#078 – I won’t neglect preparing for round two this time

#078 – I won’t neglect preparing for round two this time

I stared at the part of me that was a water gun.

This felt so so much weirder than the clothes. At least the clothes were vaguely me-shaped but this...

“Reject humanity. Become gun,” I automatically blurted out in a dazed whisper.

KaiEbikoOfficial: wait what?!

Unfortunately, chat immediately noticed my little slip up and began badgering me about what the heck I meant.

“Uh, err... Never mind.”

I tried to deflect, but...

KaiEbikoOfficial: no hold on

KaiEbikoOfficial: is soulbinding doing something to you?!

KaiEbikoOfficial: are you actually gun and clothes now?!

I cringed and let out a pained sound.

Dammit. Guess the cat’s out of the bag now.

“Okay, fine! Yes. Soulbind item... is not just a figure of speech, alright? These clothes? And this gun now?” I gestured at them one after the other. “They are me now. Part of me. Like another hand or something. Except like... I don’t feel through them or anything. You know, no nerves or touch receptors or whatever. But I can feel that they are part of me. It’s weird but... yeah. It’s fine.”

KaiEbikoOfficial: ????

KaiEbikoOfficial: nana how is that fine?!

I grunted.

“It’s fine! It doesn’t really do anything. I got used to being clothes, I’ll get used to being gun.” I waved my hand.

Obviously, Ebiko and some of the people in chat weren’t happy with that and we argued for a bit. There were also people who took my side, others who just wanted to know what it was like, and then those who apparently made memes with my face photoshopped on a gun.

Hilarious.

In the end, Ebi left chat a bit miffed that I hadn’t told her and I felt sour about the whole thing as well. Like yeah, it was weird and all, but it was far from the weirdest thing in this world, right?

Ugh, whatever...

Since I’d bought the upgrade, I also decided to test out Soul Pocket. Obviously, I wouldn’t do that with the clothes, but I could easily do it with the gun.

I activated the mental switch and watched as the space the gun occupied warped and swallowed my gun self in the blink of an eye, leaving me staring at my now empty hands.

I could still feel that gun part of me. It was just... somewhere else. A place I couldn’t physically reach, but I knew it was there dammit. Like I’d had my mouth open and my tongue out all this time, but now I pulled my tongue back and closed my mouth... If the tongue was the gun and my mouth a passage to the sixth dimension that I couldn’t see.

Okay, the metaphors were getting a bit weird but it was just hard to describe.

With that, I mostly just sulked relaxed all day and waited for my Ether to restore a bit more.

I also finally remembered to check the bracelet’s remaining juice – thanks to some badgering from chat – and found that... it was completely out. Several people immediately reprimanded me for not merging it with my clothes before it ran out for a potential permanent skill, but I just grunted at them, saying that if it didn’t turn the skill permanent, then I would just be adding junk to my clothes.

Anyway, since there was no more point in keeping them fused, I unfused the popsicle from the bracelet again, leaving me with the original bracelet and... a plastic wrapping from the Time-freezing popsicle.

Hmm, maybe I could use the bracelet for other fusions now. Chat had pointed it out quite a bit, but everytime I used a key item in a fusion, if it didn’t have one before, it would gain an innate skill... Or maybe I could fuse it into my gun self?

I frowned.

Or maybe I could fuse my gun self into the bracelet to have some kind of utility wristband that could shoot water and plasma bullets like some kind of spy.

Would that even work though...? Would the soulbound property transfer over to the bracelet if it did...? I kinda wanted to try, but I also knew that I couldn’t unfuse it afterwards if I didn’t like the result.

In the evening, when I recovered enough Ether to be fairly sure that I wouldn’t drop dead from using some, I decided to do a little testing session. First, I took out the presumed flamethrower the boss had dropped and went out to the very edge of the dungeon without entering it.

“Okay, chat... Still don’t have Appraisal but let’s see what I can do with this...”

I frowned and tried to feel around the thing with my Ether. Just like the water gun, there was some kind of Ether-powered mechanism tied to the trigger. And when I put my finger on it, it felt like there was a split in the ‘path’ my Ether could take. Again, similar to the ink gun, so I could only assume that this one also had two modes of discharge.

“Alright. Got it! Watch this, chat!”

I pulled the trigger and pushed the Ether in one of the split paths, the one that felt warmer and more immaterial.

Just as I’d expected, a burst of flames came rushing straight out of the muzzle similarly to my Fire Breath.

It was... Well, now that I thought about it, that was just it. Fire Breath but less convenient because I needed to use a gun for it. The main advantage was that I didn’t need to use a skill slot for it. But I already had a pan for that, didn’t I?

Luckily, that wasn’t everything there was to this thing...

“It has a second setting! This one should be more exciting!”

I pushed my Ether into it, this time into the path that felt more rigid and sharp. And the moment I pulled the trigger, the gun spat out a massive volley of crystal shards. They swished through the air like an angry cloud of needles, flew right across the dungeon’s boundary, and then clinked one by one against the crystal floor of the dungeon.

“Oh! It’s what the dragon used on me!” I paused and couldn’t help but shudder. I still couldn’t believe that I hadn’t turned into a pin cushion after that. “...Anyway! It’s a smaller version of that. It’s almost like a shotgun. Nice!”

This ought to be pretty useful against unarmored monsters. A big plus was that it didn’t seem to use nearly as much Ether as the water gun and nowhere near as much as the plasma setting. One shot felt like about a third of the water gun’s regular water shot.

That meant that while it didn’t have as much of a punch as the water gun, it was cheap enough for me to somewhat spam and hopefully strong enough to still be useful.

...Also, I now had horns. It was all still part of me, after all.

“Neat,” I said with a grin. “That’s still not everything though...”

I had the feeling like I could pull the hood even more over my head somehow, although I didn’t need to use my hands for it. I could do it with a thought.

When I did, the inside of the hood suddenly grew bluish metal plates that gently covered my face in a similar way to the helmet. I was left staring at a frankly ridiculous sight – though John’s PoW – of a girl with a horned hoodie, wearing a metal mask under it.

“...Chat, I look like a cartoon supervillain.”

Most people in chat seemed to think so as well. Some even began to come up with supervillain names.

Jeofffff: Lady Sapphire

jifLover67: phoenix knight

UglyRestart: bluebird

I spread out my legs and arms a little and turned my palms up in a stereotypical evil laugh pose. “You’re too late to stop this Lady Sapphire, Heroman! You may have defeated me last time, but this time, I’m the one holding all the cards! You can’t stop me from turning the entire world blue! Mwahahahaha!”

...

“...Anyway,” I said while dropping the exaggerated pose and pulling the helmet and hood part off again. “That Fusion took quite a bit out of me. I guess it’s the perfect time to use this!”

I pulled out the Crystal Flask, uncorked it, sniffed it a little with narrowed eyes, and upon confirming that the smell was exactly as I remembered the other refined ooze, I carefully tipped it toward my lips, trying to get just a drop of it out.

Surprisingly, this liquid wasn’t as viscous and a bunch of it immediately rushed out and made me jolt at the sudden surge of power.

Luckily, it didn’t leave me spasming on the floor like the last time I’d tried to drink this stuff, but I could still feel myself overflowing with Ether just a little.

“Okaaaaay! I gotta... I gotta do this then!”

I used Fusion on the flamethrower, pulled my gun self out of the pocket dimension, and immediately shoved the flamethrower into it. Since I was fusing a third item into the mix, it took a bit of extra Ether, leaving me with no excess from the potion now.

I let out a sigh of relief and looked at the flask in my hand and then to my new gun.

The gun was starting to look very strange. In addition to the three metal rods, the muzzle had now also transformed into a dragon head’s shape just like the flamethrower and the whole thing was longer than before.

“Well, that happened. I guess the flask must be doing some space-time nonsense to counteract the viscosity...? Whatever. I have a new gun and I guess I should name it too.”

Just to quickly check, I used Appraisal on my gun self and found out exactly what I had been expecting. Generic Fused item name and description, along with the Key item spiel tacked at the end of it.

...Which felt kinda weird, to be honest. Was I a key item now? Since the gun was me?

Food for thought. Later, though.

Chat immediately began coming up with cool – and very uncool – names for my gun and after a bit of deliberation and consultation with the others, I settled on a name.

What would you like to name your item?

Note: This cannot be undone. Once named, an item cannot then be unfused, but gains the ability to absorb Ether, Intra, or Tempor, to empower itself.

Y/N

I nodded to myself and then narrowed my eyes at the last sentence.

“Oh, chat. My clothes can absorb one of the three manas. I completely forgot about that part. Why didn’t anyone remind me?”

There actually was one person who had reminded me, but it had been when I’d been in the middle of the crystal dungeon, so I’d filed it away for later... and then forgotten about it again.

“Okay... I guess the obvious answer is Ether, right? Since it’s supposed to be armor, it should tank physical hits, right? But then, what would the gun be...? Hmm? Well, the wording implies that I can only pick one. No idea if it can be all three, but I could try... Anyway! Gun name. Let’s do this.”

The gun glowed and shifted for a moment and when it stopped, I was left with a gun shaped kind of like the plasma cannon, but with the crystal color and texture of the flamethrower, a dragon head decoration in the middle with dragon wings folded on top of it – oh, that was the water gun’s barrel – with a muzzle coming out of its mouth. The whole thing was surprisingly small, just like the original water gun, and easily fit into my hand.

I grinned.

“Nice! Let’s see what it can do!”

Dragon Blaster

A gun made by Aoto Nana through fusion, created out of various treasures she discovered on her adventures.

Provides several modes of discharge including: High-speed water bullet; high-speed ink bullet; high-speed bullet of any liquid fed into its barrel; plasma orb; liquid plasma; fire breath; crystal breath.

Soulbound.

[INNATE] skill: Combination Breath - Use a combination of any number of discharge modes and your own breath skills at once through this item. Ether cost scales appropriately.

This object is a Key item.

My eyes widened.

“A combination? Of everything?!”

That sounded nuts... Well, actually. Not that much. The water would probably interfere with the fire, and plasma might destroy the crystal shards...

Yeah, the more I thought about it, the less useful it seemed. But hey, if I fused more stuff into this, it could become incredibly useful. Not to mention, it could apparently also use my own breath attacks...? Well, I only had one right now, and other than the overpriced Phoenix Breath, I didn’t see how I could get more.

“Actually, I don’t think that part is very useful right now. But having all of this in one place is nice! Especially since I can do this!” I stored the gun part of me in the Soul Pocket, spun around, held my hand toward the nearest tree, took the gun out, and immediately fired a crystal barrage at it.

I grinned.

“Now, I’ll never be without a weapon on hand.”

Finally, because of the constant nagging from chat, I used Appraisal on my clothes self and found out that nothing much had changed about the description besides there now being a section that said I was more resistant to petrification.

Well, that was the whole point of fusing it, so I was fine with it.

The last thing I wanted to do before braving the dungeon again, was figure out how to ‘charge’ my soulbound items with one of the three manas and decide which should go into which if I couldn’t do all three.