Holy Sword 1/3

My name is Gyle. You know those blonde buff adventurers with a Mohican that you see everywhere? Yeah, I’m one of them. I’ll be twenty this year.

Today I was in a dungeon like usual, just trying to make a living, but I found a secret room.  When I entered it, I immediately fell into a pitfall trap.

And d*mn was I surprised.

“Huh, where’d the floor go?” I thought, and then I fell down and smashed the dungeon boss in the head.

I fell for about ten seconds, so the fall speed likely got close to the human terminal velocity of 200km/h.

I’m a buff guy, and my equipment weighs something too, ya know? A hundred kilos of stuff hitting something at 200km/h is… well, I ain’t any good at math, but it was more than enough to oneshot that boss.

It's a good thing I had the Scapegoat Doll, because if it weren't for that magic item that could take lethal damage for me once, I'd be dead, too.

Then, after collecting the drops from the dungeon boss scattered around the area, a door in the back opened and I found a claymore with a shiny silver blade and gold lettering!

My excitement hit f*cking max! I was so excited to have defeated the dungeon boss, but I almost peed myself when I found the holy sword!

I brought back the holy sword as soon as I could.

I returned to the surface via the transfer gate at the back of the boss's room, and examined the holy sword with the magic item I'd left at the inn.

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Holy Sword Masamuneigh

Equip Effect: ATK UP (L), PHYS DEF UP (M), MAG DEF UP (M), STR UP (L), [Gain Holy Sword Skill], [Gain Holy Sword Magic], [Passive Regeneration]

Party Effect: Acquisition***UP (L), Sk**l Le***P (L) , Drop Rate U* (L)

Skil: [Sword of Light], [Te**], [Sky Step], [C**ne], [Appraise]

Se***t **ill: ******* ******* ****** ******** *********: ***** ***** *************

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It was a cheap magic item, so I couldn't check all of the sword’s capabilities, but I was pretty sure it was a holy sword, not just in appearance.

—H*ll yeah! I've got some luck coming my way! Here’s to quitting my job!

And while I was planning my future happiness, the holy sword glowed and turned into a girl.

It was a girl in her early teens with dark eyes and bobbed hair, wearing some kind of white robe and a broken mask on her head. ...... Was this the kind of anthropomorphism you see in novels?

"Nice to meet you, Master. I am the Holy Sword Masamuneigh.”

—And she's speaking fluently. That’s awesome!

"You don't have to call me Master. I'll sell ya soon anyway."

"What?"

She was a looker and she could even talk. Oh, just thinking how much money she’d sell for made me tremble.

At the very least, I’d be able to live off it for the rest of my life! I could buy a house, hire a maid, and devote myself to my hobbies forever!

"I think I’ll go and have a talk with the head of the adventurer’s guild. He’s an acquaintance, so he probably won’t rip me off.”

"W-Wait a minute! If you equip me, you can become a hero! Forget about some paltry sum; you can earn a fortune!”

"Nah brah. If I can make enough money to live on for the rest of my life, that's enough, yeah?

—You think I adventure because I enjoy it? It’s h*lla dangerous and I like living. And f*ck, this sword is way too overspecced. If I actually went and used it…

"It's not just about money, you can also get power eclipsing human limits!”

"Yeah, nah bro."

"Huh?"

Power: the one thing I didn’t need..

I put my hand on Masamuneigh's shoulder and said admonishingly, "I'm only going to say this once, so listen up: ............I'm a piece of sh*t!”

"Oh, okay.”

“Ya think a piece of sh*t would do anything decent with power? No, a piece of shi*t would do terrible things!”

"Hey, don’t be so negative! W-Wait, I don't think someone who calls himself feces would do something terrible!”

"H*ll nah, I would! If I suddenly got power, I’d start thinking that I was some chosen one and act pretentiously like I was God himself!”

"Don't be so confident in your self-deprecation! Even if that happens, it won't be a problem if you have the strongest power!

"Hah, you don't know what the h*ll you’re saying.”

"What do you mean?

"That the power you’re talking about is, in the end, just an external thing! You definitely lose your power at the height of your happiness, and the people you’ve been oppressing all this time will f*ck you over!”

"Wha— ...T-There’s no way it’s like that! It’s not like it’s some kind of bard’s tale. There are arrogant scoundrels running all over the world!”

"Let me tell ya something, young'un… These days, “villain(ess)” novels are popular. This is a world where arrogant young masters and ladies all take an about-face and become the main character!”

"Aren’t you just mixing up real life and fiction!”

"I’m very knowledgeable about this stuff. They don’t call me a novel connoisseur for nothing.”

"Stop connoisseur-ing and take a look at reality! And hey, are there really that many novels out there to be a connoisseur!?”

And of course there were. A lot of new books come out every month.

Thanks to that, I was running out of money for food, so I'd been begging people I knew for food, in exchange for cleaning their room.

"There are so many requests for adventurers to write novels that I've written a few short stories myself.”

"I just took a short nap, so how did the book publishing industry become like thiiiiiisssss!”

"Are you okay? Do you want me to sing Donna Donna to you?”

"No need to sing! I-I’m not done just yet... I have one last trump card to play!”

“Ah… In novels, don’t trump cards usually fail?”

"Well this one won’t! ...Oh, excuse me, may I see your hand?”

"Hand? Sure, I guess.... Ow!”

She suddenly stabbed me in the palm of my hand! The moment she took my hand, she sunk her fingers into my palm!

I immediately pulled my hand away, drawing away from her with a glare…

Strangely, her eyes lost focus and she started humming in a monotone voice.

“DNA validated. Starting soul synchronization… Synchronization complete. Now restarting.”

I was about to lash out in anger, but the eerie atmosphere made me take a step back.

His eyes were flashing orange and she was even making some kind of metallic clanking sound.

With a little bit of fear creeping into my voice, I asked, "... What did you do?"

And she gave me the worst answer possible, smiling all the while, "I have registered you as the owner, and now I cannot display any ability for people other than you.”

"You—! Cancel, cancel that! Ain’t that mean I can’t sell ya!”

"Master, it is impossible to deactivate with the exception of your death. So you can't sell me, because if you try, somebody might get greedy enough to try killing you, my master.”

"F-F*cking—"

"Hehe, I'll always be with you, Master."

"You little piece of sh*t!”

───

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─

Two days later, I was dungeon diving with Masamuneigh in my hand. A pretty blonde-haired wizard was accompanying me. There was nobody else around.

"And that’s why I want you to be my external conscience circuit.”

"I was wondering why you suddenly invited me out to a dungeon, but it looks like things are getting weird again.” After a brief explanation, the blonde-haired beauty Yulia muttered with interest, her glasses gleaming.

Yulia was a childhood friend of mine, a part of the Magic Guild, and a freak magic researcher.

She's usually in her lab all day, but I forced her to come.

"Masamuneigh said that the owner registration can never be canceled; is that true?”

"I haven’t really looked into it so I can’t give a definite answer, but that’s likely true. There are some weapons and magic items that require owner registration, so… Huh, the Scapegoat Doll I gave you is one of them."

[It’s tied to your soul, so if you try to forcibly cancel it, you will die.]

"They say the only way to unregister it is to destroy it."

The words, "Okay, let's destroy it!” almost slipped from my tongue, but powerful weapons like holy swords and cursed demonic swords weren’t so easy to destroy.

The amount of money needed to break one such sword was like a mountain compared to the money I got yesterday from selling the loot from the boss I inadvertently oneshot.

And who wanted a broken holy sword? I could only sell it for some chump change at that point

"I wouldn’t be able to get that kind of cash. D*mn, I’d have to save up for a while...... F*ck! I was gonna sell the holy sword and play around the rest of my life. It would’ve been awesome, feel me?”

[Let’s do a Dungeon Boss Marathon! You’ll be a millionaire in no time flat!]

"Are you stupid or an idiot? I only used you a little yesterday, and my muscles are strained, my *ss is in pain, and I think I dislocated something. No way in h*ll I’m doing something like that again!”

[Come onnn.]

One of Masamuneigh’s effects was [Gain Holy Sword Skill], which raised the level of the wielding arm to that of a master swordsman.

I did a little testing yesterday, and I cut through a rock as smoothly as if it were butter. A little too excited, I went dungeon diving…

Ah, the joys of pulling muscles I didn’t even know I had and the bliss of discovering how flexible my joints could be… Is something that only some masochistic main character from some of those Eastern cultivation novels would say. After only a single battle, I felt as if I was dying from the pain.

Since another of Masamuneigh’s skills was Passive Regeneration, I was able to move soon enough. Elsewise, I would’ve been monster food by now.

“So why did you call me out here? I don’t really understand what you mean by ‘external conscience circuit.’”

“Ah, so basically I want you to make sure I don’t do any evil things.”

“...To put it simply, you want me to be in a party with you? Do I get anything out of this?”

“I still need to fully practice it, but once I’m able to use the skills, you can get money for your research after defeating monsters. And Masamuneigh is able to boost the XP amount, item drop rate, and skill learning rate by a f*ck ton, so I think this will be a big help to your future research.”

“And how are we splitting it? Don’t forget that I’m a researcher who can’t fight.”

“Since I forcefully pulled you over here, how about we split it 3:3? And the remaining 4 can go to the party funds that I’ll leave for you to manage.”

“...”

Yulia stopped to ponder, but I was confident that she wouldn’t reject me.

The fact that she asked questions instead of refusing me was proof that she never planned to abandon me from the start.

I’ve known her for a long time, and if there’s one thing that I could say about her, it’s that she’s much too good of a person.

I chose her as an external conscience circuit because I knew that she would absolutely never fall into depravity along with me.

She seems like a demanding woman, and she’s always holed up in her lab, so not many people know her.

I’m probably the only one who’s gotten anything from her. Like the Scapegoat Doll, which normally costs about a hundred grand to set up, was done for me after I cleaned her room three times.

“I’ll join you for a month, and if we still don’t get results by then, I’ll rethink this, okay?”

“Of course that’s okay! Sorry for pushing you. If I still can’t use the skills after a month, you can have this sword.”

[Wait, what did you just say!?]

“It feels like I’ll get cursed or something, so I’ll decline that.”

“Ain’t that right. I wonder if I can chuck it into a volcano.”

[I’m a holy sword! If you treat me like that, I’ll turn into a copy of you and run around the town naked, got that!]

“That’s actually not a bad idea. You should hurry up and find a volcano.”

[It’s not like it’ll woooork. I can just swim out of the lavaaaaa. And then I’ll distribute Yulia’s underwear to everyone in the toooooown.]

“Masamuneigh… You’ll be eating nothing but raw peppers starting today.”

“Wait Gyle, feed her ghost peppers instead.”

[“I’m sorry, it was just a sudden impulse. I won’t do any weird things, so please forgive me.]