V1C16

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What is this secret, you ask? Well I didn’t understand it myself until just a few hours ago, when I was listening to Old Man Japan’s explanation.

He had been explaining Tarō’s new skill, Improved Critical Chance.

“… So, you can see that one’s critical hit rate is truly negligible. They say that it increases to 300% at tenth level. However, that leaves even a master swordsman with only a 0.4% chance. You can well imagine how low an amateur’s hit rate would be…”

The truth is that my Improved Critical Chance hit level ten yesterday. Before that, it had been like Old Man Japan said, listing that I had an XX % improved critical hit chance. It was something like 2000% at level nine, I think. I didn’t know what % meant, so I had no idea what kind of improvement that was. However, when it hit level ten, the description changed.

… to Critical Hit Chance 100%.

I had no idea what it meant that the number got lower and the word ‘improved’ disappeared. But now I can link it to Old Man Japan’s explanation. Getting a critical once in a thousand times is 0.1%, apparently. So 100% would be getting a critical hit a thousand times out of a thousand. That means, I’m pretty sure, that every hit is a critical.

By the way, Evasion also hit level ten. Up through level nine, it had said something like XX% improved evasion chance. That changed as soon as it hit ten, changing to Evasion Chance 100%. That should mean that I can completely avoid any monster’s attacks. Like this morning, when I’d thought I was dead for sure, but my body moved itself out of the way of the wyvern’s maw. That must have been my Evasion skill at work.

Meaning that Trash Skills aren’t trash at all. With just these two skills, even a little kid like me can defeat a disaster-class monster.

It makes sense that nobody else has ever managed to raise them to level ten. At first they have completely useless effects, and their fruits are ridiculously gross to eat. Just to raise one of them all the way, you’d have to eat close to 20,000 super bitter fruits. I can’t imagine someone who loves punishment enough to go through with that.

If anyone had ever figured out how to make them edible, how to eat them properly, then someone somewhere would have raised one of those skills to ten just out of curiosity. And then they, and everyone else, would have understood that they’re not trash.

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The most amazing one of all, though, is Cargo Increase*. It’s ridiculous.

Nobody (besides me) has any idea what it does. For most skills, you get a description that looks like XX% improved Y. Not Cargo Increase. When I was five, I found out what others had found out before me—where the description would be, there was just a lone star symbol stuck in one corner.

What even is Cargo Increase supposed to mean in the first place? We’re people, not wagons. Where are we supposed to load up cargo?

There’s actually a story Dad told me. A long time ago, there was a man who fed his carthorse Cargo Increase fruits. He hoped his horse would become able to pull heavier and heavier wagons. But, no matter how many fruits his horse ate, it never became any better at pulling. Before long, the horse grew tired of the bitter fruits and began to refuse them… violently. So the man had no choice but to give up on his dream.

Cargo Increase fruits, for the record, are the ones that Tarō said look like crabapples, whatever those are. They’re red, and they have an invigorating sweet scent if you let them sit for seven days. They’re crispy on the inside, and they’re juicy and sour and sweet. They don’t have the same thick sweetness as an Improved Critical fruit, but a light and refreshing one. They’re especially good when you’re tired or thirsty!

Anyways, I’d been eating them for a long time before I realized one day that something had changed. At that point, I didn’t have any expectations regarding my four ‘trash skills’, so I almost never even checked my skills. But one day, on a whim, I happened to give them a look over, and I realized that the number of star symbols had increased. I had no idea what that was about, though.

And finally, just the other day, I was snacking on Cargo Increase fruits when I heard a small bell go off in my head. Believe me when I say that that was the first time that had ever happened to me, and you can bet that I looked all around for a real bell first.

When I say “go off”, I don’t just mean one little ding. I mean that it kept going and going and going. I had no idea what to do, so I checked my abilities real quick, and, as soon as I did that, the bell stopped.

Must have been something to urge me to check my abilities out. Dad never told me about anything like that.

I inspected my abilities one by one, but there wasn’t any change that stood out to me. Finally, I checked my skill list.

Where there had been nine star symbols lined up, no there were none! In their place were three words—Cargo Hold Unlocked. Besides that, there was nothing else to help me understand what the heck a cargo hold was supposed to be.

At that time, I figured it couldn’t be anything useful anyways, so I ignored it. I didn’t—I couldn’t—expect anything from my four wasted skill slots back then.

But that all changed this morning, when I somehow found myself the victor in a life-and-death contest between me and that wyvern. I was stunned at first, but eventually it hit me that it might have had something to do with my skills. Then I had an idea, and I tried it, and I managed to do it.

I was able to put the wyvern into the Cargo Hold.

*****************

This is such an awesome skill! Awesome and terrifying. I mean, I don’t think a little kid should be able to walk around with a wyvern in their pocket. I guess it’s not actually in my pocket, but you know.

It seems like Cargo Hold is just in the preparing phase from levels one through nine. Then, bam, at level ten, a Cargo Hold just for you pops up out of nowhere, and you can put whatever you want into it just by thinking load while look at the thing. At least, that’s what it seems like, since I’ve only loaded up the wyvern so far. Maybe there’s more to it.

When I go hunting for shooting beans tomorrow, I’m going to try out a bunch of stuff. It’d be super convenient if I could actually load and unload whatever I want when I want.

No matter what, though, I can’t let anyone else know about this. I can see clear as day an evil adventurer kidnapping me and forcing me to carry all their stuff until I die.

Yeah, that settles it. I’m never ever going to talk about Cargo Increase to anyone for any reason ever.

*T/N: I translated this as “Improved Carrying Capacity” in the last chapter, but I realized I had used “Storage Increase” in the first chapter when it first came up, and reading this chapter over I realize that “Cargo Increase” is probably best. I also swapped the command word from “store” to “load.”