The Ability That Shows the Answer

"……???"

Had reality just turned into a game? A potential of 96? So 37 is where she stands now, and 96 is the ceiling? If the scale ran to a hundred, that was a staggering number. The rest of the figures ran the other way. Her current potential was a mere 37, and neither growth compatibility nor equipment compatibility cleared fifty percent.

"Assistant Manager?"

"…"

"Assistant Manager Han?"

"Ah!"

My gaze had stuck on the crown of her head. Seo Jia, a straw caught between her lips, tilted hers.

"Why are you staring like that? Is there something on my face?"

"…No."

I yanked my eyes away, and the status window blotting out my view vanished in a rush, as if it had been a lie. On a hunch I stole another glance at Seo Jia. Her window crackled back into place, fizzing like static. Look away, and it was gone. Look at her on purpose, and there it was.

What in the world is going on?

All I'd done was spit at Seo Jia in a fit of temper, and my class had warped into something strange. Phrases I'd never seen before—bodily fluids, synchronization—and now a system window hanging over a person's head on top of it all. Once I clocked out tonight, I was going to have more than a thing or two to look into.

"Um, could I ask you to have the sword ready by four?"

"Ah."

Seo Jia pointed at her longsword, sprawled across my workbench.

"I did bring a bribe, so please take good care of it."

"…Understood."

She flashed a small bright smile and headed out. Work first, then. I stared blankly at the closed door for a while, then dry-washed my face in both hands and shook my head clear. A salaryman awakening a system didn't make the backlog disappear.

"Assistant Manager Han."

Team Leader Park was watching me from behind his monitor.

"Hunter Seo Jia seems awfully interested in you."

"If you were the one handling Hunter Seo Jia's sword, Team Leader, I'm sure you'd be getting plenty of attention yourself."

"Hahaha. I've got a wife, so that's a no."

"…Pardon?"

From his side of it, he was probably just tossing off a joke. I, the person it actually concerned, could only sit there dumbfounded.

All right. Let's see.

I drew Seo Jia's longsword to the center of the bench and carefully peeled back the grip cover. This was already the sixth rework. A little thicker this time. She'd announced that was how she wanted it and walked out, so when she said jump, I jumped. I was one employee on the payroll. She was the hunter who kept the company fed.

With the ease of long habit I stripped the worn leather grip, and as I did I used the ability to pull the item's information.

A Mana Steel Longsword. Common standard gear among hunters—a new one cost more than thirty thousand dollars—but it was sturdy, and parts were easy to come by. A major guild would have had custom equipment made for each of them… At a company like Daon, that was a luxury. If it broke, you fixed it. If it didn't fit, you changed the setup. And that was why I still had a place here.

I took up my tools and had just started checking the mana steel inside the blade when—

"…What?"

Faint blue lines had risen over the sword. Thinking fatigue was showing me things that weren't there, I shut my eyes and opened them again. It wasn't that. Geometric blue lines crossed the surface of the grip, and between the blade and the guard a small point blinked, as if asking to be noticed. And then—

Beneath it, lines that made me doubt my own eyes poured down like a waterfall.

In an instant the sword looked completely different. No—its physical form was the same. I was simply seeing information from a realm that feel and years on the job had never been able to reach.

"…Holy shit."

Five years grinding as a Polisher. In that time I'd handled and repaired hundreds of weapons, everything from cheap mana swords to the custom gear of guild aces. I wasn't blind. Show me a sword and I could tell, more or less, what a good one was—something that seated itself in the hand, something with low mana loss, a blade that kept its durability no matter how hard you ran it.

What the message in front of me had put up was not that kind of textbook talk. This is… It wasn't a setup for making a good sword. It was a method fitted, completely, to one woman. Seo Jia.

As if possessed, I started with the grip. I laid a thin cushioning reinforcement over the core. With 2.4 millimeters displayed so precisely, I figured the work wouldn't be hard—right up until I started rounding the cross-section into a circle, the way I always had.

A thin whine. The blue line in the air went red, like a warning.

So I shouldn't cut it like this?

I stopped the blade at once. I eased the angle by a hair, but the line stayed red.

"Ah…"

Then, holding the improvement data in mind, I pictured where Seo Jia's fingers landed when she took the sword, pressed that spot just slightly, and shaped it asymmetric. That was the answer. The line that had been red settled into a steady blue.

"So that's how it's done."

This wasn't some virtual reality game. A hollow laugh slipped out of me before I knew it. I took the sword apart again. This time it was the center of balance. I drew the counterweight inside the pommel, behind the guard, fourteen millimeters to the rear. Balance work on that scale wasn't difficult. The problem was the last item.

Lower the output? By every scrap of common sense in the trade, it was a prescription that didn't add up. A mana sword was treated as better the higher its output ran. The more of a hunter's mana it could take in, and the faster, the higher its destructive power and speed climbed to match. And yet the system was ordering me to forcibly shave that output down.

Is this right?

I stilled my hands and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thought it through. Then, all at once, the complaints Seo Jia had repeated—six times she'd sent the sword back—flickered through my head.

"The sword turns loose in my hand."

"The wrist transition feels a little late…"

"When I swing, the output lags a beat behind what I expected."

So I'd cut it thick, then thin, thrown the weight to one side, and gone through every circus act in the book. And yet—

Is Seo Jia unable to handle the sword's output? What if, every time she poured mana in, the blade broke free of her control and kicked? What if she was instinctively bracing to hold a bucking sword, and the recoil was what slowed her wrist and tangled the arc?

…Does that even make sense?

Still, just in case, I hooked the sword to the test rig and fed mana into it. A low hum. Blue-white light gathered along the blade, and it shuddered hard. The same sight as always. The problem showed up when I reproduced the mana-output pattern of Seo Jia's that I'd saved during equipment checks.

"Huh?"

I caught the place where the sword's output spiked. A dissonance so fine that if I hadn't known the answer, and hadn't been looking for it, I never would have caught it at all.

"This was it…?"

What Seo Jia had been lacking wasn't strength, and it wasn't balance. She'd been forced to run with a high-output engine bolted onto a body it didn't fit. I ended the test, opened the internal circuit, and lowered the output, touching the mana circuit's resistance until I had shaved off exactly nine percent—only as much as the system had given me. The hum that followed was smoother. When I fed Seo Jia's mana pattern through again, the sword answered tamely, nothing like before.

Why didn't I know this? No. Of course I hadn't. Everyone tried to raise a weapon's output, not cut it—and this was nothing but C-Rank gear besides. The absolute output itself had dropped. For Seo Jia, though, it would be far easier to handle.

Was that why?

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

"…It actually went up."

I hadn't swapped in an expensive magic stone. I hadn't layered on any special metal. All I'd done was shave the circuit's output and fuss with the grip and the counterweight, and the compatibility had vaulted a full seventeen percent.

Maker…

Only then did I start to get a feel for this strange system. What Maker showed you was not a method for making equipment that was, objectively, good. From the look of it, it pressed the answer into your hand—an answer fitted perfectly to the target's physical ability and potential. If there's a condition, it's that you have to be synchronized with them. And it wasn't hard to guess that the whole thing had something to do with my bodily fluids.

"Assistant Manager Han."

"Yes?"

"You not eating? You planning to starve straight through the afternoon?"

At Team Leader Park's words I looked at the wall clock. It was 1:10 in the afternoon.

"…I should."

I set Seo Jia's longsword down with care. Potential, compatibility, sync rate, how to raise synchronization—there was still a mountain of things I wanted to know about the ability. But—

"Then on your way to the cafeteria, Assistant Manager Han, stop by Management Support and drop off this receipt binder."

"…Yes."

Getting hold of a peculiar ability didn't make the piled-up grunt work disappear.

"Ready!"

The red lamp in the training hall lit. Seo Jia let the point of her sword hang toward the floor and drew a short breath. Sixty-five feet ahead, two human-sized combat golems burned with red eyes—live-training units designed for C-Rank close-combat hunters. The test, though, was not simply a matter of dumping firepower into them until they broke.

She had to answer both rules and put them down within three allowed hits. It was a drill Raid Team 1 ran on a regular schedule.

The voice carried through from beyond the control room glass.

"I know."

Seo Jia pouted. Her best was 28.4 seconds. For a C-Rank, that wasn't a bad time. It was also a time that had sat in the same place for half a year.

Back when I awakened as a C-Rank, I was sure I'd be B-Rank before long…

She was what people called a natural hunter. Train, and she could feel herself getting stronger. Step into a real fight, and the sense of it stayed with her. Then, somewhere along the way, the growth stopped.

Twenty-eight seconds.

No matter how she struggled, she could not get over that wall. They ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had all started at the same C-Rank, and the hunters who had ranked up were pulling ahead one by one, while she alone kept circling the same spot.

I have to shave it down today…

A sharp beep, and Seo Jia shot forward with the start tone. With a shattering crack she tore through the first golem's barrier the way she had drilled it countless times and drove straight into its mana core, then turned as she was and slipped the second golem's fist. Normally, this was where the sword should have followed half a beat late.

Huh?

A clean hiss—and the sword moved smoothly, as if it had sealed itself to her palm. She twisted her wrist, and the point came with her, perfect, exactly as she had wanted. The second cut followed at once and severed the golem's arm and knee joints without a hair of error.

A long beep. The end tone sounded with it, and Seo Jia's eyes went to the board.

Excited, fussing voices spilled from the control room.

"No… I guess my condition was just good."

Seo Jia answered with a faint smile. Her eyes, though, were fixed on the sword in her hand.

Half a year of training like her life depended on it, half a year of going into the field, and the record had never come down. Today was different. More than anything, the sword settled into her hand so perfectly it raised goosebumps. The faint, unpleasant sense of it slipping out of true was gone without a trace.

All at once, Han Doyun's face came to mind.

…What. So he knew how to do it like this.

Had buying him coffee made him put in a little more care? Seo Jia tightened her grip on the hilt without a word. It seemed she was going to have to buy him coffee again tomorrow.