Didn't I Say To Make My Abilities Average In The Next Life?! Volume 9

by Funa

  Though she might not truly have half of an elder dragon’s strength, what she did have still showed great skill on God’s part. Within the scope of his limited conditions, he had done fine work. Thus, even as she was, Mile was still able to repel a full-strength attack from the advanced ogre’s mutant body, with its muscular form and weight dozens of times her own, without a great deal of effort.

  Unfortunately, she was in a bad position.

  The ogre had the advantage of putting its full weight behind the attack as it swung its club down, allowing it to leverage further power by bowing its sturdy back. Mile, on the other hand, had only the muscle of her shoulders and forearms to ward off the strike. Indeed, these were the exact conditions she had faced in the beginning of the fight against Mavis’s father, Count Austien. She could not move an inch from her position. All of her strength was being channeled into her upper body, and owing to her light weight and the unsteady positioning of her lower body, if she tried to move her legs at all, she would lose her balance.

  Having never faced such a situation before, Mile was unable to come up with any swift solutions. However, just as she realized she was in a deadlock, it arrived. She thought that she saw something red out of the corner of her eye…

  “Gyabreaghahagabragahh!!!” came a collective scream.

  It was a vision of hell.

  And the color of that hell was red…

  Indeed, it was Reina’s hot magic spell, which she had cast with desperate speed despite being unfamiliar with it. It was just now making its impact.

  “Gyaaaaaaaaah!!!”

  Everyone on the field—friend and foe alike—let out a horrid scream and began writhing in agony. The only ones exempt were Pauline, Mavis, and Reina, the caster, who were all outside of the area of effect…

  “B-b-b-b-barrier!!! Filter, ventilate, purify!!!”

  Mile desperately funneled all of her magic into the spell. First, she put up a barrier to isolate herself from the outside air. Next, she expelled the inside air, using the barrier as a filter. The lowered atmospheric pressure then sucked the air back in from outside, while the filter kept the capsaicin particles out. She then applied cleansing magic to herself to remove and dissipate all of the capsaicin particles that had lodged on her skin, in her clothes, and within her body.

  “Hff, hff, hff… I thought I was gonna die…”

  Meanwhile, the ogres and dwarves, who did not have access to such convenient magic, were still writhing on the ground.

  “Wind!”

  Once Mile had blown the red fog away with a wind spell, Reina came closer, accompanied by Mavis and Pauline, who had now finished the healing process. Mavis and Mile ran the ogres through with their swords to put an end to them, while Reina and Pauline went around to the dwarves, applying purifying magic to save them from the spicy heat.

  Only one of the ogres, the strongest out of all of them, had managed to stay on its feet. It came lumbering toward Mile and Mavis, but it still was unable to open its eyes, had lost all sense of smell, could not easily breathe as a result of the pain in its throat, and was racked with intense pain from open wounds and mucous membranes. As such, it was largely unable to fight and absurdly easy to fell.

  So then, why hadn’t they just used the hot magic from the start?

  Well, that would have made putting together a reclamation team composed primarily of dwarves pointless.

  By all rights, this fight was one the dwarves were waging to protect their village. The Crimson Vow had been employed as backup, nothing more and nothing less. Whatever the final outcome, the proud dwarves needed to be able to say that they had stood on their own two feet, eradicated the monsters, and defended the village.

  Besides, if the Crimson Vow had defeated the monsters all by themselves, the dwarves wouldn’t have been able to confirm the strength of these aberrant creatures and the threat they posed with their own two eyes. If no dwarf had experience facing the monsters, they would not be able to leverage that experience later. Thus, they had intended to at least let the dwarves participate enough to say that they gave the fight their all, while simultaneously making sure that no one was seriously injured or suffered any negative aftereffects.

  Of course, if these had been “normal” ogres, it wouldn’t have been a problem even if their numbers had turned out to be slightly higher than what the scouting party had confirmed. Extermination jobs rarely went exactly as planned. However, the Crimson Vow, who had had a relatively easy go of things up until now, had been a bit too optimistic.

  ***

  After the battle was through, the Crimson Vow headed into the tunnel alone, guided by a lighting spell, and dispatched the few females and young within.

  Given that the females were sufficiently strong enough to have joined the fight, the fact that they had stayed behind was likely for the sake of minding the young—or else because they were sick or injured. However, these were not creatures to be pitied. To let any individuals of this unique and dangerous species escape unharmed would be a treasonous act, a wholesale betrayal of humanity and every other sentient race.

  Even if a few were still away from the lair, it would probably be two or three at best, a number the dwarves should be able to manage later. The Crimson Vow could not be expected to babysit them indefinitely. That being said, they did still intend to double back before heading into town again and make sure that no survivors had returned immediately to the nest.

  “All right! Back to the village!” said Reina.

  “Yeah!!!” cried the other three.

  JUST A MOMENT, LADY MILE.

  The four of them had all begun walking, but when Mile—the only one who could hear the nanomachines’ voices—abruptly stopped, the other three stopped as well. The dwarves, seeing that the Crimson Vow were not moving, all halted in place as well.

  “Hm? What’s up, Mile?”

  Seeing Mile fall silent, a suspicious look upon her face, the other three gathered around her. Her expression was serious, and she was deep in thought…or so she pretended, all the while complaining to the nanomachines inside of her head.

  Jeez! What is it?! Everyone’s looking at me. I can’t talk right now!

  WE’LL…WE’LL BE DONE SOON! PLEASE, JUST ORDER US TO “PLUG UP THAT HOLE!”

  Huh? Is that really that important?

  IT’S IMPORTANT!

  I see, so it’s important, huh…? Well, in that case…

  THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

  Will you tell me the reason for this afterward—truthfully?

  Crackle! The air seemed to freeze, though what was really happening was that the current concentration of nanomachines within the area had grown far greater than the normal distribution. As a result, the nanomachine density within the air was immense, and when all of these nanomachines stopped moving at once, Mile, who was perceptive to this, felt as though the air had actually solidified and frozen.

  You’re petitioning me to give you an order because you aren’t allowed to act independently, right? But even though it wouldn’t normally be permitted, this is something that you absolutely must do. Is that correct?

  The nanomachines were silent.

  And this is something that I, as someone of authorization level five, am able to command… Even though just attempting to make natto requires a level seven authorization!

  It would seem that Mile still held a grudge over the setbacks she had faced in her earlier Japanese cuisine project.

  “Plug up that hole,” huh? That seems to be happening a lot these days—plugging up things that have opened up…

  ………

  I wonder if the hole was similar to the one from the last time…

  ………

  Is this “hole” a hole that connects one place to another? If I don’t know that, I’m not sure that I can give the appropriate command…

  W-WE’RE GONNA KILL YOU!!

  ***

  “…So anyway, if we don’t figure out where these monsters are coming from, there’
s a chance that another group of these unique monsters might appear again in the future. I was just wondering if it’s really okay to head back just like that, without investigating further,” Mile explained as an excuse for why she had suddenly fallen deep into thought.

  The dwarves paled at her words. Every single one of them recognized that sheer dumb luck was the only reason they had managed to successfully exterminate these abnormal monsters without taking any lasting injuries or casualties. Well, they had taken a number of severe injuries, but they had fully recovered thanks to Mile and Pauline’s healing magic, so those didn’t count. By the time the fighting was over, however, about seventy or eighty percent of the dwarves had been injured, half of those significantly so. There were even a few that had taken fatal injuries—if Mile and Pauline had not been present with their absurd healing abilities, they would have died before they could make it back to the village.

  In short, they got lucky. The success of this mission hinged entirely on the good fortune of having a party like the Crimson Vow present to be hired on as their backup.

  Suppose that the ogres they had faced this time had not in fact naturally evolved here. Suppose that there was a large-scale outbreak of these ogres somewhere else. Suppose that the ones they faced had been merely a vanguard, scouting ahead before the rest of them went on the move. And suppose that another group of such ogres arrived in the future.

  “L-Let’s investigate!” the dwarf leader declared, looking queasy. “There might still be some ogres out there, and while we’re at it, we should find the orcs’ lair and destroy that, too. The job request that you all accepted was to ‘aid in exterminating the monsters,’ so this falls under your contract… I’m begging you!”

  “Well, I guess we have no choice, huh? That is within the terms of our contract, after all. We’ll stick with you until it starts to get dark out… However, battling at night is out of the question.”

  Even without Reina’s injunction, the dwarves had no intention of fighting orcs or ogres in the middle of the night in a place like this. And so, it was settled.

  “All right, then! Change of plans: let’s investigate the perimeter of the mines. If anyone finds anything that seems off—anything out of the ordinary at all, report it immediately. Everyone, split up!”

  There was no point walking around in large groups if their aim was to comb the area. Should anyone come across an orc or ogre, the leader asserted as he split them into groups, they were to come back and notify the others. They must absolutely not attempt to fight the monster on their own.

  Of course, none of them would even think of attempting something so reckless…save for the Crimson Vow.

  “It’s this way,” Mile indicated to the others without skipping a beat. The other three stared at her with wide eyes.

  “Well, that’s Mile for you,” Reina said, resigned. Mavis and Pauline nodded in agreement. They assumed that she was using her search magic or something along those lines.

  They followed her to a place where…

  “Wh-what is that?”

  It was not far from the tunnel that the ogres had inhabited, right in the center of what the dwarves had indicated as the orcs’ stomping grounds. There, they saw a rift.

  It was not a crack in the rock face or a crater in the ground, but a sort of tear, floating in midair, with nothing else around it. Indeed, it was just like something else that the Crimson Vow had seen very recently.

  “This is like that time with Faleel…”

  Yes, just as Pauline said, the rift that they faced was almost—no, exactly—the same as the one that had begun to open and then quickly closed up during the incident with the cultish kidnappers.

  “This is probably—” Mile began.

  “I’ve got it!” Mavis shouted, cutting her off. “This is probably a crack in the air, just like last time. There’s another place on the other side of it, and all of the orcs and ogres are coming out from here. The orcs and ogres from the other place probably look the same, but they’re actually a completely different variety. So, if we can just stop up the rift, then they won’t be able to come through anymore!”

  “Whooooooaaaa!!!” the dwarves shouted, in awe of Mavis’s powers of deduction.

  “But that’s what I was about to say…” Mile’s sulking went completely ignored.

  “But wait! Suppose whatever mage used the spell to open that rift opens it right back up again?” asked Pauline.

  “G-good point. If we don’t deal with the perpetrator first…” Mile began to agree, when she was cut off again by Mavis.

  “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that, actually. If this thing was man-made—like if someone had a reason for putting it here—I can’t imagine that they would have just left it unattended. There are no signs of a struggle around the rift, and no traces of blood, which makes it unlikely that the mage was overrun and killed by the orcs and ogres, either. Therefore, we can assume with a fairly high probability of accuracy that this is a naturally occurring phenomenon. I do think it’s possible that the magic those other mages were trying weakened something and made the air more susceptible to these rifts, but if we were to stop up the rift here, I think it’s unlikely that another rift will open up again in the same place. If another one opens up, it’ll probably be somewhere else…”

  The other three stared at Mavis, dumbfounded.

  “M-Mavis, how in the world did you—?”

  “D-don’t tell me…”

  “She’s an imposter! What did you do with the real Mavis?!”

  The dreadful accusations came flying.

  “Guys, I’ve read Miami Satodele’s spirit world adventure series, too!!!”

  “Ah…”

  They all fell quiet again.

  Now that she mentioned it, the concept of a rift in space-time had been introduced in some of Miami Satodele’s works. Mavis may have been a sword-wielder, but she was no muscle head. Brought up as the daughter of a noble household, she had received an extensive education.

  Nanos? Mile gently asked, seeking confirmation.

  HAHAHA… AHAHAHAHAHA!

  Apparently, Mavis was correct.

  AAAHAH HAH HAH!!!

  They seemed desperate.

  “V-very well, then… I, Mile, command (the nanomachines): Mysterious rift to the spirit world, be mended!!!”

  Naturally, Mile only said the nanomachines bit of the incantation in her head.

  Meanwhile, the nanomachines had fallen into a state of self-deprecating despair, overwrought at the fact that Mavis, who knew nothing of the reality of the situation, was able to so plainly state something which they were forbidden by their programming to speak of. Still, upset or not, they were not about to dally on such important work and set to actualizing the spell’s command straight away.

  Honestly speaking, the nanomachines were probably just being a bit cheeky. It was hard to imagine they would be programmed to actually grow depressed—but then again, there was no telling what logical structures governed the thoughts of such superior life-forms, possessed of an intelligence that humans could scarcely hope to grasp. Who knew how much these beings, wrought directly by the hands of God, truly resembled “normal” living creatures? Ultimately, Mile found it easiest to take them at face value, treating them the same way she would any other living thing.

  Plugging the hole of their own volition was beyond their permitted reach, given that it was outside of the functional parameters with which their creator had programmed them. However, the fact that they had deemed this something that they still absolutely had to do—and that they would utilize any means within their reach to bring this compulsion to fruition—displayed their compatibility with Mile’s understanding of them, or at the very least, an immense level of individual agency.

  If Mile were not around, they would probably find some other technicality or loophole that would allow them to do this. The thought gave Mile a newfound respect for the nanomachines.

  The nanomachines, meanw
hile, had set about the work of repairing the extra-dimensional rift. Before beginning, they called in a large quantity of emergency reinforcements from the nanomachines in the surrounding region—so many that they would temporarily lower magical efficacy in said region by about seventy percent. Once these reinforcements were gathered, they began the actual task of repairing the internal cohesion of the space-time continuum.

  Access to the parallel dimensional warehouse that Mile called her “inventory,” as well as the subspace pockets that the people of this world referred to as storage magic, were all facilitated by the nanomachines. With enough of them gathered in the area, repairing a rift like this was a trifle.

  Truthfully, they probably didn’t even need as many as they summoned. It was even possible that the additional individuals were merely present to give the impression that magical things were happening, making the air dance with kaleidoscopic magical formations around the rift. The nanos knew how to create quite the visual spectacle.

  IT IS COMPLETE. THE PROBABILITY OF A NEW RIFT REOPENING HERE, AS OPPOSED TO A NEW LOCATION, HAS BEEN SIGNIFICANTLY LOWERED.

  Hearing this, Mile nodded. Ah yes, it’s just like how when a bone is broken, it heals back stronger than before… She caught and corrected herself, remembering that this was just an old wives’ tale—in fact, such fractured portions would only break more easily the next time.

  Hey nanos? From now on, tell me when a rift forms somewhere, okay? I’ll give you the order to fix it every time.

  HM? ACTUALLY, IF YOU JUST ISSUE US THE ORDER AHEAD OF TIME, THEN WE CAN PROCEED WITH REPAIRS ON OUR OWN IN SUBSEQUENT CASES WITHOUT EVEN GOING THROUGH THE TROUBLE OF ENACTING MAGIC SUCH AS THIS.

  Apparently, they were hoping to get permission to handle this issue on their own without reporting it.