040. Narrative Granting (2)
040. Narrative Granting (2)
Narrative Granting.
A support skill that materializes buffs or debuffs created by the user into reality.
Even with that explanation, Rinne didn't seem to grasp it right away.
Well, that was fine.
She could figure it out firsthand from here on out.
"Let's go back to the earlier situation for a moment."
I summoned the weakened Laika and the B-rank Legion again.
As if they had been waiting, the two began a fight whose outcome was already decided.
Rinne glared at me with narrowed eyes.
"Your taste is seriously warped. You keep running simulations where a girl who likes you enough to follow you around gets beaten up."
"If that bothers you, then save her yourself."
"So how, exactly."
That was the question I was asking her.
"Try making something up. What would Laika need to do to take down that Legion?"
"What the..."
Rinne looked dumbfounded.
When I offered no further response, she reluctantly offered an opinion.
"Well. The Legion has a weight-class advantage over Laika, so maybe aim for a weak point or something?"
"Good. And what weak point would that be?"
Rinne furrowed her brow at my question.
"How would I know?"
"I'm telling you to just make it up."
"You want me to just make something up? Anything?"
Well, now.
Basically, making things up however you liked was fine, but it did work better if you met one condition.
"Make it as plausible as possible."
Rinne, still wearing a puzzled expression, began examining Laika and the Legion's appearances.
After a short while, Rinne carefully spoke up.
"The legs, maybe?"
"And your reason for picking the legs?"
"That Legion — it's a Phantom, isn't it?"
"Correct."
A Legion that could be considered a mass-production variant of the Frost Phantom.
Just like the mutated Frost Phantom, it had the shape of a spider.
"Laika told me that the Frost Phantom's weak point is its legs, and that's how they took it down."
"So you deduced that a Phantom similar to the Frost Phantom would also have its legs as its weak point?"
"Yeah."
Rinne nodded with a strangely confident expression.
I gave her a disappointing answer.
"That deduction is completely wrong."
"...What?"
"It's true that the Frost Phantom's weak point is its legs. But that's because it unusually has seven legs, which throws off its balance. On the other hand, a Phantom with eight legs doesn't have particularly vulnerable legs — they're actually tougher than average."
That aside, though.
"Still, your underlying logic—that the Frost Phantom, being a variant of the Phantom, would share the same weak point—sounds very plausible."
"What's the point? It was wrong."
It was useful even if it was wrong.
Because Rinne's skill was about forcing stories that didn't match reality onto reality itself.
"Now, use your skill to grant that imaginary weak point to the Phantom over there."
"How?"
Did I have to walk her through every single step?
"Just decide you're using the skill on that thing. Then picture this: 'The Phantom's weak point is its legs, because the similar Frost Phantom is weak in the legs too.'"
Rinne did so.
In the very next instant.
[Narrative Granting: Weakness Discovery - Legs]
—Kugugung.
The Phantom, which had been driving Laika back, buckled at once as though the strength had gone out of its legs.
"Wh-what. What just happened?"
"You used your skill to sap the strength from the Phantom's legs."
No sooner had I finished speaking than Laika began striking the Phantom.
It was her first successful counterattack after doing nothing but take hits and block.
At the sight of it, Rinne's face brightened in an instant.
"So I can make anything real as long as I just make it up?"
"It's not quite that overpowered a skill."
Depending on the skill level, there were limits to its reality-altering power.
Additionally, the Spell Formula Rinne composed—in other words, the narrative she wrote—also affected the strength of the effect through its plausibility, realism, and verisimilitude.
In this case, the role of the reader evaluating those three qualities was played by 'the world' itself.
"...I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."
"It basically means the better you persuade this world with your writing, the stronger the effect becomes."
"Is something like that even possible?"
It was possible.
Because fundamentally, a skill was close to holding a knife to this world and threatening it: 'Do this.'
Take Laika's Rampage skill as an example — it consumed phase power and demanded, 'Treat me as this much stronger for the duration of my rampage,' receiving that amount of stat boost in return.
Narrative Granting worked on the same principle. It forced the world to accept: 'Make it so this person has this kind of story.'
Only, in Rinne's case, she compensated for her insufficient phase power with the Spell Formula—in other words, with the quality of the story she invented.
With that in mind, let's evaluate the quality of the 'Weakness Discovery' Rinne had just created.
First, the logic itself—that because the Phantom and Frost Phantom were similar Legions, they would share similar weak points—had high plausibility.
However, the buildup to make that convincing had been flimsy, so its verisimilitude was low.
On top of that, she had pointed to a place completely different from the Phantom's actual weak point, so its realism was nonexistent.
In other words, two out of the three qualities were poor or deficient.
As a result, even though the Narrative Granting skill provided to Rinne was currently set at level 10, it had only managed to make its legs wobble.
But if she created something based on far more information and solid logic, Narrative Granting could produce far more powerful effects.
"The Phantom's real weak point is its head. The armor plating around the web-spinning part of its head is unusually thin."
I pulled up the data available to Commanders and showed it to her.
"Use this information as a basis and try creating something. How Laika will blow that thing's head off."
After saying that, I provided Rinne with new equipment.
A pen and a notebook.
In other words, I wanted her to go beyond composing sentences in her head and actually write them down.
"What difference does writing it out make?"
"It makes a difference."
Compared with fragmentary thoughts, giving it the clear structure of 'writing' made it easier to maintain plausibility and verisimilitude.
Besides, writing it out would probably be much easier for Rinne. It was her specialty, after all.
Maybe that encouragement worked.
Rinne, who had been hesitating, bit her lower lip hard at some point.
"...Fine. Screw it, I'll give it a shot."
Rinne began wielding the pen.
For reference, that pen was a special piece of equipment designed to assist the use of 'narrative'-type skills like Narrative Granting.
It could read the user's thoughts and write out the desired text much more quickly.
Barely ten seconds later, Rinne produced an incredible buff.
[Narrative Granting: Laika (Dummy)'s attack power against Phantom increased by 50% / Laika (Dummy)'s movement speed when engaging Phantom increased by 50% / Laika (Dummy)'s Rampage duration when engaging Phantom increased by 50%]
"What exactly did you do?"
"I wrote a short piece where you promise Laika a naked massage if she blows the Phantom's head off."
...It seemed she had created something in a slightly different direction from what I had expected.
Whatever the case, Rinne's buff produced an incredibly powerful effect.
It appeared this world had judged that 'a girl named Laika will fight far more passionately if she can receive a naked massage from her Commander.'
Empowered by the buff written in that way, Laika, who had been barely holding off the Phantom's onslaught just moments before, began swinging her shield back at the Phantom as if the situation had completely reversed.
Of course, Rinne's creation didn't end there.
Perhaps she found it entertaining to watch Laika start rampaging under the buff she had applied. Without me even telling her to, Rinne kept wielding the pen, applying mysterious buffs one after another.
[Narrative Granting: Laika (Dummy)'s shield proficiency increased by 20%]
[Narrative Granting: Laika (Dummy)'s attack speed increased by 20%]
[Narrative Granting: Laika (Dummy)'s libido increased by 50%]
[Narrative Granting: Laika (Dummy)'s defense increased by 20%]
It seemed like something strange had been granted in the middle there.
Regardless, the virtual Laika kept pummeling the Phantom, buoyed by Rinne's buffs.
Before long, a message window floated up in the center of my vision.
[Ally Victory]
[Simulation Ended]
With that, the virtual world inside the pod dissolved away.
Even so, Rinne seemed not to have shaken off the excitement from moments before.
More importantly, as though she'd only just remembered this had been nothing more than a trial run, she began pestering me.
"Install this skill module on me right now!"
Of course, I had it installed.
I asked Sumire to handle it, and it was done in ten minutes.
Up to that point it was fine, but the problem was what came next.
Rinne, having finished the module installation, declared with great bravado.
"Alright. Let's head straight to the Cradle of Silence."
She seemed to be under some kind of serious misconception.
"We can't go."
"Huh?"
Rinne glared at me as if I was being absurd.
The person who ought to have been dumbfounded was me.
"You don't actually think you can produce those same buffs you experienced in the simulation right now, do you?"
"...I do think that, though?"
So you do.
"Then let me be clear. Right now, you absolutely cannot create buffs of that level."
"What? Why not?"
Because her skill level was 1.
Meanwhile, inside the simulation, her skill level had been set to 10.
"...Is the level that important?"
"It is."
As I mentioned earlier, a skill's effects were constrained by its level.
In other words, the current Rinne couldn't create buffs that raised stats by tens of percent like she had done inside the simulation.
Even if she wrote an exceptionally polished and convincing narrative, that wouldn't change. Right now, no matter how well she did... maybe a five-percent boost was about the limit.
"What the hell. That's pathetic."
"Be grateful that the potential for development even exists."
The other skills, even when set to level 10, had been worse than useless.
Narrative Granting, however, could become perfectly viable on the battlefield if we developed it properly.
The problem was how to best manage that growth.
"First, you can raise your skill level through training. Don't worry, I'll design the training program for you."
"And then? Is that it?"
Well, now.
If she were an ordinary biodroid with an ordinary skill, leveling through training alone would have been sufficient.
But in Rinne's case, there was one more means of growth.
Namely, studying.
"...Studying? Studying what?"
"Various things."
The structures of Legions, for instance.
Their behavioral patterns, including known strengths and weaknesses.
Beyond that, biodroid engineering, phase science, and so on.
Rinne snapped at me as I listed the subjects.
"Why do I have to do that?"
"I already told you earlier."
Rinne's skill was influenced by the 'realism' of the narratives she created.
In other words, to increase the efficiency of her buffs, she needed to learn a great deal about the biodroids or Legions to which those buffs would be applied.
"I'll compile a doctrine manual and send it to you later, so study from that. There'll be exams too. If you fail, you'll write a reflection."
In this manner, the direction for her basic growth had been established.
One: raising the skill level through training.
The other: refining her Spell Formula through study.
"For now, let's aim for skill level 3 and mastery of about three volumes of the doctrine manual."
At that level, she would be capable of pairing up with Laika and being deployed on operations.
With that, I finished planning Rinne's development.
***
For the next several days, things proceeded according to that plan.
A wholesome routine: training by day, studying in the evening.
During that time, Rinne grew without issue, and her skill level reached level 3 before I knew it.
On top of that, she had barely passed the exam based on the study materials.
At the very least, there were no problems with her growth within the plan.
So, with today's training as the final session, I had intended to have her carry out her long-awaited first live mission.
But just before I arrived at the training ground at the appointed training time, a message arrived from Rinne.
[Rinne: Hey]
[Rinne: I'm taking the day off today]
[Rinne: Condition's crap]
A one-sided notification.
Well, it could happen. She had worked hard for the past few days.
I didn't think much of it and planned to resume the next day.
And that next day.
[Rinne: Hey]
[Rinne: Let's skip today too]
[Rinne: Sorry]
...Fine. One more day off wouldn't hurt.
I accepted that without much fuss and waited for the next day.
Again, the following day.
Rinne didn't come to the training ground today either.
This time she didn't even send a text.
Wondering what was going on, I went to the basement, knocked on the door, and called out, but there was no answer.
Right after that, my PDA belatedly buzzed.
It wasn't from Rinne but from the biodroid management system.
The message was absurd.
[A new Status Abnormality has been identified in biodroid 'Rinne'.]
<Status Abnormality>
- My Writing Sucks Disease (NEW!)
The subject firmly believes her own writing is terrible. All mental activity is slowed, and creative ability in particular plummets sharply.
※ A fictional Status Abnormality created by the skill 'Narrative Granting.'