My 【Repair】Skill Became an Almighty Cheat Skill, So I Thought I’d Open Up a Weapon Shop

(TL: Changed Travis’s nickname from Black Swordsman to Black Sword Mountain, since it wasn’t exactly correct before)

–Travis, the Black Sword Mountain. He was an adventurer who’d reached the highest possible rank: rank A.

Just as he’d explained to his party members earlier, he joined the adventurer guild right around the same time as me.

He was a positive and daring man, the type you’d find in a storybook about a hero.

We first met when we registered as beginners at the F-rank.

We took on several simple quests and rose to rank E together. After that, we both joined another adventurer’s party at the same time in order to learn from them.

I was quickly established as the slow one while Travis distinguished himself from the get-go.

He kept ranking up at an amazing speed, and in merely less than a year, he created his own party.

「I ended up getting dragged into his party, but I quit about two years later. In order words, I spent my first three years adventuring with Travis.」

「Why’d you leave the party? Based on what I’m hearing so far, he sounds like a great leader.」

「It was because he was too good. He kept going to difficult dungeons, but I could only use 【Repair】, making it hard for me to keep up.」

— Unlike me, Travis was loved by the god who protects adventurers.

Regardless, he noticed that I was suffering from the difficulty of the dungeons, so he considered going to an easier dungeon with a lower rank.

I couldn’t let him do that.

That meant I was holding him back from achieving success as an adventurer.

Don’t kid me, that’s out of the question, I had thought. I could never bear that responsibility.

I became an adventurer thanks to the dazzling tales of the adventurer I looked up to, so for me to ruin the person who could make those dreams come true was absolutely unacceptable. I’d rather die than do that.

「That’s why I left the party. It was just a problem with my pride as an incompetent person.」

「…You know, you really like to put yourself down.」

「Travis said the same thing to me.」

I heard some water splashing, like something was hitting the hot water.

Garnet was probably distracting herself to stop herself from saying what she wanted to say.

「Even after I left, I still saw Travis occasionally through his 【Repair】 requests… Then, I joined his party again about two years after that… So that was ten years ago. That’s when I first met Dustin.」

「That’s right! I’ve heard of the name Dustin before! If I think about it a bit longer, I can probably remember where I’ve heard it from…」

「You’ll probably remember when you hear the rest of the story. I’m going to continue.」

— Dustin, the Dual Spear Wielder. At the moment, he was a rank A adventurer, the same as Travis.

When we first met, Dustin was at rank E which was the same as me, while Travis had already reached rank B by that point.

Roughly around the same time ten years ago, the adventurer guild discovered an unexplored dungeon and sent several parties there to investigate it.

Dustin, Travis, and I all belonged to different parties, but during the investigation, we had run into some trouble causing several parties to disband. Travis took in those parties into his own.

That was how Dustin and I happened to end up together under Travis’s leadership.

「The Dustin back then was more or less had a sarcastic side to him, but he was a cheerful and sociable guy.」

「Cheerful and sociable? Are we still talking about the guy that looks like he came out of a grave?」

「There’s a reason he completely changed into the person you see today.」

— At the time, Dustin wasn’t wielding two spears.

I heard that he had a partner he worked together with, and both of them wielded a magic spear, taking on mostly subjugation quests.

Before they became adventurers, they had been working together as mercenaries in order to earn money. Because of that, their battle ability was beyond what their adventurer rank said.

「His partner was killed by the demons living in that dungeon.」

「……」

「I was the one who witnessed his partner’s death. I ran to him as fast as I could, but it was too late. There wasn’t a time that I regretted being powerless more than that moment.」

I recalled those scenes, like when I was repairing Sakura and Garnet’s wounds caused by the dragon, so often that I was sick of them.

To watch someone perish in front of your own eyes was terrible, no matter how many times I’d experienced it.

「Dustin went into a fit of rage, and then, using his partner’s magic spear, he killed the head of the demons… In other words, the demon king that had been controlling the dungeon. Afterwards, he went around, only aiming for demons who call themselves a demon lord.」

「…I remember now. He has another nickname.」

It sounded like Garnet leaned out the window.

「Dustin the Demon King Slayer. He’s an adventurer who killed at least three demon kings in the last ten years. He’s the one with the highest amount of kills if you don’t include the heroes acknowledged by the kingdom. 」

「Personally, I don’t really like that nickname…」

— After that day, there were a few more occasions where Dustin and I worked together.

We never worked together as a group of three with Travis again ever since, but Travis being Travis had invited Dustin into his party several times as well.

Obviously, that was because 『the dungeon either had a demon king or likely had one』.

At the beginning, Dustin fought with his rage as a driving force, but over the years, it built up to the point where his enthusiasm had mostly vanished.

It was like he had been reduced to a demon king killing machine.

「That’s all I’ve got. Do you have any questions?」

「No… I’m fine. That’s enough. Thanks for telling me.」

After I told her about Dustin’s past, Garnet’s attitude softened a bit.

I didn’t know the details, but Garnet had a grudge against people who illegally deal with mithril.

Perhaps it was due to that that she probably felt some connection to Dustin, who decided to live his life in order to exact revenge against 『those who call themselves a demon king』.

「Alright, let’s head home. I’m nice and warmed up now.」

「Sure, have a safe trip. I’m going to stay in here a little longer.」

「What are you saying? You’re the only one who has the key. If you’re telling me to go first, then give me the key.」

「Huh?」

「Hm?」

It was clear that we were not on the same page.

As I had a bad feeling about this, I decided to ask her a certain question to confirm what I was thinking.

「…Hey Garnet, where do you plan to stay now that you’re going to be in Greenhollow for a while?」

「Your house, obviously. It’s so big, it must have an empty room or two, no?」

It was exactly as I had expected.

When Felix said that he was leaving Garnet 『here』so she could protect me, he meant that he was leaving her at my house, not in town.

I completely misunderstood what he had said. I should’ve confirmed it with him beforehand.

「No no no no no… That’s pretty bad, don’t you think? Don’t say such stupid things.」

「You’re the one being stupid.」

I thought what I had said was common sense, but Garnet sounded dumbfounded based on her reply.

「Whether it is an assassination or a kidnapping, the best time to get you is to come at night when there are no customers. You live alone in a standalone house outside of town, do you know how easy it is for crimes there to go unnoticed? If I don’t stay there with you, how am I supposed to protect you?」

「Guh…」

Unfortunately, I could not object to any of that. If I just ignored the fact that Garnet was a girl, what she suggested was indeed the best course of action.

In fact, it made every other plan look bad and out of the question.

「So there you have it. Hope you take care of me, White Wolf.」

I realized it wasn’t my imagination when I heard Garnet’s voice echoing from afar.