Chapter 26: Regretless

Kalender’s eyes blinked so fast they were in a state of quantum superposition between open and closed.

When Page looked, they were closed. “Hm? Kal, you okay?”

“Huh? Ah, yeah, I’m fine!” He bent down and dug through the small pile of weapons, looking for something a bit more relaxing to test out. Page’s new Companion Skill, after all, sounded like it should be a topic over dinner.

He sorted through an explosive crossbow, a suppressed air rifle, an electrified machete—all the stuffings of a fantasy zombie hunter squad, just minus the Picatinny rails. None of these are relaxing at all!

Now, he wasn’t a craftsman, but when he discovered that magic accepted most instructions with engineering precision, things like packing an angry fireball into a thumb-sized clay tip became ridiculously easy to do. He went a bit crazy with the technique.

He had a literal cardboard box with magic circle pencil scratches where he dumped dirt into, shook it around a bit, and when he opened it, out came explosive bolts.

He looked up to Page. She looked really happy with her staff, and he didn’t want to take that away from her by making her drain her MP on some for-fun weapons that 12-year-olds routinely come up with after playing a certain four-player, first-person, zombie shoot-’em-up game.

He didn’t notice the Clerics approaching him.

“M’lord,” addressed one. He turned around, surprised at the four who were towering over him.

“Y-yes?”

They all got on one knee, bowing their heads and punching the ground. “We respectfully request to be armed with the first magic weapon demonstrated! In fact, all of my sisters who are yet to come must have one! Our survival rate will be majestic!” Ah, the handgun? Wait, ‘survival rate’? “Furthermore, we cannot help but to be curious about your other magic weapons! We request the honor of pla—testing them ourselves!”

They just really wanna play, huh? Well, cut ’em some slack, the Priestess barely gave them any breathing room during training. As far as thinly-veiled excuses to play around went, this one had some valid things going for it.

The four Clerics were an elite squad among the Temple of Minimine. By sheer dumb luck, one of them had archery skills, another had blade skills, another had scout skills, and the last was their leader—an all-rounder with a Leadership skill.

They all got their respective specialist weapons, except the leader, who just went to test the handgun.

“You don’t want anything?” “This ‘handgun’ suffices my purposes, m’lord.”

Alright. Your loss, I guess.

The four Clerics soon took to demonstrating their natural finesse with their chosen weapons.

The one with the electric machete did a little Blade Dance, but she complained about the strange balance of the weapon—seemed that she was more used to orthodox swords. Well, an electrified longsword sounds rad, too. Kalender told her he’d do her a little service if she really wanted it. The Cleric bowed and, with utmost respect and two fists upon the earth (may the goddesses above witness this), asked him to do so.

The scout took to outright disappearing and assassinating a passing target dummy—several times in a row, in fact. The smug look on her face when the leader asked “Aren’t you going to demonstrate, yet?” said it all.

The archer grumbled a little about how real archers used real bows, not some dinghy little crossbow that you couldn’t even draw without the help of a goat’s foot, pweh. It somewhat hurt Kalender’s feelings when she picked up a random branch and strung it together with bits of grass, but at least she took interest in the explosive bolts. She retrieved some sort of half-tube-like implement from her equipment that allowed her to shoot the undersized bolts from a full-sized bow.

For a moment, Kalender thought he went cross-eyed, because he was sure she just shot one bolt, but it turned into five explosions downrange. Volley tended to do that. It was a common archery skill, but without magic or some type of homing skill, it was—was—useless for individual archers like her.

In the midst of this, Kalender looked over his shoulder and witnessed a Priestess Tak scrambling to resume her usual priestly poise. He could’ve sworn she was seething with envy just a second ago. She started walking towards where he was, making sure to keep her eyes trained on the demonstration rather than himself.

Well, there’s still one left in the pile… He wasn’t sure about giving this one away. It’s not that it was a disgrace, but … he just didn’t know if human beings should be handling it.

“Interesting magic weapons, m’lord,” Tak remarked. She was now standing right beside him. “I will admit, you were right to suppose we would be the ones surprised. Rather, isn’t that another one you haven’t demonstrated?”

Kalender looked, and they met eyes—passionately appraising each other, like a parent glaring at a two-year-old who really, really wanted to hold a knife.

“This is a dangerous one…” Kalender replied.

Oh?

“It’ll hurt the unprepared.”

Ohoh? Are you teasing me? “Then why bring it here?”

Kalender winced. “I didn’t think there would be anyone else.”

“Does it have anything to do with this?”

Kalender looked, and Tak was kneeling down in front of the forbidden weapon—with a pair of shades in her hand.

“It has everything to do with that,” Kalender replied. “I only have two of those. Anyone not wearing them will see God Himself.”

His wording caused Tak to stand and distance herself from the ominous tube. “That is so much dangerous?” She couldn’t believe him. “You have caused me much surprise, but there are some things you simply cannot—no, must not exaggerate.”

She played around with the shades in her hand. Shades did not exist in this world, but it was clearly some type of eyewear. Looking through it, however, and there was almost nothing she could see. She raised it against the sun, and only then was there an image. Why are these so dark? They are almost pointless.

“You still gonna insist?” Kalender asked.

Tak replied with a testing glare. “I must see with my own eyes.”

You won’t be seeing again for a while, though…

[+3 Excitement] A certain someone was listening in from right over their shoulders this whole time.

Kalender saw her. “Oh, perfect, why don’t you—”

Tak put her hand on Kalender’s shoulder, oozing ‘No, it’s my turn.’ He immediately pulled up his status and sighed really hard—as the tension escaped him, because nothing happened. He wasn’t getting a new Companion today, no. Six cuffs worked this time.

“A-alright,” he relented. Tak’s eyes sparkled.

***

One pair of shades went to Kalender, while the only other pair of shades went to Tak. He’d have to make more, at some point—or maybe put together a different spell so he didn’t have to use any at all. Page and the Clerics had to turn around and hide behind an impromptu wall, unfortunately.

“If you turn around, you’ll go blind,” Kalender warned them.

Tak shouldered the bazooka-like thing on her shoulder. There wasn’t any specific reason for it to look like a bazooka. Kalender could’ve made it into a pistol if he wanted, but he really wanted to drive home the fact that it was a very dangerous weapon. For the same reason, he also tossed in a few rocks to make it unnecessarily heavy. All hail product design.

The Priestess herself could feel the power from the sheer weight of the weapon. Of course, the weight per se wasn’t a problem. She wasn’t Level 24 for nothing. She worked out regularly—twice a week, in fact—on top of her job making her exert herself on the regular.

There were two handles, a vertical one below the business end of the weapon, behind a small shield that protected the user’s hand, and a horizontal one sticking out of the side to help the user stabilize it as it rested on one’s shoulder. It looked funny to her, at first, but once she bore the weapon as burden and boon, she silently thanked Kalender for their strategic placement.

“What now?” she asked.

“Push 10 MP into it!” Kalender shouted from the sidelines. “It’ll run for one second when you do that! Make sure you don’t take off your shades before it runs out!”

He promptly got into cover behind the same earth wall where Page and the Clerics were. He peeked, only his little shades and blue hair visible from Tak’s position. He gave a little thumbs up.

Heh. It’s just 10 MP. What could possibly harm me with just 10 MP? Tak once or several times in succession took a boulder to the face. The magic barriers she casts were famous just for that reason within the Temple.

“{Wrap me in a shield},” she chanted. She aimed the weapon at the target dummy downrange and, just to entertain Kalender, lowered her shades from her head to her eyes.

She couldn’t see a damn thing, but as long as she fired the weapon, it should suffice.

He said it would run for one second using 10 MP. I suppose I can fire this for a few more seconds just to experience it in full. When she fired it, she saw—yes, through the outright welding goggles she was wearing, she saw the most intense light magic she had ever seen.

Pretty… Several seconds had passed, and the sight still left her entranced. Not even Kalender’s concerned “How much MP do you have?!” could get through to her.

She, the devout, to-the-letter commandment enforcer, wavered, as all mortals did, and opened her eyes to temptation—to something different. To partake of the forbidden fruit, no matter the consequence that those of naive minds could, no doubt, comprehend in the back of their cognizant faculties, was and always would be a once-in-a-lifetime delicacy.

She lifted her shades—and dropped the weapon.

“Tak!” Kalender shouted. The laser had stopped firing. He sprinted over to the Priestess who was rolling around, crying “I see! I see the light!”

***

A little bit of healing magic returned Tak’s vision, but she swore she could still see a ghostly streak everywhere she looked. It’s okay. It is but proof that I have been touched by the light.

It was already quite late in the afternoon—probably two hours of light left—so Kalender and Page packed up their fun package and bid goodbye. Kalender promised to prepare more weapons for the Clerics, which just left him with the problem of coming up with enough MP to actually make them all.

Guess I’ll be up all night, huh… His base MP regeneration was at 1 MP/min, which was pretty typical on Gaia. Forming a whole handgun from a bunch of iron and wood scrap took 15 MP, while making its small bullets from raw dirt took 0.5 MP, each. He could just distribute personal bullet-making magic circles for the handgun users, which took the whole of a minute to draw on a piece of paper, so he didn’t need to make the bullets himself.

Multiply that by 20 Clerics, plus Tak, himself, Jyn, and Page, and he’d need to spend 360 MP in total. With just his MP regen, it would take six hours to make them all. He also needed to make more explosive bolts for the archer—at 10 MP each, and with ten bolts, that’s another 100 MP, or another two-ish hours. He sighed.

They picked up Jyn at the barracks. She’d apparently just woken up, so they had good timing.

“Let’s bring Page to her place first before we go back to ours?” Kalender suggested. Jyn nodded in agreement, but…

“A-actually…” Page scratched her cheek and tried not to make eye contact. “I-I was wondering if I could crash at your place…”

Kalender choked, trying to cover up the fact that he was blown away by just how cute she was just now. “Y-yeah, that sounds okay.”

“It won’t work,” Jyn shook her head. “We won’t fit.”

Kalender tilted his head, then realized it. “Ahh, right… There’s only one bed, after all.”

“T-that’s okay, too…” Page replied.

“Ah, I mean, it’s too small. We seriously won’t fit,” Kalender said. “I don’t think we can ask for another bed, either.”

Page fidgeted. “T-then come by my place!” She looked at Kalender. “You’re going to be working on making more weapons for the Clerics, right? So you’ll need us two’s help!”

True. We all have the same MP regen, so eight hours’ll become … three hours? They could all eat dinner and sleep on time, even.

Jyn’s ears picked up something new there. “Kalender, she said ‘weapons.’ I need an explanation.”

“Ah, right, you see…”

He and Page unravelled the bag of goodies, and he began explaining what each one did—and what happened to Tak when she used the laser bazooka.

“A ‘laser,’ you call it? It sounds powerful and convenient, being light magic, but as you say…”

He considered switching to infrared or ultraviolet lasers. Those were invisible, but it just didn’t have the same impact, and impact was everything!

“Well, anyway, I’m kinda curious about how Page’s place looks like, anyway. Let’s go?”

They left the barracks after thanking Commander Tana for her hospitality. Soon, they once again found themselves in the cleaner part of town, stopping in front of a homey house.

“You have a house?” Jyn muttered. “I-I’m sorry. I was just surprised.”

Page giggled. “I’m renting it together with Lens, actually.”

“Oh, what, she’s your roommate?” Kalender remarked.

The door opened. A familiar pair of glasses popped out.

“Oh no, all three of you at once?” she gasped, covering her mouth.

Page rolled her eyes. “We’ll—” … be making noise throughout the night—no! I can’t say that! “—They’ll be needing a bit of space to work.” Wait, that wasn’t good, either!

“Heh. Sure,” she smirked. “Are you gonna be giving ’em a hand too?”

Page was just annoyed right now. “Oh? Wanna join in?”

Jyn and Kalender were just quiet. These two in front of them were … very different people at home.

Kalender sighed. “{Flick}.” “—Ow!” “{Flick}.” “—Owie!”

“I like seeing you both being at home, but please look at what I’m carrying,” he said, smiling, sweating, and holding up the world on his shoulders—it was just a sack of broken swords and chair legs scavenged from the back alleys, but it might as well have been the same.

The floorboards creaked, and the rafters holding up the roof were bare naked, but things felt solid. There were two bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room, and one washroom. It had a water and sewer connection, which was to be expected for the nicer part of town.

Best of all, Page’s bedroom had a lot of space.

The room itself wasn’t amazing, but for someone who’s been living here for the last two years, there wasn’t a single spot of accumulation of trinkets and things that one would expect. She liked to keep things minimal.

Lens decided to do them a favor and took over cooking dinner tonight. The remaining three went to work manufacturing things.

… Not yet. Kalender huddled together with Jyn and Page on the floor. Once again, one bed was just not enough—and they were all still dirty. They’d rather not mess up Page’s sheets.

“Page reached 100 Excitement just a while ago.”

At this, Jyn narrowed her eyes, and there was a [+1 Excitement]. He showed them her options.

***

[Please select a new skill for Companion: Page Turner]

Lasting Experience: Passive skill. Excitement earned is reduced. All Excitement loss is nullified.

No Inhibitions: Passive skill. Be your true self.

Crescendo: Active skill. Single-activation. No MP usage. Convert one point of Excitement into one temporary stat point which can be assigned to any existing skills. Each temporary stat point gained from Crescendo will last for one hour.

***

“I’m personally thinking No Inhibitions sounds good,” Kalender said. “I think it’ll have the same effect as Jyn’s Stand as Equals—if that’s what you want?”

He looked to Page. She smiled back, but shook her head. “I think I’m good. I already resolved myself to go on an adventure, and I’m already sure that Kal’s a nice guy. Even if … there’s the charm things going on, not only Kal, but I trust Jyn enough to see me through.”

Beautiful words. Kalender clapped, and Page took a small bow.

“It also sounds suspicious,” Jyn remarked. The two looked at her. She explained, “The System never lies, but it can obfuscate. This makes no mention of nullifying charm effects. Rather, it sounds as if it is unleashing something.”

"“Huh?”" Page and Kalender made that sound, then looked to each other. They both realized that it implied something … a lot serious. Should I be excited? They both had that same thought.

“On the other hand, there is also the possibility that Page is actually a sealed goddess, and choosing this option will free her,” Jyn continued. The two looked at her like she’d been replaced. She chuckled. “What? If I am to steel my psyche against the unexpected, I must be at least this much creative.”

Jyn’s comments about the matter turned it into a minor headache with major consequences, so they talked around the topic for a while.

The other options were basically some variation of ‘Excitement is Power,’ which was just mildly interesting. Lasting Experience would keep Page from being dependent on Kalender’s presence, while Crescendo sounded like a massive power-up each time spicy things happened.

“We cannot be complicit,” Jyn warned about Crescendo. “If the situation becomes desperate, Page will no longer earn Excitement, instead feeling despair.”

The most conservative option was Lasting Experience.

… But the possibility of Page being a sealed goddess was just too tempting. Why did Jyn have to suggest that? Damn it all…

“You really don’t have a clue about this?” Kalender asked the maybe-goddess.

“Not one, no,” Page scratched her cheek—then she stopped scratching. “It might explain some gaps in my memory, though.”

“The plot thickens…” Kalender murmured. “In your childhood?”

“In my childhood.”

“Of course, of course…” he murmured once more. “Hey, wouldn’t Maid Sherry know something about that?”

Just then there was a knock on the door.

“Page! There’s a Maid here asking for you!” Lens’s shout filtered through. How convenient.

Kalender got up and ran over to greet Sherry, which surprised the Maid. She’d thought he was still wary of her. He sort of was, but he went to her for a reason.

“We need your help,” he said. Sherry picked up on his distress, mixed with sincerity. “We may or may not be unsealing something in Page after this.”

Oh? This was what her assignment was about. Of course, no one actually knew what was supposed to happen. She was told to observe, and “act on your own discretion”—which was code for “just wing it,” for which she was happy enough to oblige. She never liked constrictive bosses, coiling around her work like a snake, as if they knew better how to do it.

She entered Page’s bedroom, finding the owner and Jyn on the floor. Kalender joined them, and Sherry, pulled in by the negative space of a slot in the circle waiting just for her, sat down with them, Page to her left and Kalender to her right.

“Maid Sherry, nice to see you’re healthy,” Jyn greeted with a little bit of edge.

“Same to you, Knight Jyn.” Sherry smiled. “So? What can I do for Miss Page?”

“Can you tell us anything about her childhood?” Kalender asked. “She says she has gaps in her memory in her childhood. I mean, who doesn’t, but…”

“It feels like I should be remembering more than … I do now,” Page explained. She took Sherry’s hand into hers. “Please! You served my father for a long time. Can you tell me anything about my missing memories?”

Sherry thought back. “You were a very active child, is all I can say,” she said. “Nothing that I find inherently strange about a child. You would run around all day, and then promptly run out of energy—ah! There was this one time you climbed up the windows of the mansion, all the way to the roof!” She chuckled at the memory.

Page tilted her head, but with the most confounded eyes. “I-I did what?”

“Hm? You climbed the windows up until the roof.”

“Do you mean—I climbed up the face of the mansion?!”

“Yes! Oh, that was such fun…”

“W-was I hurt?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Another Maid eventually recovered you once you reached the top. You seemed to be having much fun, as well.”

I did that? “I don’t remember that!”

It didn’t sound like it was traumatic or anything, so selective amnesia was out the window. It sounded oddly like Page to be like that, to be honest.

“Were there any other incidents like that?” Kalender asked Sherry.

“There were some, but that one topped them all,” she replied.

Kalender met eyes with everyone, one by one, even Sherry. “Any objections to choosing No Inhibitions?”

Page raised her hand. “Isn’t it better for me to get more powerful, faster?” She was thinking of getting Crescendo for the sake of the party.

Before anyone could answer, Sherry did. “It is not, Miss Page.”

There was a change in the air—something gentler. Sherry continued. “The only ones who survive the path to power are the ones who do not lose themselves in it.” She looked up to Page with a kind smile. “Power is not the goal. Know that, and you will become more powerful.”

You know what? She was right. Excitement was the goal.

Page nodded and looked back to Kalender, showing him an accepting smile.

“No other objections?” he said. “Going once? Going twice?” After scanning everyone a final time, he announced, “Alright! No Inhibitions and no regrets!”

He selected the Skill, and the change reflected in his status.

***

Name: Kalender
Age: 17
Occupation: Champion of Reincarnation
Lvl. 2 Human
HP: <ERROR>
MP: 20/20

[Skills]

All-Language Fluency (MAX)
Interpersonal Bubble (1/10)
Access Collection (1/1) (Temp)

[Companions]

Minimine (Flagged)
Vice-Goddess of Reincarnation
Affection: 70

Jyn (Sworn)
Knight of Lyrica
Lvl. 11 Human
Respect: 155
Companion Skills: Stand as Equals (1/5).

Page Turner (Flagged)
Librarian of Lyrica
Lvl. 7 Human
Excitement: 109
Companion Skills: No Inhibitions (1/1).

[Blessings]

[Blessing of Reincarnation: Champion]
…

[Blessing of the ###### God: Like Moths to a Flame]
…

***

Everyone looked to Page. Sadly, she wasn’t shining with divinity or anything. On the other hand, she didn’t look nor move any differently.

“Page?” Kalender said.

“Are you sure we can’t be together? Oh, why’d I say that… Ah, well, it’s not like you’ll hate me for it, so I guess it’s fine…”

Lens knocked on the door and poked her head in. “Everyone, dinner’s ready!”

Page looked to her. “Oh, yay! Wanna get in bed with me after?”

The question had physical knockback, as Lens jerked back. “Wha—hello, Page, is that you?”

Kalender shook his head. “Lens, I’m sorry. This is the real her.”

Well, no matter what happened, Page was still Page, and he’d still walk with her any day.