Chapter 54: Manage My Livestock (3)
"How's it looking over there?"
"It's a dead end. I'll head back."
Mary said it into the mic and moved her mouse. Her character had reached the far end of the cave; she turned and started back along the way she had come.
It had been about thirty minutes since she and the werewolf Charlotte had begun exploring underground. They had split for a while at a three-way fork partway in, and Mary, once she had confirmed there was nowhere left to go, returned to the junction.
Charlotte seemed to have finished checking her own stretch of path as well. A character clad in pure white armor was already standing there. The first-person view meant Mary could not see herself, but she was wearing the same armor.
"So the only place left... is over there?"
"Yeah. Looks like it."
Charlotte nodded. Torch in one hand, the two of them started down the one passage of the fork they had not yet taken. Two pairs of footsteps thudded along, heavy and plodding.
"Huh? This is..."
"A ruin."
What had come into their view was a stone wall carved with a pattern like a swirling vortex.
"Hehe... aren't we lucky. Would you call this beginner's luck?"
In Prasava, a ruin that spawned at low probability was nothing short of a gold mine. The treasure chests scattered all through one were packed with precious metals and rare items.
Already swelling with anticipation, Mary broke into a run.
"Eep?!"
And then, because she never checked her footing, she dropped straight through a gap exactly one block wide. Her body suddenly sinking out from under her, Mary shrieked.
"Hyaaah?!"
"Yikes. You okay, Shutan?"
An instant later, though, the screen lurched hard again. The scenery tore past in a rough blur, as if the fall from a moment ago were playing in reverse. A blunt hit sound effect landed. The screen flashed red for a heartbeat, but next to the sudden drop, the damage was almost nothing.
It took her a little while to realize Charlotte had hooked her with a fishing rod and hauled her back up.
"Th-thank you, but seriously, how did you even do that?!"
"Hm? I scrolled the mouse wheel, switched to the fishing rod, and landed the hit on Shutan."
"Char-chan..."
What followed was a dependable smile. The method of that protection strayed a little off the usual path, but when a line like that arrived in a husky voice, nearly a whisper, her heart leapt before she could stop it.
So this was why the nickname Prince had stuck to her, in real life and in the virtual world alike. Conduct exactly like this...
—Thwack!
"...Huh?"
At the impact that followed, Mary's pounding heart vanished without a trace.
Charlotte had cast the fishing rod and planted it in Mary's head.
"No, no, no, no, what are you doing? We were having such a nice moment just now."
"Hm? Isn't this the safest way?"
"No, I understand what you're saying, okay? But does it really have to be like this?!"
Dragging someone in with a fishing rod took two steps, as a rule. Set the hook, then reel. With Charlotte's mechanics she could manage that cleanly enough in most situations, but there was always the one-in-a-million. So she planted the hook in advance and collapsed the whole procedure into a single motion.
Mary understood. She could see, more or less, what the intention was. Even so, the thought that it had really needed to be like this would not leave her head.
"Haa... fine. I'll just tell myself it's all for the best."
Pressing the point was not going to drag a mood that had already crossed from romance into comedy back again. Mary sighed and started walking out in front once more.
...Why am I disappointed that the mood broke?
The thought struck her out of nowhere, but it was probably only that she had missed a chance to squeeze a little lovey-dovey value out of the stream. She decided not to dwell on it.
"Mmm... Mary-chan. By the way, this..."
"What's the matter?"
They had been making their way through the ruin when Charlotte spoke up out of nowhere. Wondering what she could possibly be about to say, Mary pricked up her ears.
"This setup. It kind of feels like I'm taking a puppy for a walk."
"Koff?!"
"Wh-wh-what are you saying, you idiot wolf?!"
"No, but it really is like that... right?"
"What do you mean, 'right'?!"
Mary panicked and hammered Charlotte with her fists. Not that doing so made the fishing line hooked into her body disappear.
"And Shutan, the more you look, the more there's something oddly like a cute little puppy about you."
"C-cute... a p-pup—haah?!"
Mary's face flushed as red as it could go. Charlotte, watching only the in-game character and not the avatar on the broadcast, would never have that expression reach her—but the fists swinging in a fluster were more than enough to get the feeling across.
"If anyone's the dog here, it's you, idiot wolf!"
"You think so? Well, a wolf is a canine too. Want to switch, then? Should I hand the leash over?"
"A l-leash..."
Somewhere in the give-and-take, it had already become a leash.
What flashed through her mind for an instant was Charlotte's avatar: a leather leash wound around that neck, and her own hand giving it a pull.
"...If it were Mary-chan, it might not be so bad."
"What are you saying now, all of a sudden, you wolf?!"
"Ah. By 'not so bad,' I mean leaving the leash in Mary-chan's hands..."
"Do you actually think I asked because I didn't understand that?!"
If anything, Mary looked more flustered now than she had when the leash—no, the fishing rod—had been hooked into her.
"And more importantly, don't you casually try to slip that fishing rod into your inventory!"
"Ahaha. Caught me."
Item looting in Prasava was accomplished by proximity alone. Wanted or not, stand near a dropped item and it was looted automatically.
Mary recoiled as if the fishing rod that had entered her inventory were filth itself, and flung it back out.
"Haaaaah..."
Whether she was trying to settle her heart or not, she let out a long, slow breath.
"I'm going to step away and get some water."
"Okay. I'll be waiting."
Talk of leashes and the like was, of course, excellent for stirring up the viewers. But it was never something to overuse. Partly just to cut the flow while she still could, Mary got up from her seat.
"...Huh?"
The moment she approached the door, she found something caught in the crack. A scrap of paper? No—this was a more familiar design...
"Heyyyyy!"
It was a ten-thousand-yen bill. Startled by a real-life Red Superchat, she called for Sister at once.
"Mmm."
She'd been scolded. Sister—Han Seoyeon—returned to her room. There were more rooms than they had any use for, so the computer room had been split off from the bedroom entirely. She sat in its chair and turned the bill she had just gotten back over in her fingers.
So real-life Superchats are banned from now on...
Ninomae's face, in the moment cash was suddenly thrust at her in the real world, had been terribly cute. Han Seoyeon lamented that the person herself had gone and forbidden her from it.
But well, what could she do? She had been told to stop. Seoyeon settled her feelings at once and shifted her gaze. She had been called away in the middle of watching the stream, so Mary's Etube channel was still up on the monitor.
Next her eyes moved to the other monitor. A voice-chat application was running there, though she was not actually in a call with anyone. Pasta was a voice-chat program at heart, but exchanging messages without a call was perfectly possible. She set her hands on the keyboard.
Says I throw money around too much.
At the sound of the ringtone, Han Seoyeon picked up the phone lying on the desk.
An international call...?
The screen made her eyebrow twitch. Reasons for an international call to come in—no, thinking about it, there were quite a few. If anything, so many possibilities suggested themselves that she could not be sure which one it was.
"Hello."
Nothing for it but to answer, she supposed. So thinking, she took the call, and a middle-aged man's voice came through.
"————."
Speaking, no less, in Italian.
"...Master?"
Han Seoyeon realized almost at once that the person on the line was someone she knew. The voice coming through the receiver was a familiar one.
Many people had taught her, but there were only two she called Master—the two she had been in the care of since childhood. One of them was speaking from the other end.
"You've changed your number? Ah, yes. That must have been quite a mess."
In the work of a Holy Knight, having one's belongings destroyed was hardly rare. Of course, the finer the fighter, the less often such things occurred—but when they happened, they happened.
"Even so, it was about time you changed models, wasn't it? Yes. That's right."
She talked for a while with the master who had contacted her after so long, from an ordinary how-have-you-been all the way to matters of work, and whether there was any trouble in her vicinity.
"Uh... one moment. Yes? Where did you say you were coming? Japan?"