"What does isekai mean?"
"It means I reincarnated-"
"And I don't understand what doing it naked has to do with anything."
"Well, it gives a bit of context-"
"And what do you mean by ruining the world?"
"This! The fantasy of this world?!"
Min stretched her arms wide. Admittedly, there wasn't much fantasy in the forge. The workshop was right beside the market, with metal doohickeys and gadgets stretched haphazardly around the smith's anvil. It smelt of burnt charcoal and somewhat rusted metal.
The cute smith was looking at Min with an eyebrow raised, like she had lost her marbles. Well, that figures. Min was a sweaty woman dressed in a barrel held aloft by suspenders she fashioned out of the remains of a bedsheet and her old cape.
The inventor sighed. She was a curvy, green-skinned woman with pointy ears half a head shorter than Min. "Please get out of my workshop; the demonstration is in just a few hours, and I need to finish my prototype thrower."
"That's. The. Thing!" Min pointed at the black rectangle resting on the smith's thighs. "You can't invent guns! Trust me, nothing good comes from-"
"Gun? But this isn't a ballista? This is here is my very own metal thingy thrower." The inventor beamed with pride as she waved her contraption around.
Min ducked to evade the barrel of the gun. Trigger discipline wasn't invented yet in this world.
"Please be more careful with-"
"It's my ninth prototype! So I'm calling it Petunia's Ninth Thrower, or P9T, for short!"
Min's eyes twitched… "Of course you do… Listen, this machine is too dangerous to unleash into the world! You'll change the-"
"Pft, danger smenge-eep!" Petunia slapped the black box and accidentally nuzzled the itchy trigger. Loud explosions rang across the air as the machine fired a volley of lead into the market.
Thankfully, the only thing that Petunia hit was …Min's barrel, which was reduced to little more than kindling circling the adventurer's bare feet.
A couple of milkmaids passed by, pointing at Min's cheeky buttocks and giggling. Min's teeth mashed together as a familiar warmth spread across her cheeks.
She sheepishly lifted one arm over her breasts, the other reaching down to pick up her thankfully intact short cape.
She really should have seen that coming.
"No danger, huh?" Min raised an eyebrow as she draped her cape over her buttocks.
"Well, a bit of danger, but you can't make a harmless weapon. Besides, it's not yet finished!" The green inventor picked up a small pair of pliers and started tweaking with the trigger. "Once I have the safety in place, then I can finally show this bad girl to the world!"
"Seems like a safety should be among the first things you made! You are like the dumbest smart person to build the world's first gun!"
Petunia clicked her tongue. "Please. If not me, someone else will. You know how easy it is to make a metal bit thrower…"
"Please call it a gun."
"…with just a bit of crystallized fire mana? Honestly, I don't know how there aren't already-"
The wind howled. Bangs of Min's hair fluttered across her face. Petunia's dark ponytail likewise flapped like a cape as a young man strode towards the forge.
"Good smith, I must bid you to stop this madness before it is too late!" The man was wearing leather armor befitting an adventurer. His hair was short and dark. His face simple and unremarkable, at least to Min's eyes. "You must not complete this contraption!"
"Oh great, not this asshole." Min tensed up. Her covering hand raised into a fist in case the situation devolved into another fight.
"I, Yoshio the Whirlwind, come here with a grave warning. Guns must not be allowed to-" as the man walked forward, he locked eyes with Min. Yoshio jumped back, hand gripping his scabbard. "What are you doing here?!"
"Relax." Min shook her head, her glare never leaving Yoshio's face. "I'm also here to tell our green Dexter here not to make guns."
"And?"
"She ain't budging."
"Sorry, brave adventurer, I'm going to make the P9T even if it's the last thing I do!" Petunia said, waving her pliers in the air.
Yoshio stomped her feet. "Come on, girl! You are going to ruin the fantasy!"
"That's what I said!"
"I didn't reincarnate to another world just to play fucking Call of Duty!"
"Yeah! Except that this isn't a game, idiot!"
"What do you know, clown?"
Min squeezed her breasts as she scoffed towards Yoshio. "Oh, back to that, huh? Is your brain too rotten to come up with another insult?"
"No, but buffon doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well."
Min clicked her tongue. Ugh, he was right.
Petunia put the P9T atop her anvil and stood up. "I don't know why you two hate my thrower so much, but you are welcome to stay for the demonstration to see how awesome it actually is."
Min bit her lip. Appealing to Petunia's conscience wasn't working. Then what else could she do? Yoshio glared at the inventor, his hand hovering over his scabbard with ill intent.
Was he really going to-? Wait! Maybe that's the angle Min needed. The naked adventurer walked towards Petunia and, with great reluctance, parted her hands from her intimates to put them on the green woman's shoulders.
Petunia scowled as she stared at Min's fingers. "Wasn't that hand on your crotch a few seconds ago? I wished you wash-"
"This isn't just about us; you are also in great danger!" Min said, fighting her burning blush to keep squeezing Petunia's shoulders. "Do you think the nobles will let you shift the balance of power so much? They'll come and silence you! Destroy your-"
"Petunia? House Vineisse would like to have a word with you!" Another woman walked into the forge, a pretty noblewoman with long brown hair flowing behind her elegant yellow dress.
Min's eyes lit up as she recognized her.
"Peonie!"
"Who?" Yoshio asked.
"Who? I'm Daurica Peonie Vineisse!" Peonie spun on her heels to confront Yoshio, her brow furrowed. "Middle daughter of Duke Algerie? We- we met already!"
Yoshio tilted his head. "My apologies, milady; despite my best efforts, I can't remember meeting such an elegant-"
"You can drop the polite act! I'm pretty sure you saw my buttocks! And I yours…"
Yoshio shrugged. "Must not have been some memorable buttocks then, if I can't recall them."
"How dare-"
"Peonie, thank God you are here!" Min went to hug her friend, pulling her clothed body between the forge and the many judgmental eyes of the market staring at Min's unclothed form, like that ogling baker next door.
"Don't you mean thank the Goddess?"
"Whatever. Now please hurry and tell this upstart that she has to scrap her guns or face the wrath of the establishment!"
Peonie pushed Min away, the baker whistling as he saw the adventurer's fluffy buns bounce freely back into the air. "… I'm actually here to buy fifty throwers for our House if the demonstration goes well."
"Argh, you power-hungry nobles!" Now it was Min's turn to stomp her feet. "Is there anyone in this world who understands the danger of-"
"Petunia, on behalf of Her Majesty, the Elven Queen, I, Roana, captain of her royal guard, came to talk to you." Another woman sauntered into the forge. A knight with fiery red hair and pointy ears, wearing green armor.
Peonie tensed up and took a step back; Yoshio tilted his head even more. Min was so happy she didn't even care that the baker was calling his friends to discuss the color of her exposed nipples.
"Yes! Surely the nature-loving elves will destroy the gun to protect their forest fro-"
"We want to watch your demonstration, and, if your device works as advertised, order 100 throwers for our warriors."
"Ugh! Your forests deserve to burn and become nothing but soybean fields!"
"What's the matter with you, Min?"
"Yes, naked human woman, why so angry?"
Min would have stomped her feet, but she already used her turn to do so. Instead, she sighed.
"It's just that everyone is going to have guns, and they'll shoot each other, and then all the magic and fairies will die, and all because this stubborn, green, I don't know …is she a goblin? She doesn't look human."
The courtyard gasped; a milkmaid dropped her jugs as she passed by. The baker shook his head disapprovingly.
"Min, you can't ask people if they are goblins!"
"It's ok," Petunia grabbed a bigger set of pliers to keep tinkering with the P9T. "I'm-"
"But, is she?" Min said. "I've never seen people with green skin before, so she has to be, right? But goblins are supposed to be quite ugly, and smell-"
The baker booed, and the milkmaids all formed a posse to frown at Min. Peonie used her turn to stomp her feet.
"I'm seriously reconsidering our friendship, Min. I think it's time for you to leave!"
"But I-"
"Yes, please do. You've done nothing but say mean things to me since she arrived," Petunia said. "That I'm too dumb and that the world would be better if I stayed home."
The increasingly angry crowd all glared at Min, who hunched over her shoulders and took a step back. Sadly, her buttocks met the dividing wooden wall of the forge. She had no way out.
"Y-you know I didn't mean it that way!"
"I think we should make her leave."
"W-w-wait!"
The gang of milkmaids dragged Min outside and raised her overhead like she was crowd-surfing at a concert. Their hands grabbed Min's exposed back, pinching her legs and even her buttocks once, but, aside from the barrage of insults, it wasn't that bad. If anything, most of the crowd couldn't get a good view of her intimates since she was sailing over their heads.
Sadly, the voyage reached its destination. Min was thrown into a pile of mud she shared with a litter of pigs, the soft dirt cushioning her fall but sticking to Min's skin like a wet napkin.
As the crowd surrounded Min from all sides to keep hurling insults, the blush in her cheeks turned hot enough to make porcelain out of the mud covering her. She watched them back with puppy eyes, pulling her muddy legs over her chest and gulping.
Their impromptu justice delivered, the crowd slowly dispersed until only one was left… that asshole, Yoshio. With a mocking grin, he leaned over the mud pile.
"You know, I was going to ask if she was a goblin as well, so I'm glad you took the bullet for me."
"Fuck you…" Min sat up, glaring back at him.
"Whatever you say." Yoshio unsheathed his sword, turning towards the market. "Welp, we gave the dialogue options a try, but I think it's time to go take care of the problem the old-fashioned way."
"Wait, no killing!" Min yelled, stretching her hand away from her legs.
"Don't worry. They aren't essential NPCs, I don't think."
"This isn't a game! They aren't NPCs!" Min bit her muddy lip, the taste of dirt spreading through her tongue. That argument was never going to convince that asshole. "And even if they were, you would be angering the biggest factions if you kill her! It's not worth it."
"Tsk, fine, let's do it the good karma way for once. I do have an id…" Yoshio sheathed his sword and turned back towards Min. "A-are you spreading mud to your tits? … Does that give you some sort of buff?"
Min lifted her gaze. As she stood up, she was, indeed, spreading the mud a bit more evenly across her torso. It gave her goosebumps, but… "Yeah, it gives me the I don't have to worry about the baker knowing the color of nipples buff."
"Right… well, if you are up for it, I do have a non-lethal plan to destroy that gun, but I'm going to need your help."