Chapter 3

Incorrigible

Dina, the receptionist and silver-rank adventurer that first took my admission to the guild, just happens to be the one at the desk today. Just like then, her deep tan hasn't diminished in the slightest, contrasting her long, pale hair.

"Yellow! My favorite killer princess!" she belts out when Ayre and I head her way, animatedly waving us over. "I saw you and some elf were on the docket for exams today!" She glances to Ayre. "This her?"

I recall gender didn't actually come up when I filed my own application to join the guild ...

Ayre says nothing about it, however, so neither do I, and I just motion to him. "This is Ayre. We've been teamed up for a while. Both the monster nest and the dungeon, we did them together."

"Oh, so that's why you're both on the schedule," she concludes with a nod. "Just the two of you did all that? No wonder the old bear wants you retested."

Dina shuffles some papers around before coming up with the ones she's looking for. "Alright, just some things we have to take care of first. Yellow, we'll cover you first, since you're such a problem child."

She ignores my huff, and is already grinning for her next jab. "First question! Have you found your rabbit farmer boyfriend yet?"

Ayre's face goes beet red. "B-boyfriend?!"

But that just triggers her to rotate her head toward the elf, a smirk still on her lips. "Oh, you don't have one yet, either, huh? Kind of a surprise with thighs like those."

Poor Ayre clamps his legs together reflexively as if to hide them, and I step between the elf and the receptionist to break up the line of sight. "Ignore her, Ayre. She suffers from chronic nosiness."

Dina's smirk flashes back to a full grin. "And compulsive teasing! It's incurable, I'm afraid!"

"And incorrigible," I retort flatly.

She actually marks something off on the sheet, though I can't imagine what. "So that's a no on the farmer! Pity, I'm a sucker for a good romance! Okay, next question!" She runs her finger down the page a bit. "Is your Intellect still higher than your Agility?"

I grin at the first real question. "Yup! I found out it helps with the strength of my magic bullets!"

"Hah! Of course it does!" She glances to Ayre again. "What a royal monster, right, Blue?"

"Blue," a still flustered Ayre repeats, pointing at himself, "th-that's supposed to be me?"

But Dina just turns back to me again. "You've gotta train your handmaiden better, Princess! Her defenses are too low!"

"Believe me," I reply, already resistant to her, myself, "Ayre is plenty capable. We just didn't expect to be under siege just reporting for an exam."

"Yeah, yeah." Dina waves it off. "Gotta always be ready, or something. Next! We got side-tracked and I missed something in your application last time. I forgot to ask you about any skills you may have that would be of use to a recruiting party!"

"Would you like a list?" I chipperly reply.

But Dina is ready for me. "I figured with a troublemaker like you, it'd be something crazy like that!" And she slides a blank sheet toward me with a charcoal pencil. "So, yes, I would like a list!"

I mutter a few complaints under my breath at that, but pull up my status to make sure I don't miss any. It's invisible to anyone I don't deliberately show it to, so I don't need to worry about peeking even from Dina, and since one of those skills is Local Language, my writing translates flawlessly.

Dina is ... patient. At first. As the list grows longer, she starts tapping her foot, then her fingers. She finally breaks when I go to flip the page over.

"That's enough, Miss One-Twenty," she says as she snatches the list away. "Before I think you're just filling it out for length." She gives it a once-over. "Seriously, Sewer Management? Slime Behavior? I asked you for skills that could be helpful to a party!"

"Those would be very useful if a big city had a runaway overpopulation problem," I point out. Larger cities use slimes to keep their waterways and sewers clear, so having that knowledge without having to escort a civilian professional would be valuable, indeed.

"Okay, fair point," Dina concedes as she continues to scan the list. "But you know what they value a lot more?" And she begins to read a few of them off. "First aid, everyone likes knowing they aren't going to bleed out before getting to a real healer. And wilderness survival, it's surprisingly uncommon, I blame modern conveniences."

She grabs the paper in both hands and leans in close to it, though. "Ooh, you can cook? Like, not just a few recipes, you actually have the skill?!"

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"I like making a good meal," I retort with arms crossed. "Everyone feels better with real food in their bellies. And it's great for morale when you can do more with the ingredients than just throwing them in a pot of hot water!"

The tanned girl leans over the counter. "How's your dessert game?"

I tick off on my fingers. "Cakes, crepes, cookies, custards, candies ..."

"In that case, if you're not interested in a rabbit farmer, how about hitching a receptionist?"

"Down, girl," I scold, thumbing over my shoulder to the still-red and quite frankly terrified-looking elf that'll be up next. "You're going to give Ayre a heart attack before you even get done with me."

Dina adopts a sulking expression as she juts her bottom lip out. "You're too hard to ruffle, Yellow. Did you level up your Tease Resistance since I last saw you, too?"

I scoff, crossing my arms again. "Nah, I just knew what to expect." I unfold one arm to shake a finger at her. "Hate to break it to you, Dina, but you're a trick that only works once."

She recoils from me as if I'd shot her. "So cruel!" she decries, throwing an arm across herself as if in defense. "Too cruel! Our golden princess has become a tyrant!"

"Uh-huh." I endure the display with a slightly less dramatic yawn. "Try it with some actual tears, and maybe I'll buy it."

The receptionist sulks some more. "Pooey. Fine. You got any active skills that you wanna add, or is it just knowledge and lifestyle support?"

I consider that question for a bit. My spells and the like are a much shorter list than my general knowledge skills, though they also tend to be pricier. Not just in points, either, often burning through mana, a resource few martials like me have much of.

"Well, I've got Heal and Diagnose," I provide, "but they aren't as good as from a priest. I've got some general utility spells, too, stuff like Spark and Cleanse, but those won't matter as much." I snap my fingers. "Oh! I keep forgetting since I haven't had reason to use them, but I've got healing bullets!"

Dina looks confused at that. "Healing ... bullets?"

"Yeah! I mean, like I said, I haven't seen them in action yet, but in concept, I shoot you, and the pain goes away!"

She pales a bit. "Yellow, do me a favor and don't phrase it that way. It makes it sound like you're putting somebody down." Then she starts scribbling on the form again. "I'm just going to put limited recovery magic and leave it at that."

"Got some elemental ability, too," I add in. I'm particularly fond of the explosive-incendiary rounds that were one of my first purchases, which basically turn my pistol into a miniature rocket launcher. That's hardly the only trick literally in my belt, though, as I picked up holy rounds for undead, and my Paralysis rounds are technically electric.

Of course, the rounds I use more than anything are simple overpressured jacketed rounds. All of my bullets are purchased directly from the System, and are guaranteed to work with my M1911 clone, no matter what they do.

I've picked up some passive skills that directly enhance its performance, too, though it's seen a lot less investment than I have. I should see about fixing that, especially the next time Ayre complains about my level jumping. As it stands, I've increased its punch and raised its doublestack magazine from sixteen rounds to twenty.

"Noted," Dina replies with another scribble, then scratches the side of her head with the back end of the quill she's using. "Wow, Yellow, you're really doing a lot. Are you sure you're not spreading yourself too thin?"

She sounds actually concerned, but I just shrug. "A lot of it came up just because we ran into something where it was needed, or was from when I was still on my own. Besides, a bunch of it is consumables, rather than something I'm using directly."

"The bullets you keep mentioning," she agrees, "like what you hit Kaido with."

"Right," I confirm with a nod. "Most of my actual combat stuff is still all centered around making me shoot better." Like the Spiral Shot spell I learned from Ayre, or the Empower spell, which multiplies most of my stats while burning my mana for as long as it's active.

"That's not so bad, then," Dina muses. "It just sounds like you're scattered all over the place. How would you describe your position on a team in your own words, then?"

Again, I consider my choice of words, though it's a question I've had to answer several times since coming to this world, so it doesn't take me long. "I'd say I'm a mid-range, high-speed striker with good coverage."

Dina chews on the end of the quill for a moment before nodding and resuming writing. "Yeah, I'd say that follows what I've seen. Of course, that's one of those questions that were supposed to be asked before, so I'd normally have to take you at your word."

She pauses in her writing, and clearly thinks for a moment before starting again. "Oh, and a word of advice, Princess, we definitely want to highlight your ability to take down targets alive. That'll be extra valuable."

"Um," Ayre ventures, finally working up the nerve to interrupt, "what happened last time that all of this was missed?"

The receptionist grins. "Have you seen her status? I completely lost focus when I saw a level three with numbers that high! I knew the normal person for testing newbies like that couldn't handle her, and sure enough," she mimes me shooting my gun, "kapow, he hit the dirt before he could finish a step!"

"The guildmaster ruled I was to be bronze then and there," I provide. "That was a week before we met."

But that makes Ayre wrinkle brows. "Hold on, you were level five when we met."

That just drives Dina to whistle. "Two levels in a week? That's not bad at all, Princess. And what are you now?"

"Ten," I don't hesitate to provide, "and my Agility's one-fifty."

"One-fifty?" she repeats immediately. "I thought you said your Intellect was still higher?"

"It is," I confirm. "I bumped it up to two hundred. My Strength and Toughness are both one hundred." That's not counting Empower, of course, which basically doubles my level by increasing everything but my Intellect by 75%, if only for a couple minutes.

The receptionist gives a depressed sigh. "Those are not level ten statistics, Yellow. And even with a dungeon under your belt, your growth rate is insane!"

I pull the repeating crossbow from over my shoulder. "Yeah, I figured. That's why I'm going to be using Noodle Spitter, here, instead of my gun. I figure it's safer. Is there any problem with that?"

She stares at the weapon, bewildered at the sight. "... No, you're free to use whatever gear you want, more or less. But ... what is that? It looks like a crossbow, but I've never seen an assembly like that."

"That's because I built it," I explain as I caress the stock of the weapon. "It's still experimental, but instead of having to be pumped every time, it'll fire with every pull of the trigger, and with way more power than the dinky things you're thinking of."

I still remember the one I was given back in the capital, where I was expected to fight level 25 wood golems with it. It was a setup intended to embarrass me all along, but it inspired me to create this beauty just to spite them.

Dina doesn't look impressed, though. "Yeah, Yellow, that sounds ... like a bit of a stretch, but you use it if you want." Instead, she turns her head from me like she thinks I've finally lost my mind.

"Alright, Blue, you're up!"