Doubt (3)
Doubt (3)
There were times when I wondered if I was popular.
Of course, for over a month after admission, no other nobles had gathered around me of their own accord. Whether it was because of the rumors circulating about me, the expressionless face I put on, or the somewhat fearsome skill I had actually shown.
Even that skill was not the swordsmanship or magic the nobles favored, but firearms, so there really wasn't much about me for the nobles in my class to like anyway.
No matter how good 'Sylvia Fangriffon' looked, sufficient to inspire goodwill on appearance alone, if the rest of my profile became a barrier, no one was likely to seek me out.
Yet, oddly enough, the people around me kept increasing one by one.
Alice? Well, I understood that. She was someone I had been with since childhood, and I had made my own efforts to build up her confidence. The Emperor, her father, loved his daughter in his own way, but his way of showing it differed from an ordinary father's, and her mother had died long ago and wasn't around. So it wasn't strange that we had become close.
The same went for Claire. In that situation, I had treated her kindly, and later I had helped her escape it. Even if the time we'd spent together had been very brief, it wouldn't have been strange for it to have remained an intensely vivid memory for her entire life.
But the fact that the others gathered around me was still hard to understand.
Mia Crowfield, if I traced our past, was essentially my rival. Charlotte, if I thought about it, had no particular reason to view me favorably after I had slighted her father.
Leo had been a little afraid of me, and Jake had never really had a reason to connect with me in the first place.
So why they were all gathered here, I had no idea.
Ah, was it because of Leo?
In the original work, Leo had been the protagonist, and in the game, wherever Leo went, almost the entire party used to follow.
"Wh-why? What is it?"
When I stared fixedly at Leo, he flinched and asked.
"It's nothing."
Still, even if it was Leo's fault, I couldn't openly say 'it's because of you.' He probably didn't intend that, anyway.
When I turned my gaze, I saw Lena Meyer's expressionless face.
My purpose in bringing her out here had clearly been to verify her skill.
Moreover, I hadn't actually wanted to verify it either. Right now, she didn't seem like a threat, and her feelings toward me appeared positive. If she had really meant to spy on me, she wouldn't have buried her face in a doll and taken a nap in her room.
The real objective had simply been to catch her before Mia Crowfield noticed Lena Meyer's true personality and her concept collapsed.
But the rumor had spread oddly, and somehow every student in the school I'd had even a modicum of conversation with had ended up gathered in one place.
Leo and Claire had even joined us in the middle of carrying out a commission. We'd run into them by chance, and they had simply followed along behind us.
"... Originally, we intended to try handling a commission."
Naturally, because of Leo and Claire, who had been sweeping up every kind of commission since morning, all that remained were trivial ones. Since it was practically impossible to verify skill in the name of something like that, I hadn't accepted a separate commission.
Even without a commission, beasts were known to appear along the roads from time to time.
"It would be impossible to verify skill with a minor commission, wouldn't it?"
At my words, Lena Meyer nodded with a confident attitude. Her face remained expressionless, though.
I felt the prickling stares of those around me. Seemingly, the fact that this was a student I had personally summoned outside made them quite concerned.
"First, may I see the weapon you use?"
I knew all of the protagonist's party's weapons, but I didn't know Lena Meyer's weapon. Although, actually, I could see it right now.
The imperial capital, Rondarium, was a region whose weather was modeled on London's, so even in midsummer, there weren't many days when the temperature exceeded thirty degrees. Even in May, the weather remained somewhat chilly. Even I had come out after setting aside the coat I usually wore over my shoulders, so to Lena Meyer, who had lived in an entirely cold region, it might feel practically like midsummer weather.
Still, she had properly worn her school uniform jacket, but the pistols she carried on both sides were clearly visible.
Just as I wore a revolver under my arm, Lena Meyer carried a pistol under each of her arms.
Just by looking at those distinctive grips, I could roughly guess what kind of weapons they were.
"Understood."
Lena immediately drew both pistols at my words.
Judging by appearance alone, they resembled the automatic pistols used by Nazi Germany during World War II on Earth.
In fact, going by the setting, the actual firearm, the Luger P08, was probably the motif. In the work, it appeared briefly, used by soldiers of the Autonomous Forces. Though none of the characters in the protagonist's party used one.
And I was intensely envious of Lena Meyer's firearms.
It wasn't that the Empire lacked a standard-issue automatic pistol. Its reliability was somewhat lower than a revolver, but it seemed usable since rapid fire was convenient and, above all, reloading was fast...
But there was a reason I still stuck with a break-action revolver.
The Empire's standard automatic pistol, the 'Wexler Automatic Pistol,' was modeled after the real-world 'Webley Automatic Pistol.'
It looked as if someone had taken a short length of square lumber, hammered a toilet paper tube into it as a grip, and stuck a metal straw into the barrel.
The first time I saw it, I had wondered just how tedious the modeling must have been for them to make a firearm like that. What a shock it was when I learned that a gun that existed in reality was the motif.
Yes. The reason I didn't use that gun was purely because it was ugly.
On the other hand, the firearm Lena Meyer held looked remarkably similar to the Luger pistol that American soldiers had once been so eager to collect as war trophies. Frankly speaking, it was beautiful. The only problem was that the ammunition it used was different from the Imperial standard and therefore incompatible.
"If you fight wielding a firearm in both hands, wouldn't your accuracy drop somewhat?"
When I asked that, Lena shook her head.
"I train regularly so that I can use them properly."
If Lena had been a character destined to be a 'main lead,' it wouldn't have been strange for her to fight in such a unique manner. Just as there were swordsmen who swung a sword and projected sword aura, there were those who could hold a pistol in each hand, fight, and hit their enemies without the slightest trouble.
"... Understood."
I had no choice but to nod.
*
"Among the commissions we were trying to resolve, there's one with fairly decent game. Wouldn't that do?"
While I was wondering what kind of prey would make a suitable test, Claire spoke up.
Seeing her offer that opinion before I had even said anything, I thought she must have guessed to some extent that I was pondering the problem.
"... Is that so?"
And I decided not to let Claire's remark pass by.
"Yeah, it's this..."
At my answer, Claire took a sheet of paper from her jacket.
The paper, which looked as though it had been torn from a notebook, had the name of the prey written on it.
"This is..."
"Yeah. It's an amorphous monster, but..."
An amorphous monster.
Most of what roamed the roads were beasts. Of course, that meant beasts by the standards of this world; by Earth's standards, they were practically monsters. Like a fire-breathing bear or a wolf that drove the wind around with it.
But besides those kinds of beasts, there were also beings you could call 'monsters.' Even by this world's standards, those were apparently seen as monsters and were classified separately from beasts.
Amorphous monsters referred to things like slimes.
Some had long tentacles attached and attacked as if flogging you, while others mimicked the outward appearance of other beasts.
What Claire showed me was closer to the former. The differences, however, were that the things you could call tentacles weren't like whips but were as large as an ordinary golem's fist, and rather than being a squishy form half-melted and stuck to the ground, it was a shape properly standing on two legs planted on the earth.
Physical attacks barely worked on it. It was a troublesome enemy that required firing magical attacks with a mage character, or using sword-aura based skills from a swordsman character's skill set, for damage to actually register. Though as long as you'd properly raised your characters, there would be no major problem.
The reason I could easily recall it from a description alone, without a picture, was that it was an enemy that had indeed appeared in the game.
Hmm...
No matter how I thought about it, it was an enemy far too difficult to deal with using just two pistols—
"I'll try it."
—just as I was about to judge, Lena, who had been reading the contents beside me, immediately answered that she would try it.
"Will you be alright?"
"Yes. I have also prepared thoroughly against this sort of enemy."
"... Is that so?"
At Lena's words, I thought for a moment, then,
"Understood."
I answered that.