In Another World With My Smartphone_Volume 6 Read online

  All right, this is bad.

  “The quality is really poor. Clearly carved by an amateur, rather than a master woodworker. Even the string is badly made. Look.” Olba pulled on it, and the string detached with little effort on his part.

  Hey, that’s dangerous! If this happens when a child is spinning it, someone could get hurt!

  “This is really bad. Talk about a bad deal.”

  “The same goes for the counterfeit yo-yos on the market. What’s truly terrible is the fact that they make them bad on purpose.”

  “Eh? Why?”

  “They probably believe that the customers would buy them again. It’s the thought process of a third-rate merchant.”

  Now that’s just stupid. I mean, a merchant’s trust is his life.

  Anyone with half a brain could tell that such scummy tactics would eventually bring the customers to completely ignore them.

  “Though the existence of counterfeits isn’t favorable, I don’t believe that much can be done about them. After all, even I merely learned it from you, Your Majesty. These were born out of your mind, after all.”

  I’m sorry. I know you’re sincere, but I’m just another counterfeiter... Damn, this actually makes my heart ache a bit.

  “However, I cannot tolerate anyone who isn’t considerate of their customers. I believe the most important thing is to have the dear buyers enjoy such things safely. Merchants who cannot do that much aren’t worthy of the title. They’re nothing but swindlers.”

  True. Even the previous world had lots of illegally copied merchandise. Some people sold fakes made to look like the real things while presenting them as their own originals.

  Someone with confidence in their own business would never copy the logos, designs or products of others.

  “The existence of these fakes must be troublesome. Why not do something to make it easy to tell that your products are actually yours?”

  “Well, we do mark them with the store’s symbol...” He took one of the kendamas lined up in the shop and, sure enough, it was branded with The Strand Company’s symbol. It was a circle with a scale and a fox on it.

  “However, even the brand ends up being copied. Though a keen eye would see the difference, most amateurs aren’t able to tell. I feel truly sorry for those who bought the counterfeits while believing they were ours.” I didn’t think he had anything to feel sorry for. Olba wasn’t he bad guy here — it was the fakers.

  Also, though I could tolerate imitations, stealing the brand was over the line.

  “Well, it’s only a matter of making it easy to differentiate the genuine things from the fakes, so... Hold on a second.” I reached into my [Storage] and took out a piece of iron the size of a golf ball, a wooden board the size of a B5 notebook and a short wooden stick.

  Using [Modeling], I transformed the iron into a stick and created The Strand Company’s brand on its top while making sure to make it horizontally backwards. Then, I turned the stick into a handle, completing the item’s main body.

  For the finishing touch, I enchanted the magic I’d programmed into the brand.

  Once I pushed the result to the board and channeled some magic, a thin line of smoke went up as The Strand Company’s symbol appeared on it.

  “How does it look?”

  “Well, yes, this looks exactly like our symbol. Is there more to this...?”

  “Try to bring the branded board to a dark place.”

  “Eh?” Looking puzzled, Olba took it to the corner of the shop.

  “What is...? Eh?”

  “Looks like it works.” In the darkness of the corner, the brand on the board was releasing a faint light.

  I’d made it so that the brands created by that branding iron would be imbued with a weak light spell.

  “With these brands, even amateurs would be able to differentiate The Strand Company’s products.”

  “Yes! If we tell everyone that ‘The Strand Company’s brands shine in the dark,’ there should be much less people getting fooled by the counterfeit goods! Thank you very much!”

  Well, even if this lowers the problem on The Strand Company’s end, it doesn’t mean that the fakes are going away. After all, there are many customers who’ll buy non-genuine as long as it’s cheaper.

  There were countless customer bases and numerous preferences regarding the goods. Thus, there will always be those who buy the 100 yen ballpoint pens.

  In the end, it seemed like we could only entrust the morality of purchasing to the ones doing the buying. There would be no demand for copied goods if the people who bought them didn’t exist, so it would be best to get the spenders to be conscious of what they were getting, but it certainly wasn’t an easy task.

  “Touya, Touya! Look!”

  “Oh. That’s cute.” Seemingly finished looking around, Sue brought me a small box with rabbits carved on the cover. It was a three dimensional carving of a mother rabbit surrounded by her children.

  “If you wish, I can give this away as a present, Your Majesty...”

  “No. This will be a present from me to Sue, so I’ll pay full price. I also want to buy something similar for the others, so may I have a look at them?”

  After I rejected Olba’s offer, Sue and I chose what kind of boxes to get the other girls. Yumina’s had cats on it, Elze’s had foxes, Linze’s had Squirrels, Yae’s had dogs and Lu’s had songbirds.

  “I truly hope they like these.” We said goodbye to Olba and left The Strand Company.

  I put everyone’s souvenirs in [Storage] and walked through town again.

  “Helloo, Your Majesty! Hello, Princess!”

  “Hello to you, too! However, I’m not a princess, but a duchess!”

  “Really?”

  “Not yet, damn it...” Sue “corrected” a young girl that greeted us, but she was still a fiancee, which wasn’t the same as duchess. Hell, Sue was a daughter of a duke, so she wasn’t even a princess, either.

  “I’ll eventually be one, so it doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s better to have them call me ‘duchess’ now, so they don’t have to change it when the time comes.” Really, now? Well, it’s nothing to argue about, anyway.

  Brunhild’s castle town was spread around the road connecting the Regulus Empire and the Kingdom of Belfast. The large road reached into the east and west, and in the middle of it, there was a northward road leading to the castle.

  Where these roads met, there was the only inn in all of Brunhild — Silver Moon.

  As far as such establishments went, it was pretty sizeable, and it was run by none other than the same Micah we knew from our time in Reflet.

  At first, I considered making Silver Moon a government-managed institution, but in the end, I merely gave it some monetary support.

  After all, if it went under the government’s wing, the workers there would be public servants.

  Silver Moon’s Brunhild branch building was four stories high and had the shape of an L. It also had a large dining hall and public bath, both of which were open to the public.

  This allowed the place to act as not just a place to stay, but a bathhouse, as well, and it was very cheap, too.

  Thanks to this, the people of Brunhild always had good hygiene and the weary travelers could refresh themselves before resuming their journey.

  “Hey.”

  “Oh, hey there. What’s up?” Upon entering Silver Moon, I — disregarding my status as grand duke — greeted Micah the same way I always did.

  Why do I feel so at home here?

  It was strange, considering I never actually stayed at this place. Micah was doing such a good job with it that I felt like I was back at Reflet.

  “I’m just observing the place. Any problems here?”

  “Wouldn’t say so. I’m getting lots of customers and we’re not having any serious fights. Though, I’m kinda worried that I’m getting more bathhouse and dining hall customers than people staying.”

  Well, that’s not exactly unreasonable. Many people wan
t to bathe every day, while the recipes for the dining hall were provided by yours truly. It was only natural to want to eat rare and tasty foods.

  Not to mention that people living in Brunhild wouldn’t be staying at the inn.

  “We get some hooligans every now and then, but the knights are quick to deal with them. Their post isn’t far from here, after all.” Brunhild’s Knight Order was split into several groups. The patrol unit kept the peace in the castle town, the security unit protected the castle itself and some other places, the information unit was responsible for gathering intel, while the development unit supervised the growth of the city and our agriculture.

  To be honest, some of those weren’t exactly “knightly” jobs. Those units existed because Brunhild was a new country with a severe lack of people, and the knights were informed of this before joining.

  I also made sure to try and assign them to roles they were good at or wanted to do.

  Well, the development unit ended up being pretty small, though. However, Naito — one of the ex-Takeda’s Elite Four — was one of them, so the unit got a number of his subordinates.

  “Good to know it’s going well. It would’ve been pretty awkward if the business I brought here wasn’t doing well.”

  “I don’t think that even the capital has an inn like this. Being able to bathe every day is such a luxury that people might not want to leave the country.”

  “Truly. Not many commoners live near a facility that allows them to bathe.” Sue — Kohaku in her hands — nodded in response to Micah’s words. Well, bathhouses away from hot spring areas were a rarity. Belfast’s and Regulus’ capitals actually did have bathhouse-like facilities, but they were either really expensive or exclusive to nobles.

  Most commoners got clean in a tub, and it certainly wasn’t because they disliked open baths or something.

  “Oh yeah. It’s not quite noon yet, but how about a meal? I’ll give one of Fleur’s roll cakes as dessert.” Fleur was one of the girls enslaved by the asshole prince of Lihnea. I introduced her to The Silver Moon, and it turned out that she was so talented at cooking that she was already put in charge of Micah’s kitchen.

  She was already able to make most of the recipes I’ve given her, and she was now doing so well that she became our head chef’s — Crea’s — apprentice.

  I looked at the time, and it was just 11 o’clock.

  Indeed, it was a bit early to eat, but hearing the mention of roll cakes made Sue drool so much that some of it almost got on Kohaku’s head, which made it more than obvious that I had no choice.

  “...Well, then we’ll do just that.”

  “Indeed we will!” Today’s special meal was katsudon. I questioned whether the dessert roll cake would go along with it, but Sue was digging into it without a care in the world.

  I was getting a bit of a sour stomach, so I gave mine to her, and she made short work of that one, too. Man, girls always have room for dessert, don’t they?

  After leaving The Silver Moon, we made our way towards the agricultural area.

  Since it was close to noon, not many people were working. Most were eating their lunches at the edges of the fields and under nearby trees.

  “Touya, Touya. Who does this field belong to?”

  “Me, actually. I paid those farmers to cultivate it, so even if the harvest is a failure, they won’t suffer for it. It’s still in the experimental stage, after all. If the farmers become able to get regular harvests, I plan to sell the land to them for cheap.” In this field, we were secretly cultivating the special produce we got at the Alchemy Lab. At first glance, they looked like normal radishes, but they were actually some sort of super radishes that were strong against climate change and were high in nutrients.

  Right now, we were experimenting with their growth and seeing how large the harvests could get. Of course, we would be back at square one if they tasted bad.

  Flora from the Alchemy Lab told me that I had nothing to worry, but I couldn’t be at ease about them until we harvested and ate them.

  They were actual GMOs, but I was told that they were safe and didn’t negatively influence the human body. Well, the changes were caused by magic, after all.

  This world’s crops were already thick with sorcery, and it was often thought that they were what caused us humans to harbor magic.

  The same applied to meat, as well, and a number of people believed that eating the meat of magic beasts from the great forest would increase their magic capacity. Yeah, right.

  “Are there any fruits?”

  “You just ate dessert...” Looks like Sue’s other stomach still has room in it.

  We actually did have fruits, but they weren’t ones that grew quickly. Peach and apple trees took a while, after all. Sure, we modified them in the Alchemy Lab, but their growth speed wasn’t extreme or anything.

  Strawberries and watermelons could come faster, but... They were vegetables, right? Speaking of which, while I could recall eating some strawberries, I wasn’t aware if this world had any watermelons.

  Just like in the other world, I’d expect them to be like melons, too, but this world had pear-looking fruit that tasted like lemons.

  I should get Flora to make some strawberries.

  “Touya, what’s that bog? Something seems to be growing there.”

  “It’s a paddy field. You get rice from those plants. You ate some, too, remember?”

  “Oh! So this becomes rice!” I left the immigrants from Eashen in charge of about eighty percent of the paddy fields. They grew rice using the same seeds they brought from their homeland. The rest of the fields were experimental, again focused on species modified in the Alchemy Lab.

  “Hopefully they’ll be ready to harvest in a few months.”

  “I’m looking forward to it!” We passed through the paddy field and headed to the training field north of the castle.

  There was a training area in the castle courtyard, but this place was much wider. The area was surrounded by a small fence, but it was also connected to a broad field that spread out further.

  We needed more space for training with Frame Gears and magic spells. Luckily I’d enchanted the grounds to automatically repair itself with earth magic whenever the soil had holes put in it.

  “Oh, there’s some people here.” On the field, a few rookies were busy training with each other. There were a few groups all paired up. Some were working together quietly, some were having mock battles, and some were running around the field in full armor.

  “Gah!”

  “Not good enough! Move it! In a real battle you die if you pause!” I turned my eyes towards the sudden sharp yelling, and I saw old man Yamagata barking words of criticism at a fallen knight. They’d been having a mock battle.

  As I stepped into the training grounds, everyone noticed me and stopped what they were doing to bow in respect. I told them to stop and continue what they were doing. I wished they’d get used to me walking around.

  “Oh, boss-man. Whaddya want?” Old man Yamagata sauntered over, a training sword on his shoulder. He was rough around the edges as usual.

  “We were just having a little look around the country. How’s the training going?”

  “It’s going. Lotta different types of people serving your army. Training styles differ, but it’s good. We’re all stronger than town thugs, at least.” The Duchy of Brunhild was sandwiched right between Belfast and Regulus, so being invaded by another country wasn’t likely.

  Not to mention the fact that I was allied with both countries. Yumina and Lu were engaged to me, as well. Even though invasion wasn’t likely, it’d be foolish to neglect training.

  Having weak knights serving me wouldn’t be a benefit. A single fragile link in the chain could ruin the whole thing. It was better to keep well trained and on the ball.

  Belfast’s General Leon even offered to train his knights alongside us, so things were looking positive.

  “Where’s old man Baba, anyway?”

 
“Baba? He took a few guys out into the mountains. He heard there were some wild boars around the area, so they made a hunting party.”

  “Hunting? Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

  “Nah. It’ll be yummy, so it’s fine.” Geez... These guys sure are carefree.

  The Duchy of Brunhild’s Knight Order was covered entirely out of my own pocket.

  As the country’s leader, naturally I was the high commander.

  Directly under me was Lain, the Commander. Then Norn and Nikola were directly beneath her as Vice-Commanders. Directly beneath them were Rebecca, the Guard Captain, and Logan, the Security Chief.

  The intelligence unit and the scout unit operated separately. They were headed by Tsubaki and old man Naito respectively.

  The issue was that I wasn’t quite sure where Yamagata and Baba stood in the hierarchy. Formally they were advisors to the Knight Order, but they also trained Lain, the Vice-Commanders, and the regular knights.

  So they were in a little bit of an odd position, all things considered.

  “Well, I suppose it’s fine to get rid of potential risks.”

  “Not like there’s much in the way of danger around here. There are actually a ton of boars, wolves, and bears. Better than monsters, sure... But dangerous if they aren’t kept in line.” Yamagata chattered and raised a few fair points, when suddenly Kohaku, who was currently in Sue’s arms, sent me a psychic message.

  《Fret not, my lord. As long as we’re present, beasts of the earth, sea, and sky cannot terrorize Brunhild.》 That’s right... I’d forgotten, but Kohaku, Sango, Kokuyou and Kougyoku were Heavenly Beasts. They had full mastery over animals of their respective species, and thus none of the creatures under their command could cause trouble here. Magical beasts excluded.

  Thanks to Kohaku, the dogs, rats, and cats in the town operated as my ears on a domestic level. In other countries, birds under Kougyoku’s command operated as my eyes.

  Brunhild had little in the way of water, and definitely no sea, so Kokuyou and Sango weren’t too active. Because of that, the two of them were following Sakura around for the time being.