Chapter 226

Among the characters I’ve never properly transformed into yet, there are four I’d classify as “abandoned characters.”

All of them are production-type classes, but the items they could make either didn’t have much demand or had weak effects—characters belonging to professions that weren’t rated very highly.

Still, their unique playstyles and skills seemed interesting, so I created them anyway. After being satisfied, I left them unused, or repurposed them as storage characters to hold unnecessary items.

To be honest, talking with those characters scares me. Like Shizuka, they might resent me. Even so, I decided to talk to them.

“That’s the situation. Starting today, I’ll spend a few hours in the form of each of the four. Once I do that, I’ll be able to converse with them in my mind.”

“B-but what if someone pretends to be Shizuma again…? Will it really be okay?”

“…So we need to keep a close watch and confirm whether it’s the real one, correct?”

“Yeah. That’s how it’ll be. Alright, I’ll start by transforming into the first one.”

A few hours after resuming travel by carriage, we stopped along the coastline for lunch. There, I explained to the two of them the policy we’d decided on at the round table and put it into action.

The goal was to spend some time as the character and prepare myself so I could hold a dialogue in my mind.

The first character I transformed into was Chimegu, a Tailor, a class I’d stopped developing midway because “it’s a production job, but the equipment it can make has low performance.”

“…Alright. No sense of wrongness, right?”

“Ooh! That’s rare! A dark-skinned elf! I read in a book that they live in mountainous regions!”

“Is this truly Shizuma’s consciousness? May I ask a question?”

No problem—this is definitely my consciousness. There’s no sign of missing memories, and their reactions seem fine.

As Melt said, Chimegu was created with a classic dark-elf-like appearance.

The class combination is Tailor × Hunter, which actually has a small amount of synergy.

“It’s fine. Ask whatever you like.”

“Then… since you may have been able to see or hear what Shizuma experienced in this world… how about this question? ‘What’s your favorite carbonated drink?’”

Ah, a real-world question. That would be hard for the characters to answer.

The only one who could answer that would probably be Seele, who shared my consciousness, fully understood my memories, and still retained her own ego.

“My favorite is Redria Energy. Caffeine doesn’t work well on me, but when I was gaming, I always had at least three cans ready. My mom used to scold me a lot, saying it was bad for my health.”

“I see… That’s definitely the real Shizuma. …Incidentally, I used to drink it often as well.”

“My condolences…”

So Sheele really did have brutal working hours back when she was a dev, huh…

Anyway, that proved I was Shizma.

“Hm… seeing it like this, brown-skinned elves really are nice… Shizuma, I’m going to touch you a bit.”

“H-huh—wait—!”

Suddenly, Sheele touched my cheek, leaned in close, and examined my face intently.

H-hey, stop that! From the outside, this looks totally wrong!

“You’ve got a dignified look. Shizuma, you have a good sense for character design. It doesn’t have the same freedom as the character creator in the rival online game SFO, but still… this is impressively well done.”

“Well… I’m glad to be praised, but it’s still kind of embarrassing.”

“Hehe, sorry.”

She stroked my cheek once more, then pulled back.

Was she involved in graphics-related development, maybe?

“Hey, hey! What’s your name?”

“This form’s name is Chimegu. My job is Tailor. I spin thread, weave cloth, and make clothes.”

“That’s right. And your sub-job is Hunter, the only one that has synergy with Tailor.”

Yes—Hunter is the only job that lets a tailor apply their craft in combat.

Tailors can create thread materials from many kinds of resources.

Among those threads are bowstrings.

Those strings can add various effects to attacks.

But… that potential was completely overshadowed by the question:
‘Wouldn’t an Enchanter’s augmentation do the same thing?’

Of course, tailors do have a unique strength:
Bowstrings made from high-rarity materials can grant special effects far stronger than enchantments.

However, since those strings are consumables, the combo never became popular.

“In this world, maybe I could give the strings to Seele and have her use them.”

“I see. Let’s try that later. Shizuma, what do you want to do now? Want to try producing something during lunch break?”

“Oh! Hey, hey! You can spin thread, right!? Then can you use my tail fur!? I want to see what a real craftsman could do!”

That actually worked out perfectly. A while ago, Melt had neatly collected some of her shed tail fur.

If I turned that into thread as a tailor, it might turn into something amazing.

“Alright, here you go.”

“Thanks. Haha, it feels strange—like there’s another one of Melt’s tails.”

“My tail hasn’t increased yet, you know?”

…Yet?

Wait—yet? Is she saying it might someday!?

Anyway, I took the beautifully groomed, bundled silver-white fur and pulled out the production-only item: the Spinning Wheel.

“Ah… yeah. Once I’m in front of the tools, the character’s memories, knowledge, and crafting data really start filling my head. This one’s fine since the playtime was short.”

I felt a slight dizziness. But now I understood how to use the tools, the techniques, how to spin thread, and even which animal fibers worked best.

I see… Melt’s tail fur is long enough and already fibrous, so if I blend it in while spinning other fibers, it should work.

“I’ll prepare lunch, then. Shizuma, keep spinning the thread.”

“Sheele, can I watch him make thread too?”

“Yes, of course. Lunch will be simple.”

So I spun Melt’s shimmering tail fur together with cotton, turning it into thread.

The wooden parts clattered softly as the spinning wheel turned.

Fluffy cotton, merely wrapped before, was twisted and refined into thin thread.

Melt’s silver-white fur blended in, layer upon layer, creating a beautiful yarn.

“Amazing… watching my fur mix into the thread is so strange. The color looks just like my tail. It’s so pretty.”

“Yeah. This should make quite a long thread. Next time, we can weave it with other threads and turn it into fabric. We’re out of time today, but we should be able to finish the thread by tonight.”

“I’m so excited! I wonder what kind of fabric it’ll be? What should we make with it?”

“Maybe a shawl or a cloak. Matching ones for the three of us.”

“Yeah!”

I stopped the spinning wheel and put the tools away.

Seele was preparing lunch, after all—it was time to set the table.

“Seele, what did you make?”

“Oh? Are you done spinning thread already? Lunch is a simple soup and pizza toast.”

“Oh, that’s rare! If we have cheese, I guess pizza works… maybe I’ll make it next time.”

“Ooh! Sounds tasty! Sheele, you’ve gotten good at cooking!”

…Ah. Right. Sheele used to mess up cooking fairly often.

But this soup and pizza toast looked genuinely good. The aroma was nice too.

We set the table and had lunch in a grassy area by the road, with the sound of waves nearby.

The toast was generously spread with something like pizza sauce, topped with rehydrated dried tomatoes, thin slices of onion, green peppers (or something similar), and plenty of melted, well-browned cheese.

It looked like proper pizza toast. Safe enough.

Trusting the appearance, both Melt and I took big bites.

“…Sheele, what is this pizza-sauce-like thing?”

“It’s sweet… Sweet cheese and vegetables are weird…”

“The color was similar, so I spread jam. I camouflaged it with salt and pepper.”

…It’s not bad, but my brain is malfunctioning…!

I really should have cooked lunch myself.

For what it’s worth, the soup was perfectly fine, so I don’t think she’s fundamentally bad at cooking.

After lunch, we resumed traveling, hoping to cover a bit more distance. Before dusk, we stopped the carriage in a nearby forest and began preparing to make camp.

Once again, we’d be spending the night inside the carriage using a bus combined with Melt’s magic.
It was extremely comfortable, but it was a method that could only really be used in places hidden from view and on nights with little foot traffic.

“Alright… all the thread is finally spun! This turned into quite a lot.”

“Indeed, it’s a considerable amount. It’s still a bit short of what we’d need to make fabric, but it would be good to weave it together with other thread.”

“That makes sense. Melt, what color thread should we pair it with?”

“Huh? Umm… I want a different color so my thread really stands out.”

“I see… if we want silver to pop… black or navy might work.”

“Ooh, that sounds nice! Then I want to pair it with navy.”

Inside the bus, we put the finished thread into the item box for now.
The loom was quite large, so there was no way we could work on it here.

“Whew… about two more days until we reach the port town?”

“Yes. If we focus on traveling tomorrow and the day after, we should arrive by tomorrow night.”

“If it’s a port town, I wonder if they’ll have shrimp dishes again! I want to eat a new shrimp dish!”

“Shrimp, huh… we already used up that big shrimp monster meat we got in the dungeon before. I wonder if we can find and defeat one of those monsters somewhere again.”

“Right? You don’t get shrimp that filling very often!”

“Hmm… I’ve never experienced that myself. I would have liked to try it… I think it would be delicious as shabu-shabu.”

That really is a very Sheele-like, mature choice.
Someday, I’d like to hear more about her past—stories from the real world.

“Well then… I spent the entire day in Chimegu’s form today, so she should be able to manifest within my mind by now. I’ll go to bed a bit early and try talking with her.”

“Ah, right—that was the purpose. Shizuma… basically, we all care deeply about you. There may be times when resentment or bitterness arises. But at the core of it all, there is always gratitude somewhere. Please don’t forget that.”

“You’re going to talk with her, right? Then please say hi to Chimegu for me!”

Feeling slightly nervous, I selected ‘Log Out’ from the menu and returned to my original form.
Then, as usual, I buried my head in the ‘silver pillow’ and drifted into a deep sleep—toward the place of dialogue.

“Use satin weave.”

“Huh?”

It was sudden.
In a world of darkness with no round table or anything else—only Chimegu and I standing there together.

As if illuminated by a spotlight, only our figures were clearly visible. The Chimegu in front of me—a white-haired elf woman with dark skin—said those words flatly, without changing her expression.

“That’s why—satin weave. If you call it satin, you’ll understand, right? The thread made from that girl’s tail hair—if you want to make the most of it, it should be made with satin weave. That glossy sheen absolutely needs to be satin fabric.”

“Uh, um… I get that we’re talking about fabric, at least. Nice to meet you, Chimegu.”

“Hm? Oh. Nice to meet you, Master. You let me do very good work—I appreciate it.”

“Well… I was planning to have a conversation, or rather, to hear what you wanted to say, or what you’re thinking…”

Without changing her expression, she continued speaking seriously about fabric, as if everything else was irrelevant. Whenever I tried to talk about something else, she just tilted her head.

“Hmm… well then… if you ever let me out into the world, build me a workshop shed near the house. Also, I’m weak. It would be difficult for me to return home alone. Please be mindful of that.”

“Uh… so you don’t have any grievances toward me? You’re saying you’ll stay right near our home?”

“Of course. Master, take proper care of me. I don’t really want to do anything other than garment work. Anyway, when you weave the fabric, it must absolutely be satin weave. Don’t forget that.”

As if she had nothing more to say, she vanished into the darkness beyond.

This… in a way, probably means she trusts me, doesn’t it…?
In any case, it seems she doesn’t resent me.

“That’s a relief… alright, let’s just sleep like this…”

In the dark mental world, I closed my eyes, letting my consciousness sink one level deeper.

…I see. There really are all kinds of personalities among these characters.