Chapter 10
Supplies were strewn across the storeroom floor.
I shouted at the sight.
“Food shortages are over!!”
The floor was littered with all kinds of canned food, cup ramen, cans of cola, and more.
And not just that—a large imported bag of potato chips with absolutely no nitrogen in it.
A tablet loaded with all sorts of videos to keep me occupied in this Wi-Fi-less place.
Solid fuel for boiling water and a simple survival kit.
The expensive liquor I'd been saving in my dorm room.
Even clothes that were easy to move in.
Now I'm rich!!
This is inventory!
This is an SSR-grade trait!!!
“What is this...?”
Aris murmured.
She seemed quite shocked.
Mm-hmm.
Of course. She'd react that way after seeing my luxurious preserved food.
Canned tuna and cup ramen with cola.
A balanced nutritional spread of carbs, protein, and fat—it doesn't even lose out to the A Student Cafeteria's lavish meals!
“What else would it be? My food.”
“No... more importantly, you're a unique-magic user, Yumia!!”
“...Huh?”
“What you did just now was definitely magic! And not a trace of mana movement was visible!”
“That's a bit different...”
“And these incomprehensible objects! You must have summoned wicked things from another world...!”
I was being misunderstood in a very strange way.
And that misunderstanding touched a nerve!
“...What?”
“Huh?”
“...Wicked things?”
Unforgivable.
You insult my cola and ramen?
“Wicked things!?”
“E, eeeh? Did I do something wrong!?”
I took out a can of cola.
And popped it open.
A hiss sounded as it fizzed.
It was still cold, since it had been in the fridge the whole time.
Perfect.
I tore open a bag of chips and handed it to Aris.
Like a devil's temptation,
“Try some.”
“Isn't this... dangerous?”
“It's fine.”
“Hmm...”
Aris, still unconvinced, picked up a chip and put it in her mouth.
And before long, her eyes went wide.
“It's salty and crispy... with a crisp crunch, the flavor bursts all through my mouth. It's insanely delicious! This taste... it's definitely potato!?”
Aris immediately grabbed another chip and stuffed it into her mouth.
By the way, does this world have potatoes too?
I learned that for the first time.
“You can cook potatoes like this? The chef who made this must be a genius!”
Aris said, her eyes sparkling.
This is bargain-bin potato chips, though.
A noble young lady falling for cheap potato chips.
Heh heh heh.
As expected, nobility means nothing before potato chips.
But this isn't over yet.
“But... my throat's getting a little dry.”
“Right?”
I handed her the cola.
After tasting the chips, Aris took a sip of cola.
And made a cute little grimace.
Her wavy blond hair trembled with it.
“Uu...?”
“How is it?”
“What is this...?”
“Ah, this is called cola. It's a drink from my hometown.”
I said it as if I were the one who invented cola.
Of course, I was merely borrowing the prestige of some great corporation.
But there isn't any big company here to assert intellectual property rights.
Then maybe I can just claim it as mine?
“Uu. This is truly exquisite... I feel like I'm going to get addicted.”
Aris looked completely hooked by the refreshing fizz she'd experienced for the first time.
Potato chips and carbonation are hard to resist.
Aris had already fallen into the chip-and-cola happiness spiral.
Before long, she finished off a whole can of cola.
“So, what exactly was supposed to be wicked?”
“Th, that...”
Aris's cheeks turned slightly red.
Watching Aris eat made me want some too, so I opened another cola.
“Come on, put your homework aside for now. It's the weekend, isn't it?”
I casually pushed Karnarov's book farther away.
“I-I guess so!?”
Now that I had food too.
There was no need to hurry anymore.
I spread the snacks out on the living room table.
***
The conversation dragged on until late at night.
Since the only interruption was having to hush our voices whenever the supervisor passed by,
I was able to hear quite a lot.
I heard about Aris's background, how vast the Empire was, how famous Reinhart's faculty was within the Empire, and more.
By this point, I was certain.
This isn't a gate.
For a gate-themed dungeon, it was far too detailed.
This could probably be considered another world.
But what does that matter?
“Aah... I'm so happy...”
In the process, we cracked open chips, cola, and other snacks too.
Of course, with Aris there I couldn't drink the liquor I'd brought, but still, it was enough.
It felt like I was on a school trip.
I was tucked into Aris's arms and being petted.
It wasn't what I wanted, but partway through Aris had asked,
‘But... could I maybe pet you just once...?’
and since I agreed right away, this is how it turned out.
“Huaaah. This is nice.”
Compared to Sera, there's a slight obstruction in the chest area, but Aris doesn't have that, so it's nice.
Of course, Aris is smaller than Sera, so there were pros and cons.
But I'm the smallest of all, so it doesn't matter.
In that state, I asked what I'd been curious about.
‘But why are you taking such good care of me?’
Aris answered that since she has a lot of younger siblings, she's naturally become used to looking after children.
So seeing me live so carelessly made her want to take care of me.
‘Isn't that just a hopeless-husband generator?’
thought the hopeless me.
But since being a hopeless case feels good, let's just stay put.
Sera would start nagging at this point.
Of course, in that case, if I got her drunk she'd start acting spoiled on her own.
“So, how do you use that?”
Aris leaned toward me and asked.
“This?”
I snapped my fingers.
And right on that snapped finger, a staff was resting.
“You can use it like that too? I'm jealous. A unique magic like that.”
“It's not unique magic though.”
“If it's not unique magic, then what is it...?”
That's a long story.
“Just my constitution.”
“Well... I wasn't even expecting a proper explanation anyway... But if it's that fast... even something like a shield...”
Ssshh. Ssshh.
I heard breathing.
Wait.
A shield?
Come to think of it, this could fit a fairly large shield too, couldn't it?
I remembered the annoying shield the skull-bucket in the last room on the first floor had been carrying.
That size should fit...
If I crouched down, I could probably hide completely inside it, couldn't I? If I carried something huge like that...
I seemed to glimpse a clue for clearing the second floor.
***
The next day.
I had to admit it.
Living here is better than I expected.
There's also the cute healer-type beauty Aris, and while the food is a bit pricey, it's edible if I can somehow get supplies.
For the record, the snacks were gone because I finished them all yesterday.
The next day, I took a more leisurely look around the school.
I sold Aris some cola.
Taking it for free felt a bit guilty and awkward in various ways, but selling it was fine.
‘One silver for a can of cola is a rip-off, isn't it?’
The magic word that settles that question in one shot.
Distribution margin.
Distribution margins are always the most expensive part.
Well, Aris said her allowance was 15 silver, so this should be okay to some extent.
Honestly, I was a little nervous too, since if I got caught I'd have to clean the bathroom.
I even did it this morning.
Other than the minor issue of my hands smelling like the bathroom, it was doable, though annoying.
Using the 3 silver I'd earned, we ate at the A Student Cafeteria together.
It was a system where you paid 3 silver and could use a buffet-like place freely.
I piled my plate high with just meat.
Gotta get my money's worth.
The food on my plate piled up like a mountain.
“...Do you eat like that normally?”
“I do, yeah.”
“...You don't gain weight?”
Aris looked at me with a complicated expression.
It was the same expression Sera made whenever she watched me eat.
She used to curse me out, asking how I could stuff myself with meat and liquor and still have that figure.
By the time we left the cafeteria and headed somewhere else, the sun was high overhead.
The library.
It was a huge library with floors one through eight, though first-years were only allowed up to the third floor.
The first and second floors were spaces for studying, and from the third floor up were reading rooms where various kinds of magic could be looked up.
“So you can learn other attack spells too?”
I picked up a book with anticipation, only to find that inside it was...
[The History of Magic]
[192 Ways to Make Flowers Bloom Quickly]
[Magic Circle Studies]
[Magic Repair]
[Basic Support Magic Even a Troll Can Understand]
“It's all nonlethal magic...”
“Haha... first-years can't learn elemental magic until they've mastered basic attack magic.”
“It was set by law, right? That we can't learn it.”
“Yes. If first-years were to go around spamming magic stronger than ordinary attack magic... it would be awful.”
“But why are there 192 ways to make flowers bloom quickly...”
“Well... the world of magic is boundless, isn't it?”
What is magic even a troll can understand?
[Magic That Won't Let You Drop Your Sword]
[Magic That Makes Your Hand Motions Faster]
[Magic to Relieve Heartburn]
.
.
.
...They're more useful than I thought, aren't they?
Especially the third one.
Magic to soothe heartburn seemed like it would be really useful when I woke up the day after getting drunk.
True to the blurb saying even an orc could understand it, it came with very friendly illustrations and explanations.
“I'll borrow this.”
“They say you can't borrow that one.”
“...Whyyy again...!”
“It looks like books with red labels can't be borrowed in the first place. This book seems incredibly popular.”
Come to think of it.
It was easy enough that once you learned the magic circle, you could use magic right away.
You didn't even need to understand the numerical system for inputting mana.
‘...Should I learn it right now?’
I had roughly figured out the role of [Mathematician of the Magic Circle].
It felt like a kind of lubricant, smoothing the conversion between equations and magic circles in both directions.
Like having one more calculator running in my head?
However, this magic circle was so simplified that converting it was actually harder.
It'll take a while.
Ah, right.
I'd charged my phone, hadn't I?
I’d taken photos of anything useful.
I should look over them later and learn them.
“...What's that?”
“A soul collector.”
“Eek!”
Aris was startled out of her wits.
And then she tried to snatch my phone away and slam it into the floor...
“No! No, it's not! It's just a magic tool! I was wrong!”
“Oh, it wasn't? I thought Yumia had picked up something belonging to devil worshippers...”
Devil worshippers. From what I'd vaguely heard yesterday, they were truly evil bastards.
For Aris to react like this, they must be pretty serious.
‘I hope I don't run into them...’
We left the cafeteria and passed by the eastern forest.
As we neared the forest, lark-like birds naturally perched on my shoulder. Red, yellow, green.
Coincidentally, they matched the colors of a traffic light.
“Waaah! Yumia! On Yumia's shoulder!”
Aris said excitedly, almost shouting.
The funny part was that she was holding her breath so the birds wouldn't fly away.
I, on the other hand, was unfazed.
I was just desperately hoping these little guys wouldn't poop on my shoulders.
“Can I touch them too!?”
“Why not?”
As soon as she got the go-ahead, Aris reached out toward the birds, but...
they immediately flew away.
Aris looked dejected.
“Looks like the birds don't really like me.”
I thought about explaining my [Nature-Friendly] trait...
but someone beat me to it from behind.
A low but feminine voice tickled my ear.
“It's not that those little ones dislike you. That child is the special one.”
I turned around.
The clothes she wore flowed in green and white.
Unlike this school, they were more like a fairy's winged robe or a wanderer's cloak.
Above that was a kindly smiling face.
Among the flowing black hair were horns like a deer's.
“You are loved by nature, student.”