"I cleared it!"
Apparently, she had. This meant the Numbers now totaled five.
Looking at them, one felt slightly different from the rest. It was the kind of subtle distinction you couldn't quite catch from a distance.
"Well then, let's have a real party, ssu!" Penpen shouted.
"Hyahhoo! I'm gonna drink and eat until I drop, dao! I'll go get the booze, o!" Alto added.
"I have a theory that you guys just want any excuse to eat, drink, and make a racket," Mahariku said.
"You caught me, o!"
"Well, the food in this game is delicious," Mahariku admitted. "Though it tastes awful when I'm the one making it."
She nodded to herself, concluding that the Cooking Skill was a necessity.
"Actually, even without the Cooking Skill, you can make something decent in VR Mode, o," Alto pointed out.
"Eh?"
"Specifically, the quality reflects the player's real-life cooking skills, o."
Mahariku went silent.
"Mahariku-san, could it be... you've never actually cooked, o?"
"A-Alto, it's not like you cook either, right?! I mean, we're coworkers in Sales!"
"O-o-o, I actually had a phase where I did my own cooking, so I'm somewhat capable, o."
I was impressed. I didn't take Alto for the type. As for me, my culinary experience began and ended with microwave meals and pouring boiling water into instant cups.
"...I want to eat... Mahariku-sama's home cooking," the Numbers whispered.
"I get that."
"Total agreement."
"Deep understanding."
"A natural choice."
The fifth member of the Numbers seemed to be fitting right in.
And so, the party began. The official theme this time was undoubtedly the "Congratulations on your Second Character" party.
"Honestly, if you want to party so much, we should just do it every day for no reason," Mahariku said. "We have the money, and we can buy or hunt as much food as we want, right?"
Tsk, tsk, tsk. You don't get it, Mahariku-san.
"These things are good precisely because you have a reason to make a fuss. Even if it's just a pretext, you need a reason, Mahariku-san."
"...Is that how it works?"
"If you eat a feast every day, it just becomes daily life. It loses that special feeling. A feast is a 'feast' because it tastes better when it's special, you know?"
"Ah, I suppose I can understand that."
Well, that was my logic, but I still wanted to eat steak every day, so I did.
Since Tria-chan could get full without getting indigestion, it was an all-you-can-eat situation. Recently, I had even developed the jaw strength to bite right through a thick steak.
A double standard? No! This was an improvement in my standard of living! By turning the special into the ordinary, I was raising my QOL by a whole tier.
I had truly become extravagant... I thought to myself, reflecting on how far I'd come.
That was exactly why we needed a proper reason whenever we decided to go all out.
"By the way, is Roku-chan human, ssu?" Penpen asked.
"She's a Druid from some tribe I don't recognize. They're nature-worshiping priests, but she's human, right, Roku?"
"I am a Half-Dryad, Mahariku-sama."
"So she says, Penpen. Apparently, she isn't human."
A Dryad was a tree spirit. So she was a half-spirit. Since we were also called Spirits, I felt a slight sense of kinship. They were likely different things, but still.
Even so, that "Second Character" status felt unique.
"Her physical features... look almost identical to the other girls, though? Do Half-Dryads not have any distinctive traits to begin with?" I asked.
"She had a few, but I adjusted her appearance during character creation. It's more strategically interesting this way. I even messed with the design of her Halo."
I looked closer. She was right. Roku's Halo was a simple circle, but it was subtly different from the others. Mahariku had clearly tried to make it match as closely as possible.
To think she went as far as designing the Halo... Mahariku-san was nothing if not thorough.
As for her body, her ears had originally been more pointed and her hair had been green. Now, she was just another plain, brown-haired girl with her eyes covered by her bangs.
"So, does Roku-chan have any special abilities?"
"Heh heh heh... it's not a secret, so I'll tell you. She can hear the voice of plants and talk to them."
"The voice of plants?! That's amazing, o!"
"She can do all kinds of spying, ssu! This world has gardens everywhere and plenty of greenery. Especially in the castles of the nobility."
"It doesn't have much to do with her combat style, but it's definitely a versatile ability," Mahariku said. "Though hearing groans coming from a salad was a bit disheartening."
That sounded terrifying.
Since plants can regenerate even from small cuttings, raw vegetable salads are technically still slightly alive.
"Wait, hasn't Roku-chan been eating the salad normally this whole time, o?"
"The fact that they speak is no reason not to eat them," Roku replied calmly. "Plants take root in other plants, fish eat other fish, and you all eat Orcs. That is simply the way of nature."
Wait, do Orcs speak? I knew they lived in settlements, but I usually just ate them because they were delicious.
"That's right," Mahariku added. "In a certain country, they give virgins to orcs. The offspring are then carefully raised as ultra-high-grade meat—a delicacy served at the tables of the ruling class."
"Hoh. That's a real 'man-eating' story, isn't it? Talk about sickeningly bad taste, o," Alto remarked.
"Actually, Roku-chan was on the verge of becoming a producer of that ultra-high-grade orc meat herself."
"Yes," Roku said. "The tendons in my limbs had been severed. I was one step away from becoming an orc bride. I may force such things on others, but I find it distasteful for myself. Selfishness is a human karma—a very human emotion, don't you think?"
Roku-chan's scenario had apparently involved escaping from that ranch.
She had supposedly set fire to the place and produced a massive amount of "roast pork" in the process.
"Wait," I interjected. "What happened to the people who were already working as meat producers there?"
"I burned them too."
"Eh. You burned civilians, o? How can you still eat steak? When Nika-chan destroyed that town... I at least refrained from eating steak the next day, o."
I remembered that. Though on the actual day, she had eaten plenty as a "palate cleanser" for the Defilement.
"Really, Alto, don't be so faint-hearted. Are you supposed to be the ace of my department or not?" Mahariku chided. "In the first place, they weren't civilians. I didn't get close to them to avoid the Erotic Skip, but their minds were already broken. They were no different from livestock. She was just putting them out of their misery."
Apparently, after the human mothers gave birth to orcs a few times, they were classified as semi-orcs.
...Yeah, that was some heavy karma.
"Ultra-high-grade orc meat... so those kinds of ranches exist. This will be good reference, ssu," Penpen noted.
"Don't. Just don't. Keep the management of Penpen's Ranch wholesome, okay?"
"Well, in my country, we used to—ah, it's nothing, ssu."
It sounded like Penpen's home country had some deep darkness of its own.