BXBX NOVEL Chapter 26: Procuring Emergency Rations
Chapter 26: Procuring Emergency Rations
Translator: ShiroiKaze/Soyokaze Translations
Now then, it’s not like I’ve been completely idle in these past two years.
I didn’t make anything to sell, but I’m developing 4 magic tools.
The first one is the Cleaver.
It has 4 [enchantments] applied to it: [Weight reduction], [Toughness], [Acceleration], and [Smashing] (incomplete).
As an evolved form of Sentinel, it’s a heavy weapon I made with a focus on area of effect power.
It uses silver as its base material, which successfully increased the number of enchantments over iron by 1.
However, with my fighting ability, I had trouble hitting Alec.
As such, it’s now a weapon for use against large enemies who are bad at dodging. Though if it hit, it could probably even kill a dragon easily!
Also, for something that couldn’t be avoided, there’s certainly the brute force option of thrusting it forward at high speed…
The second one is the Bracelet.
It has 4 [enchantments] applied to it: [Body reinforcement], [Toughness], [Connection], and [Strength] (incomplete).
The bracelet is made of silver, and is interwoven with [Body reinforcement]. It’s a magic tool for emergency use.
By converting magic power, it can grant its user a strength reinforcement.
However, it’s not as if it supplies the magic power. It’s no different from the tool user converting his own magic power.
As a test, I let Alec use it, and the activation time was only 4 seconds. He had to stay in bed for a full day to recover as the end result.
When I let him use it in combination with the Mantle, he had 23 minutes, but since his own magic power is low, it feels like the effect was lacking.
With me being able to activate multiple spells at once, I developed this thinking I would be able to get an agility reinforcement while using the strength reinforcement.
The third one is the Mantle.
It has 4 [enchantments] applied to it: [Maintenance], [Connection], [Strength], and [Toughness] (incomplete).
The mantle is interwoven with silver thread, and I developed it to make use of its wide surface area as an external magic power tank.
The outermost one, called [Strength], is an [enchantment] that keeps the mantle’s flexibility while making it difficult to destroy, increasing its defensive power.
Using the cloth folded twice on the lining, it was [enchanted] with [Connection], and [Maintenance], making it so it could permanently contain 3 times my own magic power.
Using it together with the bracelet, I can successfully increase the effective time of [Body reinforcement] to 4 times the regular length. So roughly 30 minutes.
The problems are that it’s heavy, and extremely hot… I didn’t think about its breathability.
And the fourth one is the Bow.
It has 5 [enchantments] applied to it: [Toughness], [Strength], [Acceleration], [Acceleration], and [Sharpness] (incomplete).
It’s the third of my weapons, so the pet name I gave it is “Third Eye”.
I went through a lot of hardships developing this weapon…
On this bow made of black crystal, I used [Strength] to give it flexibility, [Toughness] to harden it, and by [enchanting] it with [Acceleration] twice, it greatly increases the launch speed of the arrows fired from it. This my trump card.
Since crystal isn’t normally flexible, it’s not a material suited for making a bow out of, but I tried brute forcing some pliability into it with [Strength].
With [Toughness] [enchanted] on top of that, it’s an unbelievable weapon that even 10 adults together wouldn’t be able to draw.
The finishing blow to this weapon is that the arrows fired can’t handle the twice applied super acceleration. The moment the arrow is fired, the otherwise rare phenomenon of it breaking in two occurs.
After covering the arrowhead in iron, the next problem that came to light was the arrow, going faster than the speed of sound, burning off its fletching and flying off in some unknown direction.
To deal with this I made the arrows entirely out of iron, and instead of using fletching to stabilize the arrows, I carved spiraling grooves into the arrowhead and the resulting gyroscopic effect kept it stable instead.
Thanks to that, its penetrating power increased, and now even busting through a small castle wall would be… I thought of making it out of iron for a different reason though.
My Master gave me some words of complement saying, “Exactly where do you plan on going to war?”
Basically there’s no way to use it without [Body reinforcement], so it’s specially designed for me.
But that’s not true of the bracelet and mantle.
~*~
Well then, since there are bandits on the highway ahead, we had a conference that night, but there’s some unexpected confusion here.
Ahead of us are some larger mountains, and the highway continues by weaving through the valley between them.
The one responsible for this trip, mister Elric, prioritized safety and proposed taking a detour around the mountains, but surprisingly the guys in Vulture’s Nest are opposed to that idea.
They said, “we won’t have enough food for the detour” as their reasoning.
If we take the detour, it would take about 4 additional days. This could indeed be considered a serious situation.
“Aside from rainy days like this, we wouldn’t have enough water either. If we take the detour, it’ll definitely be dangerous. If it’s just some bandits, then we can deal with them.”
“However, there’s still a slim chance. If it’s food we need, couldn’t we use some of the vegetables we’re transporting as our food?”
“It’s 4 days worth of food for 17 people. And if we put our hands on the goods we’re transporting, then our reputation will be at stake.”
“I’ll keep that to myself. I’ll make sure your assessment doesn’t fall because of this.”
Mister Arim makes the unusual suggestion of forcing our way through.
Since there are a lot of animals in the mountains, it’s pretty well hunted, but I wonder if there’s not much prey in this area?
“With us and the Vultures here, a bunch of bandits are nothin’!”
“But purposely stepping into danger would be…”
“You’re too careful, Bella. I’m sure Oreas feels the same.”
“I suppose I would be against it. I don’t feel that it would be impossible.”
“Right, you too eh?!”
It looks like the opinions of Forest Bear are split in half.
They all make some good points, but…
“By the way, what would you do Master?”
“I would take the detour. With a wife and customers brought along, we can’t do anything reckless. I feel sympathetic towards mister Elric’s point of view.”
“I want to insist that we break through. If we leave the bandits be, then the damage they do will increase.”
“That’s if we assert our actual abilities. We hid them because it would cause trouble, but did it backfire on us?”
“And you can’t forget that we brought Marle along with us, Alec.”
“Ah… I guess you’re right.”
Alec’s impulsive habits haven’t changed.
Eventually the conference ended, and the suggestion of Vulture’s Nest passed. The plan is to take the mountain road and break through it seems.
All of the Vultures were on the side of going through, so the majority won out.
However, can’t the dependable Vultures win over hunger in peaceful times? Or could it be that the food situation in this world is just that harsh?
~*~
Translated by Soyokaze Translations (soyokazeweb . wordpress . com)
It’s after midnight.
When miss Bella’s lecture finished up, I went into the nearby forest.
I told my Master I’m going to pick some flowers. Yes, going to the bathroom.
Magic tools like my mantle need magic supplied to them, so once a day I take some independent action like this.
“So basically if we can get some extra food for ourselves here, then we won’t have any reason to put Marle in danger.”
Activating my bracelet’s power, I reinforce my strength.
I climb a tree, take a look around with far sight, and spot a bear far away. It looks like mister bear is about 300 meters away?
With a normal bow, that’s a distance it wouldn’t reach, but with Third Eye, that’s well within range.
Using my strength based [Body reinforcement], I activate the bow’s ability.
“Eat this, Forest Bear!”
Putting in all of my rage towards the usual mister Jack, I release an arrow filled with an outburst of anger.
With the doubled [Acceleration], the iron arrow is propelled forward with an insane force, far exceeding the speed of a bullet.
Seeing the bear at close range with [Far sight], the arrow thrust through it like it was a spear.
A moment later, a booming impact sound, which you wouldn’t think came from an arrow, rang out.
Receiving a direct hit, the bear had a large 30 centimeter hole open up in his spine, and the explosion-like landing sound came from the ground behind it.
With a normal bow I would be able to reuse the arrows… but as far as this weapon is concerned, I can’t even hope for that.
The bear who received a direct hit stood like that for a moment before collapsing, and then didn’t even twitch.
Taking a moment to observe it, after confirming its death, I go to secure my prey.
300 meters was a little far.
~*~
Translated by Soyokaze Translations (soyokazeweb . wordpress . com)
“Mast… Albine, could you come here for a bit?”
“Hm? What is it?”
“Oh my, the princess calls.”
Why the hell is miss Bella sitting in my spot? (to the immediate left of my Master)
This is making me a little mad you know?
“I found something odd out here.”
“Then I will also…”
“You’re on watch duty miss Bella, so could you stay here?”
“Fufu, I guess so. Have a good late night stroll with your dad. But don’t go too far, okay?”
There’s an obvious misunderstanding here, but correcting her would be a pain, so I’ll leave it alone.
Carrying the bear over next to the caravan is fine, but we’d have a problem if I ended this by saying I’m the one who did this to the bear. I have to consult my Master.
I take only my Master to a place a litter further away and explain the circumstances.
“The truth is, I took down a bear to help improve our food situation, but we would have problems if I brought it back.”
“You did something to bring trouble again…”
“If I didn’t do this, then wouldn’t we be putting Marle in a dangerous situation? She has past trauma with bandits already!”
“That’s certainly true… anyway, where is this bear?”
I show him the bear with a large hole opened up from its back to its flank.
“With a wound like this… I suppose we could fool them by saying it was stabbed on some tree?”
“A tree?”
“Ah, perfect, if it were to fall from that rock onto that tree over there…”
“Then wouldn’t it be best to show them the scene directly?”
And so we impaled mister bear on the tree next to the rock, and on the top of the rock we left claw-like scratch marks to try and create the scene.
After this we’ll call everyone over and collect it.
I’ll give my apologies to mister bear, who we’re putting in this desecrated state. I’m very sorry.
~*~
Translated by Soyokaze Translations (soyokazeweb . wordpress . com)
“Excuse me everyone, could you please wake up for a moment. We’ve discovered a bear’s corpse a little ways away.”
“It looks like it’ll be really difficult to collect, so could you lend us a hand?”
“The hell, just leave the corpses alone…”
As usual we’ll just ignore the bitching and moaning of mister Jack…
“If we can collect it, then our food problems will be solved.”
“We’ll have to knock down a tree, so… mister Arim, could you help us?”
“Mm, uhh huh… well, sure, if you say so.”
It’s probably because he just woke up, but he gave a very inarticulate response.
We led everyone, yawning, over to the bear’s corpse, and everyone got together to dismantle it.
Since we didn’t have time for it, we went a little light on draining the blood, but we’ll just have to deal with it.
“It sure died in a pretty strange place.”
Mister Kale raised a very good point, but this is something my Master expected.
“It probably slipped and fell off that rock. Because of all the rain… besides, it’s great that we could get some meat here.”
“That’s true, now we have enough food that we could take the detour around the mountain.”
Sure enough, mister Elric piggybacks off the point that my Master raised.
“Ahh, yeah I guess so…”
“Mister Arim, are you feeling all right? Did you catch a cold?”
I’m a little worried about mister Arim, since his speech doesn’t seem very energetic. Maybe he has low blood pressure? If it was Jack, then I’d ignore it though.
Alec is the type who could go his whole life without catching a cold, so I’m not worried about him.
“Uhh… yeah, maybe I have.”
“I’ve got some medicine that will lower your temperature, so please take some.”
Balms and fever medicine are indispensable for a traveling medical kit after all.
“Nah, it’s pretty light, so Mac should be able to heal it with his techniques. Sorry to worry you.”
“As long as you’re fine.”
“That aside, we should get some fever reducing herbs too, shouldn’t we…? Hey, Prokel. You’re familiar with the mountains. Could you find some herbs for us?”
“Ha, why do I have to do something like…”
“There should be a forest ahead of here. Go investigate there and come back.”
“Mm, ah, I see. Yeah, I suppose so, I’ll run over there and be back before you know it.”
“Eh, we can split some with you, you know?”
Since we brought plenty of medicine along?
“Nope, if pros like us take the medicine that an amateur young lady prepared, it’ll call our character into question. This is our chance to show you how adaptive us experts can be.”
“Uh-huh, as long as you’re fine…?”
That was strangely unconvincing, but eh, whatever.
We didn’t have time to slowly drain the blood from the bear meat, so we expose it to the rain and let the water rinse it off. It’s gonna drain the flavor from it though.
We got more than 100 kilograms of meat, but we ended up having to pile it into the carriages. It would be impossible for two people to carry this around after all.
There was more of a fuss than I expected, but how does it feel to suddenly have grilled meat for dinner, everyone?
I suppose the girls like miss Bella might be a little worried about their weight? But you won’t see me getting fat!
At any rate, the second night ended like that.
We’re a little lacking in sleep though…?