Chapter Eleven: This Isn’t a Cheat—Everyone Uses It (Thanks to Alliance Leader Kayako Saeki)

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“Calling her a cheat is terribly rude, you know. Couldn’t you think of it as a talent, a gift, or… an assist?”

Maria spoke with the rhythmic parallelism and sensual little trills of a Frenchwoman.

“A fine cheat,” Sonya cut her down in four words.

“Sonya the Dog has absolutely no manners.” Maria rose and met Sonya’s gaze.

“Xbox-exclusive players are having a meltdown.” Sonya planted both hands on her hips and glared back.

Melina said nothing.

She played mobile games.

The reincarnated Sonya and the system-assisted Maria bickered all the way to the alchemy room, with Melina in tow.

Sonya put on her processing gloves and poured the glittering, beautiful Tare crystal ore onto the materials table. As the crystals came tumbling down with a clatter, Melina noticed Maria’s left eyelid twitch.

“Ahem! Ahem!” Senior Sonya coughed loudly at the table.

Melina saw Maria’s fists tighten.

“Old Ma, put on a show for Little Mei!”

If Sonya’s personality had not yet been punished by the heavens, then surely the heavens themselves were blind. Maria, acting on behalf of divine justice, delivered a delicate elbow strike that gently soothed Senior Sonya’s ribs. With a dull thud, it slammed into her smooth armor. Banshees possessed such tremendous strength that they could touch the very edge of one another’s pain from across a mountain.

The drawback was that the recoil could be a little unpleasant.

“Aaaagh!” Senior Sonya shrieked. That was what people struck by an elbow always did: they tried to win the judge’s sympathy, concealing the outrageous fact that their own lowly ribs had deliberately collided with the noble elbow of a dignified child of heaven.

“…” Tears constantly gleamed in Maria’s eyes.

Elbowing an armored target really did hurt.

It made her look like a damp, pitiful puppy, conveniently distracting everyone from the fact that she had just driven her elbow viciously into Sonya.

She stood at the center of the materials table, raising both hands slightly. Like a master chef giving an unimpressed sniff to a dish prepared by a student, she murmured:

“Materials storage.”

The deep-blue crystal ore vanished.

“Materials appraisal.”

Neatly arranged ingots of crystal ore reappeared across the table.

Melina’s eyes went wide with shock.

This was not scientific. It violated every known principle of alchemy.

Maria really was a cheat!

Beside her, Sonya rubbed her abdomen while shrieking inwardly, She’s so cute! Little Mei is so cute!

Melina’s expression had resembled one of those cat reaction images from the online chat groups of her previous, previous life—the one with a cat waving its tiny paw and saying, “Look at her! Just look at her!” And not merely that one, either: it had to be the version edited with the head of the Cheshire Cat.

Still, Sonya did not reveal that she had been watching.

Instead, she wore an expression of solemn respect. Serious. Dignified.

“Appraisal result: quality…” Maria announced gravely. “C!”

At her declaration, the blue crystal ore on the table dimmed considerably. Rust spots even began to appear across it.

Melina jumped and glanced at her senior. The senior made a calming gesture, telling her not to worry.

Maria tossed her long golden hair and said irritably:

“Roll!”

Click.

Melina heard the faintest sound of dice being shaken, produced by magical particles vibrating in the air. She discreetly glanced at Sonya. As expected, the other girl had not heard it.

“F.” Maria sounded dejected. She even raised her pale, tender hand and examined her own complexion, her great eyes filled with confusion. There’s no reason for this. My skin tone is clearly European.

But this was not Earth. This was another world. The laws of European probability did not apply here.

The crystal ore on the table shattered into scraps, mixed with a great deal of dirt and gravel. Even a low-grade Redfeather Dragon would have shaken its head at the sight.

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“Old Ma, dear Old Ma, what the hell did you roll?”

“Your turn?”

“If I could do it, I would have done it already.” Sonya removed her gloves and held out her own claw. “Here. I’ll lend you a hand!”

Old Ma accepted without the slightest hesitation. She grabbed Sonya’s claw and pressed it against an invisible button in the air.

Click.

Sonya blinked. She seemed to feel her claw touch something.

Maria called out:

“Roll!”

Then her expression gradually froze.

“A plus?”

The crystal ore transformed into astonishingly beautiful, crystal-clear blue blocks shaped like roses. Every inch of them radiated powerful magical particles.

So beautiful, Li—

No. Wait.

Before Melina could say anything, Maria bit down on the back of Sonya’s hand and screamed:

“I refuse to accept this!”

…

No matter how unacceptable it was, Old Ma still had to carry the high-quality Tare crystals away and use them to manufacture the Bluetooth adapters.

Old Ma’s system cheat was geared toward secondary professions. In combat, it merely granted her the ability to aim at a dragon’s head and, provided she rolled well, blow its balls apart with a single shot.

In practical terms, she possessed magic bullets, a spinning top, auto-aim, zero recoil, and spider-sense—the sort of brutally simple, completely ban-worthy abilities that would get her account deleted on sight.

That was right: Old Ma was a ranged fighter too. She used a gunblade, sword in her left hand and firearm in her right, retaining a few elements that looked like close combat.

In truth, she was still entirely ranged.

It was outrageously unfair.

“Although when her rolls are bad, she shoots even more wildly than I do,” Sonya added, subtly emphasizing just how useless Maria could be. “And what’s even more absurd is that she’s an aimed shooter. Her firing output isn’t very high.”

Among explorers, “firing output” was a comprehensive statistic for ranged marksmen. A shooter’s destructive power came primarily from consistently landing attacks at long range, which was why the term had been coined.

A marksman with high accuracy but low firing output could only serve as support. Explorers like Sonya, whose individual shots were unimpressive but whose firing output was tremendously high, instead formed the core of a team’s strategy.

“Though when she rolls well, she’s both accurate and prolific.”

A sizzling sound drifted over from the other side of the room.

Maria was processing the adapters on an extremely advanced alchemical lathe. She probably had no idea how to make them, but it did not matter. As long as she had a blueprint, she could crank them out. That was simply how powerful a system cheat could be.

Sonya cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted:

“Old Ma, make ten first! In Little Mei’s current condition, five might not be enough!”

Without turning her head, Maria gave her an internationally recognized friendly gesture.

“See? What a wonderful person she is, wouldn’t you say?” Sonya said cheerfully.

Then she turned around and changed expressions completely. Her face became cold, and she lowered her voice.

“Little Mei, you must never grow up to be one of those soft adults who only play Halo and Fable, all right?”

…

I play that game…

Melina, who only played mobile games, did not dare make a sound. She wore an awkward expression that seemed to say, “The kitty has no idea what you’re talking about,” while elegantly leaning on her lace parasol and lifting her chin.

“Now, your senior has an important task for you,” Sonya said mysteriously. “This mission is of immense importance. The future of the world depends on it.”

Melina blinked. “Does it have something to do with that dragon?”

“Dragon?” Sonya looked utterly perplexed. She blinked. “Of course not!”

She raised both hands slightly.

“It’s about ordering takeout! I need you to bring back some food for the three of us. There’s an inn in Hamlet Town. It’s the only reliable restaurant in this remote little settlement. The tavern won’t do. The ratfolk chefs there only know how to add alcohol to every dish, along with those clockwork cat dumplings…”

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This world was rich in produce. Even ordinary people could enjoy all-you-can-eat meals and alcohol, even in this distant frontier where the only creatures they could bare their teeth at were wyverns.

“You want me to order takeout?”

Melina was furious. She rolled up her sleeves, flexed her muscles, and struck a pose that said, Leave it to Big Sister.

“What ingredients do you have? I’ll cook a meal!”

She was extremely confident. Back at the Explorers’ Academy, her dorm mates had adored her cooking.

Sonya was shocked too. She had never imagined that Little Mei could cook. The first time Sonya had learned of Melina in her previous life, Melina had already become Uchiha Melina, spouting chuunibyou lines like “Hate me!” every day. The fact that she knew how to cook was completely unprecedented.

The senior eagerly ordered braised pork, which Little Mei had said she could make.

Melina quickly prepared three dishes and a bowl of rice. Maria was so sweet that she did not even sound sarcastic toward Sonya when she said, “She’s so versatile. My life belongs to Sister Mei now.”

Then she took one bite of the meal…

And Melina was sent out to buy takeout.

Watching her march away with her cheeks puffed in anger, Senior Sonya rinsed her mouth and began to suspect that Little Mei’s classmates were all Ludones—at least two-star Ludones.

“There’s still room for improvement,” Maria offered critically from beside her, having already rinsed her mouth with salt water until her tongue had gone bitter.

Sonya glanced at her and muttered, “No wonder you won the first Little Mei Cup.”

…

The inn in Hamlet Town was one of the places Sonya had used to frighten Melina.

When Melina arrived, she discovered Miss Joan standing on tiptoe while checking out. Miss Rae, meanwhile, was muttering, “What kind of cursed place has only toilet brushes for toilet paper? And why are the public restroom and bathhouse in the same building…?”

Her senior really had not been exaggerating.

Melina approached the line.

Joan turned around and waved with the gentle smile of a perfectly legitimate loli mother.

“Ah, Miss Melina! What a surprise to see you here.”

Melina’s little face went pale, and she turned her gaze aside.

Joan was full of confusion. I smiled so warmly. Why won’t Little Mei talk to me?

Still, she remained persistent. One day, she would surely form a bond with this extraordinarily talented junior explorer and successfully recruit her.

Their team was only missing a primary damage dealer.

Of course, a normal party consisted of three people. Old Don Quixote was the tank and could not be kicked. Joan herself was the leader and could not be kicked either.

Which meant the person they could optimize away was…

Joan silently glanced at her twin sister.

Rae mistakenly assumed that her younger sister, for once, was relying on her and wanted her to build a good relationship with Melina. She puffed out her chest, accepted the responsibility, and made awkward conversation with Melina for a while.

After strengthening their acquaintance, Melina learned that the Echo Squad intended to rent a plot of land in the pasturelands of West Hamlet and pitch their tents there. She planned to return with two bottles of the mosquito-repelling alchemical potion she had packed in her luggage.

She had originally thought she was coming here to suffer. Instead, she had moved into a luxurious mansion before the hardship had even begun.

It went to show that most of the time, people did not rely on hard work. They relied on the arrangements of heaven.

After checking out, the Echo Squad hurried toward West Hamlet.

Night had swallowed the day, leaving behind a red afterglow filled with the weary vitality of life returning to its nest.

Melina politely greeted the local innkeeper, a bald, middle-aged man with a strange appearance. His nose was flat, his eyes bulged outward, and his skin was covered in folds.

From him, she purchased some local specialties: a dish called “The Face of Dagon,” made by stuffing fried rice—prepared from glutinous rice, roast meat, and green and red peppers—inside an octopus and roasting it; as well as a bread accompaniment called “Hydra Marsh,” an intensely concentrated fish soup that looked as though one sip would give you rheumatism.

Could this suspicious food really be better than what I made? Melina wondered doubtfully as she packed everything up.

The total price was only six silver lei.

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