Interlude: At the Weapon Shop

Today we'd come out to the weapon shop.

Not that we had any particular intention of buying a new weapon. Alto has her SP gun, after all, and for me, the weapons Penpen makes are stronger anyway.

But even Penpen sometimes looks at store-bought weapons for reference when she's making something.

So Alto and I had tagged along to keep her company, browsing without buying, or picking up small stuff like throwing knives.

"By the way, store-bought weapons end up useless in the late game once you've got a crafter on the team, huh."

"There's plenty of cases where the store-bought weapon is the material, though-ssu."

"…Material. Now that you mention it, there were cases like that too."

Store-bought weapon plus some item, combine them, and you can get an elemental weapon or the like.

"It's that thing, yo. The thing flame-bait streamers pull sometimes, where they dump meat and mayonnaise into vegan food or health food and eat it, yo? The 'if it tastes good without meat, then it's definitely gonna taste good with meat!' thing, yo."

"Ah, that. Yeah, in the sense of using a finished product as a material, it's the same, huh."

"If you use a properly strong weapon as the material, you can make an even stronger weapon. Stands to reason-ssu."

And once you take that all the way, you wind up making the material weapons yourself too so you can cherry-pick them, which means you end up not buying store weapons at all.

That said, we haven't taken things that far yet.

And then a giant sword hanging on the wall caught my eye.

It was far too much of an iron slab to be called a sword. The blade alone was a good 1.5 times bigger than Tria-chan's height.

"…Greatswords really are cool, huh."

"Oh oh oh, bigger is better, yo."

"That romance is calling to me. Mind if I try it on for a sec? Excuse me, shop cleeerk!"

"Y-yes! G-go, go, go right ahead."

The clerk hurriedly took the sword down off the wall and handed it to me. A huge weapon on a tiny girl like Tria-chan. Yeah, this is good…!

For starters I equipped it, slinging it across her back.

"Huh? On her back… it's stuck to her???"

…The clerk is staring at me for some reason. You don't have to watch me that closely, I'm not going to steal it.

Yeah, but it's too big. At Tria-chan's height, standing normally, the sword on her back sank right into the floor.

And the upper end was at a height where she couldn't reach the hilt. Ohh.

This is a weapon Tria-chan absolutely cannot equip…!

"This is… ngh…! I, I can't reach!"

"You're not equipping that, Tria, yo."

"No way that's happening-ssu. …Also, I thought that sword was stabbed into the floor, but isn't it going right through-ssu?"

Well, obviously. It's a game, so there's no such thing as your sword sticking into the floor and leaving you unable to move.

Stuff like a sword slung on your back doesn't have any hit detection.

"Huh!? Wait, what!?"

The clerk reached a hand out toward the sword on her back for some reason, but naturally couldn't touch it. Makes sense, since you'd need a suitable skill or something to take someone's equipment off them.

A sword that's only displayed as a skin is nothing but decoration. It's not often a game tells you the sword on your back is too big to fit down the corridor.

"Haah, but this really is too big, it's just unnatural. Unequipping. Here, shop clerk, I'm giving this back."

"Huh? Wait, huh? Yes, right."

I cancelled the try-on and handed the sword back to the clerk by hand.

"Oh! Tria, I found a good one, yo! You should equip this, yo!"

"Hm? What is… wait, what is this?"

"A drill, yo! Equip it on your head and you can max out your defense, yo!"

What Alto had brought over was a weapon shaped like a cone with a spiral groove cut into it.

"Hey now, equipping a drill on your head. Is this another ancient bug story?"

"What are you two talking about-ssu?"

"Ah, there was a bug like that, in an old game."

Right. There was a famous game bug like that. Back in an ancient version.

If I remember right, you'd throw away or otherwise get rid of everything else that could be equipped, put the item in the very last slot of your item list, and then press the [Best Gear] button that equips everything at once, and… for some reason, even items that shouldn't have been equippable would get equipped. That was the bug.

Equipping an item called a drill on your head was especially famous.

Obviously there's no way a weird bug that breaks game balance like that would exist, but…

Well, then again, there was that ancient bug at the casino the other day, so maybe!

…

Ah, but this game doesn't even have a best-gear button.

"Um, miss. That is a Spiral Lance. It is not a… dri-ll? It is a spear…"

"Huuuh? …Now that you mention it, it is a spear, yo. Well, want to try equipping it on your head anyway, yo?"

"I'll pass."

That bug, equip the wrong thing with it and it corrupts your save data. Way too risky.

"So there was a bug like that-ssu. First I've heard of it-ssu."

"By the way, it wasn't just drills, you could equip crossbows and stuff too, yo."

"A crossbow… on your head… hah! I've got it-ssu!! I'm off to buy a crossbow-ssu!!"

And so, some days later, Penpen developed a trick helmet with a crossbow built into it, but honestly, magic was stronger and quicker, so it got shelved.

And more than anything, probably because a helmet with a crossbow on top of it looked neither cool nor cute.