The Unscratched Lottery Ticket
A lottery ticket that hasn’t been scratched yet.
“How’s that? How’s that, boss? Feeling a little fear yet? Want to cry like a baby, whimpering and sobbing? Huh? Huh?”
Croma-senpai brandished a fist-sized ball of flame in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other, waving them wildly through the air as she steadily backed Noir into the wall. Excuse me. At that rate, even a pebble on the side of the road would get scared.
“....”
Noir stared at the menacing objects in Croma-senpai’s hands and frowned—small, but unmistakable. A tiny crack had formed in the ever-frozen ice statue. At this rate, was the quest considered a success?
“Stop it, Chrom. That’s dangerous.”
“...What? She looks exactly like the usual boss, though?”
Apparently displeased with the reaction, Croma-senpai wore a conflicted expression. In that case—
“How about injecting just a couple more doses?”
If the medicine wasn’t taking effect, simply increase the dosage! It was the same logic as ordering a large portion of jajangmyeon when the regular size didn’t fill you up. What a refreshingly clear solution. From now on, please call me the Demon of Wisdom.
“Yeah, that’s not it. So, Raven. I’d appreciate it if you put that weird wand away.”
That’s what she said. Well, this is awkward. I had only pointed a gun barrel at her face. Watching Noir turn deathly pale and duck behind Croma’s back, Sakana let out a low groan.
“...Hmm. It seems Master is actually more afraid of Mr. Raven’s wand?”
“Oh dear.”
Hearing the disappointment in my voice, Noir shook her head as if to say it was fine.
“No, still… I do feel like something has definitely changed compared to before. In the past, I would only unconsciously avoid it because it hurt on contact. But now it’s something…”
Scary.
“Yeah, that’s right. So this is what the sensation of fear feels like. How interesting… feeling? Yes. It feels interesting. Yeah, that’s it.”
The trembling in her chest. The goosebumps crawling up her arms. The urge to run away. Blood that had gone ice-cold and the sweat that came with it.
“So this was terror.”
It wasn’t pain. It was simply a normal reaction that everyone experienced and felt, all of it sprouting from the root of emotion.
Normal. Not a bad word at all.
Rolling the single word around in her mouth, Noir suddenly recalled the past.
…I really did absurd things in the past. I was never normal. Yeah, that’s right.
Charging straight into the flames spewed by bizarre flame monsters. Preferring so-called “flesh-for-bone” combat where she would willingly sacrifice parts of her body to claws or horns in order to take the enemy’s life. She had believed that was the surest and fastest way to eliminate foes. And there was no more effective method than self-harm when it came to quickly drawing out the Blessing of Wrath granted by her contracted demon, Croma Ira.
But now… it seems a little difficult.
She hadn’t shown it on her face, but in truth, Noir had been quite startled when Croma had thrust the knife and flame at her. If someone touched her back right now, it would probably be as damp as a melted ice statue. Fear had been injected properly. For the very first time in her life.
So… I really was alive?
Enough to truly feel that she was living. She had always lived with a dull sensation, as if watching herself from beyond a mirror. But the moment she felt vivid terror crawling up her spine, she realized it.
That she belonged to this world. That she, too, was part of this world.
Therefore, she was grateful. Grateful to the terrifying, fearsome Demon of Terror who had punched a small hole through the mirror she had lived inside her entire life, allowing her to reach an arm out into the real world. So grateful that she felt she would regret it if she didn’t put it into words.
Wrapped in an unknown sensation, Noir quietly opened her mouth.
“Thank you, Raven.”
For giving fear back to me. And for teaching me a new color.
“Huh?”
“Oho.”
“...Oh.”
A chorus of varied exclamations echoed through the room. Seeing this, a question flickered in Noir’s eyes.
“Yeah? Why are you all acting like that?”
“Well, it’s just… Boss is currently…”
“Smiling?”
“Huh?”
At Sakana’s half-dazed, foolish voice, Noir raised a hand clad in a pure white glove and gently touched her lips.
“How strange.”
Her red lips were drawing a much wider arc than usual. It wasn’t a smile she had thought about and deliberately made. It was a genuine smile that rose purely from the heart. And it was not at all bad. No.
It’s good.
Indescribably so.
It’s good.
A small room located at the end of the second-floor hallway of the Rainbow Cup. Yet it was far cleaner and larger than the room we had been calling our base in the Slums. Our comfortable base, shared with my contractor.
Leaning carefully against the soft bed placed there, I let a small smile form inside the stifling mask.
I gazed at my contractor, who was lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling with an expression of disbelief.
“...Is this place really our base?”
“Yes. Starting today, this is our base.”
Since we had the building owner Noir’s permission, this room was now legally ours. We could do whatever we wanted with it! Of course, if we started remodeling too wildly, Croma-senpai might scold us, but we could at least bring in whatever furniture we liked. That was plenty. Absolutely.
Thinking back to the desolate early base that didn’t have a single piece of furniture, this was an unbelievable level of progress.
“Kkyu! Kkyu! Kkyu!”
Perhaps sensing the excitement and joy between me and my contractor, Kkachi popped out from the contractor’s robe and began hopping around energetically on top of the bed. Every leap produced a “kkyu!” sound, making it seem like some kind of toy. The kind that cats would especially love, at that.
“So you told the crow boss about the emotion of fear, nyang?”
Sion, who had been leaning against the windowsill and watching Kkachi spin circles around the bed, asked the question. Even while speaking to me, her gaze remained fixed on Kkachi. The way her gray tail swished in short, choppy motions suggested she was secretly excited. Was it an instinct engraved into her Felis DNA? The atmosphere felt like a scene from a nature documentary was about to unfold. That would be troublesome. Not because I was worried about Kkachi, but because I was worried Sion would get swallowed whole after teasing it too much.
“Kkyu?”
I snatched Kkachi as it hopped past me and tossed it back into the contractor’s robe. Plop.
“....”
Her gray tail froze for a moment before slowly drooping toward the floor. Her face was filled with disappointment.
“I had vaguely guessed it ever since you took away Sion-nim’s fear, but Raven-nim can also implant fear, I see?”
“That’s right.”
Honestly, back then I had no idea what I was doing, but good is good, right?
“As expected of the Demon of Terror…”
“It seems life would become very difficult if you get on the crow’s bad side, nyang.”
“If you understand, then behave yourself—”
“I am behaving myself, nyang. Ah, by the way, I heard you received something from Croma. What was it, nyang? Did you get some Dallant or something?”
“Dallant…!”
At Sion’s words, my contractor’s red-and-black eyes sparkled with intense greed. She seemed even more excited than when she heard we had gained a base. Don’t you like money a little too much?
“I did receive some Dallant.”
As compensation for curing Ito Sakana—Noir’s disciple—of his pyrophobia, I had received one million Dallant. But that was merely an appetizer. I held out my hand toward my contractor, who was staring at the one-million-Dallant check with honey dripping from her eyes as she pressed it to her lips.
“Contractor. Take this.”
“Ehehe… Hm? What is this?”
My contractor accepted the smooth black leather gloves that seemed to have no visible seams. A flicker of doubt crossed her eyes for a moment. Then, a soft gasp escaped from Sion, who had been examining the gloves closely.
“Wait, crow, is that by any chance an artifact, nyang?”
“...An artifact? Is that true?”
Oho. As expected of a veteran, I suppose?
“Correct, rogue.”
“To give away something this precious…! Just how big is Croma’s generosity, nyang!”
“Sion-nim, are artifacts really that valuable?”
My contractor, claiming she had an artifact too, pulled a large, thick black book from her bag and showed it off. Ah, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that. Was it called the Book of Demons? Or the Book of Contracts? I couldn’t quite remember, but the sight of her—or him—holding it during our very first meeting remained vivid in my memory. She had looked exactly like a real black-mage cosplayer.
While I was recalling the sight of my contractor standing atop a magic circle with purple eyes glowing, Sion’s excited voice rang out.
“Adventurer! What are you even saying, nyang! Of course it’s precious, nyang!”
Artifacts referred to strange relics found in the dungeon at extremely low rates, or masterpieces carefully crafted by artisans. One might ask if anything an artisan made counted as an artifact, but that wasn’t the case.
“Artifacts have ranks, you know…?”
“That’s right, nyang! Masterpieces recognized by the Goddess carry her blessing and gain ranks just like adventurers, nyang!”
“Which means?”
“It means the latent power hidden within the masterpiece can bloom, nyang!”
“...!”
In simple terms, it meant weapons could gain ‘skills’ just like adventurers.
“And that’s not all, nyang!”
Masterpieces blessed by the Goddess received additional prefixes before their names, which changed the nature of the weapon.
“Even without any special skills, just having a prefix like ‘Sharp’ or ‘Solid’ makes an artifact worth at least ten million Dallant, nyang! If it’s 3rd tier or higher, it easily jumps into the hundreds of millions, nyang! The reason adventurers enter the dungeon isn’t just for rare maseok—it’s also to obtain high-tier artifacts like these, nyang!”
“Uh… Hundreds of millions? Hundreds of millions?!”
The hand holding the black glove began to tremble like a leaf. It seemed she had finally realized the value of the leather gloves in her grasp.
“Ah, what do I do? I accidentally crumpled it…!”
“Looks like you just lost about ten million Dallant.”
“Aaaah! Don’t say such scary things!”
My contractor was panting like a cat that had just finished a hunting game, apparently hyperventilating. I patted her back to calm her down.
“By the way, crow, has that artifact been appraised, nyang?”
“I heard it hasn’t.”
“An unappraised artifact!!? Wait, does that even make sense, nyang! No matter how obsessed those people are with just running the Rainbow Cup, how could they find an artifact and not even get it appraised?”
“There were about five other antique-looking things similar to these gloves. I simply picked the one that looked the most intact out of them.”
“Sigh… I knew it was weird ever since they went all the way to the Red Zone and came back only with chunks of meat and handfuls of grass instead of harvesting maseok, but that clan is seriously not normal, nyang…”
Sion muttered that she should quit being a Sherpa and join the clan that Noir belonged to—【Rainbow Cup】—then slammed her face into the bed. I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and lifted her up.
“What are you doing now, crow?”
“Since we obtained an unappraised artifact, we should get it appraised, shouldn’t we?”
Therefore—
“Everyone, get up.”
Let’s go scratch this lottery ticket…!