Isaac fell silent for a moment. "...Didn't you say something as simple as heating water was easy?"
"Easy doesn't mean it can't fail." Carlo gathered up the dice. "With probability, anything short of a hundred percent has a chance of going wrong. Even with a target of 99, there's still a chance of rolling two zeroes and getting a critical failure."
"If an ordinary failure just means nothing happens, what happens if you roll a critical failure?"
"The water might explode, or the teacup might shatter. Either way, it wouldn't be good." Carlo pushed the dice toward Isaac. "Try again."
Isaac took them and tossed them onto the table.
55. The check succeeded.
A bubble rose in the water with a gurgle, and steam drifted up. The tea leaves swirled and slowly unfurled, releasing a golden-red infusion and a hint of fragrance.
"See? I told you it was easy." Carlo leaned back in his chair.
Isaac: "..."
Who was it that just failed the roll?
He had a new understanding of his boss's ability. In theory, it could accomplish things that were almost impossible, but it had a fatal weakness: no matter how simple an event was, as long as success wasn't guaranteed, there was a chance of botching the check.
Isaac picked up the teacup, blew on it, and took a sip. The tea tasted unlike any black tea he'd had before, with an indescribable honeyed fruit aroma. It was far better than the loose black tea sold near Palmer University.
"This tea has a rather unusual taste."
"This is high-end stuff. You won't find it on the market," Carlo said leisurely.
"Don't tell me you swiped this from the Joint Investigation Bureau too."
"What's that supposed to mean? I just forgot to turn off auto-pickup."
Isaac chewed his biscuit, thinking that his boss's words were getting stranger and stranger. What new term was auto-pickup supposed to be?
It wasn't hard to understand from the words themselves, but at least Isaac had never heard anyone else use it.
Still, he didn't ask further. He finished the biscuit with his tea, then took another sip to wash down the crumbs left in his mouth.
He looked at Fenri in front of the fireplace. Fenri was lying down, eyes half-closed, as if dozing.
"Does Fenri want something to eat?"
Carlo was leafing through the newspaper. "It can eat, but it doesn't need to. Things from the Wilderness feed differently from creatures in this world. They don't need ordinary food for nutrition. Whether they eat or not is entirely up to their mood."
"Then if it wants to eat, what does it eat?"
"Yes, what does it eat?" Carlo turned a page of the newspaper. "Let's go kidnap a few random people off the street and feed them to it."
"...That's a crime, isn't it?"
"Which is why we haven't kidnapped anyone." Carlo shrugged. "Since you're not prepared to become a criminal, stop worrying about what this dog eats. It won't starve to death right now anyway."
Isaac had no answer to that.
"All right, stop worrying about it. Let's go." Carlo folded the newspaper and tossed it back onto the table.
Isaac stood up too. Fenri glanced at him, then lay back down, evidently not holding out much hope of getting to go out while Carlo was there.
When they reached the entryway, Isaac was about to open the door when his gaze fell on something standing beside it, and he paused.
An ebony cane, its shaft black as pitch, with silver inlaid at the top.
Isaac took another look. He hadn't seen it before, but its design reminded him of what had happened to a certain mercenary at Amorton Manor.
Could this be that cane?
Carlo had already picked up the cane. He weighed it in his hand, then gripped the shaft and gave it a twirl.
"Boss, are you planning to take a walking stick out with you?"
From what Isaac had observed in Vista, gentlemen were in the habit of carrying a cane when they went out, both as a symbol of status and as a practical tool. But from what he knew of Carlo, he was clearly not the type to care about details of appearance.
Carlo glanced at him. "Never mind whether I'm using it as a walking stick. Let's see how the modification turned out first."
Modification?
Carlo gripped the shaft and pressed his thumb against the edge of the silver top. There was a click. With his other hand, he twisted the handle and pulled it free in one motion.
A slender blade slid out of the ebony shaft, gleaming with cold silver light under the lamp.
The blade was long and narrow, with a diamond-shaped cross-section, a fuller, and a sharp point. The entire sword was about the length of an arm, just right for concealing inside the cane.
Isaac stared. "This is..."
Carlo turned his wrist, flipping the blade in the light, and ran his fingertips along its spine. "The craftsmanship is decent. The money wasn't wasted."
"A sword cane?"
"That cane I bought earlier was just sitting around, so I figured I'd put it to use and had someone modify it. It's made of Holy Silver, so it can effectively harm aberrants. Sometimes it's more useful than a gun. After all, bullets run out, and gunshots attract trouble."
Carlo sheathed the sword. The blade slid into the shaft with a soft sound, and it became an ordinary cane once more.
He held the reassembled cane, twirled it in his hand, then tossed it to Isaac.
Isaac caught it clumsily. It felt heavy in his hand; with the Holy Silver and the mechanisms inside, it was bound to have some weight to it.
"You'll be carrying it from now on," Carlo said.
"Huh?"
"What do you mean, huh?" Carlo straightened his cuffs. "It'd be a nuisance for me to carry a cane around all day."
Isaac looked at the ebony cane, then at Carlo. "Boss, this must have cost a fortune. You're just giving it to me..."
Holy Silver itself wasn't cheap, and with the forging and mechanical design, which looked anything but simple, the sword cane was probably worth as much as Isaac himself.
"I'm letting you use it, not giving it to you. I had it modified to be a weapon, not a collector's piece." Carlo didn't seem to care. "Besides, if we run into an aberrant, you'll be the one fighting. Surely you wouldn't expect your boss to risk his own neck?"
Isaac: "..."
Good grief, so that's why.
He tested its weight, then copied Carlo's earlier movements, feeling around the edge of the silver top until he found the hidden button. He pressed it gently.
The handle came loose, and he pulled it out. The blade slid from the cane's sheath. He swung it once, and the edge cut through the air with a soft whistle.
It felt good in his hand, with a balanced center of gravity and a grip that fit his palm. It was clear that care had gone into making it.
Isaac sheathed the sword again. His movements were still awkward, and the blade scraped softly against the sheath.
"Get some practice in. Don't let it get stuck when you actually need it," Carlo said.
Isaac planted the cane on the floor. "Boss, aren't you worried I don't know how to use a sword?"
"You can shoot."
"Knowing how to shoot and knowing how to use a sword are two different things, aren't they?"
"Lessing trained your shooting to that level, which means he put effort into teaching you, and you have talent too. What he taught you probably wasn't as simple as pulling a trigger.
"And Lessing wasn't bad when it came to combat skills alone. After all, he was only able to leave Vista because he killed a church knight in a duel with his own hands."