1.
The Dolores estate.
It was nighttime.
The estate was surrounded by tall stone walls, and beyond the back gate lay an expansive garden.
The lamps stood in rows over the manicured lawn, and just as Duchess Dolores had ordered, every one of them was lit.
At the center of the garden stood a gazebo.
A place with a vine-covered roof, wooden benches, and a table.
Sebas was sitting there.
A teacup in hand, letting the night breeze wash over him.
He had always enjoyed being here at this hour.
It was the time when he checked that the estate lights had been put out and organized the next day’s preparations in his head.
But today was a little different.
'Please, Sebas.'
When he lowered his gaze from the gazebo, darkness filled his vision, along with the newly built annex at the edge of the garden.
More precisely, it was a workshop hastily converted from a storage shed.
A building the Duchess had urgently ordered constructed through a crystal ball.
'A forge for a child...'
Orange light leaked through the workshop window.
The lamp was on. That meant the child was inside.
The Duchess's message had been as follows.
'If he gets frightened, or if he sheds tears, please comfort him.'
Sebas set down his teacup and looked toward the workshop.
A child who would be frightened.
Would he really be?
Sebas had served the masters of House Dolores for three generations now.
He had seen it earlier, in front of the estate.
The look in that child's eyes when a servant had reached out to take his hammer.
The eyes he showed as he instinctively hid the hammer had been the eyes of someone protecting what was his.
A child's eyes? How could a child possess such tenacious eyes?
Obsession, and a deep emotion bound to something...
He had seen countless people over the three generations he had served, but he could not believe those were the eyes of a thirteen-year-old.
Still, the Duchess had told him to do it.
Sebas took a sip of tea and quietly waited.
After all, the Duchess herself was likely listening from the second-floor window.
Then—
A sound came from the workshop.
"Yeehaw!!"
"...?"
Sebas flinched.
Was he crying?
Just as he half rose from his seat to assess the situation—
"Yeah, yeah! Nice~ Perfect, you, you, you little bastard!"
"...?"
Incomprehensible shouts filled the garden.
He did not seem to be crying, at least.
Was blacksmithing work normally like that?
Wondering if it was some important step in the process, Sebas tilted his head.
"This is it! This is it!!!"
"...."
...It seemed there was no need to comfort him.
Sebas sat back down and drank his cooling tea.
2.
After putting Ruby to bed,
Dolores walked out of the room.
The hallway was quiet. Through the window, she could see the garden lamps.
"...."
Dolores headed to the end of the hall.
Not toward her own room, but the opposite direction.
There was one room in this estate that no one could open.
Not Sebas, Ruby, nor any of the servants.
Dolores alone could open this door.
Click.
The magically locked door came undone.
And the door opened.
It was dark inside. There was only one window, and its curtains were not drawn.
"...."
There was only one thing in the room.
A rope hanging from the ceiling, bathed in moonlight.
A circular knot was tied at its end.
She had made this room on the day she decided there was no point in living any longer.
Back when her veins were frozen, her senses were fading, and her sworn sisters were climbing high above while she alone stood still.
This room had been her end.
Perhaps the fact that she could end everything at any time had paradoxically allowed her to endure.
She had endured until Ruby came.
After Ruby came, she had thought she would endure only until the child grew up.
That had been Dolores's deadline.
When you set a deadline, you can survive another day.
But—
Slice!
At Dolores's gesture, the rope before her was severed. It was difficult to tell what had cut it.
It fell to the floor with a soft thud.
"...."
Dolores looked down at the rope on the floor.
She did not look at it for long.
The moonlight illuminated her gloves.
The sun emblem engraved upon them drank in that light and gleamed.
She still had a reason to live. There was still something she needed to confirm.
That alone was enough.
Dolores left the room.
Click.
The door locked again.
Perhaps this room would never open again.
And the place she headed for was—
"...Lionel."
I hope he is not pushing himself too hard.
The miracle that child had given her...
It would not be an exaggeration to say that it had already repaid most of its worth in advance.
So it was all right if he did not push himself.
There was plenty of time.
Tap tap tap tap...
Forgetting all decorum, Dolores hurried toward the window.
And in the bedroom at the center of the hall,
Ruby, who was still awake, heard the footsteps passing through the corridor.
Whenever her master entered that room, she always remained there for at least an hour.
And whenever she came back from that room, her footsteps were slow.
Today was different.
'She came out... quickly.'
Under the covers, Ruby's lips curled up slightly.
3.
Dolores.
Do not expect too much from me.
"I told you not to expect anything."
I rose from my seat, spread both arms, and looked to the sky.
Then I extended both index fingers and pointed them upward.
─────────────────
[Polishing Total]
[Marvelous] [59]
[Excellent] [5]
[Normal] [0]
[Bad] [0]
[Terrible] [0]
─────────────────
"Sorry, but do not expect me to fail."
A message to the haters, including those anonymous Rhythm Game Gallery users who said I was dead.
I am still alive.
Even if I'm in a somewhat different world now.
─────────────────
[Final Success Rate: 36%]
[Failure Rate: 64%]
─────────────────
【Attempting...】
─────────────────
【Enhancement Successful】
─────────────────
[Work Gloves][☆☆☆☆☆]
[Enhancement +18 → +19]
─────────────────
Pop!
The gloves were briefly dyed red.
To be honest, I did not care about enhancing them or anything.
But before I knew it, they were +19.
What was this?
There were a few things I had noticed while enchanting.
First, the difficulty increased as the enhancement level rose.
The time limit got longer, it required more concentration, and the speed increased.
I called these circles hit circles. In falling-note rhythm games, they were called notes, but these were circles, so hit circles was right.
Anyway, the circles closed in faster with every level.
After +10, they became noticeably faster.
And that was how I ended up with this thing before I knew it.
─────────────────
[Work Gloves][☆☆☆☆☆]
[Enhancement +19]
─────────────────
So these were basically +20 attack grinding gloves, right?
Enhancement +19 on trash gear without even a single star.
Hmm... Had I perhaps wasted my effort?
No. It was practice.
And it had been fun.
I opened the enchantment log.
Apparently, something like this existed.
[Enchantment Log]
[18->19] [Failure]
[18->19] [Failure]
[18->19] [Failure]
[18->19] [Failure]
[18->19] [Success!]
Success after five tries.
Breaking through a 36% chance in five tries was not lucky, exactly, but it was not terribly unlucky either.
Well, I had come this far.
Should I go for +20?
Let's do it just one last time. Dawn was breaking, so I should stop soon.
[Currently on the fifth genuinely, truly, absolutely final attempt.]
[One last one because I'm getting sleepy / one last one because I've used a lot of powder / one last one because I can hear birds now — fifth variation.]
Oh, Yuna.
You're still awake?
[Sob....]
Well, that was that.
[But, Yujin. It looks like there's a chance of destruction starting at +15....]
Oh, right.
There was. Starting at +15, missing the timing increased the chance of destruction.
When I momentarily missed the timing because I sneezed and got a [Terrible], the destruction chance randomly went up by 1%.
Of course, other than that, I had never failed.
What destruction? Destruction does not exist in my dictionary.
[So, what I'm saying is, looking at the difficulty just now, it's getting harder, right? It's absolutely not that I think you can't do it or anything, it's just that we need to show it to Dolores too for risk management, so it's absolutely not that I think you can't do it or anything.]
[What if... you put in just a little, a tiny little bit more powder...?]
"...."
I had reached a conclusion regarding the relationship between the amount of powder and difficulty around two hours ago.
Up to a certain threshold, sprinkling on powder lowered the enchantment's difficulty.
Above a certain amount, the equipment stopped absorbing the powder altogether.
But the biggest problem was this.
Adding powder lowered the difficulty.
"Kim Yuna."
[Y-Yeah?]
"Do you think I'm not good enough?"
[No, no, no, no, it's not thaaat—]
Lower the difficulty?
What kind of nonsense was that?
"Here, I'm going to—"
Tap.
"—reduce the amount of powder instead."
This was it. This was the way for me.
[Warning! Amount is below the recommended enchantment powder quantity.]
[Enhancement +19 → +20]
[Recommended Powder: 3g or more]
Nope.
And—
"Yuna, I haven't said anything because I respect you, but this song is way too creepy."
I was not saying she had to play pop music, but she had been playing nothing but classical-sounding songs nonstop.
The reason I had failed to get an all-perfect—an all-[Marvelous]—was definitely because of the music.
It had been bothering me this whole time that I had not gotten all [Marvelous] ratings.
[Think about it, Yujin... We're in another world. Where would there be pop music...?]
[I just played songs floating around the Inner Tower community....]
"Really? Then I guess it can't be helped."
Inner Tower songs were nuts. They might even be addictive.
"Begin enchantment."
Hummm...
The gloves, stained with red energy, flickered before my eyes.
The enchantment began.
I picked up my hammer with a light heart.
How hard could it possibly be?
[0:02:00]
The time had doubled.
Just as I got the feeling something was seriously wrong—
A hit circle appeared.
But—
"Oh, fuck."
There were two.
Two circles had appeared at once.
They were closing in at the same timing from different positions.
So that was why it warned me.
Until now, no matter how fast the circles were, there had only been one at a time.
No matter how fast they came, I just had to get the sequence right.
But now, the same timing...
Sorry, but even for a situation like this, there was a solution.
There were two notes, but I could play two notes with even one finger.
The best method was to split the beat.
Hit the first 0.2 beats early, then hit the next 0.2 beats late.
That 0.2 beats depended on my senses.
Clang!
Two cleanly split strikes.
There was a technique like this. The context was a little different, but still.
It was called a trill.
Tap-tap!
[Marvelous]
[Marvelous]
Tap-tap!
[Marvelous]
[Marvelous]
"Hahaha!"
I laughed. This actually worked.
For a full two minutes, I hammered away in a state of selfless absorption.
Just as it felt like my body was moving on its own—
─────────────────
[Polishing Total]
[Marvelous] [97]
[Excellent] [10]
[Normal] [1]
[Bad] [0]
[Terrible] [0]
─────────────────
[Final Success Rate: 19%]
[Failure Rate: 81%]
─────────────────
All right, 19%.
There was nothing I could do about the larger share of [Excellent] ratings and that one [Normal].
I was not a metronome, and I did not have two hammers. How was I supposed to get a stream of simultaneous [Marvelous] ratings?
With a trembling heart, I waited.
【Attempting...】
"...."
It was not a probability worth getting my hopes up over.
【Enhancement Successful!】
Pop!
"...!"
The red light around the gloves flickered.
The red slowly faded away from the edges, and green light filled its place.
And the instant that green light enveloped the entire gloves—
─────────────────
[Work Gloves][☆☆☆☆☆]
[Enhancement +20]
─────────────────
The grinding gloves had reached +20.
"...."
I raised the gloves.
A gentle green glow shone above my head like a spotlight.
"Kim Yuna."
[Yeah....]
"Say my name."
[Waaa... Kim Yujin! Kim Yujin...!]
"Who is the GOAT?"
[Waa... Lionel....]
As expected from someone who had done this once or twice before.
She caught on fast. You were my soulmate, Yuna.
I looked down at the work gloves wrapped in green light.
"All right, shall we see what these can do?"
I threw off the makeshift gloves I had been wearing.
Then I put on the +20 work gloves.
"...."
What was this? I could not feel anything.
The moment I put them on, the green light vanished.
Could it be that, since they were junk, the enhancement was less effective too?
That did seem possible.
Henrik had said that equipment with more stars was harder to enchant.
So the easier the enchantment, the weaker its effect, apparently.
"All right, let's head out for now."
There was no reason to be disappointed.
This was only my first step. I could only look forward to the day I got to work with difficult equipment.
Smiling, I grabbed the workshop door.
Craaack!!
"?"
The iron handle embedded in the wooden door was ripped right out, mangled beyond recognition.
"...What the hell?"
In my hand was the flattened thing that used to be a doorknob.
There was now a gaping hole in the door.
"Huh?"
Wait a second.
I quickly got my brain working and began assessing the situation.
My conclusion was this:
After carefully, very carefully taking off the gloves—
I looked at the door, which would no longer open because it had no handle.
And I realized that I was now trapped in the workshop.
"...Butler Sebas!!"
From early in the morning,
I had no choice but to call Sebas through the window.
On my second day at the Dolores estate,
I destroyed the workshop.
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