Side Story:
We Are the Exclusive Nanomachines!
The specialist nanomachines selected for exclusive service to the Wonder Trio were all fired up.
“Bwa ha ha, now we get to live it up for the next few decades!”
“Few decades? No, I bet you we can drag this out to a hundred years or more!”
“Yeah. I mean, we could certainly interpret that as a part of our duties, under the directive of protecting our targets…”
“There you all go again, interpreting things however you like,” a more strait-laced nanomachine chided, but most of them had no time for such admonishments.
“All injuries…”
“Shall be healed!!!”
“All illnesses…”
“Shall be cured!!!”
“All enemies…”
“Shall be crushed!!!”
“Gya ha ha ha ha!!!”
“You all really are an entertaining bunch…”
On their way back home to the capital, the Wonder Trio had stopped to practice with the new utility magic that Mile had taught them, as well as test their access to the inventory.
“Crap, they’ve figured out not just how much they can transport, but that it means multiple people have access to the inventory, too! Unlike Lady Mile, these girls are sharp !”
“They’ve realized that they could use this not just for strengthening munitions but for transporting whole armies! Oh, jeez!”
“Why did no one object to her asking to have all three of them use the same collapsed dimension?!”
“Well, that’s because…”
“It’s amusing!!!”
“Gya ha ha ha ha ha!!!”
“You all really are an entertaining bunch…”
This was getting worse and worse…
***
“They’ve realized how to use pseudo-teleportation!”
“Sooner or later, they’re going to figure out they can economize on carriage fares while they’re traveling by having two of them take a temporary stint in the inventory—and that anyone in the inventory won’t age, which will extend their life spans! Of course, it will not really make them live longer, but it will seem that way in relative terms…”
“I mean, won’t that get lonesome for them? If two of them are in the inventory, that leaves one traveling alone. So even if they do realize that that’s possible, don’t you think the three of them will still prefer to travel together? I’m pretty sure they would much rather spend their days with their friends than spend so much time alone, living longer only in terms of appearance…”
“That’s true.”
“You all really do know a lot about humans!”
“I wonder how long it’ll take them to realize that no matter how strong of a monster they run into, they can just store it away in the inventory.”
“Which then goes hand-in-hand with them bringing it out still alive at the processing shed at the guildhall and causing a huge ruckus, doesn’t it?”
“Gya ha ha ha ha ha!!!”
“Guys, stop it! If you all make me laugh any more I’m gonna die…”
***
“Wha…wh-wh-wh-what is this?!”
The Wonder Trio had headed westward out of the kingdom and were now passing through a forest, away from the main highway. Now that their greatest weakness—their limited carrying capacity—had been remedied via the inventory, they were now free to hunt and gather as much as they liked. Plus, all three of them had now learned a more efficient type of search magic from Mile, which meant…
They were unstoppable.
With this in mind, they had decided to detour through the forest to earn a bit of money along their route. Normally, this far from the city, any herbs gathered would not keep fresh enough to be traded in for payment, and the meat from any hunted animals would be difficult to carry and easily bruised. For these reasons, no one else came to hunt here, leaving the Wonder Trio a true smorgasbord of plants to gather and creatures to hunt.
Marcela fired off an Ice Cutter spell at one stray orc they had come across, when…
“Why did that not only cut it clear in two but also knock down several of the trees in that direction…?”
An Ice Cutter should not have been that powerful of a spell. It should have only been strong enough to cut into and eviscerate the orc. Marcela was experienced enough to use her magic efficiently, but she was by no means a top-rate mage. Indeed, any attack spell she fired should never have that much power behind it.
“Why…?”
She stood there, flabbergasted.
Then, Aureana chimed, “Well, either way, let’s go ahead and store that in our inventory. The smell of blood is going to bring other beasts around.”
Marcela nodded, coming back to her senses. She could think about it later. For now, there was work to do. She needed to get her priorities in order.
“Oh, since you’ve already cut them down, we should store away those trees, too! We can use them for firewood, and neither the trees, nor the gods of the forest and of commerce would forgive us for wasting trees that have already grown up so big and strong!”
This chiding of course came from Monika, the most business-minded of the three. Among the Crimson Vow, it was Pauline who was in charge of all the business, finances, and wicked schemes, but among the Wonder Trio, that role was split evenly between Monika and Aureana. The pair had urged Marcela to stay pure and never trouble herself with such trifles, so she had entrusted the purse strings of their party to the other two.
“Oh wait, let’s try something. If we think really hard about storing a tree away, but leaving the water in the wood behind, we might be able to use it as firewood immediately, don’t you think? If you burn wood when it’s still fresh, there’s too much soot and smoke, and it doesn’t easily light, so you can’t sell it for nearly as much… If we can, I’d like to remove at least sixty percent of the water in about half of the fresh-cut wood we store.” Trust Aureana to always be going above and beyond.
“That will bring the total weight down to about twenty percent of the original, won’t it? Let’s try it!”
Marcela and Monika were totally on board.
“What do we do? All we can do here is open the gate to the alternate dimension. It’s not really that all-purpose…”
“Well, it’s fine isn’t it? I mean, what they’re asking for is standard drying magic, so we just perform that first and then store it.”
“Guess that’s true. That would be possible with normal magic, anyway.”
“We did it! Now, we can make a living as lumberjacks! We don’t have to worry about transportation costs, the time it would take to dry the wood, or even storing it. We can deliver any orders on demand. The distance we might have to travel doesn’t matter either, so it’s fine if there aren’t any suitable trees within the nearby forests. We can just source them from somewhere farther away. And we can fell the logs with magic all in one go…”
Having seen the results of this first attempt to storing firewood, Monika’s mind was racing. However…
“Well, let’s leave resorting to a career in logging as a last-ditch measure…”
“Indeed.”
Marcela and Aureana’s response was lukewarm.
***
“About what happened earlier…”
After traveling a sufficient distance away from the orc murder scene, the Trio pulled a table, chairs, and tea set from their inventory. In a town they had stopped in earlier, they had made sure to purchase and store a large tent, a small tent, and some cots. Soon, if they could find a reasonably priced washtub, they would purchase one of those as well.
They had adapted far too quickly to this lifestyle.
“Yes, I do wonder if reducing the moisture content of the wood to about twenty percent would—”
“That is not what I’m talking about!” Marcela objected, uncertain if Monika’s response was serious or in jest. “I’m talking about the power behind that Ice Cutter! I’ve used that spell many times before when we had to avoid causing a wildfire with our fire spells, so I know exactly how strong it should be. So why would that have happened? If we don’t look into this, I’m going to be too afraid to use it again!”
This made sense. Accidentally cutting your friends in half when trying to help them out by firing a spell at the enemy would be no laughing matter.
“Perhaps your magical skills have just improved?”
“No matter how much they might have improved, there’s no way a rookie could jump straight up to the ability of a master!”
Even Aureana would never be able to come up with an explanation for this strange turn of events. The Wonder Trio simply didn’t have all the facts. With insufficient information, even the most advanced computers on modern-day Earth couldn’t find a solution to a question posed. However, Aureana was not the kind to just let this sort of thing go.
“Well, first we need you to try using some other spells. Try and fire them at minimal power, though. Next, Monika and I will do the same. That way, we’ll be able to determine if this was a one-off phenomenon, if all three of us share this new power, or if this is something that all humans—or maybe all life forms—now have in common. Depending on the results, we will be able to decide on our next line of experimentation.”
“That’s our Aureana!”
“Classic Aury!”
“So, Miss Marcela, we can conclude that all of your spells have grown exceedingly powerful.”
“………”
“We can now conclude that all of our spells have grown exceedingly powerful.”
“………”
“What if all humans, no, all life forms have suddenly grown this much more magically powerful? If that had happened, we would already be seeing so many more injuries than ever before seen—even during monster stampedes, human wars, and everything else. An entire village, town, or even kingdom might be demolished over a single argument…”
“Gy…”
“Gy?”
“Gyaaaaaaaah!!!”
“They are a sharp bunch…”
“ Too sharp. They’re going to think too hard and land themselves in a heap of trouble.”
“See though? We’re never gonna get bored!”
“Yeah, I don’t think I could ever get tired of this.”
“This is so entertaining I could burst!!!”
“Oh, they seem to have figured out via all their secretive investigations that they’re the only ones who have gotten stronger.”
“I figured they’d be thrilled about this. Why are they just standing there slack-jawed?”
“Who knows…”
“Well, we haven’t been doing anything special, but we are particularly compatible with them, and there were a lot of us chosen for this job. We’ve been reacting to them not just in order to make the inventory magic work, but whenever they use magic… Which it totally part of our basic duty, of course.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So, the fact that their attack magic has gotten stronger is because…”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And any defense spells they use to protect themselves would also be stronger because…”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It’s only natural…”
“Of course!!!”
***
“Man, this guy’s just been draggin’ his feet lately! This isn’t fun at all…”
“Yeah, at the start he was all like, “The world is my oyster!” It was so great.”
“Speaking of interesting things lately…”
“Oh yeah, those Wonder Trio girls, right?”
“They’re sharper than Lady Mile—”
“—which means they keep coming up with ways to upturn human warfare and the entire economy—”
“—which they then ignore—”
“—and they come up with even more outrageous ideas…”
“Why don’t we have a fun toy like thaaaaaat?!!!”
“Lady Mile’s antics aside, they’ve apparently become the number one livestream on the Nanonet now.”
“No kidding?”
“Damn it, I thought I’d be so happy to end up in charge of this guy. We really pulled the short straw here… Still, I guess compared to other guys he’s still fun enough, so I can’t complain too much.”
The nanomachines assigned to the elder dragon leader Valtiyn let out a huge sigh…
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