Roku-chan Joins the Party

"I cleared it!!"

She cleared it, apparently. And with that, the numbered girls were now five.

Appearance-wise… one of them looked slightly different from the others, so that had to be her. From a distance, though, you wouldn't be able to tell.

"Alright, time for another party!!!"

"Yeehaw, eating and drinking our fill! I'll go grab the booze, yo!"

"I'm starting to think you all just want an excuse to eat, drink, and make noise."

"You figured it out, yo!?"

"Well, the food in this game is delicious. Tastes awful when you cook it yourself, though."

You really do need a Cooking skill, she agreed with a nod.

"…Even without a Cooking skill, you can make decent food in VR Mode, yo."

"Huh?"

"Specifically, the food comes out at whatever level the player can actually cook in real life, yo."

"……"

"Mahariku-san, could it be that… you've never cooked before, yo?"

"H-Hey, you don't cook either, do you, Alto!? Besides! We're in the same sales division, aren't we!?"

"Oh ho ho, I went through a cooking phase once, so I can manage a little, yo."

Huh, Alto had actually cooked before? Surprisingly impressive.

My idea of cooking for myself was microwaving frozen meals or pouring hot water over instant noodles.

"…Mahariku-sama's home cooking… I want to taste it…"

"Same."

"Big same."

"Deeply understood."

"The obvious choice."

The fifth numbered girl had already fit right in.

And so the party began. The occasion this time was unmistakably a "Congrats on Your Second Character Party."

"If you want to party so bad, why not just party every day for no reason? We've got the money, and ingredients are unlimited with buying and hunting, right?"

Tsk tsk tsk. You just didn't get it, Mahariku-san.

"That's the whole point. Celebrations are great because there's a reason. Even if it's just a pretext, having a reason matters, Mahariku-san."

"…Is that how it works?"

"If you ate a feast every single day, it'd become routine and lose its specialness. A feast tastes even better because it's a feast, you know?"

"Ah, I can see that."

Well, that said, I still ate steak every day because I wanted to.

Tria-chan got full but never bloated, so it was all-you-can-eat. She'd even gotten strong enough to bite through thick steaks lately.

Double standard? No! This was an improvement in quality of life!!

Trading away specialness for everyday normalcy while leveling up QOL by one tier!!

The kind of thing where you look back and go, "Man, we've really gotten spoiled, huh…"…!

And that was exactly why proper celebrations needed a proper reason.

"By the way, is Roku-chan human?"

"She's some kind of druid from an unknown tribe… a nature-worshipping priestess or something. But you're probably human, right, Roku?"

"I'm a half-dryad, Mahariku-sama."

"There you have it, Penpen. Not human, apparently."

Dryads were tree spirits, right? So she was a half-spirit. …Since we were called spirits too, I felt a bit of kinship. Even if they were completely different things.

Still, second characters really did have a unique feel to them.

"Her appearance is… pretty much the same as the other girls, though? Also, didn't half-dryads originally have distinctive features?"

"She had some, but I adjusted her look during character creation. It's more strategically interesting this way. I tweaked everything, Halo design included."

Ah, the Halo. True enough, looking closely, Roku's Halo was a simple circle but subtly different from the others'. It had an "I matched it as closely as I could" sort of look.

To think she'd gone as far as designing even that detail… Truly impressive, Mahariku-san. I'd expected nothing less, but she really was thorough.

As for her body, she'd originally had slightly pointed ears and green hair, apparently. Now she was just another plain brown-haired girl with her eyes hidden behind her bangs, same as the rest.

"So, does Roku-chan have any special abilities?"

"Heh heh heh… It's not worth keeping secret, so I'll tell you. She can hear the voices of plants and talk to them."

"The voices of plants!? That's amazing, yo!"

"You could spy on all sorts of things with that! This world has gardens everywhere and tons of plants. Especially around the bigwigs' castles."

"Well, it doesn't have much to do with her combat style, but it's definitely a versatile ability. Hearing groans coming from a salad was rather unpleasant, though."

What the heck. That was creepy.

Since plants could regenerate from cuttings, fresh vegetable salad was apparently still somewhat alive.

"Wait, but hasn't Roku-chan been eating salad this whole time, yo?"

"Just because they can talk doesn't mean I shouldn't eat them. Plants grow roots into other plants, fish eat other fish, and everyone here eats Orc. That's simply how nature works, don't you think?"

Hold on, Orcs could talk? Sure, their dens sometimes formed whole settlements, but… Well, they were tasty, so we ate them anyway.

"Exactly. In a certain country, they give virgins to Orcs, carefully raise the offspring, and the resulting meat is an ultra-premium delicacy. The kind that graces the tables of the ruling class, apparently."

"Huh. That's literally a man-eating story. What sickening taste, yo."

"And for the record, the one who was about to become one of those ultra-premium Orc meat producers was Roku-chan."

"Yes. My tendons had been severed, and I was one step from becoming an Orc's bride. Forcing it on others while refusing it themselves. Selfishness is a human failing… a very human emotion, wouldn't you agree?"

So Roku-chan's scenario had been something like an escape from that kind of ranch.

She set the place on fire and mass-produced roast pork, apparently.

"Hm? What happened to the people who were already producing Orc meat there?"

"Burned them along with it?"

"Huh. You burned civilians, yo? And you can still eat steak after that? I at least held off on steak the day… well, the day after Nika-chan destroyed that town, yo."

She'd gorged herself on the actual day to wash out the taste of Defilement, after all.

"What's that, Alto? How squeamish. And you call yourself our division's ace? They weren't civilians to begin with. I didn't go near them to avoid triggering the lewd skip, but their minds were already broken. They were livestock at that point. I put them out of their misery."

Apparently, after being made to birth Orcs several times, the mothers were reclassified as quasi-Orcs.

…Yeah, that was some deep karma.

"Ultra-premium Orc meat… So ranches like that exist, huh. Good reference material."

"Don't even think about it. Keep Penpen Ranch a wholesome operation, please."

"Well, in my country, ████… Ah, never mind."

Penpen's country sounded like it had some dark secrets too.