"Something... something isn't right..." 

Lisbeth, Alaska, and Ayame were all sitting within the shrine after they woke up this morning and were currently drinking tea. Ever since they woke up, they felt as if something was off but couldn't put their finger on it, Alaska takes a sip of her tea and glanced over to Ayame who was thinking really hard. 

"What could it be?" 

"Alaska, how about you ask, AK?" 

"Who's AK?" Ayame went from thinking to confused as the name came up and Alaska stopped drinking her tea and put down the cup. 

"Oh, I forgot to tell you about her." 

Ayame was given a swift introduction about what AK was and then they moved on to ask the AI about what was missing. Normally, Alaska wouldn't do this but this was more like something was missing from themselves rather than anything else, they were simply desperate to find out what it was. 

"Your level system is missing." 

"Wait, that's what it was?! How does this world work now?!" 

"Oh, the leveling system is gone!" Alaska smiled as she always thought the system was a bit stupid in the first place. It held people like her and Lisbeth back from actually exploring their skills with things just straight up not working if attempted just to find out they needed to be level 45 to swing their sword really hard. 

"Oh, thank the Gods, that was always a little stupid in my opinion." Ayame sighed that she could also fully unleash her demons now. No more being trapped by simply not being able to access certain skills. 

"Same. I always found it strange how much like an RPG game it was." Lisbeth was one person who was certainly being held back by her level system. Now, it was all up to her on how to fight. 

"RPG game?" Ayame didn't understand the phrase at all, "Is that... something from your previous lives?" 

They nodded their heads and Ayame didn't question it any further. She felt like it'd simply be a waste of time to do so, after all, it wouldn't help her in this world to know what an RPG game is. But, they were happy now that the stupid system was gone.

Spells were still spells, magic power was still needed to cast those and thankfully, some of the menus still existed such as the life menu. 

Which just tells you what you were inflicted by, your health, magic reserve, hunger, and thirst. That was the only one that stayed around. 

Now, things would be better for naturally powerful people as it's up to their own minds to create spells and abilities for them to use instead of using some dumb menu to tell them. To creative people, this was the best thing to happen in recent history, to people who aren't, they might as well give up now. 

But, it'd be a while before everyone would and could completely acclimatize to this. Alaska went and stood up from the table and took her sword out of her scabbard. 

"Excuse me. I'm gonna go and practice solo for a little bit. Now that I'm no longer limited to that dumb system, I have a few things I wanna test." 

Lisbeth and Ayame nodded and let her walk off. As for themselves, they hadn't really talked to each other, this was the perfect time to do so. 

"So, do you know what to do know that we're done here?" Instead of bouncing into normal conversation, Lisbeth was more interested in their plans to leave seeing as the town was under control and in a good balance now. 

"Actually, there was something happening in the capital city. There's a tournament happening in maybe two months during the Summer Festival, do you think Alaska would be interested in something like that?" 

Beta then appeared next to the Oni and jumped into her lap curling up in his small form. She guessed he did that because she was naturally more warm than anywhere else. Of course, the spell cast on this shrine didn't let snow it so it was always a good room temperature but he might've just wanted to be a little warmer. 

"Alaska? Come on, you know all of us would want to enter something like that." 

"...True. But, I feel like it might be unfair for me to enter...?" She was stupidly strong and didn't want to smash the competition into oblivion. 

"This is happening in the capital during a festival? This is attracting warriors from all over to take part, this isn't just some small thing, I'm sure there's gonna be some worthwhile competition for all of us there?" Lisbeth simply batted Ayame's worries away with proper thinking. 

"You're right!" Ayame looked more resolute, "We should all enter!" Ayame liked the idea the most and Lisbeth gladly smiled along.

The booming sound of thunder and then the crack of lightning almost made them jump out of their skin but they already knew who was the cause of such a thing. 

"Oh, but speaking of that, I need to go and collect some things out in the woods, mostly animals so I can cook meals before we leave." Lisbeth stood up and grabbed all her weapons from behind her. 

"Yeah? Do you want me to help you?" Ayame would happily help out in hunting. 

"Hm, no. Actually, Alaska wanted something from you. She was asking if you had a katana she could have?" Lisbeth gave the question and Ayame stood up herself. 

They both knew she was a weapon collector at this point, Ayame should've seen this coming and had something prepared for her before they left but, with easy access to the underworld, she'd have something ready before they left for the week. She told Lisbeth of her plans and they left the estate together but Ayame quickly went down to Hell leaving Lisbeth to start her hunting adventure. 

It's actually been a while since she's done any hunting but she's more than ready to get it started. She planned to bring whatever she got back purely with her own strength or planned to call Beta and have him snap it back to where they were, it all really depended on what she caught. 

The cold weather meant most things were either hibernating or hiding, nothing of significance would probably be out at the moment. So, she thinks she might just snap up a few rabbits and call it a day. 

Though, while out in nature, she had her rifle in her hands, muffled screams made her head turn around. As strange as it was to see, a bunch of men running with women, bags, and swords was a sight literally no upstanding citizen wanted to see, they didn't take notice of Lisbeth and so she leisurely walked behind them following them to wherever they were going. 

It wasn't a long walk to find those men typing up and shoving the three captive women into the back of a cart for transportation. The bags they were carrying were also of importance as they tucked those away but what the men didn't expect to find was Lisbeth to be standing just a few feet away from them watching the whole scene unfold. 

The five guys looked at each other in confusion, they didn't know what to do about her or what to do with her. But, the census quickly decided that she had seen too much, and the leader of the group started walking towards her with a bit of pace in his step. 

"There's no point in asking questions. You just need to die." 

He had no idea what the contraption she was holding in her hands was but, with magic, dragons, and shit like talking swords. Whatever that thing was gonna do, it wasn't gonna surprise anyone in this world, really. 

He drew his sword in a flash and swung it directly at Lisbeth as a vine wrapped around her arm and down her gun. She countered his sword swing with a slap of her weapon and before he could follow up with another strike, she shoved the barrel into his stomach making him slouch over from the pain. 

She didn't remove her hand from the grip as she cracked him in the face with her elbow and shot him twice with her rifle, of course when she looked up, the other few men were completely ensnared by flaming vines. She snapped her fingers and a root shot from the tree they were next to sending a line right through all of their heads. 

Another snap and it grew deadly spikes then everything retracted leaving the men to fall to the floor, dead. She walked over to the back of the wagon and looked to see that there was a lot more here than she thought. 

Six girls and a lot of bags, if she had to guess, it might be largely illegal items and stolen goods. She cut the women free and then got to inspecting her recent catch, and it was just as expected. 

"Wow, this is a lot of drugs and weapons..." 

There were even a few slave bind scrolls among the stuff here. This was all for illegal activity but there was something that caught her eye and it was a weapon, it was only seen because of a certain catgirl who loves weapons far too much. 

She had spotted what looked to be a swordbreaker dagger and knew Alaska was recently looking for a trapping weapon to use as she's used an axe to do it twice. Of course, these items were probably stolen and a lot of it was highly illegal but, this was just a weapon. 

No idea where it came from, no idea what to do with it, but she knows her friend wants it. 

She took it and placed it on her hip with the sheath it was in. 

Once she hopped out of the cart, she started to walk away as vines wrapped around the cart and then exploded making an inferno right in the middle of the woods. 

The fire had also scared out a few animals, specifically, three rabbits. 

Roots shot from the ground below and wrapped up the rabbits and discreetly killing them in the process. 

Lisbeth walked over and right on past as flaming vines sprouted from her back and lifted up the rabbits and slashed them in the correct places to let the blood start draining out of them as she walked. She realized the sight of her must be a strange one or even slightly horrific. 

She was just walking with three rabbits bleeding all over the ground as they hung from what looked to be vines coming from her back, she wouldn't doubt anyone would simply run away at the notion. 

But, that didn't exactly matter to her as, by the time she got back to the shrine, the rabbits were drained of all their blood. She dropped them off to the kitchen and found Alaska still training her ass off behind the place, but, it looked to be more or less playing. 

"This is the Gate of Babylon!" 

Alaska stood with all of her weapons peeking out of dimensional storage pointing forward. It wasn't many as it was just her main sword, the sword she took off Raven, a tomahawk, and a halberd. 

"Alaska, catch." Lisbeth was trying not to laugh at her as she tossed the swordbreaker to Alaska. 

The girl was so deep in her roleplay that she hadn't noticed Lisbeth was even around, she was embarrassed but still caught the dagger out of the air with a hint of red on her face which instantly turned to excitement at the weapon that was now in her hands. 

"A damn swordbreaker! Where did you even find this?! Did you steal it? You had to have stolen it?!" 

"Well, I stole it from people who probably stole it themselves. In other words, thugs transporting all types of illegal things, I took that and burned everything else." Lisbeth's quick explanation was all heard by Alaska but she couldn't really mind it, after all, it sounds like something she would've done too. 

She'd love to test out her swordbreaker but was afraid of damaging any of her blades in the process. Well, she also knew that swordbreaker was more of a figurative sense as this thing was designed to trap swords and not actually break them. Or maybe it got its name as it breaks stances by trapping the weapon, either way, swordbreaker still sounds much cooler. 

"Thank you, Lisbeth! This is honestly so cool! I can't wait to try it out!" 

"Wait, Alaska, look at the bottom of the hilt, is that a magic symbol?" 

Alaska was so caught up in her excitement that she hadn't even realized there was a faint sign of magic coming from a symbol on the hilt. Invisible to the naked eye but AK had a magic sense implanted in her so they could feel it resonating from the symbol. 

It was apparent that this was probably a personal item of someone important, more than likely, some sort of crime boss seeing as the instance they got the weapon in. Alaska told Lisbeth of her findings but they both thought the same thing in response to the weapon... 

"Eh, who cares. What are the chances we'll run into some guy who owns this thing? Just keep it."  Even Lisbeth found it far-fetched to think they'd encounter the real owner of this weapon and besides, it's not like it'd stop them anyway. 

"That I will do. I'd like to see them try and take this thing from me!" Alaska cast Symbol Nullification which was another skill from AK and got rid of any trace that this was someone else's. 

She tossed it in storage and simply went on with her day with Lisbeth and Ayame while they made plans for leaving. Which was to be very soon, they were hoping it would be smooth and pushed the whole crime family weapon out of their minds as they didn't find it important. 

Or at least, they thought it wouldn't be important...