After the attack of the bear, nobody doubted JB’s power. An iron bear was considered close in power and level to a land drake, and she had killed it in one shot. That morning, JB was met with a few pats on the back and even odder stares than prior.

JB was less focused on this aspect, because they awoke the next morning with another letter carefully placed in their cleavage. They sighed upon noticing it, then plucked it out of their chest and unfurled it.

Dear JB,

Congrats on your first kill and level up! Well, multiple level ups. I didn’t really explain the system well last time, which caused some confusion. I’m here to clean things up for you so you can get back on your mission and kill the other warriors.

I already told you that you would get stronger as you defeated things and completed missions. That fact hasn’t changed. I didn’t tell you what specific areas, which might cause some issues. Your rifle and your soul are inherently tied together as one, and that means that your level ups would affect your body and the rifle. I tweaked this a little just because I thought it would make your job easier.

Most of the power that might have gone to you physically or magically will go to your rifle instead. Your body will remain relatively the same in those terms, but you will be able to take more hits as you get stronger. I also made sure to give a slight preference to your charisma stat, but that shouldn’t become apparent till later. I did give you a new skill- Weapon Recall!

Since you seem so ready to give away your weapon, I decided to give you the ability to recall it if you're ever deprived of it. Simply shout “Recall!” and your .44 Sharp should return right to your palm. You don’t have a visible mana stat, but using recall does drain your mana. Just don’t do it too many times in a row, and you should be good. Oh, and you might want to do a few things before you go after this warrior of mine. I can’t give you any new abilities for a little bit, but killing some monsters should strengthen you. 

Yours Truly,

God.

JB, just like the last time she received a letter, groaned. God’s odd tweaking of the system apparently meant that their body was going to remain static. They felt about the same physical strength as they did in their old life, but that certainly didn’t match with the power that her weapon held. Level, from what JB had surmised, had effects both on the skills and the body of individuals who had higher numbers. She was now an exception to this rule, as all the power which would have gone to her body would now be shoved into her beloved rifle. 

Sighing, she decided to test out God’s new skill. She got up and placed her rifle against the side of the wagon, then stood ten paces back from it. 

“Recall!” She shouted loudly. As the words left her mouth, the rifle disappeared from its location and reappeared right in her grasp. Now that she knew that her body would remain the same, it was extremely helpful knowing she always had her weapon at hand.

Well, as long as she could speak or use magic. 

I should probably inform the others. There’s probably a way to word this as to not arouse too much suspicion.

“Ah. A cursed soul bound weapon.” Eric said with an eerie smile as the wagon bounced along the road. “Never thought I’d see those two ever connected.”

JB’s explanation was actually quite simple. She said that the reason that her staff was so powerful was because it took all of the power that would usually go to her and used it to power itself up. The concept wasn’t foreign to this world, as there were several known weapons which functioned on this same principle. There was one particularly famous example which Eric had referenced, being the “Bane of Light”.

The Bane of Light was an infamous sword used by the fourteenth king of Marlia, better known as the Sword King. The jet black steel sword grew stronger every time it killed, and its power helped the king dominate the lands. The cursed sword wasn’t without downside, however. Not only did the sword increase in strength and power, it also had the rather bothersome side effect of increasing the wielder's libido. The fourteenth king was extremely virulent to the point where his name as the Sword King ended up turning into a double entendre. His lineage and long list of bastard children was so numerous that the succession war after his death was called the Orgy of Blades. 

Eric’s visit was, just like the one they were currently on, another mercantile endeavor. However, since Eric was one for sightseeing, and the Bane of Light was held in a public display run by the local government to attract tourism, he decided to go take a look. The sword was so heavily guarded and its bonds so fortified that he doubted anyone, even the most cunning thief could steal it. Even then, he did note that simply being around the blade made him feel rather hot and bothered. 

JB made sure to note that her soul bounded rifle had no such effect on others, at least to her knowledge. The basic story that Elian had decided upon was that when JB was a child, the rifle was soul bonded to her with the ability to sap off her levels and take them as power for itself. That was why the rifle was so strong despite her being level twelve.

She decided to run with that.

“Still, kind of a horrible thing to do to a child, no? Not allowing them to really gain power themselves and forcing them to rely on a weapon for their entire life?” Eric waxed poetically. A man who owned a slave didn’t really have the right to judge others actions, although JB concurred that it would be extremely messed up.

Bart jumped ahead of the carriage to add in his own commentary.

“I mean without it, we would all be dead. Speaking of, how many levels did you get from killing that bear? Something like that should at least provide a level or two if you’re only at twelve.”

God did say I got multiple levels, but I don’t know how many.

“How many would you guess?” She asked playfully. 

“Uhhhh… 3?”

“Correct!”

Bart pumped his fist in satisfaction, proud that he had guessed the levels on a whim. Meanwhile, JB was extremely happy that her little ruse worked.

“Well, I guess that means the next time we run into an iron bear, you can dispatch it even quicker.”

“Of course.”

Two days later, the group would run into a second iron bear. The day after that, another. And finally, on the day before they arrived at the capital city, they ran into a baby iron bear who the other adventurers defeated and proceeded to strip for parts. 

This was because the local militia, which usually took care of the dangerous creatures that roamed near the roads, was out of commission due to a lack of funding. The meeting which was intended to decide on the yearly budget had been undecided due to the ensuing brawl putting every lord out of commission. Since the fight had every single lord as a participant, the brutality of the brawl left no one standing. The decision over the budget was delayed two weeks in order to decide on central combatants and for all of the lords to be in good enough health to resume policy making.

The city of Gar was, by all standards, a rather generic capital city. This was by design. In JB’s previous world existed the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. For Gar, this was actually the opposite. The majority of the structures, from the walls to the castle to cramped back alleys were constructed within the span of a day. 

The city that existed before Gar was destroyed three months prior to JB’s arrival during the largest party in the nation’s history. The party was in celebration of the highest lord’s fortieth birthday. As a surprise the other high lords had decided to introduce to the citizenry a new brew of alcohol which was far more powerful than anything the world had ever seen. Barrels upon barrels of it were provided to the citizenry. 

The mind altering effects of this brew were so strong they made heroin look like caffeine pills. This, in itself, would not cause the erasure of the previous city. However, rumors of the drink spread far and wide prior to the occasion, and several renowned and extremely powerful adventurers decided to come. Combine this with Gar’s culture of argumentative brawling, and it is extremely easy to see how a couple inebriated adventurers wielding the powers of entire armies could reduce a city to rubble. Luckily for the citizenry of Gar, geomancy had become a prolific enough magic that a few dozen high level mages could restore a city within a single day. 

This was still the first real city that JB had seen in this world, and that was enough to satisfy them. They would probably be spending some time here as they attempted to get closer to this other warrior of god, and hopefully get strong enough to face them. She had no idea what powers they held, but they must have been strong to defeat the horrors that plagued this land, including the demon lords that God had spoken about. 

They would also need to make some money, since they lacked it. 

Eric, being ever the samaritan, offered a career path to JB. One of them included becoming one of his personal guards, as it would be foolish to ignore the potential utility of someone with such destructive power. JB had politely declined that offer, as she was determined to stay in this city as long as the other warrior was here. She also hated the man’s guts as a slave owner and planned on putting a bullet between his head someday. She’d noted earlier on that putting a bullet in between someone’s eyes was currently impossible, as her rifle didn’t really leave anything behind. The sentiment held nonetheless.

The entry to the city was a unique experience, as the gate security was extremely belligerent towards JB in particular. He’d grabbed her makeshift guild card like a two week dead pigeon and had frowned at it so deeply that one could mistake it for a stroke.

This was because the guard had just lost an argument, and was currently doubting his prospects of ever reproducing in the future. Not that he was much of a looker to begin with, but he would have at least preferred to have the opportunity to create more pug faced children that would carry his last name. It didn’t help that JB fit his type down to the letter, yet stared at him the same way one might look at an overfilled chamber pot.

“Miss… Jaybee? Your card is quite unusual. Mind if I take a look?” He said, very aware that he hadn’t checked any of the other adventurer’s cards.

“Why would you need to check her card? I’ve already vouched for her and have the letter confirming her as a quest-taker.” Eric protested, hoping to move past this unsightly guard and enter the city. 

He shook his head before trudging his way into the back of the checkpoint towards a small magical device which checks the authenticity of guild cards. The device was so unused that he had to blow a thick layer of dust off of it just to tap her card onto its smooth black top. After tapping it, the machine whizzed and hummed as its arcane circuits studied the guild card, until a happy blue colored light appeared in the top right corner of the machine. Shrugging, he took the card and handed it back to JB, looking somewhat defeated. 

It was rather fortunate that he left the room, as not too long after checking the card, the machine began to sputter and smoke as its system began to fry. The card reader was an old device, and the makeshift card was such an odd creation that the machine simply decided death was better than completing the process of authentication. The light that originally showed blue went through every conceivable cover of the rainbow as it let out one final death rattle and fell silent. 

“Thank you.” She said with a smug grin. The wagon trudged forward with its guards in tow, and JB finally arrived in the same city as one of the men she was given the divine order to kill. She hopped out of the cart and decided to walk beside Elian and his party, only to notice odd sounds coming on a nearby street. As the wagon drew closer, she saw that a crowd had formed in its direction, and a sensation in her gut told her that she should go look. Shuffling through the crowd was quite difficult, as JB was short and the crowd was very tightly packed.

As she made her way to the edge of the crowd, she finally saw what all the hustle and bustle was about. On a wooden platform, a man was bent over naked and being flogged by what looked like a member of the city guard. That wasn’t the odd part. The odd part is that the man currently being flogged was Asian. 

Spedbop

Yeah, writing jokes for this series is fun. My current mindset is this- If this series does good and has strong enough reception, I'll move to posting on my main account. I have 2-ish chapters written, and I'll post those later. Speaking of, if you would like to see the series I actually care about (relatively), please read Edge of Freedom.