Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 155: Can You Do the Same?

We sat there in the freezing silence with our wooden tankards sitting completely untouched on the table.

I stared at the dark liquid for a few long minutes before eventually letting out a heavy sigh, figuring there was absolutely no point in just sitting here overthinking about the invisible monsters outside.

Reaching out, I picked up my tankard and took a small sip of the ale and immediately regretted it.

"Bleh," I groaned, violently scrunching my face in disgust. "How do you guys even drink alcohol? It tastes like... I don’t even have anything to relate it to!"

Garek raised a thick eyebrow at me across the table. "Was that your first time drinking?"

"Yep," I nodded with my face scrunched up from the bitter aftertaste.

"How old are you?" Garek leaned back in his wooden chair.

"Twenty,"

"You have been of age for seven years now," Garek pointed out with genuine confusion. "And you haven’t drunk even once."

"Nope," I replied, setting the heavy cup back down.

[Can’t exactly tell him I have barely been in this world for a week,] I thought, looking at the tankard. [Or that I spent the vast majority of my actual life locked in a hospital bed fighting cancer.]

Garek chuckled at my reaction. "There is still some porridge left in the kitchen if you want to wash down the taste."

"That bland sludge?" I said and immediately shook my head. "Hell no."

"Suit yourself," Garek grunted, picking up his own tankard and easily taking a massive, effortless gulp.

I watched him drink it like water before stubbornly picking my cup back up and taking another tiny sip, only to comically cringe all over again as the terrible taste hit the back of my throat.

And so, the silence returned to the mess hall. I sat back and watched Garek fidget with his drink; even a child could tell that the dude looked like he desperately wanted to talk, or at least say something to fill the quiet.

And I knew why.

Garek was worried sick about Mitsuki, and he desperately needed a distraction.

I couldn’t help but look at the guy and wonder how he survived doing this every single month. He basically had to sit completely alone in this freezing room while his wife stayed outside.

I took one more tiny, terrible sip of the ale before sighing. "Come on, spit it out."

Taking a deep breath, Garek looked me directly in the eye. "Kid, do you think this is worth it? The daily pay is guaranteed, and it is three times what we would make dungeon diving or doing quests. Safe for bandits or occasional magic beasts, there is barely any combat."

"You are asking me this?" I asked, raising an eyebrow in genuine surprise. "Why?"

"Because, unlike everyone else, you give me no face, but you’re not hostile either," Garek explained, resting his hands on the table. "You will say it exactly as it is."

"Huh..." I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. "So, tell me, are you asking this as Garek, the leader of the Iron Vanguard, or Garek the husband?"

Garek fell completely silent at that, lowering his gaze and gripping his tankard tightly.

While I took another sip, cringed, and mentally wondered why I kept drinking this shit, before pushing the tankard completely away this time.

"Look, as a leader, this contract is as good as it gets," I said honestly, before my gaze landed on the frost creeping under the front doors, and Garek followed my gaze. "But as a husband starting a family, absolutely not. No amount of money is worth this."

Garek let out a deep, shuddering sigh as he deflated, "Yeah, what kind of hunband willingly let his wife..."

And in that moment, I realized he definitely did not know Mitsuki was pregnant. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

"Look, I get your predicament," I continued, laying out the facts. "But, you keep doing this, and you put your family at risk. You stop, and since you’re the only B-Rank in the party, you guys lose the contract for the mine’s security. And that would not be fair to your brothers and sisters in arms who look up to you."

"Exactly...," Garek sighed, taking another large sip. "That is the crux of it."

"Then why not hire another priest?" I asked. "Why do you keep risking Mitsuki?"

"A priest of her caliber will cost more than we could afford," Garek explained quietly. "Everyone’s cut would be halved."

"That is it?" I asked, feeling a sudden spike of anger. I couldn’t stop myself from blatantly judging him with absolute disgust before I gestured toward the doors. "That justifies... this?!"

Garek noticed my expression, and a sad smile crossed his face as he shook his head. "You don’t understand..."

"I am not even sure if I want to," I shot back.

With another deep sigh, he looked straight into my eyes and spoke. "Remember Brant? The man you poured porridge on this morning?"

I gave a slow nod.

"He has a seven-month-old girl his wife died giving birth to..." Garek continued. "And that girl has a disease that turns her blood into solid clots inside her. No amount of blessings has been able to cure her so far. And she needs Healing Potions constantly, or she would die. His old mother takes care of the girl while Brant does all he has to."

I sat there completely shocked, just as I opened my mouth to speak, Garek cut me off.

"Remember Selene?" he asked. "Her gambling addict father sold her little sister into slavery. And the noble he sold her to is demanding a bullshit amount of money. Each night, every day you can imagine what he..."

I swallowed my words as Garek’s trailed off. Slavery in Fugen, after all, was completely legal.

Garek stopped and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. "It is not greed that drives me, kid. Everyone of them needs that money. They are my people too."

I looked at the massive man, feeling a sudden, overwhelming wave of respect wash over me.

[So that is why Mitsuki hasn’t told him she is pregnant,] I deduced, connecting the final dots. [She doesn’t want to add another massive weight to his already breaking shoulders.]

I let out a soft sigh, feeling my anger fade completely, bringing my focus back to the situation at hand.

"Then I guess it is time you got your priorities straight."

"What would you have done?" Garek asked in a quiet whisper.

I couldn’t hold back the chuckle as I leaned back in my chair. "The things I can do, Garek... well, they are things you will never be able to replicate."

"Right," Garek chuckled sarcastically.

I chuckled right back at him before raising my right hand and silently activating Metal Manifestation. And a few beats later, a small, solid gold nugget seemingly grew straight out of my open palm right before his widening eyes.

I casually threw it onto the table, sliding it over to Garek with a metallic clink.

"Here then, try to replicate this..." I smirked. "Go on, take your time. I will wait."

Garek looked at me, then down at the gold nugget on the table, absolutely dumbstruck.

His brain practically short-circuited as he slowly picked it up and examined the gold nugget.

"You know Manifestation," Garek breathed out. "And you know it well enough to produce actual gold!"

"I am still waiting, you know..." I said, keeping the smug grin on my face. "Very patiently too."

"Don’t give me that shit, you dumb brat!" Garek snapped out of his shock. "Manifestation is one of the hardest forms of magecraft to master! People have spent their entire lives trying to master it, and you... You recover mana fast too!"

"Come now, bubba," I interrupted him. "A literal Greater Dragon wouldn’t become just about anyone’s Familiar."

Garek went completely speechless, staring at me like I was a monster as the implications of being able to basically print money settled in.

"Why?" Garek blurted, "Why are you even here? You don’t lack... anything."

"For the sheer dumb fun of it..." I rested my chin on my hand, "Wanted to go on a balls-to-the-wall adventure away from the city... wanted to see the Outsiders, and stuff."

Garek just took a deep breath, tilting his head up as if asking the gods what the hell kind of mold you guys made him with.

Letting out a final chuckle, I dropped the smug act and leaned forward in all seriousness. "The point I am trying to make here is. So if I were you, I would have this and that too. And I wouldn’t have settled for anything else... Now, the question is, can you do the same?"

Garek fell silent as he stared at the gold in his hand.

"Of course you can’t..." I said, answering the question for him. "So, guess you gotta decide what is more important to you. Mitsuki or everything else."

Garek looked at me for a long moment before slowly nodding his head. "Yeah."

He raised his tankard toward me for a cheers. Chuckling, I grabbed my own cup that I had pushed away earlier and -

-Thok.

The tankards met with a solid knock, spilling ale onto the table.

Garek tilted his head back and downed his entire massive drink in one smooth go.

[Alright... You’re the Destined Hero, you got this!] I hyped myself up as I looked at him, figuring if he could do it, then so could I.

I tilted my head back and tried to chug the damn thing down. Emphasis on the ’tried’ because I immediately burst into a violent coughing fit, sputtering and spilling the ale all down my shirt, gasping for air as the terrible burn coated my throat.

Garek laughed out, "There’re somethings you can’t do too.. but I can."

"Beat it." I shot him an unamused stare.

And slowly, the heavy silence returned to the freezing room as I wiped my chin.

Just as it did, my brain suddenly clicked.

[That’s right! I should load the shotgun with the new shells!] 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

I mentally opened my personal inventory.

Nom-Nom currently wore the ammo-producing bracelet, and because she was my Familiar, she had rightful access to everything I owned, including my Inventory.

I had messaged her to try producing the next grade of buckshot whenever she had free time.

And lo and behold, I found fifty new shells sitting perfectly in a grid slot, 00 Buckshots made of Grade 9 Mythril.

I quickly ran the math in my head.

The shells I had been using so far held only 200 grams of Virtual Mass.

While these Mythril shells could easily hold 400.

But that also meant the charging time and upkeep cost would skyrocket. Fully charging them would require 800 MP, with a 40 MP/s upkeep.

And with my 65 MP pool, pumping at full capacity would take me around 12 seconds just to charge the Shotgun. And it would take more than half my capacity just to hold the charge there.

But the payoff was also completely insane.

The total energy would be massive.

Each individual pellet would produce about 6.7 kilojoules, basically like a magnum rifle, and the best part, a pellet has a much smaller surface area, meaning insane penetration.

And the collective energy of this 9-pellet buckshot was 60 kilojoules. That was 20-mm autocannon territory, designed to dump all that energy on impact.

I picked up the Divine Browning A5 from the table. And began racking the bolt, unloading all the old shells onto the table under Garek’s curious gaze before mentally pulling the new Mythril shells directly from my inventory, manifesting them right into my hand in a quad-reload grip.

Garek instantly jumped in his chair. "You have a spatial storage artifact too?"

"That is how my Soul Armament functions, picture it like a crossbow," I casually lied, showing him the shells in my grip, and the silvery Mythril pellets gleaming in the dim light. "... And these are the bolts. I can use mana to produce them."

"I see..." Garek muttered as his surprise immediately faded.

Soul Armaments were a manifestation of one’s soul into a physical object, and they hardly followed the conventional laws of magecraft.

So, Garek took my explanation at complete face value.

While I began quad-reloading the weapon, smoothly sliding five shells into the tube and dropping one into the chamber before grabbing the old shells off the table and shoving them into my pockets, and resting the fully loaded shotgun back on the table.

[Okay, now I am as ready as I can be...] I sighed, staring at the frozen door.

And as if the universe heard me and decided to say sure, the silence instantly shattered.

Mitsuki’s muffled, shrill scream of pure agony ripped straight through the walls.

Color instantly drained from our faces.

I reacted purely on instinct, immediately grabbing the shotgun and throwing it across the room, hoping to keep the weapon far away from my hands, fully knowing I was about to get mind-controlled for the next ten seconds.