In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 12 Page 9

  Siegrune used the opportunity to charge forward and bash the Treant with the shield.

  “Graugh!” The giant Treant was staggered, giving Siegrune a perfect opportunity to bring its blade down upon the creature. It was sliced in half with little effort at all, the Treant fell to the ground in two pieces.

  The Treant’s outer bark was tough, but that material was simply no match for phrasium equipment.

  “They’re different from the Wood Golems! Do these Treants have magical lifelines?”

  “Yes! If you cut off the magical lifeline that runs up the middle of its body, then it should die! It’s like severing a human’s spinal cord! That part of the body is protected by the toughest bark, so be wary!” Relisha replied quickly and concisely. She certainly had good casual knowledge of these things...

  “Haaah!”

  “Grauuugh!”

  Gerhilde smashed its fist right into a Treant’s face. There was a dent left in the now-cracked wood, but it wasn’t down for the count. It seemed like the Treant wouldn’t die unless the lifeline in the middle of its trunk was cut off. That meant that non-bladed weapons were highly ineffective.

  Gerhilde still had a small knife on its waist, so I figured she could use that to make short work of it...

  “Haaaaaaaaaaaah!”

  Gerhilde’s left fist came down upon the monster all of a sudden. Then the right again! Left, right, left, right! A flurry of punches rained down upon the tree. I almost felt bad for it.

  It was being absolutely pummeled to pieces. With each successive strike, more and more bark was chipped away.

  “Eat this!” One of the pile bunkers on Gerhilde’s wrists finally came out, severing the lifeline. Then Treant fell, defeated. That was one hell of an attack... She even surprised me.

  “Who’s next?!” Elze abandoned the Treant she had almost punched into sawdust and ran after her next target.

  “Man... she’s really good at piloting that thing.”

  The Frame Gear reacted to its pilot, and thus actually riding it became easier over time. In other words, the more you used it, the more it began to work as an extension of yourself. That was the case for all Frame Gears, even the Chevaliers, which was why I liked making sure that knights used the same one each time.

  Relisha stared at the scene, of giant robots fighting giant trees, and muttered in amazement.

  “This is truly something to behold... Even gigantic Treants can’t do anything to stop the Frame Gears...”

  “We still struggle against the stronger Phrase types, though...”

  “Without these giant warriors, I fear the world might have already ended. I don’t know who they are, but I really do owe a great thanks to the ancient genius who invented these...”

  Don’t say that around her, you’ll inflate her ego... I don’t want her laughing and gloating all over the place, thanks. Although, to be fair, she is kind of a savior... Without Babylon’s genius, the world would be in a lot of trouble.

  Still, it wasn’t her that repaired the boundary of the world... If whoever did that hadn’t done it, then the Frame Gears would’ve had to have been deployed far sooner.

  Two-thirds of the world had already been ruined at that point, though... so I wasn’t certain if the Frame Gears would’ve actually made all that much of a difference.

  “Kokonoe Secret Style: Lightning Flash!”

  “Oh.”

  Schwertleite dashed forward, slicing a Treant cleanly down the middle in the blink of an eye.

  It fell down, making tremors run along the ground. Compared to the Frame Gears, these things were completely harmless... To be honest, Treants weren’t inherently hostile to begin with anyway. I wondered if the Rivet Tribe couldn’t have picked a better creature to equip for battle...

  Either way, the deed was done. All the Treants were down for the count.

  “You have my gratitude. The elven village should be able to return to its former prosperity now.”

  “Don’t worry about it... We did a little bit of a rough job...” Relisha was thankful, but I looked around at the wreckage and kind of felt a little bad. In the end, it came down to monsters vs robots in the middle of a forest. Even though we won easily, we’d ended up making a hell of a mess. The local animals also caused us a bit of trouble.

  “It’s hard to use the Frame Gears in such an enclosed space...”

  “Couldn’t you have just used your teleportation magic to move the enemies to an open space?” I stared blankly at Sue, who had just raised a great point. Crap.

  Relisha also stared at her, simply sighing and saying “Oh.”

  “...Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I bowed my head slightly. Part of me wanted to get on all fours and prostrate.

  After that was over we went back home. Yumina and the others were having a cup of tea. I was talking on the phone with Relisha.

  “Wait, what do you mean the Treant bark is worthless?!”

  Yumina and the others suddenly stared in my direction.

  “It’s not exactly worthless, but... you’re not going to get all that much.” According to Relisha, the giant Treant wood didn’t have the same qualities as standard Treant wood and wasn’t nearly as valuable a material.

  The outer shell was tough, but the insides were surprisingly squidgy... Internally, they had the consistency of packing styrofoam.

  I guess that made sense. The Treants weren’t natural Behemoths or anything. They were the product of Rivet experimentation. It was no wonder their wood wasn’t as good as the real deal.

  “So that means we will not be making much profit, will we not?”

  “Well, it won’t be a total loss. We can still sell it as decent-grade firewood...” I came up with the best response I could to Yae. Money was still money, I supposed. It’d be less than a thousandth of what I was expecting, but... money was money. It could probably be used as a substitute for corrugated cardboard or something.

  “Oh, well... On the bright side, the elven village managed to brew some alcohol from the drinker mushroom. Shall we go get it later?”

  Everyone at the table, with the exception of Yumina, Sue, Sakura, and Leen, fell quiet and looked down at their cups. They’d all had a pretty bad experience in that mist, after all.

  In Brunhild, the legal drinking age was fifteen, just as it was in Belfast and Regulus. That meant Yae, Hilde, Elze, Linze, and Leen would be completely fine to have it. I didn’t really drink much, though.

  Leen suddenly opened her mouth on behalf of the silent table.

  “I’m not especially interested in fruity liquor, so I’ll be quite fine. I think everyone else feels the same.”

  “...Seems so.”

  Well, that was to be expected. I picked up my phone and started texting Relisha, telling her that the village could keep the booze.

  All of a sudden, a hand appeared from beneath the table and grabbed my wrist, stopping me from sending the message. Augh!

  “Heeey... Don’tchu dare do somefing so, hic... stupid!” It was Suika... the god of alcohol, and she had clearly been listening in. I had no idea where the hell she’d come from, but she refused to let go. She was clawing at me like a zombie while yelling about the booze.

  “Okay, okay! I get it! Let go, I’ll get the damn drink!”

  “Hic, yahoo! We’re gonna drink, hic, the besht stuff! Yippee!” The drunken little rat immediately broke her hold on me and spun around on the spot before bowing.

  Hey now...

  “Good work, best regards, you have, hic, my thanks! I’m gonna go see if Karina wants some, too! Woohoo!”

  We all watched her skip out of the room, bewildered and irritated expressions on our faces.

  “...Is drinking fun, Touya? It kind of looks troublesome.”

  “Ehhh...” I didn’t have a good answer to Sue’s question. On Earth, there was a saying that went like “good wine makes good blood,” but it was also said that “beer is the nectar of the nitwit”... Drinking t
o relieve stress was probably fine, so long as people never went overboard with it. Either way, drunkards would continue to drink. It was a simple truth of the world.

  I sighed quietly and picked up my smartphone once more, this time to message Relisha about securing the booze.

  Chapter III: The Phantom Thieves: ‘Red Cat’

  “We’ve all had a formal discussion, and we’ve decided that we will remove the barrier that separates our island from the world. Thank you for your consideration.”

  “Thanks for telling us. The Duchy of Brunhild will assist Palerius Island in any way it can, I promise.” I took Mentor Central’s outstretched hand and shook it firmly. They’d decided to formally make contact with the outside world, and I couldn’t be happier. I did, of course, already know about the decision they’d made thanks to Kougyoku and her familiars.

  They’d investigated the Initializer I’d given to them and confirmed that it would do as I said. Then, they’d had several talks that all pointed toward a desire to join the world at large.

  Now all we had to do was head down to the basement of the Central Temple and deactivate the artifact that was keeping the barrier in place.

  We headed down the spiral staircase and finally came to the object. It was a large black monolith in the center of the room, with a seven-colored spellstone embedded in the middle.

  The monolith was one meter wide and two meters tall, and it had to be at least twenty centimeters thick. It kind of looked like a massive door.

  “So this thing controls the barrier...”

  “There are other monoliths in each cardinal direction on the island. They interact with this one to maintain the barrier. If this one is disabled, then the others will cease functioning as well.”

  I nodded along as Mentor Central explained the situation, and reached my hand out to touch the black slab. I found myself unable to touch it. A cushiony sensation surrounded it, preventing me from laying hands on it. It was an even smaller barrier. Made sense, this was something they thought needed to remain untouched.

  The effect was likely produced by the monolith itself. That meant if I used the Initializer on the barrier surrounding it, then the whole thing would shut down.

  I could easily use [Cracking] to disable it, but it wasn’t my job to do that. The right to take down the island’s barrier fell to Mentor Central. She took the Initializer and approached the slate.

  She would be the one to release the barrier that had imprisoned and protected them for five-thousand years. As an outsider, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what she must have been feeling. Either way, her will to put an end to all of this was astounding.

  She brought the needlepoint tip of the Initializer toward the cushion-like barrier, and her thumb struck the injector’s plunger.

  In a flash, the magic stored within the Initializer flowed into the monolith. The pure ‘nothingness’ that had been hardcoded into the Initializer began to overwrite the black slab’s other functions.

  The barrier that had coated Palerius Island for the past five-thousand years was now gone.

  I wanted to be sure, so I sent a telepathic message off to Sango and Kokuyou, who were waiting off-shore. I also sent a message to Kougyoku, who was airborne above the island.

  “Did it work?”

  《It did. The magic-diffusing barrier above the island is completely gone.》

  《It has worked, yes. The fog around the island has gone. Ships will be able to freely navigate the area.》 I passed on the message to Mentor Central. The island was finally free.

  Now, all that remained was to mop up the monsters.

  ◇　◇　◇

  The hedgehog-like Behemoth fired out a spray of needles, but Lu’s Waltraute strafed left and right, easily dodging it all.

  That was all thanks to the B-Unit strapped to its back. The B-Unit was composed of several multi-directional thrusters that allowed for rapid speed and maneuverability. The B stood for Booster.

  Waltraute charged toward the Behemoth and detached the B-Unit from its back, quickly swapping out and equipping the A-Unit, which stored four blades on to its back and waist. The A stood for Attacker.

  It took less than a second for the two units to swap out. Waltraute then immediately drew two of the blades from its left and right waist sides and began slicing off the spines from the Behemoth’s body.

  The giant hedgehog suddenly curled up into a ball and attempted to strike back. Waltraute dodged the attack with little difficulty, but the hedgehog continued to roll onward. It was clearly trying to escape.

  Lu responded quickly by ejecting the A-Unit and swapping it out with a heavy cannon on Waltraute’s shoulder. She propped it up with the Frame Gear’s arms and deployed the heel anchors. This was the C-Unit, specially designed for long-range shots. The C stood for Caster.

  A massive bullet erupted from the cannon’s length, firing out at incredible speeds. It struck the fleeing hedgehog, causing it to tumble to the ground.

  “Welp, she took it out...” I was using [Long Sense] to project my senses and watch what was going on. After I confirmed it was dead, the southern capital’s soldiers followed Dyent’s orders and went to retrieve the corpse.

  The soldiers would be able to harvest useful raw materials. It was time-consuming work, but nobody from Brunhild was going to help them out with it. Why? Because we’d promised all the spoils to the islanders.

  Lu warped the C-Unit back to Babylon and dismounted Waltraute.

  “Yo, good job up there. How’d you find it?”

  “It was very pleasant. I can change out the parts with little difficulty. I’m fairly sure I’ll be a good deal of help in the heat of battle.”

  Lu’s Frame Gear, Waltraute, was a machine designed for fast-paced guerilla combat. It was a multipurpose jack of all trades built to adapt to any situation on the battlefield. The role of it in battle was to ride around the field and adapt to support others in any way it could. And so, despite its simple design, it had incredible potential in combat.

  We’d dispatched Behemoth hunting squads to all four corners of the island, this corner included. Thanks to the removal of the barrier, we could easily use Babylon to track where the Behemoths were. It was only a matter of time before they were all gone.

  The barrier was gone, but there were still a lot of magical wellsprings and hotspots on the island. It was never like all the Behemoths were going to immediately vanish when the barrier came down, anyways. Either way, after this cleanup they’d be a little more safe roaming outside their cities.

  A merchant vessel from Elfrau was on its way, so all that was left to do was to see if both parties could reach a fair agreement with each other. I imagined that the early talks would be rough-going, but not impossible to handle.

  I was honestly a little less concerned with this stuff and more worried about the wicked godbeast’s cocoon.

  Weak or not, a god was a god. The beast had devoured the NEET god entirely and taken in his divinity. There was no telling what it would hatch into.

  From what I was told, my body was a specially crafted vessel that had the capabilities to handle divinity. So the cocoon, being a rough and sporadic creation, would take some time to hatch...

  My sisters were keeping watch on the situation, for the time being, so they were allowed to stay in the mortal realm a bit longer.

  Apparently, their secondary duty was to train me as a newcomer god, and that was what they were reporting back to their higher-ups. Funny, since I didn’t remember them training me in any capacity at all. Well, either way, it was reassuring to have them nearby.

  “Something on your mind?”

  “Ah, no. Don’t worry.”

  My sudden bout of introspection seemed to worry Lu. I needed to focus on the present instead of worrying about the threats of tomorrow.

  I’d asked Mentor Central to show me Alerius Palerius’ research notes from the ancient era. His notes were extremely old, so it was unlikely that anyone on the island would be
able to make heads or tails of the stuff... but Brunhild had someone who lived in that era, so we could’ve been able to make use of it.

  Babylon did, in fact, find herself capable of understanding them, and she’d shut herself away in the research laboratory, frantically scanning every single copy of the documents that I’d sent her. I was surprised that texts so old were still in such a good condition, but apparently, they’d been enchanted with an effect similar to [Protection], so there was no wear or tear. More specifically, the spells he’d employed separated items from the flow of time entirely, preserving them in an eternal permanence. Given that he was a master of time, and the Sage of Hours, I wasn’t surprised he could do that.

  As I thought about that, my phone started vibrating. It was the mad doctor herself.

  “‘Sup.”

  “Touya? I found something interesting in these old notes... I want you to take a look, are you busy?”

  “Not at all. We’re just about done here, so I’ll swing by.”

  I ended the call after giving my response. I wondered just what that interesting thing could be... so I headed to the lab.

  “Come see this.”

  The doctor showed me a notebook on the top of her desk. It was turned open to a page that had a sketch of what looked like some kind of armored suit. It had strange mechanical parts and clearly robotic joints.

  “What is that... some kind of Frame Gear?”

  “That’s not it, no. The Frame Gear is a design of my own making, and it never formally came into the public eye during the ancient era. This thing is human-sized, see? Far too small to be a Frame Gear.”

  What? Like some kind of power armor? Sounds like something a billionaire might build in a cave with a box of scraps... But I digress, did the Sage of Hours make something like this...?

  The doctor shook her head as if answering my thoughts.

  “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, then no. There are too few notes about this strange armor. If he was the inventor of this suit, then why would he write notes like ‘it presumably draws power from atmospheric magic particles,’ and ‘I could potentially design an autonomous variant if I studied this more...’? These seem to be notes about something he hasn’t personally observed. Also, there’s more...”