the inserted auditory hiccup. It appears the Essence System didn't want to even remotely attempt that one.

I look to Leuke and Korrigan. "Did, uh, did you two catch that last bit?"

They both shrug at me, lacking an answer. "It kind of sounded Elvish?" Leuke tries.

"I've never heard the elven language," Korrigan admits, "but it might have been?"

My gaze goes back to Ayre, who's beet red again. "It was just a slip of the tongue," the archer insists.

"Like–" I start before I get whacked with his bow. Again. "I'll take that as a yes."

"MOVING ON!"

"Yes, moving on," I agree sunnily, clapping my hands as if it's everyone else's attention I'm trying to gather. "We've got a hall to conquer, and we've wasted enough time with shenanigans!"

I ignore the muttering from Ayre, though I distinctly hear, "Whose shenanigans?"

Instead, I turn to my friend. "I see two ways we can go about this. One, we put another Hero on this one and cheese it again, easy peasy. I can probably find most of the traps in this place fairly reliably. I can see three potential ones just from the entrance here."

The way I pause, still grinning at him, clearly makes Ayre uneasy. "... And the second way?"

"Well, I happen to know someone who could afford to work on their Wilderness Survival."

The elf blanches, recoiling. "You want me to do it?! But I already got the Wilderness Survival skill!"

I shake a finger at him. "You know that's not enough. Any work you can do to refine it will only help! And, besides, working with traps specifically might help you learn the Trapmaking skill, and won't that help with your hunts?"

Ayre starts grumbling under his breath, not saying anything in particular as he feels pinned by my points. Finally, he raises his head again.

"Alright, fine, I'll do it. But why don't we combine both pursuits? I don't want my inexperience to lead us into a deadly situation, so you should follow behind me and help point anything out that I miss."

I nod in agreement with that suggestion. "That works. Maybe the System will even consider that assistance from a trainer and increase the odds of you getting the skill that way. And don't worry too much. Anything that's not instantly lethal is something that I can heal right up, after all, so this isn't really that dangerous."

One more sigh from the reluctant elf suddenly thrust into the spotlight. "Alright, let's get this over with. Any last-minute advice before we start?"

I actually change out my bullets for healing rounds so that I can be quick on the draw if any healing does turn out to be required.

"Yeah," I confirm as I holster my gun again. "Stay out of the light."