The Unsafe Safehouse

Over five years the status window had grown Lupin more than enough, and it had even gone out of its way so she could keep doing the thing she loved. Ungrateful to the bone, Lupin did not care. Thirty thousand chests still weren't enough to stop the fit, and on top of that she was bawling like a baby—waa, waa—insisting she was about to starve to death.

If the status window had possessed a personality, a loving smack would already have split that thick skull of hers in two. Sadly, a status window was only a status window. She did wonder whether this was really all right, and yet Lupin felt not the slightest hesitation about whining. Her opponent wasn't a person. It was a status window.

Of course, the way flavor text tailored to her situation kept arriving suggested it wasn't moving strictly by a fixed script. Even so, the status window was helpless before Lupin's violent skipping. She was incapable of reading anything longer than three sentences.

But the status window asked one more time.

Destiny's Star is drawn to those who hold great power. It grows along whatever path they choose and, in doing so, influences the world. It would stir—and because its avatar was a lunatic of exactly her sort, the warning included notice that the world might turn into an absolute shitshow.

In short: keep hunting treasure chests, and you might get fucked.

To Lupin, it was nothing but laughable.

"What kind of question is that?"

Permanently lock the Secret Chest, a collectible? Puh-ha-ha—what kind of idiot makes that choice? It was the same as take a billion versus don't take a billion, and get the soles of your feet beaten a billion times. The balance wasn't even in the same dimension.

And so Lupin made the decision with ease. Whether that choice twisted the fate of the world or not was none of her business.

Destiny's Star? Isn't that the big sister who shows up in my dreams sometimes and holds me against a soft, warm chest?

Big Sister Star gave me lots of presents.

As if to back up a faith born entirely of experience, Destiny's Star soon arrived with an armful of gifts.

She had asked for a single bottle of baby formula and been handed two full combo sets of pizza and fried chicken. So it really had felt a little sorry for shelving this for three whole years. The aura granted on a temporary basis was even gold—in the game called Elysium, a grade you could only pull from a limited gacha.

Even after receiving the gifts, Lupin's mood stayed thoroughly sour.

"…So if I'd cracked even one Secret Chest in those five years, I'd already have been an Aura User?"

The status window's design was impressive, looking ahead all the way to a future in which Lupin moped about having no chests. Impressive, and yet—

You—you crazy bastards!

They could have just handed this over when she found every last Abandoned Chest! A person had nearly worked herself to death for a whole week…!

That was not the end of her complaints. By the common sense of Lupin, a player from the live game, an aura had to be built on weapon specialization. And now, out of nowhere, pigeon magic? While everyone else swung spears and blades, was she supposed to swing pigeons? Giving pigeon magic to a pigeon-hater—what even was that?

Hah. Don't tell me.

She'd flopped down and refused to budge, so was the grand design to deliberately gift her something she hated and drive her out by force? Was a King Pigeon going to descend next?

Whatever the status window intended, Lupin happened not to be particular about this business of swinging. She hated pigeons. She wasn't afraid of them. Even if a King Pigeon were summoned, it would fly at the enemy, not at Lupin. …If the summoned friends tried to retroactively apply her lifetime pigeon kill count, she'd have to think of something then.

"Open the door!!"

"Mom!!"

And in a situation like this, there was no reason not to use the weapon she'd been given. The blast door that was supposed to stop even bombs was already rattling in its frame. The two buzzcuts were monsters, just as Vatslava had warned. There had been plenty of bombs in the armory earlier. Why they insisted on doing this with their own bodies, she had no idea.

Snap your fingers to activate. Consume vitality to summon a spirit in the form of a pigeon…

Lupin ran through the instructions for the pigeon magic, which had engraved themselves in her mind of their own accord.

Bang!

The door that had barely been holding spun past Lupin's side.

"There you are!"

"You're not leaving here alive, you little shit!!"

The trafficking crew came pouring in like a flood. Lupin thrust her right hand out as far as it would go and focused on the tips of her fingers. The pose called to mind a certain famous alchemist. It was the birth of a special aura stance, invented on the spot because Lupin did not want to get even one centimeter closer to a pigeon.

"Hup."

With a snap, something whooshed out of Lupin's body. A flat plane shaped like a card formed in front of her hand, and a flock of pigeons burst into the air. Her body lurched. The dizziness was about as bad as being stranded on a mountain and starving for three days. The price of paying in vitality?

Her first day with aura. She was thinking how this really wasn't easy, and had just reset her stance, when—

"A—Aberrant Aura!!"

"Everyone, get behind the Vladimir brothers!!"

The traffickers suddenly leapt back as if they'd been stung. …The effect was outstanding. Did every one of them have pigeon trauma? They had said Aberrant Aura plain as day, but Lupin was not someone with much interest in the words of a random mook, or in proper nouns she was hearing for the first time.

"Gyaaah! Aaagh!"

"Farther back. Farther back!"

Every trafficker who had charged the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠entrance made their exit again, pigeons and all. A short while later the card-plane vanished, and the summoning stopped. The only ones to weather the wave of pigeons—the two musclebound buzzcuts—creaked their way toward Lupin. They looked to have taken no small amount of internal damage. Meaning to counter if they attacked, Lupin eased a step back and took their measure.

"Mom!"

"Mom, are you okay!"

But the two ignored Lupin and sprinted for their boss. Sobbing and wailing Mom without pause was, frankly, a little terrifying.

"Mom, get up!"

The unconscious boss's body rocked back and forth under their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠brutal hands, hard enough that a perfectly sound neck might snap. At this rate the woman was actually going to die. Her nose was bleeding even worse than before.

Meanwhile, outside, gunfire roared as if someone had launched an operation to exterminate the airborne pigeons. From a certain moment, though, the screams grew louder than the guns, and Growth Value alerts tumbled in one after another.

What was this? Growth Values, the kind that stacked through combat and experience, all at once?

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

She poked her head toward the doorway, and a truly horrific scene was unfolding. Who had called a pigeon a frail creature, a creature that ought to be protected? If an ornithologist like that existed, they needed to be dragged here and shown this. The flock was pecking to death humans who had lost all will to fight—striking the eyes to steal their sight, pecking the throat until the artery burst.

"They're insane…"

The memory of nearly losing an eye to a pigeon welled up, vivid as yesterday.

No. This will not do. We decline the Growth Value.

After Charm and Honey Trap, Avian Affinity proudly took its place as the third Growth Value she had blocked.

"Not Avian Affinity. Avian Affinity is…"

For a long while after that the pigeons kept pecking the subdued gang members with their beaks, then vanished the way a magic trick ends. All those cruel birds left behind were corpses reeking of blood, and white feathers slowly staining red.

A symposium convened inside her skull over whether any of this could even be called magic—only for a mysterious thug with a treasure chest jammed onto their head to appear and obliterate the chairman in a single stroke. It was time to open the second treasure chest she had been waiting for.

Hemmed in by groans that filled the room inside and out, Lupin crouched before the chest with a perfectly peaceful heart—————.

"You're dead!"

Killing intent. A fist came flying all at once, faster than a decent fastball. Lupin twisted aside in a hurry, and still her shoulder and thigh were grazed. Far too strong for a bare fist—a punch like a cannon. She hopped back to make distance, and the musclebound buzzcuts surged in again. Their movements were still quick, as if the beating the pigeons had given them a moment ago had never happened at all.

"Ah! Just let me open the treasure chest!!"

She was already exhausted from spending vitality! The treasure-chest opening ceremony had barely begun, and having it interrupted set Lupin's killing intent ablaze. Without a moment's hesitation, her fist flew at a brother's face.

Thwack!

It really did go thwack. Her knuckles thrummed as if she had caught a flying stone with her fist.

"Agh. Hard as fuck."

Call the pigeons one more time and she felt like she would actually collapse. Skin that tough, and even a gun wouldn't get through. Lupin thought it over while slipping several punches. How was she supposed to put down these insane stone fists and this stone skin?

"…So that's the only way."

She was hopeless at arithmetic, but her feel for a fight was alive and well. In an instant she finished calculating how closely the fists tracked, and at what angle they could hook. Then Lupin abruptly leapt in between the brothers.

For them, there would never be a better chance. A rat in a jar. Fists without a shred of hesitation flew in from both sides to pulp her.

Boom!

Lupin did not end up flat. Instead, fist met face, and face met fist.

"Guh…"

"Grrk…"

Leaving the brothers to stagger and fall, Lupin—remembering something a beat too late—lifted her index finger and muttered.

"From now on, kill each other."