A Bracelet and a Bargain

The living quarters, like the infirmary, had been neatly cleaned out.

More accurately, things had been stripped from the place with such momentum it could be called a clean sweep.

"Of course it's already been explored, huh."

"Yup, yo."

Well, this was a game, so I figured living quarters with no personal belongings were just par for the course.

At the very least, anything worth taking had been pulled up by the roots, more or less.

Then again, when you really think about it, even in real life people haul everything off, daily-use items included, from old burial mounds and pyramids and the like… so in that sense, this was actually pretty realistic.

The flip-side question, then, was why a halo-knockoff had been left in the infirmary, but, well, that was probably just game-side convenience. That thing wouldn't have been usable anywhere else, after all.

"…So that means the prince has ruin excavation finds and cartridges and the like, right?"

"!! That's it, yo! That guy's got a memoir on him too, so he's bound to have excavated items, yo! I'll demand cartridges as my reward this time, yo!"

Penpen and I had been able to power up with our use-as-many-items-as-you-want alchemy, but Alto had only swept the dungeon and gotten no special boost out of it. So that was the angle, huh. Balance-wise, it added up.

Just in case something had been overlooked, we made sure to comb through the toilets and the residential areas thoroughly.

The result… one tube of lip cream.

"I thought it was a bullet, but it wasn't, yo…"

"Your gun doesn't even need bullets, you know."

"Yup, yo. Well, I'll take it anyway, yo. I'll believe it's the used lip cream of a beautiful girl!"

"It's a relic from an ancient ruin, you know? Even if she was a girl, by now she'd be a grandma."

"Don't say things that crush my dreams, yo! There's a chance she's a loli-baba, yo!?"

Miitei-chan was muttering "Aww, no food, what a shame," but we decided to head back to the prince.

"My body feels heavy… but my skills are definitely being suppressed…!"

"Is it being processed as a kind of reincarnation, ssu? Maybe your parameters got lowered, ssu."

"That might be it, hmm…?"

"Ah, then for now, I'll give you some equipment that boosts HP, ssu."

Whoops. When we got back to the infirmary, Gin-chan was just then handing the prince a bracelet. I had to give him a quick warning.

"Hey there, prince, if you put that bracelet on—"

"Gah!? Wh-wh-what is this!? A sudden palpitation, shortness of breath… this chill, poison!? Y-you couldn't be the minister's pawn…!?"

"Too late, huh."

"Nika-chaan, give him a Heal."

"Ah, yes, Spirit-sama. Heal!"

That HP-boosting bracelet Penpen had made had performance that was just too good. Good enough that if your base HP was low, the moment your total HP went up, you'd flip straight into the danger-zone display.

At our level, as long as our HP wasn't already worn down, we were fine, but the prince was the sheltered type, and one wrong step would've sent him straight past "danger" into "almost dead."

"…I've calmed down. Wh-what was that just now…?"

"Well, it's a common parameter shift caused by equipment. Happens all the time."

"Yeah, performance being too good is kind of a double-edged sword in full-dive VR, yo."

"I plumb forgot, ssu. Sorry, prince."

"N-no, I'm the one who jumped to conclusions. My apologies. I am grateful for such precious equipment."

Well, it was made out of potion materials we'd skimmed off what the prince had given us, so it was essentially free, but we'd keep that part to ourselves.

"But just putting on this bracelet raises my maximum stamina. That's outrageous."

"Yo? Isn't that a pretty common piece of equipment, yo?"

"Equipment of this caliber has been lost to history."

"Ah."

Mid-conversation, the prince casually unfastened the bracelet. And then put it back on.

"Bgkh!?"

"Aah, aah, didn't I tell you. Nika-chan."

"Yes, Tria-sama. Heal!"

Bathed in sparkling light, the prince perked back up.

"Khah, ha, haa, that saved me. Wh-what was that just now…?"

"Of course that's what happens if you take an HP-up piece of equipment off and put it back on, yo. Are you stupid, yo?"

"The instant you take it off, you're at the max for your no-equipment state, you know. And then on top of that you put it back on, so, you know?"

"Your gauge just turned red and you went and did that, ssu? It's common sense, ssu."

"…It's common sense, huh. So that's how it is."

Common sense, right? The kind that makes you need a heal every single time. I figured plenty of people had pulled the same stunt.

"Anyway, prince, the ruin had nothing decent left, yo."

"What? I see, now that you mention it, only memoirs are left, so it must have been explored already."

"Yup, yo! That's why, as my reward, I demand a cartridge, an artifact that would have been here, yo!"

"…Cah-trij? Sorry, but I don't know what that is."

"Hand over the right to take one item from this site's excavated finds, yo! Hand it over, yo!!"

Alto grabbed the prince by the collar and shook him back and forth.

"V-very well. I shall negotiate. I can't promise anything, since I don't know exactly what's where, but once we return…"

"Yeah! It's a promise, yo!!"

Lèse-majesté? Never heard of it! Anything goes here!