Volume 1, Introduction: Making

Volume 1, Introduction: Making

The girl’s long black hair was worn in twintails. Instead of any kind of accessory, it was loosely tied in place by fist-sized balls of the hair itself. A ring of bluish-white light spread out around her feet like ripples. As soon as the size of the space came into view, an unpleasantly mechanical and smooth voice came from the heavens above.

“You may now make your initial customizations. Please choose each piece of equipment based on the change to your stats. You may not wear equipment that exceeds your total capacity, so please keep an eye on how much Willpower is being consumed.”

Only when she heard that feminine voice and felt the chill on her skin could the black-haired girl see her own body clearly.

She looked down at her hands while clenching and unclenching her fists.

“Why must I start with selecting my underwear every single time I arrive here?”

“Each piece of equipment provides Percentage-type Magic. You may feel as if you are wearing the equipment, but it is actually a manifestation of your willpower.”

The twintail girl gave a somehow alluring sigh.

She snapped her fingers and a giant circle surrounded her. Square frames fifty centimeters across rotated around her. Each one contained a sample of women’s underwear, so it was a surreal sight.

Starting with HP, STR, INT, VIT, MIN, AGI, and LUK, a list of around one thousand stats appeared and changed slightly with each sample she chose by rotating the circle with her fingertips.

She set up an even larger frame in front of herself which displayed her slender body in place of a mirror.

In her own opinion, she had a decent body.

Her breasts were larger than average. Larger than average! Everyone around her claimed they could not tell the difference and they always mentioned her narrow waist instead, but they were definitely a few millimeters bigger!! (←Emphasized for importance)

(If I choose based on the abilities, I’ll end up looking weird.)

“But you know what?”

“Your question is unclear.”

“I hate how all of the clothing I can select is so risqué.”

“Clothing is Magic given physical form. All of these are what you have learned.”

“I am saying there is a blatant bias in what I was able to learn!”

“The options are different for different Jobs. A Holy Swordswoman is expected to possess only the almightiest and highest stat arrangeme-...”

“Yes, yes. I was a fool to even think of asking you.”

After the underwear, she chose padding to prevent the armor’s joints from digging into to her skin, boots, gauntlets, other armor, a breastplate, a skirt, etc. etc. She constantly swapped things out and spent a long time to achieve a nice balance of appearance and functionality.

She ultimately chose Western armor with a miniskirt. The shoulders and back were left bare, but that was not a downside when defense was handled by Magic.

“Material selection complete. Next up are the color options. The selected colors will not change the Parameters, but keep in mind that they can provide visual effects such as camouflage in some cases. Also, the available color options are theoretically 320,000-...”

“I get it, I get it! You don’t have to line them all up!! I’ll do it on my own later!!”

The silver-haired girl let out a shout to stop the frames from filling the entire visible space around her.

She also noticed something else.

“Mh? Even the way I’m talking has changed.”

“It is not uncommon for the speech and behavior patterns inputted from the outside world to change once the equipment has been selected. Some abilities such as Auto-Aim are directly controlled within the user’s brain, so they take over some of the thought resources and can negatively impact their personality. It can be necessary to recompose their mentality to an appropriate extent.”

When the girl looked to the frame she was using as a mirror, she realized even her own face had changed. She now had pure white skin that seemed to reflect the light and clearly did not belong to an Asian. Her long hair was primarily silver, but it grew red as it approached the tips. The twintail hairstyle had become a straight long style.

It was not that a different body had been created.

There was only the one body, but that one body had been transformed by the equipment.

“Honestly. Why does the appearance have to change after choosing the clothes? I chose those based on what I looked like before.”

“It is meant to reduce the discrepancy between the equipment’s adjusted abilities and your physical body. For example, if a STR increase of 300% was left to the original muscular strength, it would strain the muscles. In order to use the effects properly, the size and balance of the user’s physical body must be readjusted based on the equipment. This is not an error.”

(Well, it made my breasts a little bigger, so I’ll allow it. But! But! They were already bigger than average!!)

“If you do not verbalize your requests, I cannot assist you properly.”

“You don’t have to read my mind!!”

However, choosing different equipment would only give her another different appearance, so choosing clothes to match this silver-haired blue-eyed look would get her nowhere.

The silver- and red-haired girl gave up and moved on to the colors.

Of course, if she took the time to choose each individual color, she would be here for an entire week if not an entire month.

“Maybe I should choose from a color palette. I’ll have red for the main color, white for sub-color 1, and gold for sub-color 2. Also, add in some chocolate color to round it out.”

“Will 255,000,000 for red and 255,255,255 for white be acceptable?”

“C’mon, you can do better than that. Like add in a bit of blue and green for a wine red look.”

“The designation ‘gold’ is unclear. Would you like to view the help menu?”

“Brighten up an ochre color and give it reflectivity! What are you, a useless help search window in a word processor!?”

After shouting without anyone to actually talk to, the silver-haired girl filled in all the necessary fields.

Once she was done, she let out a truly exhausted sigh.

“All of your preparations are complete. Welcome, Beatrice, to the Labyrinth and the adjacent land of Ground’s Nir.”

“To be honest, it’s exhausting doing this every single time. It really kills my motivation.”

“Would you like to view the help menu?”

“?”

“You can save any fields you have already chosen and call up that preset next time to omit this work. Would you like to view the help menu?”

“Why didn’t you tell me that two years ago!? Why do you only tell me when I ask, you damn window!?”

All of the frames vanished and white light appeared in their place.

Like the bottom of a balloon opening, the silver-haired girl named Beatrice had her mind and existence rapidly sucked out.