Luke momentarily paused his hands, which were making cookies, and shouted behind him.
“Pyris, what are you doing in the room right now?”
“……Playing with dolls!”
“Hmm, is that so?”
Didn’t he just hear something spill?
What kind of doll play was that?
Pyris seemed quite pleased to see Liv too.
“Then can you play quietly? The room is noisy. If you make that much noise, the person living below will come up. Clean up whatever you spilled.”
“Okay!”
He only lightly chastised her, not making a big deal out of it.
It seemed like there was some heavy breathing mixed in with Pyris’s voice, but since Liv wasn’t just a stuffed bear sitting still, some level of intense movement was understandable.
Pyris also liked to move around.
But despite Pyris’s response of “Okay,” the noise erupted once more.
-Bang! Crash!
Eventually thinking it wouldn’t do to leave it as it was, Luke completely set down what he was doing and headed towards the back to figure out what was happening.
Even as Luke approached, the inside of the room continued to emit loud noises.
-Slam!
Luke opened the closed door and spoke.
“What on earth are you making such a racket for…?”
As soon as the door opened, a brown figure seemed to leap out at his face.
Luke was taken completely off guard as something collided with his face.
“Ugh?”
Startled, he reached out towards whatever had clung to his face, only to be met with a heavy impact smashing into his body.
As a result, Luke naturally lost his balance and fell backward.
-Crash!
“Ugh!”
As he fell, he barely managed to avoid landing on his tail, but he couldn’t escape letting out a ripping scream.
He felt something with considerable mass entangled around his body, then it disappeared, and soon his body felt light as whatever had covered his face vanished.
What in the world was this ambush?
Luke was quite confused.
His backside hurt from the fall.
“Ouch, ouch…”
Since it was home, he didn’t feel the need to cast a shield ahead of time, so he took all the impact directly.
The only saving grace was that if it had been his old body, he would have quickly complained about back pain from such a shock, but this body was flexible and sturdy enough, allowing him to recover quickly.
“What the hell is this…?”
The scene that unfolded before Luke, having just barely gotten his body upright, was a room completely turned upside down.
His neatly organized bed and blankets were tossed about, and even the carpet that had been on the floor was turned over and crumpled in a mess.
Not only that, but a few cosmetics that had been placed on top of a dresser were rolling on the floor, soaking it, and the pillow had burst open, feathers filling the air and still flying around the room.
Items that had been in the drawers were all pulled out and scattered, and several items were broken, with shards littering the floor.
What in the world had caused all this chaos?
In the first few seconds, Luke really thought that there might have been a mana explosion in the room.
However, just a moment’s thought made it clear that it was mere denial of reality.
The only ones moving in the room were Pyris and Liv, and naturally, the only beings capable of causing such a mess were also Pyris and Liv.
Based on that thought, he easily deduced that it had been Liv clinging to his face and Pyris causing the impact on his body.
“Py! Liv! What on earth has happened to this room!”
Luke shouted in anger.
From Luke’s perspective, who usually had a mage-like obsession with cleanliness, the state of his home was a horrifying situation that was absolutely unacceptable.
-Crash!
But whether they were listening to him or not, the chaos continued, albeit with a change in location.
No, it seemed even more intensified.
It was clear that his voice was not registering in their ears.
However, the problem was that the direction of the noise was coming from the kitchen.
Luke soon remembered Yerna’s ointment that he had left in the kitchen and sprang into action, heading towards it.
————
“Liv! Pyris!”
As soon as Luke shouted their names and arrived in the kitchen, the chaos had somewhat quieted down.
The reason being that the two were currently in a standoff.
“……”
Liv was gripping a kitchen knife sitting on the cutting board, adopting a stance and drawing out a dangerously sharpened edge, while
“Eek…”
Pyris was also glaring, her face flushed with anger, clutching a whisk.
Pyris didn’t seem to have picked it up with a specific intention; it seemed more like she had just grabbed something at random, and it just happened to be a whisk.
Luke felt he couldn’t possibly get angry in this situation.
He was flustered, and he thought that if he made a wrong move, something genuinely serious could happen.
Though Liv currently looked cute, she was a battle weapon crafted to the specifications of a former royal knight commander.
In the hands of such a battle weapon, she was wielding a proper modern blade, a kitchen knife.
That aura of righteousness could easily sharpen even a severely damaged blade, conditioned through ages in Arinseia.
Yet, she was wielding a modern reinforced alloy knife forged with overlapping sharpness, which meant Luke couldn’t afford to be careless.
The only fortunate thing was that Yerna’s ointment for treating burns was still intact.
“Wh-what on earth is happening? Why are you fighting?”
Thus, Luke pushed away his feelings of anger momentarily and tried to initiate a conversation.
If he were to scold Pyris here, it was certain that Liv would interpret Pyris as an ‘enemy’ and act out with her sword, and he feared the knife in Liv’s hand too much to scold her instead.
Since he hadn’t yet built a deep and certain trust with Liv, it could very well end up costing him a hand if he wasn’t careful.
Changing the perception of the master-servant relationship of living armor would require at least a full day of effort, so he had to be cautious.
‘Perhaps I really did something ridiculous…’
As he was thinking that, Pyris opened her mouth first.
“That doll hit me!”
“Liv, is that true?”
Luke asked, and Liv nodded slightly, as if feeling wronged, pointing out the stuffing that peeked out of her joints.
It seemed she was suggesting that she was also a victim.
“Pyris, it seems Liv wants to say that you started it first.”
“T-that’s… She provoked me first!”
“……”
At Luke’s “Is that really true?” look, Liv shook her head.
“She says no. Did she really provoke you?”
“B-but she got in between me and my sister first! I’m the family member here! This is a doll!!”
Pyris seemed momentarily at a loss for words, but soon expressed her disdain towards Liv and adjusted her grip on the whisk.
As for Liv, Luke couldn’t understand what had any meaning here.
Was she judging that she needed to hold something as well because Liv was holding something?
But that reaction was strange.
Pyris was generally friendly to everyone and didn’t shy away from new faces.
So why did she dislike Liv so much? Luke was able to recollect something.
“Ah.”
Now that he thought about it, there had been something like that before.
Sometimes, Liv would dance alone in the air as if she were performing a sword dance.
At first, he thought it was merely an error in the logical circuitry, but later, a bard visiting the castle advised him that it was a movement reacting to a ‘spirit.’
Considering the previous example, it’s clear that fundamentally, living armor is a type of artifact, and spirits generally loathe or avoid artifacts.
It’s a tendency close to instinct.
In Kate’s case, she accepted it since she had seen it being made firsthand, but Pyris didn’t have that.
She had essentially brought in a doll that was ‘completed from the outside’ without any forewarning.
Moreover, strictly speaking, it wasn’t even an artifact made by ‘herself.’
So, it was only natural that they couldn’t develop a good relationship all at once.
“……Sigh.”
Realizing the full situation, Luke let out a tired sigh.
He spoke gently to the pouting Pyris and Liv.
“Pyris, Liv. For now, how about putting down whatever you’re holding?”
Also, he had no idea what the whisk was meant for.
Holding that would only make Liv perceive her as ‘armed.’
“She won’t put it down!”
“……”
Hmm, that’s rather particular.
Reluctantly, Luke suggested again.
“Well, how about we put them down at the same time? When I count to three, we all drop them the same time, okay?”
This time, perhaps without discontent, Liv nodded.
“……”
“Okay.”
“One…”
As Luke began counting, an inexplicable tension filled the house.
What was causing this tension to occur?
Luke took a breath and continued counting.
“Two…”
-Snap, blink.
Did he just blink? It was a fleeting moment that raised such a question.
His vision went dark for a moment before it returned.
Thinking it might have been an illusion, Luke brushed it off lightly.
“Three.”
However, the moment Luke counted to three, everything went dark at once.
The house was suddenly engulfed in darkness.
-Thud, clatter.
The kitchen knife in Liv’s hand fell to the floor and began rolling.
Simultaneously, Liv too collapsed, as if she were a marionette with its strings cut (though she was indeed a doll) losing her strength.
Sensing some connection in that situation, Luke began to look at Pyris with suspicion.
“……Pyris, what kind of prank is this?”
“Older sister! I-I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me!”
However, Pyris vehemently denied having done it, waving her hands.
“Hmm…”
It didn’t seem like she was lying.
Pyris, being a spirit honest to her emotions, was genuinely incapable of acting out a lie.
“Then is the lighting broken?”
Confused by what was going on, Luke looked up towards the lights; the reason was actually a very simple issue.
“Mana exhaustion?”
———-
So, the reason was really simple.
It was simply that the mana cutoff system that Yerna had installed in the house was now activated.
With a mana capacity of three million gills, Yerna had installed a mana cutoff system in the house afterward.
If mana usage exceeds a certain limit, the breaker would drop immediately to prevent excessive consumption.
However, now that it had activated, it was clear that significant mana had been consumed.
And that…
“Liv…”
The issue was Liv being in a state of bleeding and pushing her limits.
Liv was originally designed for military purposes as a living armor.
Although she was trapped in the body of a teddy bear, considering the inefficiency, she could still output considerable amounts of energy.
However, it couldn’t simply be sustained by just a single mana core.
She would have had to draw on the surrounding mana to operate.
“……”
And there’s no way a mere household could withstand such outputs.
That was the very cause of this mana exhaustion incident.
Luke rubbed his forehead.
“We’re in trouble… Yerna will be back any moment now…”
However, wasn’t there a saying that if you talk about dragons, they come?
Luke and Pyris began to hear the light sound of elven footsteps coming from the hallway.
