In a peaceful state, time swiftly passed and soon six months had passed by. I learned most of the commonly spoken language or at least enough to communicate on a normal conversational basis. Beyond that it’s been relatively quiet.

The majority of my time has been involved in creation of various artifacts. I set up myself up as an artifact creator, even got my own building forge and shop in the Normal Difficulty zone. I’ve basically moved here almost permanent after learning the language.

The room is relatively small with a forge and the various tools I need to create artifacts. Upstairs is a small comfortable bedroom and various living necessities.

As it turns out, people are more than willing to provide the materials and artifacts to help me expand my skills. My plan for ‘borrowing’ materials has been almost entirely dismissed. I only need to toss people a random artifact every now and then. Nobody complains, so I guess they’re happy with that result.

I’ve tried contacting the natives in the Residential Zone to learn the knowledge from the old society, but all of them were uselessly unhelpful. So I gave up that plan extremely quickly. I suppose it makes sense. If you asked me to build a cellphone I wouldn’t have a clue. Hoping the natives would know anything specific or have useful knowledge was a dream.

If the natives in this place actually had any useful information, other people would’ve found it and used it already.

After getting settled in, I’d been searching for someone with a healing ability and finally found a clue. According to rumors, a girl from the Hard Difficulty exposed her ability in public by healing several of her friends who were on the verge of death.

Apparently, a healing ability is far rarer than I thought as it would be though. I haven’t heard of anyone else having one. Although it isn’t exactly common to expose your own ability in public. Except for a few stupid or frame driven people, almost nobody reveals their ability to the public eye.

I’ve heard there’s a ranking of the strongest people who have exposed their abilities, but that’s used mainly by guilds to show off their strength. Basically they’re walking propaganda posters.

The bell above the door rang out.

Looking away from my current project, a bracelet with various lines engraved onto it, I glancing toward the door and saw a thirty-ish year old man in formal clothes. More importantly, despite his formal clothes, he looked poor and didn’t carry any rare materials to scam off him.

I coldly stated. “We’re closed.” (Conversations translated into English for your convenience.)

The man tried to introduce himself. “Apologies, I’m-”

“What do you want? You have ten seconds.” I interrupted him.

“The Water Requiem guild…”

“No. I’m not joining any guilds.” I interrupted him and pointed toward the door. “If there’s nothing else leave.”

When the man introduced the guilds behind him, I could immediately understand where this conversation was going. About 90% of the time, the guild behind them wants to recruit you. The other 10% want some sort of discount or utilize their guild name to pressure you into doing something.

If he was from a guild I recognized, maybe I would hear him out… but I’ve never even heard of ‘Water Requiem’? What kind of guild name even is that? Why should I care about hearing him out?

“Sir, I-” He tried to protest.

“Either get off my property voluntarily, or I’ll toss you out.” I stood up and threatened, placing my project onto the table. “If you want something crafted, come back in the morning with the necessary materials when I’m open.”

Shaking my head in annoyance, as the man reluctantly left my workshop.

I swear people cannot follow basic instructions. I’ve repeatedly told people that I’m only open in the morning. Even with a picturesque ‘closed’ sign on the door, idiots just enter anyway. The fact that the writing system doesn’t translate at this point in time certainly doesn’t help with their idiocy.

Anyway, sorry about the interruption. As I was saying, I finally managed to get some clues regarding a healer. Last time she was spotting healing people in the Third Zone of Hard Difficulty. That isn’t the important part of the news, though. According to my source, aka random guilds I’ve bribed with artifacts, she’s returned to the Residential Zone today.

Picking up the bracelet I was working on, I finished engraving several lines onto it and watched it light up. Blowing on the metal, I brushed away the metal dust from the engravings.

This bracelet works off similar principles to the shoes of teleportation, in theory it should allow teleportation over short distance. In practice, I have no idea whether it will work. I’ll toss it somebody in exchange for minerals and have them try it as a lab rat (with a warning that it’s untested and potentially extremely dangerous to use).

Try it myself? Are you crazy? This is literally an untested teleportation device. What if I messed up on engraving the array or it rejects the changes needed to swap it over to a bracelet? From what I can tell, there’s a complicated calculator type formation inside the array to handle the necessary calculations for teleportation. If that’s even slightly messed up, it might just immediately kill the user.

For other projects, I’m usually fine testing it myself … but I’m decently sure any sort of defense won’t hold up against a spatial cut.

Huh… why hasn’t teleportation been weaponized? Like, presumably it can be used to create a weapon that teleports parts of the opponents body away? Or anything similar? Presumably that should’ve been weaponized a long time ago. So why haven’t I read about it being in popular usage?

Note to self, look that up in the library. There might be a way to defend myself from unauthorized teleportation and localized spatial anomalies, or a reason waeponizing it is impossible.

Tossing the bracelet down onto a pile of finished artifacts, I left the shop and activated my defensive wards.

Heading down toward the last reported location the healer had been spotted, I entered into the building. A bar that also serves as a bed and breakfast. Although I’m not really sure how that works considering there’s no such thing as currency in this place.

It’s probably a hobby of the owner instead of an actual business, who might deal in bartering of alcohol supplies. That’s the way things tend to go when there’s no proper economy, yet food is abundant and supplies.

I gazed about the bar.

It was basically empty. There were only three people in the entire place.

The bartender who wiped over some glasses. I already knew the gender of the healer was female, so he definitely wasn’t who I was looking for.

I quickly turned my gaze to the other two people.

Sitting at the bar, there was a woman with several scars on her body. She seemed to be a war veteran or something, judging by her perpetual scowl and knife kept at her side. The woman’s gear and clothing was practical military type with camouflage, she gazed toward me.

Hmmm… although I wasn’t actively attempting to hide my presence, maybe some sort of detection ability? It’s strange that she noticed me. Usually people only notice my existence when I speak up.

Dragging my gaze away, I turned toward the remaining person in the far back.

In a small booth, a girl with white dress sat sipping a small drink. Unlike the other woman, she looked more in line with a healer. She has a kind and peaceful aura and atmosphere about her, might be our healer.

In the future, I should probably get more detail information about people’s appearance instead of simply their location.

Walking up to the girl in the booth, I stood across from her. “Excuse me?”

The girl in a white dress clearly hadn’t noticed my existence until I spoke and jumped in fright from suddenly noticing me, spilling her drink on herself. She looked like a frightened deer in headlights, frozen in fear staring in my direction.

Sighing, I apologized. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

People are usually unable to notice me until I speak to them. Although this girl slightly abnormal for jump-scared by my appearance, the military woman was more abnormal for noticing me.

“No- it’s…” The girl grabbed a nearby cloth and tried to clean up her dress, still stumbled but less scared by my sudden appearance, “It doesn’t matter, do you need something?”

“Ah, sorry to bother you. I was just wondering if you had a healing ability?” I asked with slight hope.

The girl shook her head, “No… sorry, is someone hurt?”

“It’s complicated to explain, thanks anyway.” I shook my head in disappointment.

My source might be wrong, or the healer might’ve already left. She might also just be unwilling to reveal her ability to a stranger. Regardless of what it is, I should talk to the barkeep and military woman before leaving. That would reveal the accuracy of my sources information at the very least.

Walking over to the bartender, I greeted him with a wave. “Are drinks free?”

“Limited to two per person each day.” The barkeep nodded and poured a glass of alcohol before sliding a glass over.

The military woman glanced in my direction.

“Right, thanks…” I left the glass that had been filled with alcohol on the bar. “Either of you know someone with a healing ability?”

The bartender shrugged and gestured toward the military woman.

“You don’t look like your dying.” The military woman plainly stated, her statement was implicitly affirming the barkeep’s gesture.

I gazed toward her with surprise. “You have a healing ability?”

“Ironic, isn’t it.” The military woman laughed, stole the drink that had been placed on the bar in front of me and drank it. I had no idea why it was ironic from her point of view, but wasn’t in a position to question her.

“I need your help.” I explained.

“No, thanks.” The military woman shrugged. “What did you expect? Did you honestly think a random stranger will help you just because you asked?”

“In approximately six months, I plan on entering into a special competition and require someone with a healing ability to join me.” I stated plainly. “You will be fairly compensated for your time and will save someone’s life.”

“Do you know? I discovered something interesting about abilities.” The military woman swirled the liquid around in the glass, “It certainly doesn’t apply to everyone, but it applies to enough people that I find it interesting. People’s abilities tend to be inversely related to their desires.”

“What?” I stared at her in confusion.

Firstly, I didn’t understand what this had to do with anything. We were having bargaining about whether or not she would help me. Having a random conversation about abilities is completely irrelevant.

Secondly, I knew abilities were randomly developed by people’s bodies. That’s what I’d written in the novel. The idea that they were based around people’s desires was absurd.

For example, Rin’s ability was inborn from their bloodline. The process to adapt to foreign mana merely awakened her inborn superpower.

Despite internally dismissing her theory, the military woman lifted the glass upward. She didn’t seem to care about my opinion, thus I didn’t understand why she was even bothering to explain this theory to me.

“For example, someone that wants to protect people is more likely to get an offensive ability and vise versa.” The military woman turned her eyes toward me and stared. With an intent that stated the example she was providing was deliberate, “Someone that wants to be famous might get a stealth ability.”

I retorted. “The whole theory is absurd. At the very least, I don’t want to be famous it has too many disadvantages.”

It was an interesting theory, but it wasn’t based on any sort of factual basis. Her argument in it of itself was flawed.

I’ve never wanted to be famous. Only ever wanted to be… actually, nevermind, it doesn’t matter.

“As I stated, it doesn’t apply to everyone and it’s not an exact science.” The woman shrugged seemingly not caring that I’d dismissed her theory, “But it certainly an interesting theory. At the very least, I know several people it applies to… including myself.”

I finally realized the entire point of this conversation, and her divergence from my request. “You’re saying you want people to get hurt or die? That’s why you got a healing ability.”

“Your words not mine.” The military woman shrugged and took another sip from the glass of alcohol.

“No, didn’t you save your friends back in Hard Difficulty?” I interrupted her with a solid argument. Despite knowing it would expose that I studied up on her beforehand. It didn’t matter if she knew I explored her background information.

After all, the likelihood of someone showing up in this bar looking for a healing ability the day she’d arrived was already low enough that it basically confirmed I was searching for her beforehand.

“Sometimes living is crueler for than dying… and, as you stated, they are my friends. It’d be inconvenient if they died.” The military woman simply explained with a smile, she didn’t seem perturbed by my knowledge of her background. “None of those conditions seems to fit in your case. I won’t be helping you.”

My displeased expression only caused the woman's smile to grow wider.

She down the rest of her drink and stood up, prepared to leave. “It was a pleasure to meeting you, stranger. Thank you for brightening up my day.”