Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 4.6 - Chapter 5

Strengthening the Weapon

I couldn’t imagine the gun in my hand serving as a very competent weapon; a spurt of water was hardly dangerous enough to be effective.

“Lady Rozemyne, whatever might you be holding?” Hannelore asked. “Is it a weapon?”

Before I could even respond, Rauffen raced over and stared down at the water gun in my hand. “Is this a new weapon you’ve invented?!” he exclaimed. It was such an immediate response that I started to suspect he had been listening in on our conversation.

“No!” I shot back. “It is nothing that significant. In fact, this is merely a children’s toy.”

“Nah, nah, nah. Looks to me like this is some great new creation that’s going to change warfare as we know it. Could you demonstrate it for me?” Rauffen asked. His booming voice had caught the attention of all those in earshot, and their prying eyes seemed to ask what crazy thing I was about to do next. I wished they would just turn back around.

They’re staring at me like I’m waist-deep in dangerous weapons! And then there’s the whole ordeal with my deadly charms! It’s not fair! I’m not violent! This is just a toy!

The whispers I was hearing were surely not positive ones. I had already received a passing grade for morphing my schtappe, so I wanted nothing more than to run away and take refuge in the library.

“Come on, Lady Rozemyne. Strike your enemies!” Rauffen declared. He pointed at some dummies wrapped in cloth, which he had apparently set up at some point. They must have been made for testing out the specs of transformed weapons; I could see a boy who was presumably an apprentice knight swinging a sword at one.

He wants me to stand next to that cool, powerful-looking boy and squirt a target with a water gun? I’m going to look so lame!

I tried to shake the embarrassing thought from my mind and then looked up at Rauffen. “As I said, this is a mere toy. It is not usable as a weapon.”

“Hm. So you want to hide your new weapon, huh? I’d expect nothing less from Ferdinand’s disciple.”

“I am not attempting to hide anything. There is simply nothing for me to show.”

“I want to see it,” Rauffen said, his fists clenched in determination. The sparkle in his eyes made it unfortunately clear just how excited he was about my water gun. At this point, I had no choice but to show it—to prove to him how ill-suited of a weapon it really was.

I’ll turn that look of hope into one of despair!

The other students crowded around to watch as I stepped in front of the cloth-wrapped dummy. A heavy silence had fallen over the hall, so absolute that I could hear those swallowing nervously. All eyes were on me, and their stares burned.

“Observe,” I said, pointing the gun at the dummy. My form was perfect, and with that, I pulled the tiny trigger.

Spurt!

A spout of water shot from my gun, traveled a short distance through the air, and then struck the floor perhaps a few inches short of the dummy. The splash glimmered for a brief moment before disappearing entirely. It seemed that the gun used my mana rather than actual water, and since the mana had disappeared on its own, there was nothing for me to clean up. How wonderful.

I was personally quite impressed with the display, but everyone else looked somewhat baffled. Rauffen shook his head as though he couldn’t or simply didn’t want to understand.

“Er, Lady Rozemyne... What in the world...?” he asked carefully. “That didn’t look like much of a weapon to me.”

“I did tell you—this is only a children’s toy.”

“Can I ask what it’s actually used for...?”

“Hm. Surprising people, I suppose.”

“I see. Well, you succeeded there...” Rauffen said, slumping his shoulders with a look of indescribable disappointment. As I chanted “rucken” to revert my schtappe, I hoped that his despair was severe enough for him to stop inviting me to ditter games.

Once my water gun was gone, the other students lost interest and returned to their own practice. I let out a sigh of relief, free from the peanut gallery at last, and returned to Hannelore. She looked sick with worry.

“My sincerest apologies, Lady Rozemyne,” she said nervously. “It was because of my own misunderstanding that Professor Rauffen made such a scene... You said from the beginning that it was only a toy, but he refused to relent...”

Wilfried shook his head. “It’s not your fault, Lady Hannelore,” he noted, trying to console her.

“Please do not let it bother you,” I added. “Professor Rauffen jumped to his own conclusions. The blame does not rest on you.”

“But—”

“Professor Rauffen overheard your comment and nothing more. It was just a bit of unfortunate timing.”

“I-I suppose...” Hannelore said with a nod. A weak smile formed on her face as I consoled her, but for some reason, she seemed even more depressed than before.

Sixth bell rang before long, and our schtappe-morphing class came to an end.

After dinner, Wilfried and I called over our retainers so that we could give our reports on the events of the day’s practical lessons. We told them how I had surprised everyone by making Schutzaria’s shield and Leidenschaft’s spear, how one of Ferdinand’s defensive charms had shot back at Rauffen during class, and how I had made a water gun.

“You made Schutzaria’s shield and Leidenschaft’s spear?!”

“A defensive attack during a test... We are lucky Professor Rauffen was the proctor. This could have become quite the incident had Professor Fraularm been the target.”

Everyone began commenting on the matter with widened eyes, but even then, one thing was clear—nobody was more surprised about Ferdinand’s charm activating than me. Maybe I was a bit late in counting my blessings, but given how Fraularm viewed me as an enemy, I certainly was glad that it hadn’t been her.

“Show some sympathy for us,” Wilfried groaned. “Your retainers and I need to mention all this in our report back to Ehrenfest. Think about how we feel.”

I shot him a stern look and then recalled how much our guardians had agonized over Wilfried writing such unclear and incomplete reports. No doubt he and his apprentice scholars had gotten much better at composing reports since then.

“Shall I write them in your place, then?” I suggested.

“So that you can leave out anything that reflects badly on you?”

“Not at all,” I gasped, fixing him with an offended glare. “I would write only the truth, in brief and concise language.”

Cornelius gave a heavy sigh. “And your brief, concise report containing only the truth would probably be nothing more than: ‘I passed my practical lessons again.’ From the bottom of my heart, I am grateful that you and Lord Wilfried are in the same grade, Lady Rozemyne. Your reports are much too lacking.”

Talk about rude. Our lesson had been about transforming one’s schtappe into a shield and then a weapon, and I had managed both successfully. What else was there to report? I was a child raised in the temple, so my guardians would surely understand that I could only make Schutzaria’s shield, and the water gun was simply a toy that had ended up disappointing Rauffen. Ferdinand would probably want to know how his charms had reacted to the feystone for research purposes, but that was about it.

“If you are dissatisfied with my methods then you may write the report as you wish,” I said. “I have done nothing that I would not want them to hear.”

“You’ve got it all mixed up, Rozemyne. They asked you not to do anything that would demand reports like this in the first place,” Wilfried said. It must have been a fair point, as Rihyarda gave a firm nod in agreement.

In contrast to everyone else, Hartmut seemed fascinated. He leaned forward with an unmistakable sparkle in his eye. “Splendid, Lady Rozemyne. I believe that Schutzaria’s shield and Leidenschaft’s spear are perfect for the Saint of Ehrenfest.”

“As loath as I am to rain on your parade, Hartmut, spears are unwieldy and not my weapon of choice. I do not have the strength to aim and throw them at my targets,” I said. It was only because Ferdinand had been there to help me that I had managed to strike the schnesturm. If someone had told me to do that on my own, I could say with complete confidence that I would fail.

“That is what enhancements are for, Lady Rozemyne.”

“Hartmut... I am learning enhancement magic so that I can return some semblance of normalcy to my everyday life, not so that I can throw massive spears.”

I could move around without my enhancement magic tools now, but only at a lumber; I still required them to have any chance of walking at the same pace as everyone else. I was already at a disadvantage due to my small stature, which meant I needed the help of others to achieve a lot of what I wanted to do.

“But you will need a weapon to use when the time comes,” Hartmut said. “If a spear is too unwieldy, then you must think of an effective alternative. What shall you do?”

“I do understand my need for a weapon,” I replied. “If possible, I would prefer something that can be used from a distance while riding my highbeast—perhaps something I could hold in one hand and use through the window.”

The apprentice knights exchanged conflicted glances. “With one hand, Lady Rozemyne? Can you even hold a dagger with two?”

“Are the charms you received from Lord Ferdinand not meant to be your weapons, Lady Rozemyne?”

They weren’t wrong. Ferdinand had determined that I needed these charms precisely because he couldn’t count on my fighting capabilities.

“Bleh. I’m done thinking about this,” Wilfried interjected. “She passed her classes, and Uncle’s charms will serve her well enough. End of discussion. I’ll write the report.”

And with that, our meeting came to an end. I returned to my room and rolled around on my bed, pondering the weapons that Wilfried had just told me not to bother thinking about. Ferdinand’s charms were powerful, but I didn’t want to be entirely reliant on them; it was easy to imagine scenarios where I was surrounded by threats and ended up running out of them. Leidenschaft’s spear might not have been a good match for me, but I still needed a weapon—preferably one that wasn’t a children’s toy.

“If only I had a real (gun) instead of a toy (water gun)...” I muttered, deep in thought. And then realization struck me.

Wait a moment... All I did was say “water gun,” right? I didn’t actually chant a spell.

I seemed to recall that chanting a spell was necessary to make other weapons. It was possible to recreate the shape without one, but the spell was necessary to make the schtappe actually function as a sword or spear. I took out my schtappe, confused, and whispered “water gun” again. This time, nothing happened.

“Why...? Oh, because I wasn’t visualizing it?”

I shut my eyes, visualized the water gun, and then said the words again. This time, my schtappe transformed. Further experimentation was clearly needed. I reverted my schtappe to its usual form, pictured a sword, and then said “sword” in Japanese.

“Hm? That didn’t work?”

My schtappe morphed when I visualized divine instruments and chanted the spell, but not when I spoke in Japanese. I couldn’t figure out that pattern. Nothing in the vein of “printer,” “photocopier,” or “scissors” seemed to work either; the only thing I could make by speaking in Japanese was a cheap-looking toy water gun. Perhaps there were other items that would work, but I had no way to figure out what they were.

I took the translucent water gun and fired it a few times from where I was lying on the bed. The “water” inside disappeared immediately upon hitting something, and even when I shot my covers, they didn’t become the slightest bit wet. Most curious of all, however, was that the amount of water inside never seemed to decrease; I could use it as much as I wanted until my mana ran out.

“I wonder whether I can power up the (water gun) somehow?”

I could grip the water gun comfortably in one hand, meaning I could steer my Pandabus with the other, and using it was as easy as squeezing the trigger. No reloading was necessary either, since it automatically used my mana as ammunition. I just needed to improve its range and power—then it was likely to be the perfect weapon for me.

“When it comes to using water as a weapon, I suppose there are water jet cutters... But just how much pressure would it take to kill a person using one of those? I can’t really imagine it. Maybe I could try using a fire hose or something to blast out a ton of water? Nah, I could just use waschen in that case... No need to modify a water gun.”

I played with the weight of the water gun in my hand as I made and then shot down my own suggestions. The mana inside, which looked entirely like water, sloshed around.

“Seeing as this is mana and not water, perhaps I could make it come out as the arrows that Ferdinand uses. Like when he was fighting the trombe, I could just shoot and...”

I pulled the trigger, thinking about how cool it would be if an arrow shot out... and then one actually did. That one arrow soon became several, presumably because I had been thinking about the time Ferdinand hunted the trombe, and they tore through the canopy above my bed. The arrows disappeared once they reached the ceiling, but the damage was already done.

Well... that happened.

I was blinking in surprise at the torn canopy when Rihyarda rushed over and threw aside my bed curtains. “Milady! What happened?!” she cried.

“I, er... Um...”

Rihyarda saw the water gun in my hand and the holes above my bed and immediately pieced together the situation. Her eyebrows shot up in anger, and she regarded me with a gaze so sharp it was like a razor. Moments later, lightning struck.

“Milady! What are you thinking, using your schtappe in bed?! Put away that dangerous weapon and go straight to sleep!”

“Sorry! I’ll go to sleep right away!” I squeaked. I chanted “rucken” to get rid of my water gun and then immediately retreated underneath my covers.

I’m sorry! So, so sorry! I didn’t think it would actually shoot out arrows!

We made our way to the dining hall for breakfast the next morning. Once all of my retainers were gathered, Rihyarda let out a sigh. “Last night, milady experimented with her schtappe in bed and shot her canopy to pieces with a so-called ‘water gun,’” she said. “Hartmut, add this to your report to the castle.”

“Erm, Lady Rozemyne... It’s dangerous to handle weapons in bed...” Philine added, blinking at me incredulously. I averted my eyes; the events of yesterday’s practical lessons were one thing, but I was absolutely going to be lectured for this.

“Didn’t you say the water gun was a toy and not a weapon just yesterday?” Cornelius asked, making no attempt to hide his exasperation.

“It truly is supposed to be a toy,” I replied. “But since it contains my mana rather than water, I wondered whether I could make it shoot arrows, and whether those arrows could then split apart. I gave it a try and, well... My canopy ended up a sacrifice for scientific progress.”

“Lady Rozemyne, may I see this water gun?” Hartmut asked, leaning closer.

“Me too! Me too!” Judithe added, her violet eyes sparkling with excitement. “You can fire arrows with a single hand, right? Do you think I could use one too?”

Despite their exhaustion, my other retainers seemed equally curious about my water gun.

“Shall we go to the gathering spot before morning classes?” Leonore suggested. “It would be too dangerous to use this new weapon in the dormitory, and although we could use it somewhere else outside, I worry that the snow might be bad for Lady Rozemyne’s health.”

Everyone agreed with her assessment, so it was decided that I would debut my water gun at the gathering spot. We headed there immediately after breakfast. The others in the common room asked where we were going as they studied, but Hartmut deftly evaded their questions.

We flew through the air on our highbeasts until we eventually reached the pillar of yellow light. It was still strange to see one spot without any snow, but either way, due to all the feybeasts that converged at the gathering spot, the knights would end up very busy once we were inside.

“Once we get inside, I will use an attack whether there is a feybeast or not. Knights, stay by my side. Do not get in front of me under any circumstances,” I said. “Right. Here I go. Water gun!”

I focused my mind and morphed my schtappe into a water gun. Then, with my left hand still on the wheel of my Pandabus, I extended my right as far as I could out the window and aimed toward the gathering spot.

“Eep!”

My vision twisted for a moment as though I were passing right through a magic barrier, and an instant later, I saw several feybeasts in front of me. I eyed one and, while visualizing Ferdinand slaying the trombes, pulled the trigger of my water gun. Liquid mana shot out and turned into a glowing arrow, which split apart and started downward. It wasn’t long before several of the arrows pierced one of the feybeasts.

“Yesss!” I cried.

“Ooh!” echoed Hartmut.

The feybeast wavered for a moment at the sudden attack and then bared its teeth at us. Although my rain of arrows had struck their mark, none had managed a killing blow. Defeating a feybeast in one move was evidently not so easy.

“Go!” Cornelius shouted as he sped up on his highbeast and then plunged toward the feybeast. His sword was already in his hand, and he slew the feybeast in the blink of an eye.

“We have seen the strength of Lady Rozemyne’s weapon!” Leonore called. “Let us depart at once!”

And so, we turned straight around to return to the dorm. We only had three apprentice knights with us, which wouldn’t have been enough to deal with all the feybeasts if we attracted too many.

“I couldn’t kill the feybeasts, even with my new weapon...” I mumbled, unable to contain my sadness. I had wanted to impress everyone by slaying several with a single blow, but reality was not so kind.

“No, but you did more than enough,” Cornelius said, trying to console me. “I was surprised by how much damage you did to that feybeast; there’s no doubt in my mind that your attack would have killed a weaker one.”

Apparently, the feybeasts we had encountered were on the stronger side.

“That was an amazing weapon, but not one I think I could use,” Judithe said, eyeing my water gun with regret. “I don’t have enough mana to shoot out that many arrows at once.”

My water gun was small, light, and easy to grip in one hand, but its attack power was fiercely dependent on one’s mana quantity. Truly, it was a weapon made for me.

Although it kind of stopped being a water gun the moment it fired out arrows...

Even so, it was unexpectedly strong and convenient to use, so I decided to take it as my weapon of choice. I could slowly improve it over time.

In which case, it doesn’t even need to be a water gun anymore. I want to make it cooler. A more realistic black, maybe, like the ones you get in hard-boiled fiction!

We returned to the dorm, and while everyone else was busy with their studies, I alone struggled to change the appearance of my water gun. I didn’t want one that was cheap-looking and translucent.

“Ngh. Another failure...”

Unfortunately, I had never even touched a toy version of a black gun, so I couldn’t properly visualize one. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get a clear image in my head, and my schtappe didn’t take the shape I wanted. The most I could seem to manage was giving my current water gun a black tinge, but it was still translucent, which was very uncool.

Nooo! At this rate, I won’t even be as hard-boiled as an egg! I’m just a soft, squishy soft-boiled one!

“Now, now, milady. Enough with that frown. Let’s go to the auditorium,” Rihyarda said, hurrying me along. “Today is the day you’ve been waiting for, when everyone passes at once. Focus on the written lessons, not your schtappe.”

I returned my schtappe to its usual form, albeit regretfully. Getting everyone to pass came first; I could focus on improving my water gun once that was over and done with.

One day, I’ll have a supercool gun. Then everyone will think I’m hard-boiled!