My Glasses Will Be Able to Conquer the Whole World, I Suppose

Chapter 123 – Glasses boy tries various things before sleeping

 

“Then, let’s depart.” Horse told us.

Early in the morning, we left the assassins’ village, just as scheduled.

The trip this time won’t be done via narrow carriage, but on foot instead.
And we’ll be running the whole time.

Running speed, and by extension, stamina are highly required of us.

Being fast without stamina is no good, but having high stamina and running slowly would also be no good.
We need to have both the stamina and the speed to properly function.

As soon as I became a hunter apprentice, my master taught me that, and he made me run whenever possible.

Later, when I started hunting in the forest, I painfully understood the importance of my master’s words.

Stamina is what gives you the will to live.

Without it, you no longer have the energy to keep going.

You feel broken.

You succumb to fear.

You give up on living.

… That’s what I was taught, and I’ve actually experienced this kind of situation several times.

So, stamina is important.

Especially on the hunting grounds, you want to have some leeway in both stamina and raw power.

It seems like assassins have this same mindset, and as such, all trainees have built our stamina under the guidance of our masters.

I was a bit worried about Cherry’s stamina at first, but surprisingly, she has been able to keep up.

I haven’t seen her do anything that showed off her physical capabilities before, but it seems like she has been working on maintaining them on a good level.

And surprisingly, Florentine seems to be the one with the lowest stamina.

In any case, Cherry cried tears of joy a moment ago, when we heard that the trip would be on foot instead of by carriage.

She really struggled with motion sickness last time, and it was hard for us, who were watching her, so… I’m happy for her.

And so, shortly after we reunited at the meeting spot, all of us started running in the early morning, under the guidance of Horse, right before sunrise.

He’s quite fast.

We weren’t told where we were heading, and if I got distracted and ran sloppily, Horse’s back would surely move away and become out of reach.

On another note, Sorichika is running at the end of our group.
She seems to also be planning on going to the Tower of Bryne with us.

… Anyways.

While we ran, the other trainees started talking about the direction that we were going to, about how this was on the direction of the Great Empire and things like it.

Meanwhile, my sleep-deprived mind was still thinking over the occurrences of the last night.

“I’m looking forward to the smoked meat of the Sky Lizard!” Florentine exclaimed.

“You just think about meat.” Chace commented.

“What you on about, thug? You don’t wanna eat it?” Florentine asked him.

“I’ll eat it! I’ll eat it and I’ll eat your portion too!” Chace exclaimed.

“Hah!? Are you going to mess with my meat!? Are you seriously planning on trying that!?” Florentine asked him.

“Now now, no need to show bloodlust.
The taste is gonna be different after it’s smoked, but I’m sure it will be delicious anyways, right?” Cherry tried calming them down.

“Yeah, I can’t wait for lunch time.” Florentine nodded.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it too.

I can’t wait for the lunch break.

… Well, let’s put the meat aside for now.

Last night, while taking advantage of the fact that the cat wasn’t waking up, I tried various things to better explore the phenomenon I had seen.

The number of attempts was still small, and the target was only one, so… This is still in the experimental stage.

But nonetheless, I definitely got something out of that… A new power for my Glasses.

If I had to name it, it would be… Forced Information Disclosure.

******

First things first, the most important thing to remember of all this, was that I didn’t know anything about the Sand Walk gift.

As a rule of thumb, there were three things that could stop me from seeing someone’s Gift when I tried Inspecting them with my Glasses.

The first was if the owner wasn’t using it.

The second was if I didn’t know the Gift.

The third was if the person I was looking at didn’t have a Gift yet.

This is usually the case with children.
When I Inspect people whose Gifts I don’t know, I can’t read them, but when Inspecting children, I don’t see anything at all, so they shouldn’t have any Gifts yet.

However, there is something about this third restriction that bothers me, but let’s put it aside from now.

What’s important is that the cat’s Gift, the Sand Walker’s Gift, wasn’t something I couldn’t read, but more like something that didn’t show up at all.

After I returned to the village, I tried Inspecting all the villagers, including the cat, and what came up was the third situation.
No Gift was displayed at all.

Back then, I didn’t really question it.
I thought it was natural that no Gift was displayed because I didn’t expect the cat to have any Gift.
I accepted it without worrying about it in the slightest.

But Demon Beasts have Gifts.

I hadn’t thought about it until now, so I really assumed it was natural that Demon Beasts had no Gifts being displayed.

At least until last night.

When I opened my list of Gifts, it was certainly there… Sand Walk.

It was properly registered as a Gift.

There were many things that surprised me about this whole situation, but the biggest question I had was pretty simple.

What does Sand Walk do? What kind of Gift is it?

******

I tried various things that night, and to make sure the cat wouldn’t wake up, I kept on stroking its fur.

First of all, I figured out that I could suppress the emission of light from the Shining Lens at will.

Conversely, it’s possible to make them light up if I wish them to.

Next, I understood that the letters, Sand Walk, that emerged from the Shining Lens, could not be seen from the naked eye.

I can understand that they look like letters, but they’ll be blurry and unreadable.

I thought it was just because they were dazzling at first, but that was not the case.

Even after giving it time to let my eyes get used to the brightness emanated by the Shining Lens, I just couldn’t read the text no matter how much I tried.

But when I put on my glasses and stared at the text, even without using Darkened Lens, I could read the text clearly.

Therefore, if I have my glasses on, and put a different pair of glasses on someone else, it’s possible to extract information from the other party.

… And if I can extract it from Demon Beasts, then it should be possible to get this information from people too.

So, basically, if I put my glasses on someone who doesn’t know their Gift, I can ignore the three core rules of Gift registration and acquire their Gift anyways.

******

Next, I learned another important thing.

Since the cat was sleeping, I was able to try various things out.

And in the process, I spent some time staring at the cat’s mouth and saw its amazing fangs.
At that moment I really thought to myself, ‘She really does eat humans, doesn’t she?’

In any case, one of the Gifts I had registered, was ‘Appraisal Eye’.

Normally, it’s possible to use this Gift to learn information about the target, such as its name, value, usage and other similar information.
How much information you obtain depends on your own pre-existing knowledge and on your magical power.

However, Gifts that my Glasses reproduce are considerably less effective than the original.

In the case of Appraisal Eye, it would only show information that I already knew about in advance.

It was a shame, but there was no reason for me to ever use Appraisal Eye.
I had thought it could be a useful type of non-combat Gift, but it had turned out to be worthless.

Until I discovered Forced Information Disclosure, that is.

I had never thought that Appraisal Eye would come up in this kind of situation, but… Forced Information Disclosure does not depend on my knowledge.

Even though I did not know about the existence of the Sand Walk gift, I could still Inspect and register it just fine.

In that case, what would Appraisal Eye tell me if I were to look at information provided by Forced Information Disclosure?

It was purely conjecture on my end, but I figured that in this case, Appraisal Eye might rely on the cat’s knowledge instead of on my own.

After all, with this ability, I can read Gifts that I don’t know about.
It’s not my knowledge that is letting me read the Gift, but the cat’s knowledge.

And so, I decided to use Appraisal Eye on the cat, and when I did it, a simple explanation of Sand Walk appeared.

Sand Walk: No footsteps, no footprints.

That was all the information I obtained.

When considering how simplistic it was, it’s possible that this was the cat’s own way of perceiving its Gift.

******

Taking advantage of the fact I could do whatever I wanted, I tried doing a few more tests, but that led to the cat almost waking up.

It seems like I got too excited…

I hurried to the bed and pretended to be asleep for a while until the cat calmed down and seemed to go back to sleeping soundly.

At this point, I started wondering about what were the exact rules behind this new ability.
Under what conditions would Forced Information Disclosure work?

Glasses don’t need to be worn specifically on the face, after all.

It feels like an action that is plain wrong to me, but it’s possible to hang glasses on any part of one’s body.

So, I tried hanging it on the cat’s front paw… But it had no effects.

I then tried the front and back legs, but it also gave no results.

I could make the glasses glow if I wanted them to, but Forced Information Disclosure did not activate.

I also tried hanging it on the cat’s torso, but I also got no results.

Then I tried the tail, the ears, base of the legs, on the neck… And no matter which place I tried, Forced Information Disclosure would not activate.

At this point, I came to the conclusion that the glasses had to be put on the face to activate this ability.

… But do they need to be normally put on the face? How about putting them upside down?

I could activate the ability this time, but the letters were displayed upside down, so it ended up just being pointlessly hard to read like that.

There was no point in doing this, so I decided I would never do it again.

Then I tried it on the cat’s forehead and… It worked.
Forced Information Disclosure activated.

Does it need to be near the eyes, then?

I put it over the cat’s head this time to test, but the result was no good.

I also tried closing the glasses before putting them on the cat’s forehead, and I also got no results.

Therefore, the condition to activate this seems to be, to wear the glasses on one’s face.

So, for example, it’s not possible to use Forced Information Disclosure by pressing the glasses against someone’s back, then leaving immediately after obtaining the information.

Forced Information Disclosure requires wearing the glasses.

Mmmm… It’s a pretty harsh restriction.

That said, the more I think about this… The more I’m unsure about what I’d even want to do with this kind of power.
Its burden is way too heavy…