CH 256

Any Closet not Regularly Cleaned is Bound to Fill with Junk

Editor(s): Speedphoenix, Joker

“Huh?” A dumbfounded groan escaped my lips, one that only Lefi was present to hear. Everyone else was off going about their own business.

The noise I made stemmed from a rejection. I’d opened up the usual crack in spacetime and chucked the prototype ring I’d made at it, only to see it bounce off, fall onto the floor, and roll around before finally settling on its side.

“What the fuck?” I repeated the action, but again, to no avail. Not even the most classic of troubleshooting solutions, closing my inventory and reopening it, seemed to show any results. “Is it bugged or something? Probably not, right? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure bugs aren’t a thing in real life.”

Oh… wait… right… After a third attempt, I recalled a fact that I had pushed off to the side given its relative unimportance: my item box was not infinitely large; its size was strictly proportional to the depth of my mana pool.

“Wait, are you serious? Did I really manage to fill it all the way up?”

My max MP looked like a mere speck next to Lefi’s, but as far as the average Joe was concerned, it was effectively infinite. I had always been able to shove everything I wanted into my dimensional pocket without needing to concern myself with its limits. And it wasn’t as if I had been completely unmindful of its contents either.

I had immediately looked through everything immediately after recovering from the effects of the bizarre concoction that had turned me into a master detective. That said, a few pieces of actual trash aside, I hadn’t thrown anything away during the inspection.

“Welp. Looks like I’m going to have to go through it again, I grumbled, “and I guess I’ll actually have to clean it up this time.”

***

After running a few preliminary checks, I realized that sorting through my stuff in the true throne room was a surefire recipe for a huge mess, so I chose to head outside instead. Once I found myself in the field, I dumped everything I had into several huge piles, sorted based on their types.

“I do not understand.” Lefi sighed as she looked up at the literal mountains laid out before her. “How, exactly, have you managed to accrue so many belongings?” The dragon had apparently chosen to tag along for the excursion because she had nothing better to do.

“Honestly? Me either.”

When I said everything, I meant everything. The collection contained all the items I had hoarded since I first came to this world, most of which were corpses. Dead monsters made up a good sixty percent of the stash. I knew that I’d been keeping a healthy supply of them around, as they served as both food and an emergency source of DP, but I wasn’t expecting to have accrued so many.

What surprised me even more, however, was that a good third or so of the items I had sitting around were weapons; my own creations. Many of them were greatswords, as I’d recognized the hefty blades as my weapon of choice, but that wasn’t to say they made up the majority. There were also large numbers of other weapons that relied heavily on blunt force trauma, such as greataxes and two-handed hammers. Regular one handed swords made up most of the remainder, but there were also a few less-than-useful anime-inspired weapons I’d made for shits and giggles, such as oversized scythes and ornamented blades. Holy… I mean, I know I make shit whenever I’ve got nothing better to do, but still. This is… a lot of shit. And that last group is especially shit. It’s basically got no purpose but cosplay.

The remaining items consisted of potions, board games, and all sorts of other miscellaneous odds and ends. Freeing up space, in and of itself, was easy. All I had to do was turn half the monsters I had sitting around into DP, as there was no reason to hang on to such a large number of them. But that was only a temporary stopgap. It didn’t actually solve the problem that was my propensity to hoard everything I created.

I had no use for any of the weapons I had sitting around. Enne was all I needed, but I still didn’t want to toss them. Though they were suboptimal in combat, they still had plenty of sentimental value. Ehh… yeah, fuck it. I’ll just hang onto them for now.

With that decided, I began executing my stopgap solution. As I did, Lefi, who had been watching me in exasperation, began to look through the weapon pile.

“What is this?” she asked, upon picking out a long metal staff tipped with a circular, yellow formation containing a red orb. 

“That? That’s a staff for magical girls.”

“A what?”

“A staff for magical girls. Here, pass it over, I’ll show you what I mean.”

After retrieving the staff from her, I took a pose with my left arm in front. I’d bent it such that the lowest part, my elbow, was at the center of my chest. I made sure to stick out my thumb, my pinky, and my index finger, whilst using the remaining two to hold the staff in place. My other hand, which I’d used to form a finger gun pointed right at her, rested right on top of my left elbow.

“In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you!” I said, in the girliest voice I could manage.

“…”

My first pose apparently hadn’t quite managed to amuse her, so I took a second one with the staff held out in front and my hips thrusted to the side. This time, I even threw in a wink for added effect.

“Starlight Breaker!”

“…”

“Oh come on, don’t look at me like that,” I said. “Just to be clear, I’m not a degenerate. I was just acting.”

I had originally made it for the girls, but since I couldn’t remember exactly what the different designs from different series looked like, I ended up mashing them together and creating something that looked more like a mage’s staff than a magical girl’s staff. The result was off-putting, so off-putting that I decided to toss it into the inventory and forget about it. 

“And what is this?” Lefi picked up another relatively odd-looking weapon.

“That’s a gunblade. The barrel lets you shoot projectiles if you’re trying to stay at range, while the sword lets it remain functional even if you end up getting forced to fight up close.”

“It sounds rather useful,” she said. “A versatile weapon is one that can create many opportunities to slay your foe.”

“Yeah, you’d think so, but it’s a total piece of hot garbage in practice.”

The most effective form a gunblade could possibly take was that of a bayoneted gun. Mine, however, was much more akin to something ripped straight out of an anime in that the blade was fused onto the barrel. It was totally badass, but that was it. Appealing to cringey manchildren was, quite literally, its only use. The hollow barrel made it so that the blade was too delicate; it would give the moment it was put under any real pressure. This not only destroyed the blade and rendered it unusable for melee, but also bent the barrel out of shape and either jammed the weapon or threw off all its shots. 

Another noteworthy point that further degraded the gunblade’s value was the relative inefficacy of guns in general. The only useful ones were those akin to my enchanted revolver. Gunpowder was something that already existed in this world. Its explosive properties had already been thoroughly investigated, and advancements in its tech had in fact gone so far that many a musket had already been developed. Learning that had gotten me incredibly excited. I went ahead and crafted my own, only to be thoroughly disappointed. 

My inability to aim certainly had contributed to the weapon’s lack of performance, but that certainly hadn’t been the only lackluster variable in the equation. Most of the Wicked Forest’s monsters had thick hides or shells; bullets would bounce off them without accomplishing anything at all. There were a few softer targets that the metallic projectiles were able to pierce, but they would never penetrate far enough to do any real harm. There was no such thing as an instance in which picking up Enne and giving my target a good old smack wouldn’t have been far more effective.

Hearsay led me to believe that bullets could do a good bit of damage to regular monsters, but that was it. Even members of the races were able to easily defend against single-shot weapons. There was a possibility that things would change in the future—that fully automatic weapons would be able to nullify magical defenses—but I had no way of acquiring one. They didn’t exist  yet, the dungeon’s catalogue didn’t have any, and I was by no means knowledgeable enough to craft one myself. Even then, to me, they still wouldn’t have proven useful.

In the Wicked Forest, the best use case for a gun was to have it serve as a club, which was to say that guns were, in effect, totally useless.

“And is this not just a log?”

“Nah, it’s much more than just that. It’s a weaponized log.”

“A weaponized log, you say? I do not see the difference.”

“Against vampires, that thing’s totally lethal. All you gotta do is pick one of these babies up, shout to rally your troops, and show ‘em hell.”

“Are you absolutely certain that it will prove effective?”

“Well, I mean, yeah. It’ll be about as effective as any other blunt force weapon, so it’ll be about as effective against vampires as it is against everything else.”

“…”

Again, Lefi was stunned into silence. But she didn’t need to speak. Her exasperated expression said everything that she found herself unable to put into words. Look, I know you want to scream “what the fuck is wrong with you?” at the top of your lungs, but just chill, alright? Don’t think about it. This is just the kinda thing you’re supposed to accept as universally true.

After giving the mountain of weapons a long, blank stare, the dragon nodded to herself. “…I suppose it is time. I shall do you the favour of incinerating them.”

“Nononononono! Wait!”

She’d created a bright, blue flame in each hand, but I wedged myself between her and my precious stockpile before she could launch her attack.

“Why are you stopping me? Were you not planning on disposing of them?” she asked in a fed up tone. “I am assisting you by removing them immediately.”

“Noooo! Not like this! You can’t just light them all on fire!” I shouted, half panicked. “I was planning on to sort through them so I could figure out which ones I was going to junk and which ones I was going to keep!”

“Why?” She cocked a brow. “Is this not all garbage?”

“Absolutely not!”

Everything here has got a piece of my soul poured into it!

After a brief pause, during which the dragon stared me in the eyes, she heaved a sigh.

“Very well. If that is the case, then I will refrain,” she said. “But at the very least, I shall turn the staff and the log to ashes. They are far too irritating to be allowed to remain.”

“What!? Noooo! Not the staff! Not the log! Whyyyy!?”

My pleas were completely and utterly ineffective. Her magic had caused both to light up as would drywood in a campfire. It made sense for the log to burn the way it did, but the staff was made entirely out of metal. And yet, it had vanished in an instant. Holy shit! Just how hot were those flames!?

“Now hurry up and begin. If you, as an adult, cannot clean up after yourself, the children will soon begin to treat you as a laughing stock.”

“Alright, fine! I get it already, so stop making more flames and just let me do my thing!”

And so, I began sorting through my collection. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a long, painstaking process. But as Lefi would try to light whatever I was considering on fire the moment I showed even the slightest hint of hesitation, I ended up finishing the job in record time.