I stared at the part of me that was a water gun.

This felt so so much weirder than the clothes. At least the clothes were vaguely me-shaped but this…

“Reject humanity. Become gun,” I automatically blurted out in a dazed whisper.

KaiEbikoOfficial: wait what?!

Unfortunately, chat immediately noticed my little slip up and began badgering me about what the heck I meant.

“Uh, err… Never mind.”

I tried to deflect, but…

KaiEbikoOfficial: no hold on

KaiEbikoOfficial: is soulbinding doing something to you?!

KaiEbikoOfficial: are you actually gun and clothes now?!

I cringed and let out a pained sound.

Dammit. Guess the cat’s out of the bag now.

“Okay, fine! Yes. Soulbind item… is not just a figure of speech, alright? These clothes? And this gun now?” I gestured at them one after the other. “They are me now. Part of me. Like another hand or something. Except like… I don’t feel through them or anything. You know, no nerves or touch receptors or whatever. But I can feel that they are part of me. It’s weird but… yeah. It’s fine.”

KaiEbikoOfficial: ????

KaiEbikoOfficial: nana how is that fine?!

I grunted.

“It’s fine! It doesn’t really do anything. I got used to being clothes, I’ll get used to being gun.” I waved my hand.

Obviously, Ebiko and some of the people in chat weren’t happy with that and we argued for a bit. There were also people who took my side, others who just wanted to know what it was like, and then those who apparently made memes with my face photoshopped on a gun.

Hilarious.

In the end, Ebi left chat a bit miffed that I hadn’t told her and I felt sour about the whole thing as well. Like yeah, it was weird and all, but it was far from the weirdest thing in this world, right?

Ugh, whatever…

Since I’d bought the upgrade, I also decided to test out Soul Pocket. Obviously, I wouldn’t do that with the clothes, but I could easily do it with the gun.

I activated the mental switch and watched as the space the gun occupied warped and swallowed my gun self in the blink of an eye, leaving me staring at my now empty hands.

I could still feel that gun part of me. It was just… somewhere else. A place I couldn’t physically reach, but I knew it was there dammit. Like I’d had my mouth open and my tongue out all this time, but now I pulled my tongue back and closed my mouth… If the tongue was the gun and my mouth a passage to the sixth dimension that I couldn’t see.

Okay, the metaphors were getting a bit weird but it was just hard to describe.

With that, I mostly just sulked relaxed all day and waited for my Ether to restore a bit more.

I also finally remembered to check the bracelet’s remaining juice – thanks to some badgering from chat – and found that… it was completely out. Several people immediately reprimanded me for not merging it with my clothes before it ran out for a potential permanent skill, but I just grunted at them, saying that if it didn’t turn the skill permanent, then I would just be adding junk to my clothes.

Anyway, since there was no more point in keeping them fused, I unfused the popsicle from the bracelet again, leaving me with the original bracelet and… a plastic wrapping from the Time-freezing popsicle.

Hmm, maybe I could use the bracelet for other fusions now. Chat had pointed it out quite a bit, but everytime I used a key item in a fusion, if it didn’t have one before, it would gain an innate skill… Or maybe I could fuse it into my gun self?

I frowned.

Or maybe I could fuse my gun self into the bracelet to have some kind of utility wristband that could shoot water and plasma bullets like some kind of spy.

Would that even work though…? Would the soulbound property transfer over to the bracelet if it did…? I kinda wanted to try, but I also knew that I couldn’t unfuse it afterwards if I didn’t like the result.

In the evening, when I recovered enough Ether to be fairly sure that I wouldn’t drop dead from using some, I decided to do a little testing session. First, I took out the presumed flamethrower the boss had dropped and went out to the very edge of the dungeon without entering it.

“Okay, chat… Still don’t have Appraisal but let’s see what I can do with this…”

I frowned and tried to feel around the thing with my Ether. Just like the water gun, there was some kind of Ether-powered mechanism tied to the trigger. And when I put my finger on it, it felt like there was a split in the ‘path’ my Ether could take. Again, similar to the ink gun, so I could only assume that this one also had two modes of discharge.

“Alright. Got it! Watch this, chat!”

I pulled the trigger and pushed the Ether in one of the split paths, the one that felt warmer and more immaterial.

Just as I’d expected, a burst of flames came rushing straight out of the muzzle similarly to my Fire Breath.

It was… Well, now that I thought about it, that was just it. Fire Breath but less convenient because I needed to use a gun for it. The main advantage was that I didn’t need to use a skill slot for it. But I already had a pan for that, didn’t I?

Luckily, that wasn’t everything there was to this thing…

“It has a second setting! This one should be more exciting!”

I pushed my Ether into it, this time into the path that felt more rigid and sharp. And the moment I pulled the trigger, the gun spat out a massive volley of crystal shards. They swished through the air like an angry cloud of needles, flew right across the dungeon’s boundary, and then clinked one by one against the crystal floor of the dungeon.

“Oh! It’s what the dragon used on me!” I paused and couldn’t help but shudder. I still couldn’t believe that I hadn’t turned into a pin cushion after that. “...Anyway! It’s a smaller version of that. It’s almost like a shotgun. Nice!”

This ought to be pretty useful against unarmored monsters. A big plus was that it didn’t seem to use nearly as much Ether as the water gun and nowhere near as much as the plasma setting. One shot felt like about a third of the water gun’s regular water shot.

That meant that while it didn’t have as much of a punch as the water gun, it was cheap enough for me to somewhat spam and hopefully strong enough to still be useful.

I was definitely going to add this to my gun self… oh, and then I needed to name the gun something. Hmm, what should I name it…?

Well, that was for later. I still wanted to Appraise this thing just to make sure it didn’t have any hidden features. After the spat with Ebi… I wanted to be mindful about the things I was putting into my soul.

I spent the rest of the day talking to chat about strategies and tricks I could employ in the dungeon, so that hopefully I wouldn’t nearly die again.

The next morning, I had my breakfast, made chat watch another ad – ugh, the switch between not being the gun and being the gun still felt uncomfortable – and then had my session with Jane again where I mostly talked about the soulbind business.

She didn’t really understand it, but I agreed with her that I should be more careful about adding more things to myself. After all, I might get used to it after a little while, but we didn’t know if it could have some kind of long-term side effects.

And… yeah. I hadn’t thought about that, somehow. Would being part gun corrupt my soul or something? I really hoped not. Crap, hadn’t I said to myself that I would stop being reckless? That applied outside of combat too!

Stolen novel; please report.

Well, nothing I could do about it now.

After that, I started the stream for the day.

“Goooood mooorning, my precious little Aquamarines!” I cheered as usual. “It’s me! Aoto Nana, your favorite half-girl, half-gun!”

…Okay, maybe I shouldn’t joke about that so brazenly, but eh.

“Yes, yes, and half-clothes as well. That makes me one and a half of a person! Amazing.” I giggled. “Anyway! For those who missed it, we started a new dungeon yesterday and uh… it went okay. Better than the city dungeon for sure, but I could have done without almost dying to sapphirication… Well! Lesson learned. Focus on the boss and make sure to dodge when it attacks. Wow, what revolutionary strategies! Yeah, ignoring that little blunder, we got some cool stuff from beating it. I kinda had to swap Appraisal out to survive, but I still wanna appraise the loot I got, so we’re going to be hanging about for a bit until the cooldown is up.”

So I spent the rest of the morning chatting. Unfortunately, Ebiko wasn’t in the chat at this time… I really wanted to apologize to her for not telling her about the soulbound thing sooner. Yeah, I hadn’t thought it was a big deal, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t. And of course, she would also be quite worried if I told her it messed with my soul.

I may act like a buffoon on stream, but I was mature enough to admit that.

Well, I would just have to wait till she came by the stream again.

Once the cooldown was finally up, I swapped Rend for Appraisal and got to appraising the loot from the dragon. First was the flamethrower.

Crystal Dragon Flamethrower

A flamethrower made to emulate a certain Crystal Dragon’s breath.

This object is a Key item.

My eyes instantly narrowed.

“Wait, what? This thing is a key item? How?” I tilted my head, thinking back on the three key items from the water park dungeon and wondering how this thing could be used as one of these. “Do I need to use the crystal shot on something? Hmm, it says certain Crystal Dragon…”

Irid123: we’re uncovering history here!

Irid123: maybe you need to reenact what happened there

Irid123: to go to the next floor

I hummed.

“You know, that’s a good point, Irid. But uh… I don’t know about reenacting what happened there…” I glanced over to the giant crystal wasteland. “I’m not that powerful. Maybe a smaller version though…”

After some theorizing with chat, it had become obvious that some kind of epic clash of two absurdly powerful beings had probably taken place here and it had ended up spawning a dungeon. We weren’t certain on the exact mechanics of that, but that was our best guess.

And with that in mind, the dragon I’d fought had likely been one of the combatants in question. Going by that logic, the next boss was likely going to be the other combatant. The one responsible for the black flames that the dragon had sapphired.

Again, that was just chat and me theorizing, but it would make sense.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to see.” I shrugged. “Next up…”

I pulled the helmet out of my backpack and appraised it.

Sapphire Gorgon full helm

A full helm made out of a Sapphire Gorgon’s sapphire. Provides moderate increase to general defense and resistance to petrification.

I huffed.

“So in other words, this would have been super useful to have yesterday. Typical.” I shook my head. “Well, whatever. It sounds like the perfect thing to add to my clothes. More defense and petrification resistance… Yeah, I should probably add it before going to the dungeon. Ugh, but that’s gonna cost a lot of Ether, isn’t it? Hmm…”

I wanted to go and continue the dungeon today, but depending on how much Ether fusing this into my clothes cost, it might not be the best of ideas.

“Anyway, how about this thing?”

A crystal flask of Refined Life Ooze

A crystal flask enhanced to hold five times as much liquid than it would appear. It is filled with Refined Life Ooze - A clump of highly concentrated Ether mixed with a small amount of water and Intra.

My eyes brightened.

“Yes! It’s another Ether potion! And this one even has weird space-time properties! Perfect! That means I can get to fusing and then drink this thing afterwards to recover!”

I got to work immediately.

The helmet turned into a familiar blob of orange smoke and I pushed it against my chest into the part of me that was clothes. I was quite literally shoving more power into my soul, so I had to make it dramatic for myself.

It took a bit of effort and a lot of Ether, but eventually, I managed to complete the Fusion.

The part of me that was clothes glowered for a brief moment before settling again. I looked over myself but saw no significant changes, so instead I tried to feel what had changed and…

“Oh. The hood part gained a new feature, I think.”

I hadn’t really used the hood before much since I didn’t have a reason, but let’s see now…

I grabbed the back of my collar and tugged it up. It expanded into a hood and gently covered my scalp. Then I frowned, feeling like the hood gained some kind of new feature, but I couldn’t quite see it like this.

John to the rescue. I summoned him and had him look at me, and sure enough, the hood now had horns on top, just like the helmet had. Which should have felt pretty awkward, what with the hood itself being soft and light while the horns were heavy and rigid.

It didn’t though. It all felt completely natural and not like the horns were weighing the whole thing down at all.

…Also, I now had horns. It was all still part of me, after all.

“Neat,” I said with a grin. “That’s still not everything though…”

I had the feeling like I could pull the hood even more over my head somehow, although I didn’t need to use my hands for it. I could do it with a thought.

When I did, the inside of the hood suddenly grew bluish metal plates that gently covered my face in a similar way to the helmet. I was left staring at a frankly ridiculous sight – though John’s PoW – of a girl with a horned hoodie, wearing a metal mask under it.

“...Chat, I look like a cartoon supervillain.”

Most people in chat seemed to think so as well. Some even began to come up with supervillain names.

Jeofffff: Lady Sapphire

jifLover67: phoenix knight

UglyRestart: bluebird

I spread out my legs and arms a little and turned my palms up in a stereotypical evil laugh pose. “You’re too late to stop this Lady Sapphire, Heroman! You may have defeated me last time, but this time, I’m the one holding all the cards! You can’t stop me from turning the entire world blue! Mwahahahaha!”

…

“...Anyway,” I said while dropping the exaggerated pose and pulling the helmet and hood part off again. “That Fusion took quite a bit out of me. I guess it’s the perfect time to use this!”

I pulled out the Crystal Flask, uncorked it, sniffed it a little with narrowed eyes, and upon confirming that the smell was exactly as I remembered the other refined ooze, I carefully tipped it toward my lips, trying to get just a drop of it out.

Surprisingly, this liquid wasn’t as viscous and a bunch of it immediately rushed out and made me jolt at the sudden surge of power.

Luckily, it didn’t leave me spasming on the floor like the last time I’d tried to drink this stuff, but I could still feel myself overflowing with Ether just a little.

“Okaaaaay! I gotta… I gotta do this then!”

I used Fusion on the flamethrower, pulled my gun self out of the pocket dimension, and immediately shoved the flamethrower into it. Since I was fusing a third item into the mix, it took a bit of extra Ether, leaving me with no excess from the potion now.

I let out a sigh of relief and looked at the flask in my hand and then to my new gun.

The gun was starting to look very strange. In addition to the three metal rods, the muzzle had now also transformed into a dragon head’s shape just like the flamethrower and the whole thing was longer than before.

“Well, that happened. I guess the flask must be doing some space-time nonsense to counteract the viscosity…? Whatever. I have a new gun and I guess I should name it too.”

Just to quickly check, I used Appraisal on my gun self and found out exactly what I had been expecting. Generic Fused item name and description, along with the Key item spiel tacked at the end of it.

…Which felt kinda weird, to be honest. Was I a key item now? Since the gun was me?

Food for thought. Later, though.

Chat immediately began coming up with cool – and very uncool – names for my gun and after a bit of deliberation and consultation with the others, I settled on a name.

What would you like to name your item?

Note: This cannot be undone. Once named, an item cannot then be unfused, but gains the ability to absorb Ether, Intra, or Tempor, to empower itself.

Y/N

I nodded to myself and then narrowed my eyes at the last sentence.

“Oh, chat. My clothes can absorb one of the three manas. I completely forgot about that part. Why didn’t anyone remind me?”

There actually was one person who had reminded me, but it had been when I’d been in the middle of the crystal dungeon, so I’d filed it away for later… and then forgotten about it again.

“Okay… I guess the obvious answer is Ether, right? Since it’s supposed to be armor, it should tank physical hits, right? But then, what would the gun be…? Hmm? Well, the wording implies that I can only pick one. No idea if it can be all three, but I could try… Anyway! Gun name. Let’s do this.”

The gun glowed and shifted for a moment and when it stopped, I was left with a gun shaped kind of like the plasma cannon, but with the crystal color and texture of the flamethrower, a dragon head decoration in the middle with dragon wings folded on top of it – oh, that was the water gun’s barrel – with a muzzle coming out of its mouth. The whole thing was surprisingly small, just like the original water gun, and easily fit into my hand.

I grinned.

“Nice! Let’s see what it can do!”

Dragon Blaster

A gun made by Aoto Nana through fusion, created out of various treasures she discovered on her adventures.

Provides several modes of discharge including: High-speed water bullet; high-speed ink bullet; high-speed bullet of any liquid fed into its barrel; plasma orb; liquid plasma; fire breath; crystal breath.

Soulbound.

[INNATE] skill: Combination Breath - Use a combination of any number of discharge modes and your own breath skills at once through this item. Ether cost scales appropriately.

This object is a Key item.

My eyes widened.

“A combination? Of everything?!”

That sounded nuts… Well, actually. Not that much. The water would probably interfere with the fire, and plasma might destroy the crystal shards…

Yeah, the more I thought about it, the less useful it seemed. But hey, if I fused more stuff into this, it could become incredibly useful. Not to mention, it could apparently also use my own breath attacks…? Well, I only had one right now, and other than the overpriced Phoenix Breath, I didn’t see how I could get more.

“Actually, I don’t think that part is very useful right now. But having all of this in one place is nice! Especially since I can do this!” I stored the gun part of me in the Soul Pocket, spun around, held my hand toward the nearest tree, took the gun out, and immediately fired a crystal barrage at it.

I grinned.

“Now, I’ll never be without a weapon on hand.”

Finally, because of the constant nagging from chat, I used Appraisal on my clothes self and found out that nothing much had changed about the description besides there now being a section that said I was more resistant to petrification.

Well, that was the whole point of fusing it, so I was fine with it.

The last thing I wanted to do before braving the dungeon again, was figure out how to ‘charge’ my soulbound items with one of the three manas and decide which should go into which if I couldn’t do all three.