“Even at minimum, it should be somewhere between 1% to 10%…
even averaged across all stat values, that’s still an increase in the range of 100 to 1000 points.”
This was, frankly, no different from soaring up into the heavens in a single step.
After Asfi left with the letter, Astraea took Natsuka into the back courtyard.
A great many books, scrolls, and notes were piled up there, and the air carried a mingled smell of old paper, wood, and a bit of dust — like a little storeroom whose breath had been pressed down by time.
“This is where the materials those children compiled while exploring the Dungeon back then are kept, along with quite a lot of handwritten notes left behind by my seniors.” Astraea said warmly.
“Before officially starting on adventuring, I think it would be better for Natsu-chan to study here first for a bit.”
Following her gaze, Natsuka casually pulled a book off the shelf and flipped it open.
What was written inside, of all things, was a recipe for making gunpowder, the handwriting somewhat untidy — by the looks of it, like a manuscript left behind by some pallum senior originally from the City of Sinners.
Flipping further on, there were also mage seniors’ compiled notes on spellcasting know-how, as well as all sorts of knowledge about the practical application of magic in combat.
“There are even Dungeon maps?”
“Yes.” Astraea’s gaze flickered slightly, carrying a hint of fond reminiscence.
“These are all the achievements that my seniors left behind, bit by bit.
Natsu-chan, you must study them well, and not let everyone’s hard work go to waste.”
“I understand.”
Natsuka nodded earnestly.
Honestly speaking, without these notes, a halfway-into-it otherworldly newcomer like him would probably have had to fumble blindly through trial and error just to figure out how to channel magic and how to mobilize his mental energy.
After all, in this world, magic wasn’t something that would just smoothly come out simply by finishing the chant.
Setting aside super-short chants, or special types like Bell’s that were nearly instant-cast for now.
Ordinary long-text chants, or even ultra-long-text chants, if your mental energy mobilization went even slightly off during the casting process, could outright blow up on you.
Though with the Falna in place, the probability of mistakes was greatly reduced, this kind of danger had never completely vanished.
That was why parallel chanting was regarded as the standard-issue technique of a high-tier magic swordsman, and was recognized as a top-tier skill.
Natsuka had already made up his mind.
Within these seven days, he wanted to absorb as much of the knowledge he could take in, and at the same time push that whole scheme in his head forward by a huge chunk.
But just as he was about to roll up his sleeves and really go at it, the very first practical problem he’d run into after arriving in another world hit him right in the face one step ahead.
“I can’t just let you eat and stay here for free.”
At lunch, Cecil hugged her arms, put on a stern little face, and dropped an extremely heartless line.
“Normally, with this level of help, as the ‘Captain,’ I would of course look after you, the ‘member.'”
She lifted a finger and waggled it back and forth in front of Natsuka.
“But!”
“Right now we’re competitors!
Behavior that’s obviously aiding the enemy — I’m not going to do that!”
After saying that, the face she had been keeping taut slumped just a little, as if she herself felt a slight twinge of guilt, so she hurriedly added,
“A-at the very least, until a winner has been decided, I will not be helping you!
Whether it’s lodging, or meals, or even custom equipment you need for going out on adventures — every last one of those, you have to figure out how to earn money and solve on your own!”
Her ears were faintly red, but she deliberately raised her voice a notch.
“In short, before you even think about competing with me for captain, you’d better go worry about your own food-and-shelter problem first!”
At the very end, she even put on an air of feigned magnanimity and tilted her chin up.
“Of course…
if you’re willing to admit defeat right now, it’s not like I couldn’t bestow my mercy on you and help you out.”
Because, to put it plainly, this was all quite reasonable.
And it was precisely where Cecil’s biggest advantage lay at the moment.
If anything, the fact that this girl had even seriously considered covering all his expenses once the two of them had settled which one came out on top actually surprised Natsuka a little.
So even I have become a man whom a woman would want to keep, huh?
But very quickly, he no longer had the mind to dwell on such things.
Because the real problem was just one.
Right now, he genuinely didn’t have any money left.
Out of the fifty thousand Valis he had taken from Asfi’s side, he had already spent ten thousand earlier on probing for information.
The remaining forty thousand Valis looked like a lot, but if all he wanted was to scrape together a set of beginner adventurer’s gear, that would just barely cover the edge.
And this place wasn’t Orario.
This was the Sword Capital.
In a place like this, where blacksmiths were running about everywhere, pick out any one of them at random, and the weapons they forged wouldn’t be all that bad.
Naturally, there was no such thing as cheap entry-level gear specifically prepared for beginners.
In the Sword Capital, the blacksmiths competed with each other absurdly fiercely — for technique, for reputation, for the quality of their works, each one more crazed than the last.
Trash had no market at all.
Even the defective pieces churned out by rookie blacksmiths would often just be thrown straight back into the forge and recast.
So that kind of twenty-thousand-Valis-a-set, value-for-money rookie armor — here, you may as well just give up on the very thought.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan ;)🔥👻
🔥 New history: Danmachi: Summoning Ruri Gokou, And other Chuunibyou Brats
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