“So, Yorha, can I call you that?” I asked her, getting up off the couch, where I’d moved after about an hour of talking, once it became completely clear there were no hostile intentions coming from 2B’s direction.
And it felt somehow uncomfortable calling a beautiful girl I’d been talking to for hours “2B.” There was something inherently wrong-feeling about it.
Whereas her model designation, while exotic, still read as a perfectly serviceable feminine name.
“That is the designation of my model, and thus it is permissible to address me by it,” — yeah, “permissible,” I’m going to have to diversify someone’s vocabulary a bit, since moments like that had already popped up more than once in her speech over these four hours.
They stand out way too much…
or should I just chalk it up to her “foreign origins” if anyone else ever hears her talk like that?
“Perfect, then, Yorha it is.
At least in public.
‘2B’ would sound way too out of place a name in this world.
Now, I need your help,” I said, heading toward the basement…
god, how bad does that sound out of context.
Yeah, once again, Gennadiy’s memory was throwing up some genuinely creepy associations to that, along the lines of “creepy old man lures a girl to his place with a cocktail and hypnotizes her into watching Russia-1 TV programming.” “Are you being threatened?
Do you require protection from something, or the elimination of someone?” 2B shot up from her seat instantly.
“No, I need boxes moved from the basement up to the attic, to clear space there for my training.
Given that this training will involve internal energy, it needs to stay my trump card for as long as possible, meaning I should practice it somewhere that can’t be seen from the street, and the basement is the only place like that,” — congratulations, Lucian, you’re now officially a lazy ass who, instead of doing honest labor, chose to use a being summoned from another world, created to protect humanity, to help you haul boxes from the basement to the attic.
I’m definitely experiencing a strange feeling right now, yeah.
Just like that moment in our conversation when it turned out 2B can’t cook.
At least she can clean.
Otherwise I’d genuinely wear myself out cleaning this big two-story house.
Hm, I’ve been swearing more often lately, need to watch my language, it’s not exactly a great habit.
My parents raised me differently, and I’ll at least try to hold onto that much…
in memory of them.
And here’s the upside of an android — my answer didn’t send her into a stupor, she simply accepted my terms and went to help.
A human in her position, under similar circumstances, might well have “blue-screened.” And she helped in earnest, grabbing two boxes at once (one per arm) and calmly hauling them along.
She could have carried even more, as she admitted after I asked, but then the sheer size wouldn’t let her move properly through the narrow doorways, and she might accidentally break whatever was inside the boxes.
What was especially satisfying was the speed!
While I hauled one box, she managed three(!) round trips, the weight of the boxes not affecting her speed in the slightest.
Ugh…
I really need to do something about my own strength, because an average human level is genuinely pathetic — this kind of everyday, hands-on comparison makes that painfully clear.
And sure, I’m taking steps in the right direction, but even maxing out my body (which would take several years of “investment” at minimum) would still leave me at human level.
Well…
the hacker card is next in line, after which I comb through every database out there looking for various augmentation methods, and this world should have plenty of those lying around.
And the job that, by my own internal sense of time (which I’ve come to trust quite a bit lately), would’ve taken me about twelve hours, the two of us finished together in two hours (or more precisely, one hour and fifty-seven minutes…
I’m basically a human stopwatch now, wow, what an amazing superpower).
After that, 2B helped me mount the punching bag I’d bought in advance down in the basement…
shadowboxing is fine and all, but I need actual strike practice too, with something solid to feel myself hitting.
After that I threw myself fully into training, since today was a holiday off and I had nothing else planned, aside from handing 2B some history books I had lying around.
There’s a decent chance our worlds’ histories diverge somewhere, so let her read up, and it’ll keep her occupied too, in case she gets bored (if that’s even possible for an android?).
Though in the end she decided to read in the same room where I was training, so as not to let me out of her sight.
Ugh…
I have a feeling this is going to be a problem going forward.
Excessive coddling really isn’t what a teenager my age wants, however cute it looks for now.
On top of that, I got so deep into training that at some point I completely forgot anyone else was even in the room with me.
I’d even say I fully slipped into a trance, getting lost in the sensation of every muscle in my body, how they worked, and the strange power inside me that seemed to saturate every single cell.
That’s right, there were no reserves as such, no meridians, no chakra, no wellsprings, none of that nonsense.
My whole body itself was simply the energy generator.
I even clearly grasped that the higher my endurance, the more…
crudely put, life force I have, the bigger my reserve gets, letting me fight and use this power for longer…
and that reserve can even be developed, precisely by pushing past my body’s limits, breaking through them to grow beyond myself and become stronger across the board.
After which, sounds of “Jo-Lan Chuubasu (Super Strike), Jo-Lan Rusiken (Fist of the Jo-Lan Dragon Spirit), Uzumaki Jo-Lan Kick (Whirlpool), Jo-Lan Toraken, Super Jo-Lan” started echoing out of my basement — yeah, I’d gotten down to drilling my techniques.
As for shouting the names out loud, that was a habit drilled into Axel, and it turned out impossible to unlearn even before I’d finished assimilating him — the technique simply refused to work without its name being announced, at least at my low assimilation percentage.
We’ll see how that develops later.
I only stopped when…
honestly, when I overexerted myself, feeling how, after yet another Jo-Lan Chuubasu — which eerily resembled a Hadouken from Street Fighter, except limited to close range, but with excellent shattering power — hmm, right, so, using it one more time, I watched the bottom half of my punching bag, now torn clean in two, hit the floor, and I myself started slowly but surely toppling over right after it.
But I never made it to the floor — I got caught, first by the torso, then, in one quick motion, scooped up fully into someone’s arms…
princess-carry style.
I wanted to sink into the ground or at least make a run for it, but I couldn’t move at all — barely able to turn my head, clench and unclench my fingers, roll my eyes, and, as I found out a bit later, talk.
“Master, you need to treat your own body more carefully and control your energy expenditure,” Yorha scolded me, still in that voice utterly devoid of intonation, as she carried me upstairs and set me down on the couch in the small sitting room.
“Yeah…
got carried away.
Thanks,” I admit, noting for myself the percentage that had risen on the first page of my Gacha.
A whole three percent gained…
scratch that, the number just changed again, four percent now.
And I think I can guess why I just got credited another point — that infamous “pushing past your limits” thing, that must have been exactly what happened.
During training I switched over completely to Axel’s reflexes, simply not having any of my own to fall back on, and as I mentioned back when I first got his card, he always tries to push past those exact “natural limits of the body” during every single training session.
“Words of gratitude are unnecessary, I was merely performing my duty.
I also concluded some time ago that a break was in order, and stepped out to order you a pizza, since there was no prepared food in the refrigerator and my model does not possess cooking skills.
After successfully placing the order, I came to find you, intending to ask you to pause and let your body rest and replenish its reserves; however, my calculations proved incorrect — you exhausted yourself sooner than you should have,” — if she weren’t devoid of emotion, I’d swear I detected a note of judgment in part of that speech!
“Thanks again, you really are a caring person,” — yeah, I remembered that in one of the “routes” she agreed to help out an outright “shady” android, along with a bunch of other episodes showing she’s more than capable of genuine care, but actually being on the receiving end, in the position of one of those “coddled NPCs,” was a strange feeling.
Though, honestly, I’d already been feeling like just a plain NPC in this world for a while now, yeah.
“If that is what you believe,” — apparently 2B decided it wasn’t rational to argue with me on this.
And also…
that thing hadn’t just been a glitch after her summoning after all.
Name: YoRHa No.2 Type B Relationship: 2/10 Rarity: 3 Just like I focus to summon the Gacha, I can pull up this display too.
What can I say — it doesn’t really feel like a proper “system,” and while we were hauling boxes I glanced out the windows a couple of times to check — I can’t scan ordinary people this way at all.
So this is most likely only available with summons, and is part of the Gacha’s overall function.
By the way, the relationship stat with her started at not zero but one.
So, is zero even possible?
Since 2B’s starting one point could just be from her overall attitude toward humanity as a whole.
Another baffling unit of measurement is Rarity.
Is three a lot?
How many total ranks are there?
Can it even be raised?
What parameters and powers even factor into calculating this Rarity?
Questions — I’ve got plenty of them, and not a single answer.
Sigh.
All right, the next round of summons should at least close some of these gaps.
But…
at the very least, I feel a bit better knowing that what I’m summoning is…
um, undead?
Dead characters, granted a shot at living again through the Gacha?
Or is 2B’s case a one-off?
Ugh, well, coming back to that same thought — future summons will give me the answer to this.
“As for the miscalculation regarding my fatigue buildup, that’s not your fault.
It’s just that the energy techniques you observed cost energy to produce — surprise, surprise — and that energy comes straight out of my endurance.
And if I overdraw too much, I risk, well, collapsing entirely, like just now,” I admitted, at the same time trying to reassure the girl whose “calculations were off.” If she even needed reassurance in the first place.
“Information noted.
Going forward, I recommend you train exclusively under my supervision and avoid situations like this in the future,” came the instant reply.
Somehow, even without emotions, there’s something oddly endearing about her reactions and even her way of speaking and carrying herself.
“That last part’s probably not going to happen.
The only way to increase the amount of this energy in me is by pushing myself to exhaustion.
That’s just how it works,” I replied breezily.
“I recommend you find an alternative method of development,” came the dispassionate reply.
And not a second’s hesitation, either!
“If only it were that easy…” So, in the middle of this light little argument, the ordered pizza finally arrived.
Where it turned out that 2B is entirely capable of consuming human food, though there’s not much point to it, since “breaking down this organic matter provides me neither an influx of strength nor any particular energy expenditure to process it.” Well then.