Think About It Logically

The price of becoming a bastard was, surprisingly, not a bad one.

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The moment she heard a binding curse lay on the thing, Relic Appraisal had opened to her. Relic Appraisal! Every time before this, she had hauled relics off to the Collector without the faintest idea what they even were. Now she could see their true worth in advance, and if she felt like it, she could haggle the price.

This humble servant possesses 172,251 star clusters, O God. Which was to say she could smash Growth Values to pieces whenever the mood struck her. A promotion did have a required number of relics acquired hanging on it as a condition, but that hardly meant anything. For Lupin, asking whether she remembered how many relics she had pulled from Abandoned Chests was about as reasonable as asking whether she remembered how many loaves of bread she had eaten.

In any case, ten thousand star clusters went in on the spot.

While she was at it, Lupin took an interest in Spirit Affinity and Life Force Trade as well.

Spirit Affinity was rejected on the grounds that the only thing she had ever met was a pigeon.

She was turned away and told to come back after using a little more aura. The latter, at least, was the better of the two. Simply using aura steadily would clear the condition and let her raise the rank, and once the rank rose, the life force drained by a single use of aura would shrink. If you wanted to throw out a finishing move more than once, this was a Growth Value you absolutely had to raise.

The problem was Spirit Affinity. She had ties with magical beasts, but none at all with spirits, because spirits never appeared around Abandoned Chests. Noble spirits only deigned to show themselves after loafing about the spirit realm, and only then if a human begged, Please, just come out! Ordinary people witnessed one once or twice in a lifetime, if that. If your luck was rotten, you saw one right before you died, the way you did with human traffickers.

"Well. Nothing I can do about this right now."

If it couldn't be solved on the spot, Lupin's way was to set it aside and move on. She was, you might say, the sort of person who had once ignored even a boss shouting, What if you don't come get my approval because you're on a call! and simply kept waiting. If it didn't work, then it didn't work!

Anyway, Relic Appraisal was Rank X now. Which meant she had to appraise something, didn't she? Raising the Growth Value had branded the relevant knowledge straight into her brain, so she already knew the method. Lupin fixed her gaze on the ring that had turned her into a bastard.

"Nnnrgh—"

It felt like receiving an hour-long scalp massage compressed into ten seconds. If your skull simply vanished, would it feel like this? Her head had gone so soft she thought she might fall asleep the moment she closed her eyes. But that drowsy languor vanished the instant she saw the result.

"Damn it."

One look and it was obviously a relic tied to the main scenario. Which meant Lupin had no way of finding out. She ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had never once run the main scenario, and she didn't know a single character in it!

"Still, no problem for the moment, I suppose."

Then she could forget it and get on with her life. But thanks to the thing, she was about to be saddled with a burden that had never been in her fate, so Lupin bestowed a special nickname upon the ring.

"Very well. From this moment on, your name is Bastard Ring."

"Aura Users really do have it rough..."

As if having your life force stolen every time you used aura ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠weren't enough, touch the wrong relic and you got stamped with an object of obsession on top of it. Thank goodness it was only Bastard Ring. If the relic she had picked up had been a demonic sword, and Lupin a swordswoman, Vatslava's head would have been off long ago.

She had been waiting for hours in front of a two-story hospital no bigger than a little city on the eastern frontier. Vatslava, her examination finished, came out through the creaking door with a small medicine bottle in hand. A large bandage was stuck over the swollen spot.

"I'm sorry. It took a long time, didn't it. I'm all done. They said I don't need to be admitted. If I just apply the ointment properly to the bruises..."

Lupin, who had been nodding along, cleared her throat — ahem — and put on an air of gravity for no particular reason. Aside from the moments she opened treasure chests, Lupin tended to live quite freely, even dissolutely. Which was precisely why she had to warn her new companion ahead of time. From here on, the woman was in for a journey harsher than anything she had ever known.

A party formed against her will, all because of Bastard Ring. Lupin knew perfectly well that her store of mercy would be spent by the end of today. She was kind enough in front of people, but in the end her mood rose and fell according to whether a treasure chest was involved. As always, she would move fast. Decide fast. Find the treasure chest fast, and move on to somewhere else. Keeping up with a Lupin like that was Vatslava's share of the work. It all depended on what she did.

"Until I find a way to give this ring back, if you die, you know what happens, right? Then I become the son of a bitch who swindled away your parents' keepsakes."

"Ah... yes."

There was nothing wrong with growing strong enough to look after your own body. If you didn't have the strength to fight, you at least needed the speed and the stamina to run. How utterly fucked up was this world? People who looked weak got picked on whenever someone was bored. If you were actually weak, it went further than that — you knelt, or you were disgraced. So if Vatslava were turned loose into the wild as she was now, she would only meet another bad person like Milwi and wander down the wrong path again.

Lupin had been weak too, when she first came to this world. Weak enough that she followed someone who offered to buy her a meal, knowing nothing, got framed as a dine-and-dasher, and washed dishes at the same restaurant for four whole days. From that day on she ground her teeth. She cracked Abandoned Chests, gathered star clusters, and poured them into Growth Values. Endurance. Agility. Strength. She raised each ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as high as the ranks would go.

So on the day her path happened to cross that dine-and-dash criminal's again, Lupin pretended to be taken in once more and turned him into the dine-and-dasher. How exhilarating that had been. The popcorn she had prepared in advance tasted as sweet as if it had been brushed with honey. And when that guy took slap after slap across the face from the proprietor, she could have sworn soda had exploded inside her skull.

"Get stronger. Or make a cocktail delicious enough to tempt me."

"Ah! Understood!"

"First, let's go get clean."

Lupin pointed to a small waterfall spilling off a cliff a short distance away. Vatslava, who had naturally assumed they would head for an ordinary inn, tilted her head.

"Look at your feet and legs."

"Ah."

Dark crimson blood still dappled Lupin's boots and Vatslava's legs like spots. It was a small mercy the doctor had treated them without filing a report.

At the same time, the sole survivor of the safe house opened his eyes. The mohawked executive's temple burned as if it had been caved in, and his nape and solar plexus throbbed so hard it was difficult to breathe.

"Wh... what happened?"

A moment later, the bodies of his dead comrades and the boss filled his vision. Not a single person was alive. Blood everywhere. The reek of death saturated the safe house. Worse, among the boss's treasure chests, the chest of gold bars was half empty.

An intruder. A bounty hunter had come.

"Damn it. My gold bars...!"

Ever since he had learned the boss was an ordinary human who could die at any moment, Mohawk had nursed a grand dream — the dream of sitting in that seat himself, once the boss was dead. So he had been diligently climbing the ranks inside the organization, all so he could take everything the boss owned. But now that even the Vladimir brothers were dead, what meaning did rank have? When a fortune like this was sitting right in front of his eyes!

"...Is this heaven's own luck?"

With headquarters scorched to the ground, the scattered branch outfits would fail to hold together and collapse in an instant. That much was obvious. Then what choice did he have, the only one left alive in this moment? Simple. Take everything he could take, and wash his hands of the rest. Wasn't Mohawk salvaging it before it fell into enemy hands the greatest kindness he could offer his fallen comrades?

"Keheh. To think all of this is mine!"

Mohawk hurriedly began hauling the contents of the treasure chests out of the safe house. Just imagining bringing a car around and loading every last piece made his shoulders bounce with glee. He was even more thrilled than the day he had become a headquarters executive. But in the middle of moving the gold bars, Mohawk arrived at a thought so vile it would have moved even Satan to tears.

"If I collect the bounties on top of this... that's double the money, isn't it?"

Whatever had come and gone, the boss's head was intact — and so were the heads of the Vladimir brothers and the other executives. If he just cut them all off and handed them over to the Adventurers' Association...! As it happened, he himself was not a wanted man. It hadn't been long since he had climbed from a frontier-region boss to a headquarters executive, and even back when he had operated as a boss, he had pulled every trick to dodge a bounty — putting his underboss forward as the boss, among other things.

"Am I a genius?"

Beaming, Mohawk lifted the landline sitting on the boss's desk.

"Mm."

Meanwhile, Lupin, having reached the lake beneath the waterfall, found herself in a predicament.

"What is it? It's the... scars, isn't it? There are quite a few. The boss... no, that demon hag hit me so much..."

The instant Vatslava jumped into the water, she flung her shirt off without a second thought.

What is this? Showing off her figure?

"Ah. No. More than that — what are you going to do if someone sees?"

"It's not like I'm completely naked. And there's nobody here."

There is a five-year-old girl in here with a tiger in her chest. Sob, sob. Lupin's eyes went, entirely of their own accord, to those ferocious great pectorals. There were indeed plenty of scars across her upper body, just as she'd said, but wow. Mm. Uh. Anyway, difficult to put into words. No — if you moved like that, the balloons might burst. Aaah. She had thought her own, which she saw every time she washed, was pretty brutishly large. Had Lupin, in fact, been a genuine five-year-old infant this entire time?

Whether Lupin was having a crisis or not, Vatslava was in high spirits, as if she had made a friend of the same sex for the first time in ages.

"Don't be like that. You should wash too, Miss Lupin. The clothes need washing, so hand them here."

"H-hey! Hey! I'll do it myself! Don't pull!"

"Ahaha! Why are you so embarrassed? We're both women."

"Eeeek!"

Lupin fled like a bolt. It was an acrobatic feat, like a little lizard walking on water. Unlike Vatslava, who clapped in pure delight, Lupin — now a good distance away — let out a childish scream.

"Touch me without permission and you die?!"

"S-sorry. I'll be careful. Anyway, once you give me the clothes, just swim or something. I'll wash them."

"I! Will do it!"

With only her head above the surface, Lupin stripped off her harness and shirt underwater. What kind of woman had no shame whatsoever. For a while there was only the slap of water, and then Vatslava carefully opened her mouth.

"Um.... Where's our next destination?"

"Rava, you just have to follow."

"S-still. I might lose you, Miss Lupin. Something like a rally point..."

The effort to keep up was admirable. Lupin, feeling a little better, burbled and mumbled.

"The nearest Adventurers' Association. I'm going to beat down every last wanted criminal there is."

The person who said she was looking for treasure chests — and now wanted criminals? Vatslava tilted her head and asked.

"What about the treasure chests...?"

Big or small, treasure chests existed everywhere in the world. A treasure chest was not bound by its size. It might be a roughly disguised wooden crate. It might be a coffin meant for a corpse. It might even be a little jewelry box.

"I'm doing all of it to find treasure chests."

The moment she acquired two Secret Chests, she had attained a great realization. And Lupin was a person who grew exactly as much as she realized.