The Fourth Talent
"Oh, there you are. What took you so long? It's been almost four hours."
"The ruins were bigger than I expected. It was my first time in a place like this... honestly, it was fascinating."
We retraced our steps exactly as we'd come and returned to the Central Control Room on the first floor.
Kaya and Catherine were already back, apparently done with their sightseeing, and were tidying up the Panic Room. Kaya shoved the luggage carelessly into a corner and dusted off her hands.
"Kek. No wonder you're fascinated. Outside of the estates run directly by the great noble houses, you won't find ruins kept in this kind of condition. Short of some extraordinarily special case like this one, most people never get inside."
"It was truly an excellent experience. Thank you again for allowing us to look around, Lady Catherine."
"...It can't hurt to know the geography of the place I'm meant to protect. That said, I'm rather tired... I should rest for a while."
It was barely ten in the morning, yet Catherine slipped behind the makeshift wall they'd built out of stacked luggage and vanished. Whatever had happened, she looked thoroughly worn out.
Had Kaya been tormenting her that badly?
"When a person's heart gets complicated, their head stops working properly. It's just how it goes. She looked in bad shape, so I messed with her a bit."
"Is this about Henry, by any chance?"
"Henry? Who's that supposed to be?"
"The lady's lover."
"...And here I thought she was just worried about her family. Ha! A green little sprout who's barely weaned, already mooning over romance? I can't stand it."
"Wait... well, of course she's worried about her family too..."
I stared at Kaya, dumbfounded by her indignation.
What is with this woman...? The moment she steps outside of combat, something about her just goes sideways. She's got to be decades older than Catherine—at that age gap, shouldn't she be smiling fondly and looking the other way?
"Tsk tsk. Nobles mature early, so I suppose I'll just have to endure it."
"...Ah. Yes."
"So, why do I get the feeling you've come into something?"
"What??"
"Relax, I'm not going to ask for a cut. You've always been a lucky one, that's for sure... Anyway, I'll be examining your body in about an hour. Consider yourself warned. Can't waste time."
Kaya tossed out that sharp remark with practiced ease and strolled out of the Panic Room, apparently intending to work up a sweat on her own.
But how did she know I'd gotten something?
I shot a sidelong glance at Noah, who stood beside me.
"Is it showing? Is it written all over my face?"
"Not at all. That woman truly does have something beastly about her."
"Kaya is pretty unusual, yeah. Still... that robot... are we really going to use it?"
"If things become dangerous."
"Ooh... the way it moved earlier was so cool. If I weren't so picky, I'd want to carry one around myself."
Just as Kaya had said, we'd gained a great deal from the Secret Laboratory.
We repaired Noah's body and viewed the video records of the past—not to mention quite a few more material gains besides.
I let my mind drift back to what had happened in the laboratory.
***
Several hours later... Noah, newly reinforced, modified, and repaired, shed the round-bodied robot shell and stood proudly upon the earth once more.
On the surface, she looked barely different, but according to her, the insides had changed tremendously. She promised to demonstrate it when the chance arose.
But setting that aside—separate from resolving Noah's situation, we had made considerable gains of our own.
First harvest: magic stones suspiciously dense with points.
Rooting through every corner of the laboratory, we had recovered a total of seven black magic stones.
They were almost certainly the stones of the goblins from the video records, and when I absorbed them all, the point total came to a staggering 5,000!
"From just seven stones? That's insane... clearly those weren't ordinary monsters."
"It seems evident that points—the resource itself—are connected to the strange power those goblins possessed."
"I feel the pull again this time, too. And there are exactly two candidates."
One cost 1,000 points.
The other cost 4,500.
The 1,000-point one was probably something related to releasing sword energy. Which meant this obscenely expensive talent was...
"Hard as it is to believe, I'd say it's a talent related to resisting ranged attacks."
"This isn't even a talent anymore, is it...?"
Ever since I'd acquired Sensory Impartation, the talent category had shown signs of breaking down, and by now it was as good as shattered completely. No matter how generously I looked at it, could this really be called a talent?
Unlike me, lost in my confusion, Lena simply clapped her hands together in delight.
"I don't really follow the complicated stuff, but the bottom line is we can get the same power those goblins were using, right! A good thing's a good thing, I say."
"I... suppose so?"
"If it were me, I wouldn't even be worrying about it. I'm so jealous."
"I just feel a little uneasy, that's all."
An unidentified power that let a person grow stronger just by absorbing magic stones, as if playing a game. Where had this power come from—the one I'd stolen from that mechanical girl I'd faced on the verge of my death and rebirth?
Worse, all the evidence suggested that whatever had wielded this power was the very thing that had attacked humanity in the past...
Just as I was spiraling into idle speculation, Lena's voice yanked my mind back to reality.
"Hey, Mister. Got a question."
"Hm? What is it?"
"If you can get stronger by absorbing magic stones... why not just buy them up with all the money you earn normally? Once you're strong, making more money would be easy anyway, right?"
"Ah... there's actually a bit of a problem with that."
It was a simple question with a complicated answer: the vast majority of the enormous supply of magic stones flowing through the world was consumed by the Association, the guilds, or the Magic Tower.
Because of that, an individual like me could hardly obtain magic stones in bulk. Honestly, private buyers had little reason to purchase stones in the first place—at most, people bought them as fuel for artifacts.
And even then, most were self-sufficient...
"Buying magic stones in bulk would look awfully suspicious, wouldn't it?"
"It would. Since they're used as artifact fuel anyway, someone's bound to be watching the flow of stones with their eyes burning. Illegal organizations could be buying them up, after all."
Purchasing stones had long since been crossed off my list of options for exactly that reason. Hunting monsters directly and taking their stones was the best path available—which was why I'd always been starving for points. And then, out of nowhere, this flood of them comes pouring in?
What on earth was I supposed to spend all of this on?
"You should try restoring the 4,500-point talent first, sir. An ability to counter ranged attacks will prove invaluable."
"Isn't that a bit of a waste, though? With that many points I could buy four more talents on the level of Inner Heart. I didn't run into that many monsters using ranged attacks, after all."
Even assuming fights against people, the current generation of firearms was barely at the matchlock stage. Someone at my level could dodge by watching the muzzle alone.
But Noah shook her head.
"No. Perfectly functional artifact-class firearms might exist. You saw them yourself, didn't you? Personal weapons behaving like heavy machine guns. Lasers, even."
"...Would I really end up fighting people carrying guns like that?"
"The world is full of surprises."
"Ugh. Fine, fine. You're right—those guns were genuinely terrifying."
Standing in front of a weapon spitting dozens of rounds per second, sword energy and everything else would be reduced to minced meat.
Come to think of it, given that ruins this pristine had survived intact, it wouldn't be strange at all if some organization out there still possessed science-fiction-grade weaponry.
I selected my fourth talent.
[&^()*^% → Protection against Arrows]
It felt as though a gossamer-thin, transparent sheet of fabric had settled over my entire body.
...
"..."
"..."
About thirty seconds later, Noah peered at me, still standing there blankly.
"Are you finished? You seem remarkably unresponsive this time. Was it the talent you wanted?"
"Uh... judging by the name, I think so..."
I scratched my head as I studied the talent displayed on my status window.
Protection against Arrows, huh... a name I felt like I'd heard somewhere before. It was probably the talent I'd wanted.
But the process of acquiring it had been so unnervingly calm that I couldn't quite convince myself I'd actually received it. At least when I'd gotten Sensory Impartation, I'd had some vague sense of how to use it.
"Just test it, silly! Should I throw a rock at you?"
"...Might as well. Throw it at my arm. And don't go easy on it just because it's a test—give it your all."
"Yes, sir!"
Lena scooped up a piece of debris from the floor. A rock about the size of a ping-pong ball.
She backed away, wound her arm back behind her shoulder, and hurled the stone at me.
Shweeeeak...!
Plop...
"Ooooh."
"Did it work?"
"Yeah. What a peculiar sensation."
Just as I'd seen in the video, the ability that had blocked even the attacks of those futuristic firearms now manifested through me. The stone, thrown with considerable force, touched my arm and dropped to the ground with a lifeless thud, rolling away limply.
I hadn't used mana. I hadn't used will. And yet, as if this were simply how the world was meant to be, the pebble failed to deal me any damage whatsoever.
"No laws of physics, no nothing, huh..."
"I wonder how far the protection extends. Whether there's a time limit, as well. Oh—and whether it activates even unconsciously."
"Well, my guess is there's no time limit, and conscious intent doesn't seem to matter either. There has to be a limit to the defense itself, though. Even the goblins couldn't handle truly overwhelming firepower."
Still, against anything short of that, I was practically immune. As long as I wasn't standing out in the open, using my body as a target and inviting a hail of bullets, it shouldn't matter.
The points had cost me dearly, but seeing the results with my own eyes like this gave me a real sense of security.
"I cannot determine where the boundary of 'ranged attack' is drawn, but given that it blocked even the laser, the criteria seem quite generous. It may be that the attacker's perception serves as the standard for judgment."
"'Judgment,' huh... If something like that exists, who on earth is doing the judging?"
"Perhaps a god."
"...It's sad that I can't even rule that out."
If I ever met a god, I wanted to ask why the world had turned into such a mess. Or maybe—just maybe—the cause of the mess was the god itself. Surely it wasn't the case that a god had created the monsters and wiped out Old Humanity?
Having acquired such a bizarre talent had my mind churning through all manner of stray thoughts.
...
The second harvest was a sword.
"You saw the axe the robot was swinging in the video, didn't you?"
"It looked sturdy, all right. It shattered sword energy, no less."
"According to the records, it was a metal engineered specifically to withstand mana. Naturally, it's not at the level of Obsidian, which outright nullifies mana—but it is a durable metal with genuine resistance to magical force. Its common name is Shadow Steel. It's classified as a strategic material, in fact."
"Oho... So you forged a sword out of it?"
"There was a suitable amount left over after use, so I made one. It's considerably sturdier than before."
I'd been meaning to replace my old sword forever, but never found one I liked, so I'd just kept repairing it and carrying on. Who knew I'd end up upgrading like this?
I drew the sword Noah had hammered out using the laboratory's equipment.
Sliiing...!
With a cool metallic ring, a sleek blade rose into view.
Where the old one had gleamed pure silver from tip to hilt, this blade carried a slightly translucent ink-black sheen. The weight, too, had grown satisfyingly heavy in my hand.
"But if the metal resists mana, wouldn't it be hard to draw out sword energy with it?"
"Ordinarily, yes. However, I salvaged the Artium components still intact within your old blade and inlaid them inside the new one like circuits. Artium may be a question mark in terms of strength, but it has excellent mana responsiveness—and since I engineered it using the mana-related data on file, it should prove easier to use than you'd expect."
"Let's see..."
Vuummm!
The instant I fed aura into the blade, it hummed and shivered as a silver layer of sword energy sheathed itself over the steel.
Certainly, the aura flowed in far more grudgingly than before, but it was nothing that would hinder me in a fight. The trade-off of a sturdier sword was more than worth a penalty of this size.
Besides, in terms of appearance, it was in a league of its own now.
This looks incredible...
Shadow Steel, which made up over ninety percent of the blade, carried a semi-translucent black hue—and thanks to that, the silver light produced when the geometrically-woven Artium circuits running along the blade's central axis reacted to my aura looked for all the world like a constellation scattered across the night sky.
And since my aura's color was silver as well, the harmony of inner and outer silver light wrapped around the ink-dark blade made for a design beyond improvement.
It was only natural that Lena puffed out her cheeks, unable to hide her envy.
"Hmph. Can't you spruce up my gear too?"
"I'm sorry. There wasn't enough Shadow Steel left to use for armor... and more to the point, all of your equipment incorporates magitech, so it's difficult to modify carelessly for now."
"Booooo..."
Realizing her whining was getting her nowhere, Lena let her shoulders slump in defeat.
Wearing the most expensive equipment of any of us, and still greedy for more.
In any case, there remained one final harvest from the laboratory.
The third and last harvest was, of all things—the bipedal war machine that the laboratory's people had been rushing to build.