CH 40

Roa thrusts her spear, and it weaves through rugged scales to pierce the large body beneath them.

The fish-type monster called armored salmon jumps back, but quickly falls limply. It looks like Roa pierced its vital organs with her one strike.

We’ve come to the nearby river to test their new magic items.

“Good. Very good.”

Whispers Roa while lightly lifting the bridge of her glasses-type magic item.

What she just did is supposed to shift her magic item into power sealing mode.

It looks like she’s going to keep testing the performance of the magic item until she’s satisfied.

She’s standing in the river with her skirt tucked up and spear in hand. Behind her, in the river bank, there’s a pile of dead fish-type monsters, all killed with one strike each.

They’re all the same kind of monster, something Ahri tells me is called armored salmon. Their scales are very developed and look rugged like a rock, and they look tough enough that even Kalin could have a hard time cracking them with one blow.

Apparently they’ve been swimming upstream in large numbers because Hipopo took out the boss of the pond, that cat-fish monster.

As I think about this, Roa pulls her skirt down and puts her boots back on. She defeated so many of those armored salmon and her clothes are barely even wet.

As Roa walks towards us, I prepare the tools I brought with Hipopo to fine tune their magic items. I knew I’d want to adjust them after seeing them in actual use.

“Good.”

Is all Roa has to say.

“Hum… Do you have any complaints? Like with the way it changes modes, or with it slipping during battle, or anything like that?”

“No.”

“Roa, you’re being rude. Answer properly.”

Says Ahri.

Roa then looks like she’s deep in thought. The cloth covering her face is completely rolled up, so her face is almost completely bare, and I can see it well.

I look at her eyes behind the square frames of the magic item, and it looks like she’s staring at something.

I can control my magic eyes exactly as I want, so I can see the world really well. Shifting between transparency mode and long-distance sight mode is smooth. Shifting via voice activation is convenient, but doing it by touch feels more reliable. I use my spear with my right hand, so I want to be able to control everything with my left if that’s possible.”

Says Roa while pointing to the metal part of the frame on her left ear.

“Understood. Give it to me and I’ll fix it right away.”

I respond to Roa while thanking Ahri for stepping in.

Roa puts the cloth over her face again, and hands me the magic item.

I quickly set a device I brought with me on it and start rewriting the magic circuit. Having that said, all I’m doing is making it so everything is controlled by the left side, instead of some functions being on one side and others on the other. It doesn’t take very long.

“It’s done.”

I give the magic item back to Roa.

“I’ll try it.”

She puts the magic item back on her face and rolls the cloth back up, before throwing away her boots again.

She’s like a kid with a new toy, and she jumps into the river again.

Ahri and I look at each other and awkwardly smile. Her cloth is rolled up too, and she has a monocle-shaped magic item covering one eye. It’s round and big enough to completely cover her left eye with the power of future sight.

Ahri then thrusts her spear, and the magic elements around it start stretching forward.

An armored salmon suddenly jumps from the water, and plunges itself into the magic elements as if it was sucked in by them. The magic element spear penetrates the monster from its open mouth to its tail.

Ahri foresaw exactly where the monster would jump, and simply acted in accordance with what she saw.

I glance over at her, and she looks happy. They really are sisters.

As soon as this thought crosses my mind, I feel like Ahri is kind of staring at me.

Oh? Does her magic eye activate even outside of battle? Did she see a future in which I accidentally said what I was thinking?

“No, you’re not entirely wrong.”

Ahri responds to my thoughts with a composed expression.

As an apology for last time (the author accidentally classified the novel as complete) I will explain some terms and parts of the setting. Some things that probably don’t relate too much to the main story.

・Military arts

A technique to cover one’s body, weapons, or defensive equipment with magic elements.

The first stage is to use magic elements as they are. The second is to change their element and use them in battle. The first stage is crucial to fight monsters, so people without knowledge of military arts have to be equipped with magic guns if they are going to fight monsters.

When it comes to fighting other people, the first stage is mostly for intimidation. Magic elements themselves don’t hurt people, so they don’t change the actual power of their weapons.

In the sixteenth chapter when Rust and Roa met, she enveloped her spear in magic elements to keep Rust in check and as a display of her killing intent towards the white lizard.

・Roa’s glasses-shaped magic item

A magic item for Roa, who has one eye that can see far away, and the other has the power to see through things.

The concept behind it is that each frame seals each eye’s power interdependently.

By turning the seal on and off on a cycle with a short time span, the special powers can be restrained.

The time span in each frame can be changed to the millisecond, so from Roa’s point of view, she can choose what she sees from frame-by-frame images to high-resolution images.

Also, she has 『Long-distance sight mode』, 『Transparency mode』, a 『Rest mode』 where both powers are sealed, and a 『Full release mode』 where both are active.

Roa doesn’t need the sealing scroll Rust gave her anymore, but decided to keep it anyway.