Chapter 13. The Overturned Train I
Episode 13.
The Overturned Train I
A damp feeling on my cheek made me open my eyes, and I saw fluffy fur.
"......."
What now?
I stared at it for a moment, then quickly realized what it was.
A weasel.
To be precise, a Magical Beast, a Blade Weasel.
......How is this thing still alive?
Squeak.
The weasel looked at my bewildered face and raised one paw with a flourish.
It looked exactly like it was saying, "Hey, buddy. We both made it out alive, huh."
[With outstanding intuition, you have accurately guessed the Magical Beast's inner thoughts.]
['Blade Weasel's' trust in you increases.]
Buddy, my ass.
Just as I shoved the clingy little nuisance away with my hand—
"Ah! Kaindel! You're awake!"
A familiar voice reached me.
It was the mage, Kazen.
His haggard face was etched with exhaustion.
"......Where are we?"
"Don't worry. We're inside the train."
So it seemed.
The interior was a wreck because the train had overturned and the shadow thing had torn through it, but they'd apparently done at least some basic tidying up. At least there was a roof, so it was better than being outside.
As I sat up, the blanket that had been covering me slid off.
My head throbbed for a moment, and I felt like lying back down a while longer, but I forced the thought aside and spoke.
"How long was I out?"
"About an hour, I'd say."
Thankfully, I hadn't been asleep that long.
Which meant the darkness outside the window wasn't just from the storm clouds. The sun still hadn't risen.
......What a goddamn long night.
"I kept watch on the surroundings just in case, but there's been no suspicious movement. It seems safe for now."
"Safe? The archer should still be alive."
Dorman's party was nearly all dead, but an archer named Reina was still left.
That meant an arrow could come through that cracked window at any moment.
'The odds are low, but she might have gone to request backup from another party.'
Of course, they were the ones who'd acted like looters first, but a story's meaning changes depending on who tells it and how.
If that woman set her mind to screwing us over, it would be hard to clear up the misunderstanding right away.
"You don't need to worry about that."
"Based on what?"
I felt a little bad for sounding accusatory, but I couldn't brush off a matter of safety.
The mage made an awkward face.
"I do have a basis, but how about you rest a bit more first, and then we talk?"
"Why."
"It would probably be faster for you to see it yourself than for me to explain, but you still seem to have trouble moving."
Faster to see it myself? That sounded rather meaningful.
"I'm fine. Moving around isn't a problem either. If anything, I don't think I'll be able to rest easy unless I confirm it for myself."
"Hmm....... If you insist, then all right."
My injuries had actually seemed fairly serious, but maybe thanks to good first aid, the pain wasn't too bad.
If anything.......
'My body feels lighter than I expected.'
Was this also the effect of my improved physical abilities?
Since it wasn't a bad thing, I decided to check my condition later. For now, I followed the mage out of the train.
It must have only been a shower; the rain had already stopped.
I stepped through the squelching mud as we moved, and suddenly Kazen's outfit caught my eye.
"That was impressive."
"Pardon?"
"Your archery."
"Ah."
Only then did he seem to realize the crossbow poking out from under his sleeve.
"Wouldn't that suit you better than magic?"
I wasn't being sarcastic; I genuinely thought so.
Making a night shot from several hundred meters away would be a difficult feat even for most archers.
The mage scratched the back of his head sheepishly.
"It's just a hobby. I don't even particularly like shooting bows."
"You made one yourself, though."
"It wasn't that crossbows were the only things I could make. I've just liked making all sorts of things since I was young. I couldn't get too deeply into it because people criticized it as a vulgar hobby, though......."
A vulgar hobby, huh.......
So this guy really was from a distinguished family?
'He's not actually a noble, is he?'
The odds weren't very high.
Because every noble in FoS was steeped in privilege, supremacism, and elitism.
But it was hard to imagine a noble being someone who spoke politely even to a stoker.
"Then I guess I owe my life to that vulgar hobby."
"Pardon?"
"Thank you."
The guy, who'd been staring at me blankly, burst into laughter.
"Don't mention it. If anything, without you, Kaindel, we'd be dead by now."
He said that, but he looked pretty pleased.
He looked like someone who'd never been praised for this sort of thing before.
['Kazen' feels a faint sense of trust toward you.]
Enough that even a message like this popped up.
Anyway, I knew crossbows were weapons with fairly complex structures.
Unlike a bow, which you could roughly shape as long as you had the limbs and string, a crossbow had added mechanical components.
And he'd made a scythe in the middle of all that chaos, too....... This guy's dexterity really was no joke.
'I wonder what his Art grade is.'
A character's dexterity was proportional to their Art rating.
With this level of skill, he'd clearly get a significant bonus when doing <Gathering> or <Material Processing>, and above all, <Crafting>.
I suddenly got curious about this mage's status window, but unless I actually made him a companion, there was no way to peek at it right now.
I'd look into that later.......
With all these thoughts running through my head, I passed a few wrecked train cars and spotted the younger sister.
"......."
Kria was crouched on top of the train, staring down at something.......
I followed her gaze and found a corpse.
'She's got a strong stomach.'
The corpse was gruesome enough to turn your stomach even when it was empty, but Kria stared at it without so much as changing expression.
As I looked around, I soon spotted a broken bow lying next to the corpse.
"Is that the archer?"
"Yes."
"Did you two......."
"No. She was already dead when we found her."
That figured.
The corpse looked as though something had savaged it, leaving it so mangled that its original form was hard to make out.
Just looking at it, this wasn't the work of those two.
In the first place, if the goal had simply been to kill her, the corpse wouldn't have ended up like this.
The archer's corpse had been mutilated after death.
'......What kind of bastard did this?'
Anyone who'd do that to a corpse was probably mentally disturbed.
Their mental contamination might have already reached dangerous levels, or they might be suffering from traits like <Murder Addiction> or <Schizophrenia>.
"Hmm......."
I thought of a few famous psychopaths among the Delvers who'd boarded cars 1 and 2, but soon realized it was pointless.
The roster of Delvers boarding was always random, after all.
But, in any case.
'......It really is over.'
Dorman's party, who had threatened us, had been wiped out.
That fact, at least, was certain.
* * *
The storm-like rush of events had finally come to a halt.
At last, I'd been given time to catch my breath.
'It won't exactly be plentiful, though.'
Still, I'd secured the minimum breathing room to reorganize.
The first thing I did after returning to the train car was finally check my status window.
Player: Kaindel
Level: 17
Class: Summoner
Stress: 31
Stats
Strength: 10(+1) Agility: 10(+2)
Endurance: 10(+1) Magic Power: 10(+1)
Spare Points: 7
Talents
Body: D- Mind: D
Art: F Intuition: E+
Skills
<Taming>, <Scythe Mastery>, <Wild Force>
Traits
<Friend of Magical Beasts>
Looking at the status window stirred up a mix of emotions.
First, the positive part: my level had already reached 17.
Since my starting level was 10, that meant I'd gone up a whopping 7 levels hunting the shadow things.
Most of it was probably experience from the octopus thing, wasn't it?
'The bonus stats are probably thanks to taming the Blade Weasel.'
The bonus stats totaled a full 5 points.
That meant I'd gained in one go the stats you'd normally get from raising five levels.
That alone gave me a sense of how broken the Summoner class was, but.......
'Ugh.......'
Something felt off.
I'd never seen a game with returns and risks as clear-cut as FoS.
If the Summoner's advantages were this big, there had to be corresponding drawbacks.
It was unsettling, but there was no way to figure it out right now, so I moved on.......
For now, I focused on the visible problems.
'As expected, Scythe Mastery manifested.'
In the early game, having even one more skill is obviously better, but <Weapon Mastery> was the one exception.
Because the more weapon masteries you had, the less efficient each one became.
That was because the proficiency required for skills skyrocketed as you learned more types of mastery.
'If the first mastery requires 100 proficiency, then from the next one onward, the required proficiency doubles each time.'
In other words, the second took 200, the third 400, and the fourth a staggering 800.
Some classes learned three or four, but the standard approach was one mastery, or two at most.
'There is a way to remove them.'
But the cost was considerable, and above all, it was a feature that didn't unlock until you reached <Royal Capital>.
Which meant it was a distant prospect for now.
'A scythe, huh.......'
Setting aside how awkward it was to use, the unsettling part was how little information I had about this weapon type.
I didn't know where to get endgame weapons, of course, or even usable early-to-mid-game equipment.......
'Ah.'
There was one, actually.
The hidden boss of the <Abandoned Cemetery> map.
Meeting its spawn conditions was brutal, and taking it down was even more brutal, but.......
Once you killed it, the weapon's drop rate was fairly high, and the weapon itself was good enough to last into the mid-game.
Above all, <Abandoned Cemetery> was a map worth passing through anyway.
'Phew. So the weapon's settled, then.'
I'd put the Scythe Mastery issue aside like that.
Now it was time to check my class skill and trait.
Summoner
Combat Type: All-Rounder Weapon: —
Main Stat: Magic Power Main Talent: Intuition
A Summoner can tame beings that meet certain conditions.
Combat type is All-Rounder?
Did that mean I could fill a healer role in addition to tank or damage dealer?
'......That's not entirely unreasonable, is it?'
Not only did I receive bonus stats from a tamed beast, I could use its skills as well.
If I tamed a beast specialized in combat support, I might be able to at least imitate a healer.
'No recommended weapon, main stat is Magic Power, and main talent is Intuition.'
Magic Power I could understand, but I'd almost never seen a class with Intuition as its main stat.
That was the kind of trait mainly held by sub-class lines like <Gambler>.
Taming
You can tame beings that are not hostile to you. The success rate of Taming is affected by your trust with the target.
Currently Tamed Entities
1 / 1
Tameable Types
Beast-Type
When I tapped on the tamed entity, the Blade Weasel's status window I'd seen before appeared.
'The number of entities I can tame increases by one every 10 levels.'
If so, the number of tamed beasts I could actually command was on the low side even among summoning-type classes.
Though that was only natural, considering the exceptional combat power of Magical Beasts.
'If I gain just 3 more levels, I'll be able to tame one more.'
I also realized that a tamed beast's <Combat Incapacitation> and <Death> states worked differently from those of other summoned creatures.
'Come to think of it, the words for death were all different for other summoning classes too.'
For undead, it was <Soul Extinction>; for golems, <Total Destruction>. For spirits, which had no concept of death, it was <Contract Termination>. For beasts, it seemed to simply be [Death].
This also explained why the weasel was still alive.
'Lastly, the trait.'
Friend of Magical Beasts
You have received the Beast God's favor. Most Beast-Types will no longer be hostile to you, and occasionally you may receive special quests from them. If taming fails, you may attempt it one more time.
You may need to periodically prove your abilities to the Beast God......?
So that was it. That was why the die had rolled one more time even after the taming attempt failed.
'This is a little—no, pretty good.'
For someone with luck as rotten as mine, an extra taming attempt was pretty valuable.
If I had any room to be cautious, I'd only attempt taming at 70% or higher, so the odds of failing twice in a row would be almost nil.
'But what's this about proving myself?'
Tapping on the text didn't reveal any additional information.
It was unsettling, but for now I had no choice but to move on.
'I'm steadily heading down the path of a jack-of-all-trades build.......'
A hidden class I'd never seen, a bizarre trait, and a scythe I'd barely ever handled....... It was a complete clusterfuck.
And the two who seemed like companion candidates.......
"......."
Maybe they weren't total garbage.
Their aptitude as a mage or Spiritist was awful, but their combat sense wasn't bad.
Besides, after I'd nearly died to a D-grade myself, it felt wrong to keep treating these two like total dead weight.
'Still, three of us feels a little shaky.'
Of course, I'd strictly maintained a no-companion playstyle in <FoS>, but the situation was different now.
Now that the game had become reality, even using every option available to me didn't feel like enough.
Scratch, scratch.
As I was thinking that, I felt something clawing at my pant leg.
When I looked down, it was the weasel. It somehow seemed to be saying, "Buddy. You planning to leave me out? That's cold, man."
[With outstanding intuition, you have accurately guessed the tamed Magical Beast's inner thoughts.]
['Blade Weasel's' trust in you increases.]
......What an easy-to-read little guy. Honestly.
Of course, considering the weasel's combat power, it could more than hold its own as a party member.
'So that makes four?'
Just one more person would be nice.
The Delvers who'd been in cars 1 and 2 had probably already entered the forest.
Even if any remained, they didn't seem likely to join a mess of a party like this.
I figured I should at least check, and just as I was about to leave the train car, Kazen asked,
"Are you going out again?"
"I was going to check the surroundings a little more."
"Aha! Your body must be feeling better now."
At that, I checked my overall condition.
I felt around the wounds from my fight with Dorman, including the spot on my abdomen where the arrow had lodged.
"Huh?"
It was astonishingly clean.
As if there had never been any wounds at all.
I'd thought they'd just done rough first aid.
"Were there potions left?"
"Pardon?"
"There's not a single mark left."
Kazen spoke with a baffled expression.
"You had...... wounds? We just moved you from where you'd collapsed in the forest to somewhere safe."
"What?"
"I mean, you didn't have any wounds to begin with, Kaindel."
What the hell was that supposed to mean?