I Said Make My Abilities Average! (LN) - Volume 10 - Chapter SS1

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Side Story:

Mavis’s Ambition

“Mile, could you tell us that Mysterious Grasshopper of Justice story that you told us before?” Mavis asked Mile one day.

“Huh? Sure, I don’t mind.”

“Also, I want to hear the ones about the man who has an artificial left arm that a sword comes out of when he takes it off, and the boy who has golem limbs for his left leg and right arm.”

“Uh…”

Mile never minded retelling a story she had told before, but she had no idea which one Mavis was referring to now.

Is she talking about the Poison Snake Man story, with the Clan of the 100 Devils? Or wait, is it the one with Hyakkimaru…?

In the original Poison Snake story, the man’s arm had a gun in it, but guns had yet to be invented in this world, so that would be confusing to include. Mile had replaced it with

a Psycho Sword when she had incorporated it into her series of Japanese folktales, which made it hard to differentiate it from the story of the boy who went on a journey to slay forty-eight monsters.

“Also, the one with the giant transforming golem with a left arm that turns into a drill, and that Armored Cell 004 with weapons embedded all over his body, and the One-Armed Machine Girl, and Yakuza Weapon, and Drill Girl Spiral Nami, and…”

That was when a lightbulb flashed on in Mile’s head. Even she could tell that with such a biased request, Mavis was up to no good.

“Umm, Mavis, you aren’t plotting something, are you?”

“Gulp!”

“Did you just purposely voice a sound effect?”

Reina and Pauline looked upon the pair warily.

“So, just what are you plotting?”

“P-plotting? I-I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular.”

“Well, I guess that’s true, you rarely think much about anything…”

“Huh?”

“I don’t want to hear that from you , Mile!”

“Wh-what is that supposed to mean?!?!”

A fight was brewing. The Crimson Vow usually got along swimmingly, but that did not mean that they were without their quarrels. They butted heads when it came to spending money (where naturally, the aggressive party was always Pauline), when it came to choosing places to eat, and of course, when someone said something unflattering about either Mile’s or Reina’s stature or build and the others failed to refute it, unconsciously agreeing with the statement that had been made…

At any rate, sometimes the four did fight. And this was one of those times…

“ Hff, hff, hff… A-anyway, on the previous topic…”

“No gettin’ past you, huh?”

It would seem that Mavis had instigated this fight in the first place as a means of disguising her motivations, but Mile had seen right through that.

“You’re thinking something terrible, aren’t you? Like getting some kind of secret technique, like an arm attachment that can transform into a drill, or a rocket punch, or a knuckle bomber, or…”

“G-gulp!”

“Seriously, stop making your own sound effects!” Reina interjected this time.

“N-no, it’s just, those epics about fighters, with their ultimate moves, and killer techniques, and secret weapons, and drills, and self-destruct systems… They’re all just—” started Mavis.

Mile said along with her. “Super cool!”

“Anyway, your hand doesn’t have any weird gimmicks of the sort! It’s a little more accurate and a little more powerful than your original arm was, but it’s fundamentally only good at absorbing any force it receives, so your strength has only increased a little! Also, it doesn’t have any firing capabilities!”

Mavis’s shoulders slumped in disappointment.

“Would it make you happy to become a knight by relying on the abilities of your artificial limb?”

“Uh…”

Mavis was lost for words; Mile had hit her where it hurt. She was correct, of course.

However…

Compared to the mages, whose abilities improved instantaneously by leaps and bounds with just a little advice from Mile, Mavis was a swordswoman who had to improve step by excruciating step, over time… It was fine if she cheated just a little , wasn’t it?

Besides, there was a certain maxim that had come up in the telling of one of Mile’s stories: “Evil must be crushed thoroughly. Any means that justify that end are acceptable! That’s the ‘ultimate justice!’”

The truth was that Mile had mistaken the black-and-white morality of her didactic tales for an actual life lesson. She was mistaken about many things, such as the fact that “not seeing the forest for the trees” wasn’t referring to some kind of invisible wood, or that “too many captains will steer the ship up a mountain” didn’t mean that the impossible became possible with enough people in charge.

No matter how advanced a computer’s processor, if you gave it faulty data, you’d get a wrong answer. That was what had happened here.

“It’s okay to cheat a little bit if it’s for the sake of justice!” said Mavis boldly, swiftly recovering from the impact of Mile’s words.

“Well, there’s our Mavis again…” said Reina, rather wearily.

Meanwhile, Pauline nodded, agreeing with Mavis. And as for Mile…

“Hmm.” She was puzzled.

Hey, Nanos, is that possible—technologically and within your restrictions?

ON A TECHNICAL LEVEL, THE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES OF YOUR PREVIOUS WORLD, LADY MILE, CANNOT BE REPLICATED BY OUR PROPULSION SYSTEMS. WITH THE STRUCTURE OF THAT ARM, LACKING BOTH WINGS AND AN AERODYNAMIC FORM, THRUST ALONE WOULD NOT BE ENOUGH TO ENSURE VERTICAL STABILITY IN FLIGHT WHEN FACTORING IN GRAVITATIONAL PULL.

FURTHERMORE, WERE THIS ARM—WITH ITS BUILT-IN LOAD BEARING, ENERGY SCATTERING, CANCELLATION SYSTEMS—TO FIRE PROJECTILES, THE HEAT AND RECOIL WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR LADY MAVIS’S BODY TO BEAR. NOR IS THERE IS ENOUGH STORAGE SPACE FOR SUCH AMMUNITION.

IN REGARDS TO OUR OPERATIONAL RESTRICTIONS, IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE SUCH CAPABILITIES, A GRAVITATIONAL CONTROL TECHNIQUE WOULD BE REQUIRED. THIS WOULD LIKELY CAUSE ISSUES IF SOMEONE WERE TO SEE LADY MAVIS, WHO THEORETICALLY IS INCAPABLE OF MAGIC, USING SUCH A TECHNIQUE…

Okay, yeah, so it’s impossible…

THE RETROFITTING WOULD TAKE US 15 SECONDS.

“So, it is possible?!?!” Mile inadvertently said aloud.

“Wh-what are you shouting about all of a sudden?” asked Reina.

SHALL WE DO IT?

I’d prefer you didn’t!

“Y-you can do it, Mile?!” Mavis, who could not hear the nanomachines’ half of the conversation, assumed that Mile’s shout was the result of her weighing the possibility of remodeling the limb inside her head and rushed up to Mile with a glint—or rather, a glimmer in her eye.

“S-so close! Why are you so close, Mavis?!” Mile panicked, her face reddening for some reason as Mavis gripped her by the shoulders, their noses barely ten centimeters apart.

“Ah…”

“Aha…”

This is no good, thought Reina and Pauline.

Indeed, even though they were comrades who spent every day together, from dusk to dawn, this was too much to handle. Mavis’s masculine energy was just too strong. It was far too close not to manliness, as a man would think of it, but rather, to a young girl’s idea of the “ideal man”…

“I-I’m not one of those girls! And I’m not in the Lily Brigade, either!!” Mile protested feebly, flailing about, but she did not truly make any attempt to repel Mavis.

“‘ Those girls’ you talked about in your Japanese folktales? The ones who like seeing men together?”

“Reina, that has nothing to do with the current situation!”

The struggle between Mavis and Mile raged on as Reina and Pauline chattered on the sidelines.