Something's Off About This Secondhand Newbie

Counseling.

Lupin truly hated counseling. Not because she was the sort of little shit who went around thinking, Who do these adults think they are, sticking their noses in my life? She simply found it hard to sit face-to-face with another person and talk.

At work, she buried her face in a monitor. When she got home, she buried her face in a monitor and popped treasure chests. People were less comfortable than monitors, and monitors were less comfortable than treasure chests.

Tasili, however, possessed a magic iron rod capable of prying Lupin's mouth open. Her assigned enforcer. A sturdy little etiquette-injection machine.

"How many years of adventuring experience would you say you have?"

The answer snapped out at once.

"About five."

"Five years. Remarkable. After watching that duel trial earlier, I had you down as an adventurer of at least ten years. Aura Master class, I thought..."

She could have charged in looking for a fight, but if there was one thing Lupin read with uncanny precision, it was who was strong and who was weak. She had never actually been turned into a human donut, but she had come close often enough that the timing of when to show respect, and when to bow her head, had settled naturally into her body. More than that, the old men she knew were the bosses and directors who yelled all day and hurled paperwork; Tasili himself was a culture shock. He even spoke politely to Lupin, who was far younger than he was, so even after taking a knuckle to the head she couldn't help seeing him as a good person.

"Oh, right. I've been wondering this whole time. That Aura Master...? What even is that? Someone who's insanely good with aura?"

Lupin's eyes went bright and sparkling. For the first time in a long while, they shone with curiosity. Theory lectures were not Tasili's strong suit, but if a novice adventurer was asking, explaining was only human. He soon took up the chalk and wrote something diligently across the board.

Only then did something click for Lupin. This was that thing. Swordmaster. Sword Grand—no, Grand Swordmaster. Run it through the martial-arts-novel converter and you got Peak Realm, Transformation Realm, Profound Realm: the superhuman grades out of a fantasy novel.

And yet the swordmasters in her memory had casually diced their way through ordinary people, while she—a so-called Master—was out here shooting pigeons. The dissonance was impossible to shake.

"Am I actually, like, crazy strong?"

"It is only a guess. To know for certain, you would have to cross blades with a Master."

"Are you a Master, Grandpa?"

"I am. The sword was my primary weapon, so in my prime they called me the Sword Emperor."

"Whoa. Hold on. Then if I'm a Master too... what's the character for pigeon again?"

Lupin grumbled to herself for a long while. There was no search engine, and no GPT, so she never did land on the answer. The answer was gu, the character for pigeon. Coo, coo, coo. After pointlessly imitating a pigeon for no reason at all, she found her way back to the subject.

"Right. I was curious about that, too. What's formless aura?"

"Formless...? Formless, you say?"

"Yeah. Those human traffickers said it. That I use formless aura."

Tasili's eyes went perfectly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠round.

"Is that true?!"

"Swear to god."

At the sound of his voice, Lupin's heart lurched. Her whole body jolted, as if she had been standing in front of the enormous speakers of a concert hall.

"Ah. Ahem. My apologies. That was far too loud."

"No, thanks to that I definitely understand ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠just how incredible formless aura is..."

Tasili took up the chalk again. Beneath the writing already there, a new line appeared.

"This is, roughly, the ratio of fixed-form to formless."

"Fixed-form?"

"Fixed-form. It refers to every aura user who wields a weapon with a defined shape—including sword, spear, and fist, the three great factions the world knows so well."

"Aha."

"Fixed-form can manifest through effort alone, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but formless is nothing but inborn talent. More than that, it shifts without end and cannot be predicted, which makes an opponent exceedingly difficult to deal with. Those who have faced it often say they never even knew what hit them."

"So, a genius. Mm-hmm."

Genius. So what. No matter how she turned it over, the cool factor refused to show.

I Became a Sword Genius in Another World would have been cool. I Became a Pigeon Genius in Another World was just strange. That was a gag character, plain and simple.

The thought that she was someone extraordinary and, at the same time, someone utterly trivial spun through Lupin's head for a long while. If only she could use a sword. Failing that, if she at least had a gun that fired cards and sliced through anything.

"Some call it magic. Others call it a miracle.... In any case, it is so rare that the moment one is discovered, they are almost always taken in somewhere."

"They are...?"

The Adventurers' Association could not hold on to a formless aura user even if it managed to acquire one. It was no different from a small company striking on a brilliant idea, only for the conglomerates to copy it in a stampede or buy the thing and strip it for parts. A few had belonged to the Association. In the end, every last one of them moved on. One rose into the Rounds, another into the Seven Stars, and the last was erased from the Association's history.

An uncut gem. The more you cut and polished it, the brighter it shone—a jewel that set the whole world to coveting it. That was a formless aura user.

"Honestly, it is almost strange that you, Miss Lupin, have not joined the Imperial Alliance's Rounds, or the North Country's Seven Stars—or, less fortunately, the Church."

"The Rounds? The Seven Stars?"

"Now that I think of it, you were dozing earlier and didn't really hear, did you."

"Busted."

Lupin scratched her head, grinning sheepishly.

"A complicated explanation would only burden you, so I will keep it simple. They are where every Grandmaster in this world gathers, along with the Masters closest to becoming Grandmasters."

"Ooh."

In a word, a den of glow-in-the-dark monsters. Touch one, and wasps with bloodshot eyes came swarming after you to make you suffer. To Lupin, it was a horrific prospect. She had treasure chests to open, and the strongest people in the world would chase her down and get in the way? Even a protagonist hounded by five yandere heroines would have it better than that.

"Of course, there are Grandmasters who belong to neither the Rounds nor the Seven Stars. The problem is that he belongs to the Church."

"A Demon King? Something like that?"

"A Demon King... he is not. The otherworldly races the Church summoned from another world, it calls them demons, and..."

Proper nouns, and things she was supposed to know, kept piling up. When Lupin squinted and complained of a headache, Tasili cut himself off.

"Well. I believe we have already had more than enough talk of this complicated world. Let us rest a moment, and then speak of you, Miss Lupin."

"Thank you... I was just about to get dizzy."

For the girl whose head hurt, warm milk and cookies were provided. Warm liquor would have been even better. Lupin scooped the cookies off the plate three at a time and dumped them into her mouth, and only once she had eaten her fill and was patting a satisfied belly did Tasili carefully broach the subject.

"During your adventures... have you ever come close to harm because of other people?"

Lupin flinched, a shudder running through her. Right after she had taken over this body, maybe. Two women had tricked her, and a mimic had nearly eaten her alive—two days that were dark, and terrifying, and damp. She had even lost everything that might have been worth any money. Lupin hardly remembered most faces, but her grudge against those two ran deep enough that she recalled them with perfect clarity. The moment she thought of it, heat flared. She trembled, fists clenched tight, and though she never said a word, the emotion exploding out of her reached Tasili whole.

"I am not certain I ought to say this."

Tasili chose his words with great care. He had no wish to provoke Lupin and fan that madness any higher.

"It isn't that you hate humans, is it?"

"I don't particularly hate them. I don't particularly like them, either...?"

She meant it literally. She liked the people she liked, and disliked the people she disliked.

A solitary warrior. So she had wandered five years with nowhere to lean. A wretched life, surely. How many times had humans betrayed her? It was not cruelty, as humans went. For someone raised outside the human world, it was a remarkably human thing. They ought to be grateful that a woman of such inborn talent had never fallen into the Church's grasp.

"Have you ever felt that you hated the world?"

"Lately, pretty often..."

"I see..."

Rage at a world that had run out of treasure chests. A counterfeit fury that reset the moment she found a secret safe—yet to Tasili, this too looked like a bad sign.

Five years. She had held out a long time. What she needed now was someone to hold her up, and a place to lean. But the Association had no formless aura users. With whom was she supposed to feel any kinship, and from whom was she supposed to learn? He could not cast Lupin back into the world merely because he had no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠good method. Do that, and one day she would surely become prey for the Church.

...What was he to do?

All at once, Tasili's gaze fell on the adventurer registration form lying on the table—Lupin's.

"Miss Lupin, how much have you actually handled a sword in real combat?"

"About four years? I've swung one around—swish, swish-swish—but..."

"Then, would you consider learning the sword from me?"

"Huh? The sword? Out of nowhere? I mean, it's not like I have zero interest..."

Even Lupin, who lived in a frenzy of chest-grinding, had a romance with the sword. The reasons were many, but the greatest was that back when she was a gamer, the characters built for chest farming had used swords as their main weapon. Every other relic she could sell; the swords she refused to part with, and left them in a collector's keeping.

Clinging to the dream that someday she might be able to wield one, she had spent five years swinging every fire iron that tripped her feet and every cheap blade she could find, more times than she could count. By now she had reached the point where she could swing whatever came to hand. That was why the dagger borrowed from the mountain inn had carved things up without any trouble.

So if she had only had a little room to breathe, the offer would have been terribly tempting.

If only she had had the room.

Already, two days had passed since she last opened a treasure chest. A craving for drink was creeping in, and food was starting to lose its taste.

Don't forget. Treasure chests are the main thing. Getting stronger is a bonus.

Right now she had to prove that piece of personal common sense—wreck a bounty hunter, and a secret safe comes attached—or she would never lay hands on any more of them.

"The thing is, my time is—"

Ding.

The status window had spoken. It would bestow a third talent, so she was not to raise her voice.

"Time... I need time to think."