Chapter 510

Day 107 – Nighttime, the Theocracy, City

Crying as they ate simmered taro, river fish boiled in soy sauce, miso soup, and teriyaki chicken, they couldn’t resist going back for seconds even though their bellies were already full, as if driven by some primal instinct, and now they are even eating pork soup, completely giving up on resistance.

「It hurts, it’s good, it’s nostalgic, my stomach hurts.」

「I didn’t even like Japanese food that much… why does it taste so good? Wait, why did I get seconds when I’m already hurting!?」

「It’s even better than mom’s cooking… more than nostalgic, it’s just insanely good!」

「This is the kind of food even a first-class traditional restaurant wouldn’t be able to match. If your mother’s cooking was better than this, she would’ve been scouted away?」

「「「「We were planning on skipping dinner! This is your fault, Haruka-kun, seconds!!」」」」

They still can eat!? Their bellies looked like they were at their physical limit, but maybe Lv100+ bonuses were letting them endure? Even though they’d already overeat on sandwiches in the morning, they finished all off at lunch and dinner within seconds, unable to resist the blend of miso, soy sauce, and seasoning. Could this be a tanuki pandemic!?

The girls were preparing for their One More Set sword drills, planning to burn off bulging calories through exertion, then wring out the rest in the bath. Probably still not enough to burn away those raging calories, though, I guess I’ll make a sauna extension later.

Some of the sisters and monks, apparently born in this town, went back to their homes. But was it really a good idea to let them go back while licking knives? If they tripped on the way, they might cut their tongues?!

「Bath time~. I built one on my own, but baths are important, you know? More important than some shrine to a some wrinkly old fart.」

(Jiggle-Jiggle)

But I also can’t afford to waste MP. While a night would be enough to fully restore my MP, the massive capacity of the Item Bag’s magic battery wouldn’t refill so easily. Even after saving all day, it didn’t fill even halfway. Yeah, I might’ve stuffed too many magic stones in there?

「The Item Bag is basically stuffed with a mountain of high-grade magic stones, so the total MP capacity must be way beyond just tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands? Yeah, the Beastmen Country’s great wall was pretty long after all, just how much MP did that actually take? Really long?」

Normally, building even a single house is apparently impossible for one person, but that’s largely because they don’t know prefab methods or 2×4 construction. Assembling piece by piece and step by step is completely different from working with standardized procedures and prefabricated parts, the workload, difficulty, and MP cost are orders of magnitude apart. But even then, the real difference lies in the Item Bag’s massive input capacity, combined with Wisdom’s controlled parallelized output. After all, Wisdom-san is secretly an efficiency-obsessed slacker?

Knowledge alone, if it stays as knowledge, is useless, something to brag about and nothing more. Wisdom(智恵) would just mean intelligence, but Wisdom(智慧) is a Buddhist term, carrying deeper sense of discerning the true nature of things.

That insight, paired with Rajingan’s analytic freedom, was what made all of the crafting cheats possible. All I have myself is Item Bag and a few skills.

That’s why, if I lack knowledge, I go around asking. For most things in the world, the Librarian knows the answer, and when it comes to obscure or abnormal specialist knowledge you wouldn’t find in a decent world, the Geeks would have it.

So I gather information and process it, so I can make my way through the maze of deliberation I’ve wandered into. Effect nullification is a skill effect that can negate defensive skills, which leaves only physical. No matter how much you strengthen cloth with skill effects, if they are nullified, it’s just cloth. In the current situation where we can’t even make first-generation aramid fibers like Kevlar, I’ve managed to create a knockoff otherworld Kevlar by coating fibers with magic-stone powder. Since I’ve already tested and calculated every conceivable weave pattern which felt close to infinity, I can say that reinforcement through cloth pretty much hit the limit. The only option is to increase the mithril wire content making it heavier and harder, but less flexible. That in turn leads to stiffness in movement, and you lose that wonderful stretch feel, which makes it cling perfectly to the skin.

A shift in thinking is needed? What exactly is nullification? If I figure that out, I could nullify nullification. I don’t fully understand, but I’ve somehow done it before, so it can be done. If it can be done, then it can be created, the way of crafting truly is unfathomably deep.

「Neutralization or destruction, whichever it is, if it’s interfering with skill effects, then a skill effect that rejects interference would also be nullified, right?」

(Jiggle-jiggle?)

Magic essence! If it only nullifies skill effects but still impacts the physical, then it must be the magic essence contained in matter. That’s why frontier-made weapons are strong. 100% frontier-made, Made in the Frontier could become a brand. So if equipment is packed with magic essence, would its skill’s effect strength increase? If the crystal form of magic essence is a magic stone, then making equipment from 100% high-purity magic stone would solve it. In fact, the composite magic-stone-powder coating layer on armor surfaces is made by re-crystallizing high-purity magic stones… so just apply that to clothing.

If it succeeds, it would be revolutionary. Performance would be so much better that the difference between new and old products would be enough to start a mass redo of all items. But strength also means hardness, what can be made with stiffer fabric… a bra? What’s the point in protecting just that!? Well, sure, it is important. Yeah, really important.

The idea of dress armor had already been proposed. By Geeks, obviously. I should’ve listened, but come on, it was so annoying? They were crazy smug about it?

Fibers are spun from magic-stone thread, woven into fabric… but it’s rough. Probably usable only on the surface, but it also doesn’t lose shape. So that’s why ballroom dresses ended up so absurdly strong! They used a lot of interlining to keep the form intact, but by chance, that interlining had a high magic-stone purity. No wonder it had armor-level strength in skill effects. Yeah, that took tons of magic stones.

I get out of the bath while drafting new design plans. One More Set and dance exercises had already begun. The scary thing is that their bellies were already slim again! All that excess bulging nutrition had been burned away. Since they changed into separate-type leotards, they must’ve judged it safe to show their bellies Truly terrifying, One More Set! Even the Stern-faced Female Knight was joining for her first session and struggling… though why bloomers?

Anyway, if I keep watching, it’s bad for appearances, and Affection Rating, and me as a Highschool Boy, so I’ll head to my room. I did make rooms for everyone, you know? Added some extensions to the building? Secretly?

Apparently the strategy meeting would be held as a Girls-only gathering, and since aerobics had started, it looked like it would still take a while. Being able to keep up with that grueling routine of alternating aerobic and anaerobic training, for hours straight… They’d probably be able to fight an entire day long?. But they seem terribly weak to supply line disruptions, so I better prepare plenty of provisions!

The never-ending ONE MORE SETt, well, they bought piles of ice cream saying it was for after the sauna? Yeah, this eternal, ceaseless reincarnation cycle of One More Set seems to have no end.

Strategy, huh… the Theocracy has thin magic essence. Maybe that’s why it’s a holy land, but it’s a disadvantage. The overwhelmingly strong in terms of this world become disadvantaged, and those with numbers are advantaged. If you can’t replenish mana fast enough, then with MP depletion you wouldn’t be able to even move properly, so you are forced to fight while suppressing skills… so it comes down to basic physical stamina, huh?

「Maybe I should’ve left the girls behind and brought Idiots instead. They just punch everything; they don’t care if they have skills or not. I mean, they’re idiots, so whether MP depletion makes them lightheaded or not, they’re still idiots. They’re creatures of pure reflex, fighting by instinct and intuition, so they would’ve been perfect? Well, Geeks would’ve been completely useless though. Those guys are entirely reliant on their skills for combat, fighting only with skills and basing all their moves around skills… without MP Geeks are useless beyond extreme.」

(Bounce-Bounce)

Crafting with MP restrictions is no fun, it just becomes designing and drafting. The real thrill is thinking things up as they come, but if I can’t actually make prototypes, it’s just stressful. Still, by aggregating and refining accumulated information, linking it, and reorganizing, new ideas and overlooked possibilities appear. It’s the flip side of trying out every idea in rapid-fire trial-and-error, so sometimes just running the calculations is worthwhile… oh, right, corsets are an option too. If I can just calculate the structure properly, even stiff fabric wouldn’t hinder movement. But if I hand out bondage dresses, Pres would probably beat me up! In some circles that might count as a reward, but in this world it’d just mean slaughter for sure. Still, it actually seems like a pretty good idea?

Then, Armored Pres-san and Dancing Girl-san came back from the bath, faintly pink and wearing yukatas. Damn, I’ve already suffered back-to-back defeats and this was supposed to be a revenge match, but with MP restricted, yet the thin yukatas clung to their damp skin, the curves of their bodies standing out so vividly it looked like it might turn transparent, th-this is a trap! Not wearing underwear, only that thin inn-style yukata over slightly wet skin? If this isn’t a trap, then what else could this trembling, quivering temptation of bewitching beauty be!?

The ponytailed Armored Pres-san and Dancing Girl-san with her hair swept up in a chignon, the slender, exposed nape of their necks was a charm attack in itself, and when I avoided that, the shallow overlap of their yukata offered a clear view of cleavage, the violent swell of curves pressing the thin fabric outward as though to force the fold apart, an attack of pure allure. This is violence, this is what violence truly is. A brutal force of tension that seemed about to burst free, pushing out and straining the thin fabric, crushing against it and pushing back in a merciless clash, violence of the most wicked kind!

Completely seduced and enthralled, one-sided negotiations ended with an agreement: to save MP, equipment would be removed, and magic limited to internal circulation only, a pure battle of flesh against flesh. But come on, that’s not fair! Getting tricked by their bodies into making the deal, and calling two-against-one even conditions? That’s cheating from the start!

But that wasn’t the only trap. I was deceived by the wet, clinging, see-through yukata, but even that was misdirection! It wasn’t just bath-damp skin at all, it was the slippery Body Lotion-san, making them impossible to grab. As the yukatas fell open, skin gleaming slick and radiant, and once hems came loose, those glistening wet legs entwined themselves around me. A fiendishly underhanded trap, but also such an exquisite craftsmanship that I couldn’t help but praise myself for making these. The dreams and hopes of Highschool Boys seem to be lying at the bottom of this world’s dungeons! If you summoned a horde of all-boys-school Highschool Boys, every Dungeon in this world might be wiped out in an instant!?

Resisting the bewitching, sensual flesh, I finally managed to pin down Armored Pres-san face-to-face. With us pressed together, the only thing Dancing Girl-san could do from behind was unleash squishy-squishy attacks. And then, the power of the 『Sex King』 who had surpassed the wall of Lv25 surged forth in an overwhelming storm-like a rampage, the furious, unrelenting onslaught of the Highschool Boy raged across her body, striking in a torrent until she rolled her eyes back and collapsed. Only then, as I attempted to get to Dancing Girl-san who was attempting to restrain me, I feinted with a shoulder hold, twisted my body, and in that instant of surprise struck with a Butsudan-gaeshi, stopping her movement cold. While she arched back, I followed through with a Tsubame-gaeshi, dropping her down and assailing her as fiercely as wildfire, as swift as a woodpecker!

Though at one point I was dragged into a Gosho-guruma and struggled bitterly, once I locked her down with the Shishimai, victory was mine. Both were down, their eyes rolled back, and as she attempted to prop up her pale naked body, I leapt at her! It’s a pure flesh-to-flesh battle, but it seems I still could fight, with Wisdom-san’s analysis of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu I had 48 ultimate finishing moves for ground fighting! Well, they’d probably pick it up quickly and turn it back on me, but tonight, they’d be on the receiving end of all 48 finishing moves. The night is long!