Joint Quest and Keeping in Check (3)
#
Right after Rebecca gave her greeting and vanished, I fired off a message to the Holy Sword from the mansion's entrance.
[Hey, can you hear me.]
At my message, the Holy Sword poked her head out toward the entrance.
"What? Why aren't you just talking and using this instead..."
[Shh, quiet. I'll buy you a present later.]
"Hrk."
The Holy Sword clapped both hands over her mouth at the word "present."
There was a reason I'd used a message instead of speaking aloud. I needed to be careful, because Rebecca's ears were absurdly sharp.
If that woman overheard me talking to the Holy Sword, she'd definitely find some way to nitpick again.
Rebecca had a way of subtly giving me grief. Her jabs were so careful and understated that I rarely noticed them in the moment, but in hindsight, they were unmistakable.
She'd obliquely snipe at me, or deliberately say something unnecessary just to get on my nerves. Seriously, why the hell did she even tell me a maid interview was happening?!
Whatever she said didn't bother me that much, but the real problem was the maid interview itself. I might not have cared if I hadn't known, but now that I did, it nagged at me unbearably.
A maid interview... I wanted to watch too! I wanted to stick my nose in!
But at that point, telling the girls we should go to the Guild later would have drawn far too many looks.
[What is it?]
The Holy Sword sent a message. This was where the Holy Sword's role became crucial.
[Ah, right. There's something I need you to do for me.]
[Don't wanna.]
[...Two presents.]
[Okaaay!]
[Listen carefully. You heard there's a maid interview today, right? This concerns your dignity too, so you should actively assert yourself... I mean, participate. In deciding who gets hired.]
[I don't get it.]
[Hrmm... so basically. If someone matching the conditions I'm about to describe shows up, tell Rebecca to hire her. Got it? The style is...]
"Baby. What're you doing?"
"Uh, yeah. Coming!"
I stepped out of the mansion while composing the message to send to the Holy Sword.
# # #
The Holy Sword's message reception range barely reached the mansion's front gate. The messages themselves deactivated the moment you went past it. So I'd sent them in a huge rush, and I wasn't sure if she'd understood properly. She'd better do this right.
"What's up? You've been quiet for a while."
"Ah, no. Just spacing out a little. Maybe I didn't get enough sleep?"
"What're you talking about..." "!"
Yuri grumbled, her face flushing slightly, while Reni's eyes flashed.
...Right, there was only one reason I'd be short on sleep! I was the one who'd said let's not bring up bedroom talk, and here I was advertising it myself! I was just stacking up my own karmic punishment!
Before the mood could turn delicate, I swiftly changed the subject.
"Hrmm. Anyway, those idiots... the trio, I arranged to meet them at the Guild. They said if I leave a message with the receptionist, they can come right over."
The greatest inconvenience of coming to another world was having no personal mobile phone.
In a world without phones, how did you make plans to meet someone?
That meant using premodern methods.
Either arrange a meeting by letter or hire a personal errand runner.
Obviously, the mail took a long time. It worked just like parcel delivery.
The process began with accepting the item at the point of origin, gathering and sorting it at a logistics hub, sending it near the destination, and finally delivering it.
Even if you sent a package to the next neighborhood over, it still had to go to some hub dozens of kilometers away first, so it always took at least a day.
I could have hired a personal errand runner, but there was no one at the mansion to do that kind of work. Rebecca? Dark circles showed through her makeup, so I couldn't ask her to take on even more. No, even if she'd been free, she probably would not have done it. If she did, she'd surely try to feed me something strange again.
Anyway, that was why we were going to the Guild.
The Guild had a magical communication device... something you could basically call a telephone.
The Guild had equipment capable of reaching several major facilities. The city hall, the administrative bureau, the Church, the Arena—key contacts like that, plus the merchant association and a few large clans.
The idiots were members of a large clan either way, so contacting them through the Guild was fastest and easiest.
"But what if we call and they're not there?"
Yuri tilted her head.
"Should be fine. They said they'd wait until we contacted them first."
"Huhhh... they just wait around for a message that could come anytime? Did you spray more pheromones or something?"
Yuri narrowed her eyes and stared at me. We'd just happened to run into each other, and she was talking like I'd been hitting on them. Just what did this woman think I was?!
"No, seriously, I'm telling you. You think I go around seducing just anyone? No, wait, it's weird that they'd even get seduced in the first place."
"...Fair point."
Yuri suddenly laughed to herself and linked her arm with mine.
"When I think about it, there's no way. Sorry?"
"...Yeah."
Her mood flipped with astonishing speed. But this woman was saying something seriously concerning.
"No way? What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's just a thing. Never mind."
Yuri giggled, released my arm, then guided my hand around her waist. The movement was perfectly natural. Her unexpected physical affection left me speechless.
I heard a groan and looked beside me to find Reni shooting flames from her eyes.
"L-lewd behavior in a public place...!"
Miss Reni was calling it lewd when she happily linked arms with me all the time. What a textbook double standard. But before I could say anything, Yuri fired back first.
"I'm his lover, aren't I? Aren't lovers supposed to do lewd things like this? Ah, but Reni's the first wife, so maybe first wives aren't allowed to do this sort of lewd thing?"
"Grrrrr...!"
"..."
The endless First-Wife War! Reni trembled as though she couldn't take it anymore, then snatched my arm away. As if determined not to let go, she trapped it between her crossed arms and breasts and fumed.
Buried between her breasts—the sensation was nothing short of magnificent, yet the atmosphere was nothing short of murderous.
The moment Yuri saw that and looked about to say something, I hurriedly opened my mouth.
"Y-Yuri. Now that I think about it."
"Mm?"
"Didn't you say you were attending a Training Hall before? What happened with that? Don't you need to go anymore?"
"Ah... that."
Yuri made a slightly sour face.
"It's fine. I learned as much as I needed. Got a refund, too."
"Refund?"
Yuri frowned.
"Some bum kept hitting on me so I kicked him and left. Didn't get a full refund, but... anyway, there's nothing more for me to learn there. Making such a fuss over just putting a little mana into arrows. Something like that barely takes a day or two."
Yuri broke off her sentence and snickered.
"Come to think of it, Mana Detection? I learned that in only a few hours too. Am I some kind of genius? Could I become a magic archer or something? Hehe."
"You are not."
Ariel, who had walked along in silence until now, cut in abruptly.
"What you learned barely even qualifies as magic. Borrowing the name 'Mana Detection' for a technique that can't sense anything unless you're pressed up close is excessive, to say the least."
"What?!"
"What you learned is merely a slight application of the very first stage of the very introductory level. And even that took you quite some time. Someone with true potential would have learned it far faster than you, in fact. Furthermore, you..."
Ariel paused briefly for effect.
"Your mana control is rather crude. As if sheer force were everything."
"Wh-wh-what?!"
"You said you can imbue an arrow with mana. Could you demonstrate?"
Yuri shuddered at Ariel's words, then held a hand out to me.
"Baby. Give me an arrow."
"Uh, yeah. Here."
Feeling like a shrimp caught between two whales, I handed Yuri an arrow. She gripped it, let out a sharp 'Hup!' of concentration, and proudly held it out. A blue glow shimmered around the arrow.
"There, what do you think? Even now..."
"Inefficient."
"What?!"
Ariel picked up the arrow and examined it from several angles before beginning her assessment.
"It's certainly imbued with mana, but the tip's sharpness is gone. This is closer to a blunt instrument than a blade. Have you tested it?"
"..."
"This isn't good. Putting this much mana into a single arrow... is it because of the amplification? That seems to have formed a bad habit."
"Because of the amplification? What does that mean?"
Was there some kind of problem with my buff? No way. Buffs didn't have hidden penalties. That was why Awakened were called overpowered—was a hidden penalty showing up now?
Ariel explained calmly.
"Assuming an ordinary archer's total mana capacity is 100, they would imbue an arrow with about 1 to 5 mana. In a form optimized for sharpness. You, however, have loaded the arrow with close to 100. In a lump, no less. I suspect the amplification increased your total mana capacity, leading you to forgo restraint—that is why I called it a bad habit."
Aha. I mostly understood.
In other words, intoxicated by the buff's power, Yuri had crammed the arrow full of mana without realizing that the result was actually worse.
Come to think of it, she had once overspent so badly that she ended up sleeping rough. Did she always charge ahead until she got burned?
Honestly... that sounded exactly like her.
"..."
Yuri's face had gone bright red. She probably hadn't expected one careless comment to get her dragged this hard. I poked Yuri in the side.
-Poke.
"Hee-yak! Wh-what!"
"No need to rush so much, right?"
"What...?"
I tossed Yuri, who was staring blankly, a conversational opening.
"It's fine, isn't it? You've done fine without those techniques all this time. Goblins, the ostriches, the gorilla. So what I mean is there's no need to get so impatient about those skills. If we need to learn skills, let's take it steadily, one step at a time."
"..."
Yuri blinked several times at my words, then muttered quickly.
"Y-yeah, right. Impatience. There's no need to get impatient."
Yuri seized the "impatient" lifeline I'd thrown. Right, it was better to choose the escape route of "got impatient" than the embarrassment of having gotten cocky about being hot stuff.
"Ariel."
I spoke to Ariel, too.
"Ariel, you too. Wasn't that a bit much? Calling it embarrassing and all... was it really that worthless? You didn't have to tear it down so harshly, did you?"
I was honestly curious too. Why'd she suddenly snap like that?
"..."
Ariel blinked several times, then opened her mouth.
"...My apologies. I must have gotten carried away without meaning to at the word 'genius.' There are certain matters I am sensitive about. I'll be more careful in the future."
"...Hmph. Hm. Yeah, well, fine."
Yuri said the words, but her lips were still pouting. Yeah, well, one apology wasn't going to smooth things over. I gave her side another unnecessary poke.
-Poke.
"Hee-yak?! Now what!"
-Poke, poke, poke.
"Why do you keep poking me! Wanna taste a blunt instrument?!"
Yuri swung the arrow around as she shouted, and I darted around frantically.
I wondered whether those two realized I was sacrificing myself to lighten the mood.