In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 4 Read online

  I photocopied flyers en masse in the workshop, and had them distributed. We needed advertising, after all. We were scheduled to open two days from then.

  After I’d checked on everyone, I began another part of my daily routine.

  I put my smartphone on a table and sat away from it on a chair.

  “Power on.” In response to my words, the smartphone turned itself on.

  “Run search. How many humans are within this house?”

  “...Search complete. There are ten humans within this house. Two male, eight female.” The men were likely myself and Laim, so that meant Julio was out in the garden. I only ran a search for humans, so Cesca and Rosetta weren’t included, either.

  “Run search. How many people are in the garden of this house?”

  “...Search complete. One person in the garden. Male.”

  “Tom isn’t included because he’s outside the gate, I guess... Display those in the garden.”

  “Copy that.” A 3D projection shot out from my smartphone. It was a live recording of Julio. I achieved this effect by combining [Long Sense] and [Mirage] spells. Julio was hard at work tending to the flower bed, but he took a moment to stand and stretch a bit. I figured he was probably tired.

  “Target lock on Julio. Apply [Cure Heal] and [Recovery] to him.”

  “Copy that. Applying [Cure Heal] and [Recovery] to Julio.” A soft magical light appeared about Julio’s head, then sprinkled over his face. He looked confused for a brief moment, but then he moved around, free of strain. He turned to face my room. I opened the window to give him a wave, to which he responded in kind.

  Great, it all runs smoothly. I gradually added to and updated the [Program] on my phone. For the vocal output, I used Cesca’s voice. I tried my own for a while at first, but I really didn’t like it, so I changed it quite quickly. I assumed most people felt the same way about their own voices, honestly.

  It was different from something like Paula, since the recording function made adding commands a little bit simpler. It was a little annoying having to add each vocal command individually, but it gradually made the phone more useful, so I didn’t mind so much. I couldn’t really use my smartphone in the heat of battle, so vocal commands would come in handy for situations like that.

  “Net search. Daily events.”

  The 3D projection of Julio vanished, replaced by a display of news from my home world. Seemed that the House of Councillors were having an election. I felt a little sad for a moment, as I never once had the chance to vote in my life back there.

  “End tasks. Power off.” My smartphone screen went dull, powering off entirely. It worked out pretty well, all things considered. I put my phone in my breast pocket and headed downstairs.

  I came down to the first floor and saw Will there. That was lucky.

  “Good timing on your part. I’d like to experiment a bit with your grandpa’s Null spell... Wanna come along?”

  “My grandpa’s? But it’s just a spell that makes things a bit heavier. I don’t think that’ll be very useful, sir...”

  “That’s not it at all. In fact, if I have the right idea about this, it might be one of the most important spells I’ve ever heard of.”

  “What?!” Will adopted an extremely confused look, but he still went along with me anyway. I don’t think he quite believed what I said, though.

  We walked out along the terrace. Julio was tending to the flowers nearby, as usual, as we both headed out into the middle of the garden.

  “Will, can you lend me your sword?”

  “Hm...? Ah, a-alright, then.” He pulled the sword from his waist and passed it over to me. It was a fairly standard blade. It didn’t seem bad, but it was a bit big for Will.

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but this sword doesn’t really suit you, Will. Why’s it so big?”

  “A-Ah, well... I just picked it up. It’s not really mine. I found it in the desert... so it probably belonged to someone that was eaten by a Sandcrawler or something worse...” Damn... So he was just making the best use of what he could get. Novice adventurers probably have difficulty finding proper gear, huh... Guess that’s just the nature of the field.

  I thrust the sword into the ground.

  “Try and yank it out.”

  “Huh? W-Well...” Will pulled out the sword quite smoothly. It came out without any real difficulty. After confirming the difficulty, I had him put it back in the ground. Will looked quite confused. It seemed he hadn’t realized the point of my experiment yet.

  Then, I began to get to the point. I put my hand around the handle of the sword, focusing my magic.

  “[Gravity].” The sword slipped down slightly deeper into the ground. I took that as a sign that things were working as intended.

  “Try and yank it out.”

  “Huh?” Will seized the hilt, then began straining to pull it out.

  “Ngh...! Kuh!!! I-It’s heavy...!” The sword lodged itself deeper into the ground. Will tried to lift it, but he couldn’t shift it at all.

  “Seems like this spell can alter the weight of any touched object. But your grandpa could only make things a little heavier because his magic pool was small by default.” Honestly, it would’ve been more accurate to call it a gravity changing magic, but maybe it would’ve been more fitting to call it weight shifting magic. [Weight] might’ve been a better name for it than [Gravity], but I didn’t need to sweat the small stuff.

  The only drawback was that the object needed to be directly touched to be altered, but weight could be changed freely and it could be undone at any time, too. Plus, my own body weight could be altered as well.

  In other words, if I focused my magic at the point of impact, I could do something cool like a megaton punch. But I’d probably do serious damage to my fists, so that wouldn’t be such a good idea.

  Changing the weight of my weapons mid-battle would probably be the smartest use. I could probably even smash a Phrase with this if I maximized the weight...

  I could reduce my own weight to increase the effects of [Accel] and [Boost] as well.

  I could enchant weapons with it too, to make them easier to wield. Although using that on an axe or mace wouldn’t be much use... Those weapons were only powerful because of their weight, after all. Either way, this magic was extremely beneficial.

  “Your grandpa’s magic is amazing, you know. He just didn’t have enough magic energy to bring out its full potential.”

  “I didn’t know grandfather’s magic was so incredible...!” Will had unintentionally given me a means to combat the Phrase. I had to let him have a token of my thanks, no matter what. I took a mithril lump out of [Storage], used [Modeling] to transform it, and handed over a mithril breastplate to the boy, along with a pair of gauntlets too.

  “I-Is... this okay? Really?”

  “Don’t mention it, kid. Consider it thanks for the spell. Let me do something about that weapon of yours, too.” I canceled [Gravity] and grabbed Will’s sword. I then enchanted it using [Gravity], but this time applied the effect in reverse. It should’ve become easier to wield, though the weight decrease would give it a bit of reduced strength.

  I handed the sword over to him, and he gave it a few swings. His eyes went wide in amazement.

  “Wow, it feels so much easier to handle. I might be able to defeat monsters more easily now!”

  “Let’s not get too cocky, though. Yeah, I know what you’re in need of. A crash training course should sort you out...”

  “H-Huh?”

  I grabbed him by the wrist and led him off with me...

  “So, would you take him on?”

  “I see...” I took Will to the training grounds of Belfast’s Knight Order. From there, I brought him to Deputy General Neil and explained his situation.

  “That’s good timing on your part. We’ve actually been trying to make up for the earlier issue with the nobles mingling in our ranks, so our recruitment has become a lot more fair and broad lately.”

/>   “Heheh, so then... Will can get some training, and join you if he proves his worth?”

  “That depends on him.” Neil looked the boy over with sharp eyes.

  “Will, was it? Putting aside the entire matter of joining our ranks... do you wish to become strong?”

  “I... do want to become strong. There’s someone I wish to p-protect. That’s why I want to become stronger. No, I don’t just want to just become stronger. I want to become a man worthy of protecting what he cares about.” His knees were weak, his palms were sweaty, but he still answered resolutely. I figured he was talking about Wendy. Neil smiled at the boy, letting out a hearty chuckle.

  “Magnificent. It is a knight’s honor and duty to fight for what he loves. You have character, boy, and I respect that. Morning or eve, you come to me. You can train to your heart’s content, so will you join us in training?”

  “I promise!” Will gave a resolute answer.

  Be brave, young man. Be strong.

  ◇　◇　◇

  Contrary to what I’d expected, my reading cafe, Moon Reader, ended up being quite popular. Many people dropped by because they heard about the shop being somewhat unique in its function, and many of them ended up sticking around for long periods of time due to how cozy it was.

  Because of that, three days after opening, we decided to create a “Whole Day Free Pass Course.” By picking it and paying a fixed amount of money, customers could come and go as they pleased. The charge was somewhat high, but still far smaller than they had to pay for an entire day’s worth of normal courses.

  We also began to have a shortage of chairs and private rooms, so we cleared up the garden and made it possible for customers to read on the benches there. However, that option was entirely self-service and only covered reading. Plus, rainy days rendered the garden completely unusable.

  Besides the popularity, another thing that surprised me was the gender balance among the customers. In my mind, this business was much like a manga cafe, so I expected the customers to be primarily men, but it was obviously the other way around.

  Almost eighty percent of the customers were female. That was probably caused by the fact that the available books were mostly stories.

  In this world, men were more into the more practical stuff, such as scholarly books, field guides, magic manuals, and texts about swordplay, while stories didn’t seem to interest them too much. Still, there were some men who came here to read about knights, adventurers, and other such military novels.

  Once we realized that most of the customers were women, we began to increase our book selection with them in mind. The amount of female customers saw a particularly great increase when Linze suggested we add a new genre to the selection.

  In fact, those books were so popular that I had to [Gate] to various places in order to buy more copies of them.

  I couldn’t bring myself to describe what the books were about. However, I could honestly say that I would distance myself from any man who would’ve willingly read them. Their presence would’ve made me feel unsafe.

  Anyway, due to the cafe being a great success, we raised a considerable amount of money. I had more than enough for everyone’s salary, so after I paid them, they all left the mansion and found their own lodgings.

  Rebecca and Logan had left a while ago, and Will followed soon after them with Wendy in tow. They all shared the same place, of course. Not the same room, though. Except for Wendy and Sylvie, anyway. Do your best, kid.

  “Alright, it’s been a while since I’ve worked my main job, so I guess I’ll go to the guild now.” After all, I wanted to test the new [Program] on my smartphone and the Null spell, [Gravity]. Yumina was the only one who didn’t have any plans for the day. Apparently, since only her guild card rank was blue, she wanted to finally make it red.

  “Shall we go, then?”

  “Yes. Let’s have a hunting date!” Well, that just sounds way too brutal for a date. Definitely something I’d refuse...

  The two of us made our way to the guild, entered it, and noticed it was packed with all sorts of adventurers as per usual.

  When we began walking toward the request board, a man of a large stature stood right before us. Who the hell is this? He was wearing black trousers and a tiger-striped vest on top of his bare torso. Two large axes were hanging on his waist, and for some reason — probably due to horrible fashion sense — he had chains around his neck. His head was completely bald and he had an unpleasant grin on his face.

  “Hey, what the hell are you brats doing here? This ain’t a playground, ya know?” It was my first time seeing him. He was probably new to the capital. After all, there was simply no way I could’ve forgotten someone with such terrible fashion sense.

  I looked around and noticed that some of the other adventurers were grinning, too. However, those grins weren’t aimed at us... They were aimed at the man before us.

  Now, how do I go about this...?

  “Ya listening to me, punk?! Get outta here before I hurt— gah?!” His hands were heading straight for Yumina, so I shot him without any hesitation. I used paralyzing bullets, of course, but the impact was still enough to be equivalent to a body slam. He was still conscious, so I showed him my guild card.

  “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.” After his eyes opened wide due to seeing the red card, I dragged and threw him out of the guild. I tried using [Gravity] to make him lighter, and it turned out to be quite a useful application of the spell. Carrying him was easy.

  Once I returned to the guild, the people who were grinning were now laughing out loud. I knew they were hoping for something like this.

  “Guy’s got some guts! Not everyone can mess with a Dragon Slayer!”

  “He obviously didn’t know. You should’ve just told him, damn it!”

  “Are you stupid?! We wouldn’t get our laughs that way!” Everyone else agreed and laughed along with him. These people are just...

  Well, it actually wasn’t the first time someone tried messing with me like that. As much as it pained me to admit, I didn’t look strong in any sense of the word, so people like the guy from before saw me as a joke. I always ended up beating them up and showing them how wrong they were.

  Well, whatever. I made my way to the board and looked through the requests there. This time, it was just the two of us, so bigger hunting quests were no good.

  I took one of the red elimination requests and read it.

  “Bloody Crab? A dangerous crustacean, I guess?”

  “A giant red crab monster, yes. They’re easily identified by their four large pincers and tough shell. The shell is good armor material, while the meat is high-quality. Both can fetch a decent price on the market.”

  Interesting... Definitely an attractive quest. Guess I’ll take it.

  We only had to take down one of them, and we had no problems getting to it because it wasn’t too far from the mithril golems we’d defeated a while ago.

  I took the request paper and brought it to the girl at the counter. Yumina’s rank was blue, but I was red, so we had no trouble taking the quest. However, if we had another person of a blue or lower rank among us, we couldn’t have taken it due to there being more lower rank people in the party than those that fit the criteria.

  “Umm... you are the owner of the ‘Moon Reader’ reading cafe, are you not?” Somewhat timidly, the receptionist began talking to me.

  “Well, yes...”

  “Um! The Refreese Imperium has a book series called ‘The Order of the Rose.’ Do you have any plans on adding it to your selection?!” The woman approached me with an excited air about her and a blush on her face. She really seemed interested in that book.

  “Uhh, well... is the book a completed series?”

  “Y-Yeah! It should be about fifteen volumes in total!” I didn’t see any issues with buying a completed story. After all, customers would likely lose interest if I didn’t invest in new titles from time to time. I decided I’d go buy it after my current
quest.

  “Sure, I’ll get that series, then. It should be available tomorrow or so, is that fine?”

  “Seriously?! That’s amazingly fast! Tomorrow’s my day off, so I’ll come read the whole thing all day! Thank you so much!!!” We left the guild after waving goodbye to the strangely enthusiastic receptionist. Yumina, who had been silent the entire time, kept making glances at me.

  “Er... Touya... You do know what The Order of the Rose is about... don’t you?”

  “Hm? No, never heard of it. Is it a famous tale or something?”

  “E-Er, well... It’s the tale of a male-only knight order in a certain country, the Order of the Rose. They have a confrontation with the female-only Guards of the Lily, and... Well, it’s a series well known because of the love scenes within the knight order...”

  ...Hold the hell up! The love scenes within the knight order? What? But there are only men in the group, so...

  Yumina’s eyes met mine for a moment, but she quickly looked away. ...Is it really like that? “...A-Anyway, you’ve already promised to pick it up, so it’d be bad to go back on your word now...”

  “You have a point... Well, the bookstore staff might start thinking weird things about me...” Guh... this sucks. I can’t exactly have Yumina go pick it up for me, either.

  “...Hold on, Yumina. You seem to know that book pretty intimately... Why would that be?”

  “Ah, wait. No, er, don’t misunderstand! I don’t read books like that, I just, er... I don’t have that kind of hobby, really!”

  I wonder about that... I gave Yumina a look full of doubt. I thought about Linze, too. She was definitely into that kind of thing, but it probably wasn’t a bad influence or anything. Everyone has their own hobbies, in the end. Still, I didn’t need to say anything like that out loud.