Idle Treasures

After briskly dumping everything related to the Est Kingdom onto Kiriku and the others, I had returned to Einheria Castle.

Even so, this war was educational in a different way than usual, since the enemy had come at us with all sorts of things.

Schemes… well, in the game there had been fire attacks and flood attacks… pitfalls and surprise attacks too, but those had basically been war-type commands that characters of the intelligence type specialized in, and until now, none of the enemies in these wars had used tactics like that.

It was especially welcome information to learn that Kiriku could see through things like hidden troops and pitfalls even in this world. Thanks to that, I now knew we could gain a considerable advantage in future wars too.

Well, for now, we could still just bulldoze our way through with troop specs alone… this time they had traps and all sorts of things set up all over the place, but all we did on our side was go straight ahead and blow them away… that was it.

No, we did crush their surprise attack and avoid their pitfalls, but… in the end, we simply blew away the shield troops and forced our way toward the enemy main camp.

Keeping that momentum, we easily seized the main camp, captured the commanders, and demanded the enemy soldiers surrender… well, naturally, quite a few still did not stop, but I had Saria lead around a thousand troops and physically shut them up.

Come to think of it, for some reason there had been a unit of mages stationed even farther back than the main camp, preparing something… what had that been? Magic in this world seemed to have a shorter range than bows, so mages often seemed to be placed fairly far forward… but they did not seem like a reserve force placed at the rear either, so what had been the point of that?

I should probably confirm that information later.

They had deliberately kept valuable mages out of the battle and stationed them all the way in the rear… there was no doubt some kind of intention behind it.

Most likely, it was some kind of trump card… I would have to look into how powerful it was.

If it was the kind of thing that could become a threat even to us… then it might be dangerous when the time came to fight the Great Magical Nation, which was said to be a magic-advanced country.

This world was still overflowing with unknowns… I did have some awareness of myself as one of the strong, but letting my guard down was out of the question. I needed to stay careful without getting carried away… caution was necessary.

Come to think of it… that catapult attack that came flying in during the verbal exchange before the battle began… even Kiriku had not been able to detect that in advance, right?

That would count as a surprise attack… ah, right, by this world’s standards that attack would probably count as a sneak attack, but there had not been anything like a verbal exchange in the game to begin with, so maybe it was not strange that he had not reacted?

No, more fundamentally, where exactly does a surprise attack begin, and where does a normal attack begin…?

Or rather, how do you even determine whether battle has started or not…? Yeah, I had no idea.

It felt like I should look into that area a little more properly too.

Thinking that, I opened the door to the Treasure Hall.

As always, I had no idea what this room in front of the treasury was even for… it was not like there were guards posted here or anything…

Well, I did not know the mechanism, but supposedly only I could enter the Treasure Hall, so perhaps that was why security was so lax? That said, even if it contained treasures, there was no way they were leaving it completely unguarded… probably.

By the way, did the restriction that prevented entry into this room apply to people of this world too? If the people coming and going in the castle could just enter freely… that would not be very good.

Maybe I should use Oscar as a test subject next time.

Thinking that, I stepped into the treasury and looked over the tightly packed weapons, armor, and precious items.

No matter how many times I came here, this place always made my heart race.

Now then, I did not have much time today, so I should just finish my business quickly.

I walked deeper into the treasury and stopped at a corner where equipment exclusive to unique characters was kept.

“Now then… which one should I pick…? Since I’m the one equipping it, it has to be a sword… but I need a sword whose negative effects won’t hurt too much even if it’s not equipped by its proper character, and whose effects are easy to understand… this is hard.”

I worried over it while checking the exclusive equipment of the unique characters from Sword and Legions, displayed like trophies.

The reason I had come to the treasury was because I had been thinking about whether these many pieces of exclusive equipment that were just sitting here unused could be put to effective use.

Well, I had come up with the idea while thinking about what to do for Saria and the others’ rewards before the battle started.

Right now, my people each had one weapon and one accessory equipped… that was because in the game, those had been the only two equipment slots.

For example, what I had equipped was the Overlord Sword Verdia and a ring that nullified status ailments, and of those, the Overlord Sword was exclusive equipment, while the ring that nullified status ailments was general equipment.

Back in the game, if exclusive equipment was equipped by anyone other than its unique character, the demerits would hit hard, so I never had my people equip them.

Instead, I gave them the best general equipment available, but even so, there were parts where it was still somewhat inferior compared to exclusive equipment.

Well, that was not universally true, but even so, there were quite a few pieces of exclusive equipment with outrageous performance… for example, the Crimson Lotus Sword Agni sitting right in front of me now.

In the game, it was equipment exclusive to the Emperor of the red nation, the Dentel Empire, and on top of having extremely high bonuses to martial prowess and command, it also inflicted additional fire damage whenever it attacked.

Speaking of swords that dealt extra fire damage on attack, the Flame Sword I had picked up before had the same effect, but its power was not even comparable.

That effect on the Flame Sword was really more of a bonus, or rather… the added fire dealt only negligible damage.

To be specific, I think it was about one-twentieth the damage of a normal attack?

And on top of that, the target’s elemental resistance would reduce it, so at that point it was basically a hobby weapon that made you ask, “Do I even need this?”

But this thing was different.

First, when it attacked, it slightly lowered the enemy’s fire resistance value, and then additional fire damage occurred.

Its multiplier was a terrifying one hundred percent… it dealt bonus damage equal in power to the normal attack itself.

Against enemies weak to fire, it had the utterly nonsensical performance of the additional damage being stronger than the normal attack.

However, that idiotic level of performance only applied when the Emperor of the Dentel Empire equipped it.

If another character equipped it, first the bonuses to martial prowess and command dropped by about twenty percent.

On top of that, it applied a negative modifier to intelligence… it was a sword that turned you into an idiot.

And on top of that, your own fire resistance dropped sharply… and additional fire damage occurred when making a normal attack. To yourself.

The negative effect of the Overlord Sword Verdia was terrible enough, but the Crimson Lotus Sword Agni was vicious too.

At that point, you would think it might as well just make itself impossible to equip, but for some reason, it could still be equipped.

Presumably, it was the sort of thing where you might be able to use it if you reduced the demerits by combining it with accessories, but if you were going to use precious accessory slots just to equip exclusive gear, it was better to simply use the highest-tier general equipment instead.

That was why all these exclusive pieces of equipment had ended up sitting unused, but frankly, that was a waste.

After spending several months in this world… only now had I started thinking that I should experiment with these exclusive items… no, equipment in general, and release whatever seemed useful as rewards.

Treasure that served no purpose except as a collection was, quite literally, treasure gone to waste.

“To release them, I first have to test the negative effects, but… yeah, the Crimson Lotus Sword is out of the question. I have no hobby of being roasted alive… hmm, but still, the others are not much better either.”

While looking over the many exclusive items, I searched for a weapon with a somewhat tolerable demerit… but even if I had the memory of doing countless playthroughs, it was not like I remembered the negative effects of every single weapon.

“I want to see the equipment details… Fio, the equipment details. I want a function that lets me see the detailed effects of items.”

I voiced that request to Fio, who was probably stalking me even at this very moment.

Well, I had no idea how many requests Fio could actually grant, but unless you voiced a request, you would never know whether it might get through.

And besides, making a request itself was free.

“I remember the distinctive ones like this, though…”

I muttered while staring at a short sword in a poisonous color on display.

Sword and Legions did not have a dagger category, so this was treated like a normal sword too, but… this weapon belonged to an assassin character… well, a diplomat, really… and it was exclusive equipment for that character, a weapon thoroughly specialized in status ailments.

But well, as you might expect… if anyone other than that guy used it, both the enemy and the user would be hit with a parade of status ailments. Sometimes it would even kill you.

No, instant death effects in a world that had become reality were way too dangerous.

A ring that nullified status ailments would not prevent instant death, and if you equipped a ring that nullified instant death, you would take status ailments head-on… huh?

Now that I thought about it, could accessories perhaps be equipped in multiples?

They were rings, so maybe you could equip more than one…?

No, that did not mean I was going to test this short sword, though… to begin with, weapons and accessories were the kind of things common in games where they meant nothing unless they were equipped.

I did not know the logic behind it, but simply picking one up did not activate the equipment’s effects.

In other words, the demerit effects of exclusive equipment did not activate just by picking the item up either, and the effects only appeared once you consciously chose to use that weapon.

At that point, it suddenly hit me… was the ring that nullified status ailments actually functioning all the time?

If you got hit with a status ailment… for example, poison, and only then thought, well, I’m wearing a ring that nullifies status ailments, wouldn’t that already be too late in all sorts of ways…? In the game, even if you changed accessories while afflicted with a status ailment, it did not cure it or anything.

Not good… thinking about that suddenly made me uneasy.

I should seriously run some tests on equipment and items.

What I needed to investigate was the negative effects of exclusive equipment, the conditions under which accessory effects activated, and whether equipping multiple accessories had any effect.

What else was there… I should probably also verify the effects of consumable items other than potions and hair-growth medicine…

A lot had been keeping me busy until now, but I had really neglected item-related things too much.

I felt like I ought to add item investigation to my duties as well.

But there was no more time today.

After this, I had a scheduled meeting with Efaria and the others.

It was a discussion where I would compare the information the diplomat had investigated with what Efaria and the others said, and decide on important things like how we would deal with the Lufelon Holy Kingdom going forward.

After that, I also had to discuss the matter of the war with the Est Kingdom… so when would I even be able to start dealing with the item issue…?

I had gone to the Treasure Hall, but in the end I wound up doing nothing more than looking around.