Today, we paid a visit to the weapon shop.
It wasn't as if we were actively looking to buy new weapons. After all, Alto had her SP gun, and the weapons Pen-pen crafted for me were far more powerful anyway.
However, even Pen-pen occasionally took inspiration from store-bought gear when designing new items.
Alto and I had simply tagged along for company, looking to browse or perhaps pick up minor consumables like throwing knives.
"Come to think of it, store-bought weapons become pretty useless in the late game once you have crafters in your party, don't they?"
"Though store-bought weapons are often used as crafting materials, ssu."
"...Materials, right. Yeah, that does happen sometimes."
You could take a store-bought base, combine it with specific items, and synthesize an elemental weapon, for example.
"It's like that thing, dao. You know how those rage-bait streamers take vegan or healthy dishes and dump meat and mayonnaise all over them to make them actually taste good, dao? Like, 'If it's good without meat, adding meat will make it amazing!' kind of thing, dao."
"Ah, that. I guess using a finished product as raw material is pretty much the same concept."
"If you use an already-decent weapon as a base, you can craft something even stronger—it just makes sense, ssu."
Of course, if you pushed that logic to its limit, you'd end up min-maxing and crafting the base materials from scratch too, which meant you still wouldn't buy anything from the shops.
Still, we hadn't taken our crafting quite that far yet.
Just then, a massive greatsword mounted on the wall caught my eye.
Calling it a sword felt like a stretch—it looked more like a slab of iron. The blade alone was one and a half times taller than Tria-chan.
"...Greatswords really are cool, aren't they?"
"Ohoho, bigger is better, dao!"
"The sheer romance of it has me intrigued. Mind if I try it on for size? Excuse me, clerk!"
"Y-Yes! P-P-Please, be my guest!"
Flustered, the clerk hauled the massive blade down from the wall and handed it over. A colossal weapon wielded by a petite girl like Tria-chan... You just couldn't beat that aesthetic!
I went ahead and equipped it, slinging it across my back.
"Huh? On your back... It's just sticking there???"
...The clerk was staring at me with wide eyes. Hey, you don't need to keep such close watch; I'm not going to steal it.
Yeah, but this thing really was absurdly oversized. Given Tria-chan's height, the sheathed blade clipped straight through the floor in her idle stance.
To make matters worse, the grip extended so high overhead that her hands couldn't even reach it. Oof.
This weapon was completely unusable for Tria-chan...!
"This is... gah...! M-My hands can't reach the hilt!"
"You can't even wield it, dao, Toria."
"No way that's gonna work, ssu....Wait, I thought the tip was stuck in the floorboards, but isn't it just passing right through, ssu?"
Well, of course it was. This was a game; it wasn't like a sheathed weapon would clip into the terrain and trap you in place.
Things mounted on your back simply didn't have collision hitboxes.
"What?! How is that...?!"
The clerk reached out toward the sword on my back, but naturally, his hand passed right through without making contact. It made sense—unless you had an appropriate skill, you couldn't just strip equipped gear off someone else.
A weapon displayed on your avatar was purely a cosmetic visual. It wasn't as if a massive sheathed blade would ever get you wedged in a narrow hallway, after all.
"Whew, yeah, this looks way too unnatural. Unequip. Here you go, clerk, thanks for letting me try it."
"Huh? Wait, what? Ah, y-yes."
I canceled the fitting preview and handed the greatsword back to him.
"Oh! Toria, look at this one, dao! You should equip this, dao!"
"Hm? What's that... Wait, what even is this thing?"
"It's a drill, dao! If you equip it on your head, your defense maxes out, dao!"
Alto brought over a conical piece of equipment etched with deep spiral grooves.
"Hold on, equipping a drill on your head? Are you talking about that ancient glitch again?"
"What glitch, ssu?"
"Ah, there was an infamous exploit like that in an old game."
Indeed, it was a legendary bug from a classic title in the ancient retro era.
As I recalled, if you cleared your inventory of all other equippable gear, placed an item in the very last slot, and then hit the 'Optimize' auto-equip button... for some bizarre reason, the game would force-equip items that were never meant for that slot.
Putting a drill on your head was the most famous application.
Obviously, there was no way such a game-breaking, nonsensical bug existed in this world, but...
Then again, we had run into an ancient integer exploit at the casino recently, so maybe...!
...
Ah, wait. This game doesn't even have an 'Optimize' button.
"Um, valued customers... That is a Spiral Lance. It is not a... 'drill.' It is a spear..."
"Ahn?...Now that you mention it, it really is a spear, dao. Still wanna try sticking it on your head, dao?"
"I'll pass."
If memory served, that glitch had a nasty habit of corrupting save files if you equipped the wrong items. Far too risky.
"There was really a bug like that, ssu? That's news to me, ssu."
"By the way, it wasn't just drills—you could equip bowguns on your head too, dao."
"A bowgun... on the head... Ah! Inspiration strikes, ssu!! I'm buying a bowgun, ssu!!"
A few days later, Pen-pen successfully developed a novelty helmet with an integrated, head-mounted bowgun. Ultimately, however, offensive magic was both stronger and far more practical, so the invention was quietly shelved.
Above all, a helmet with a bowgun bolted to the top looked neither cool nor cute.