Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 6

by Hiro Ainana

  “…Martial arts instruction?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Judging from the way they were swinging around those heavy wooden swords with one hand, these kids must be about the right level for it. From the look of their footwork, they haven’t had any formal training. The animal-eared folk are known as a warrior race, so I’d be more than happy to teach them our style. And we have to pay for travel somehow,” he added with a chuckle.

  The samurai pair explained that they were on a journey to Labyrinth City to increase their combat skills.

  And their weapons were currently being repaired from the damage they took in the tournament. As a result, they couldn’t earn money by exterminating monsters or taking escort missions.

  I had just been seeking out a teacher for the beastfolk girls, so this was perfect timing. I accepted Kajiro’s proposal and drew up a contract of employment for the duration of our stay in the old capital.

  He would come to the mansion each day until I received permission from the former count, who would hopefully agree to let him stay in an empty room of the guest mansion.

  When the bells rang to sound the time in the museum, Kajiro excused himself and the woman.

  “The main battles of the tournament are today, so we must take our leave.”

  I had no qualms with that. We were planning to start training the next day anyway.

  Evidently, a lot of the other guests were just killing time until the tournament, too; the crowd at the Ancestral King Yamato exhibit soon all but vanished.

  “So the royal capital used to be here.” Lulu was reading the Shiga Kingdom chronology written on the wall.

  “Relocatiooon?”

  “I’m confused, sir.”

  I explained the meaning of “relocating the capital” to Pochi and Tama.

  The Shiga Kingdom was founded in this city. When the royal capital was moved to its current location, this became the old capital, beginning the reign of King Sharorik the Second. He sounded a lot different from the current third prince, despite sharing the same name.

  We proceeded along the preset route, where the items were arranged in chronological order.

  “Ah! I know this one. It’s a painting of the crazed king Gartapht’s demi-human war.”

  Arisa pointed at a painting that depicted various kinds of demi-humans and humanfolk murdering one another. Apparently, a copy of the same painting had been in the castle where she used to live.

  Four hundred years ago, there was a massive amount of persecution against demi-humans, which led to a great war with the demi-human countries to the east and northwest of the Shiga Kingdom. This war had the most casualties of any non-demon-related war in the past millennium. In the end, even the elves and a summoned hero from the Saga Empire got involved to stop the bloodshed.

  This painting was made in the era of the wise king Zara, who succeeded the crazed king and restored a dynasty. It was meant to serve as a reminder for future generations that extreme persecution could only lead to tragedy.

  As far as I could tell, persecution and discrimination still had a hold on this kingdom, but perhaps it was better than when a demi-human would get killed on sight.

  After a few more similarly bloody images, a painting that was leaning against the wall caught my eye.

  It was a simple scene of a single door on top of a hill. Curious, I examined it more closely.

  Oh?

  After a few moments, the door in the painting swung open, and a tiny girl peeked out and waved at me. A moving oil painting? Now, that was classic fantasy stuff.

  I waved back, and the girl reacted with delight. Very interactive.

  The girl beckoned me over from inside the door.

  Instinctively, I took a step forward, but…

  “It’s huuuge!”

  “Sir!”

  …Tama and Pochi chose that moment to tackle me from the side.

  The suddenness of it surprised me, but they were too light to make me stagger or anything.

  “What is it, you two?”

  “Come heeere?”

  “There’s something amazing over here, sir!”

  The excited pair grabbed my hands and dragged me toward the next room.

  Casually glancing over my shoulder as we left the room, I saw that the painting I’d been looking at was gone.

  Since it had been on the floor, it was probably just being moved. If there were any others like it, I’d love to show everyone.

  “Looook?”

  “It’s amazingly amazing, sir!”

  Tama and Pochi pulled me into a hall with an enormous tapestry on display.

  It was huge, about fifteen feet tall and one hundred and fifty feet long. According to the museum label, it was made over the course of more than forty years.

  “Master, the demon lord is very large and dangerous, I report.”

  Nana pointed at one section of the tapestry with a grave expression. It depicted an enormous monster with the head of a boar that dwarfed the castle beneath it.

  “The giant demon lord appeared before the great ancestral king Yamato, trampling a castle under his feet…”

  A clear voice rang out behind us. I turned around to find a stage set up at the far end of the hall. An orchestra was providing background music as a minstrel stood center stage and described the scenes on the tapestry.

  I listened to the voice as I gazed at the tapestry.

  “The demon lord’s chief henchmen, the six-colored veteran demons, caused much trouble for the humanfolk armies…”

  Standing in front of the demon lord was a green snake, a pink mochi-like slime, and the familiar blue and red greater hell demons, all led by a four-armed yellow demon.

  He said “six-colored”; maybe the last one was the black shape that looked like the yellow one’s shadow?

  The minstrel intoned the details of each demon’s special powers. The green one could shape-shift, the pink one specialized in defense, the black one appeared and disappeared unexpectedly, and the yellow one, as the de facto leader, was much stronger than ordinary demons.

  The minstrel’s tale went on for quite a while.

  “The demon lord manipulated the orcs, turning them into boushi mouhei to fight against the knights.”

  I’d never heard of boushi mouhei. Was this some made-up Japanese-style word from this world?

  The little humanoid shapes at the yellow demon’s feet were probably the orcs.

  When it occurred to me that I’d never met an orc, I ran a map search on a whim and found two living downtown in the old capital.

  Like the kobolds I’d met in the giants’ village, they were considered fairyfolk, not monsters.

  These two orcs managed an alchemy store in a corner of the slums. They didn’t seem to have any offenses in the Bounty section of their information, so I decided to go check them out at some point during our stay.

  “The cryptid knights of the Flue Kingdom joined the battle mounted on griffins. Then the demon lord summoned his sky fortress, Tovkezerra, and countless monstrous fish swam through the skies.”

  Where’s this part?

  I tried to find this “Tovkezerra” thing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe it was the giant shape at the top left corner of the tapestry, which looked like either an airship or a sperm whale?

  A swarm of sharklike monsters was emerging from the magic circle in front of the airship, crushing buildings and soldiers like a tidal wave.

  The griffins were depicted as well, but clearly, there weren’t enough of them to stand a chance.

  “Just as the kingdoms were on the verge of destruction, our savior appeared on the back of a sky dragon: the ancestral king Yamato himself.”

  On the right side of the tapestry was the silver head of a dragon, with a knight in blue armor standing between its horns. This must be Yamato, then.

  The knight held a large shield and a staff, and several glowing blue swords were floating around him.

  Okay, the part about the swor
ds floating in the air has got to be artistic license. It was like a scene out of an anime or something. For one thing, the Holy Sword Claidheamh Soluis didn’t fly around when the prince had used it against those demons earlier.

  “So this brave figure must be the ancestral king Yamato.”

  “A great king though he may have been, I do not believe that a dragon would allow anyone to ride on its head.”

  Miss Karina seemed impressed, but Liza not so much. Maybe her race viewed dragons as sacred creatures.

  “A dragon knight? Now that’s hot!”

  I had a strong suspicion that Arisa wasn’t referring to the temperature. Next to her, Mia nodded sagely; I decided I didn’t want to know why.

  Arisa, please don’t corrupt this world’s culture too much.

  “Master, there is a replica of the Holy Sword over there, I report.”

  Turning to look where Nana pointed, I saw a ten-foot-tall bronze statue of the ancestral king Yamato, as well as an equally giant replica of Claidheamh Soluis.

  If my memory of the real one was anything to go by, this size must be an exaggeration to emphasize the king’s greatness.

  Thinking back, the ancestral king statue I saw in Sedum City in Kuhanou County was similarly grandiose. I guess that was the default size for statues of Yamato.

  As we admired the statue of the ancestral king, a carriage arrived to pick us up. Evidently, it was just about time for us to visit the home of Tolma and Viscount Siemmen.

  We stopped by the house to drop everyone else off, except for Arisa and Nana, who wanted to come along. Then, the carriage took us to the viscount’s estate.

  The man had a hooked nose, a furrowed brow, a carefully groomed mustache, and swept-back golden-blond hair. His eyes were intense, full of strength and determination.

  The man was so serious, it was hard to believe he was Tolma’s brother.

  If anything, from his somewhat aged features, he could pass for Tolma’s father. He certainly looked older than thirty-four years old.

  “I thank you for saving Tolma’s life.”

  How strange. For some reason, his thanks sounded more like a scolding from my boss.

  This was Tolma’s older brother, Hosarris Siemmen.

  The only people in the room were the two brothers, Arisa, and me.

  As soon as we arrived, Nana wanted to go to the adjacent house where Tolma’s family was staying, and I let her do as she liked. By this time, she was probably doting on baby Mayuna.

  “Sorry, Sir Satou. My brother always talks like this.”

  “How rude, Tolma. What’s wrong with the way I talk, pray tell?”

  His words were normal enough on their own, but something about Hosarris’s tone made him sound like a straitlaced teacher addressing a particularly disappointing student.

  Inexplicably, Arisa was about to start drooling. I couldn’t help but be concerned by the gleam in her eyes. Whatever you’re fantasizing about, please keep it to yourself.

  As the conversation continued, it felt more like a job interview than a friendly welcome in the parlor.

  Tolma had already told the viscount about my top priorities, namely purchasing scrolls from the warehouse and ordering more, so the arrangements were made easily enough. It helped that I showed my permit from the duke, of course.

  “If collecting scrolls is your hobby, would you like to tour our workshop?”

  “Could I really?”

  I was so excited about this unexpected turn of events that I instinctively leaned forward on the table.

  “I don’t see why not. Miss Nina the Iron-Blooded even called you ‘trustworthy’ in her letter of introduction. Besides, Tolma is an excellent judge of character.”

  What a gentleman. I could even see him being a charismatic company president in modern Japan.

  My “Keen Hearing” skill picked up a conversation in the hallway.

  “…Which is why we simply must use ink made from the dew of a firefly lily.”

  “That ink certainly would allow for very precise work, but think of the cost.”

  “But Mr. Djang, I could say the same of the dragon powder and drill powder you insist upon using. How are we to profit?”

  These must be the scroll craftsmen that Mr. Hosarris called for.

  “You have need of us, my lord?”

  “At your service, Lord Hosarris.”

  The pair that entered was a middle-aged man who gave obesity a whole new meaning and a young woman with freckles and glasses.

  The girl was a fairly average-looking gnome, neither beautiful nor ugly. As you might expect from a member of her race, she was even shorter than Arisa.

  “This is Djang, the workshop manager. He may not look it, but he is the greatest scroll master in all the Shiga Kingdom. And the young lady is Natalina, the most ingenious artisan in our workshop. I have no doubt that they will be able to meet your expectations, Sir Pendragon.”

  I sensed a certain implication behind Hosarris’s use of the word ingenious. Maybe she was the type who liked making strange scrolls that wouldn’t sell or burned up budgets for her experiments.

  Once he’d introduced the duo, Mr. Hosarris took his leave along with Tolma.

  That was all right. I was told when I first arrived that he might not have much time to spare. I was just glad he introduced me to the artisans first.

  I showed the list of scrolls I wanted to Mr. Djang, and we began to make arrangements.

  Sadly, it turned out that greater magic couldn’t be fashioned into scrolls.

  He also wasn’t able to make scrolls of spells that could be used for criminal purposes, like Fake Patch and Unlock. I’d been told the same thing at Kikinu’s magic shop, so this wasn’t that surprising.

  As it turned out, finishing scrolls required someone who had the skill for the adapted spell. Gravity, Shadow, Psychic, Ghost, and other such types of magic couldn’t be produced, either.

  Because the resident Space Magic user was currently away in the royal capital, I wouldn’t be able to order scrolls of that sort for another month. However, the warehouse already had a scroll of the only intermediate teleportation spell, Return, so that wasn’t a problem.

  I hesitated a little but eventually agreed to buy the Return scroll for one hundred gold coins.

  My “Estimation” skill gave the price as about thirty coins, but one hundred coins was nothing if it meant I’d be able to teleport. Besides, if you included all the different currencies I had in Storage, I had upward of ten million gold coins.

  Additionally, while it was technically possible, creating Holy Magic scrolls was forbidden for religious reasons.

  “Say, Mister Knight… I get that you’re a collector and all, but the scroll versions of the spells on this list are all fairly ineffective. You sure you’re okay with that?”

  “Natalina, you ought to address him more respectfully.”

  “Whaaat? I was being respectful. Wasn’t I, Mister Knight?”

  “I only recently became a noble anyway, so I don’t mind if you speak to me normally, if that’s what you would prefer.”

  “Really? Whoo-hoo!” Natalina struck a triumphant pose, prompting Mr. Djang to bop her on the head. I understood all too well the pain of playing the straight man to a goofy young girl.

  “As for your concerns, Miss Natalina, the aim is to collect them. As long as they can be used, I have no problem if the effect is weak,” I promised.

  We completed a sales contract for the scrolls in the warehouse, then moved on to my creation requests in order of priority.

  “These are some weird spells, huh? They’re easy to read but real inefficient. They probably count as lesser magic, but the long chants make ’em pretty hard to use.”

  Natalina tilted her head as she observed my handmade spells.

  My spells were considerably different from the standard spells here, since I took a structured programming approach.

  They were very readable and effective, but their magic efficiency and s
pell length were much worse than traditional spells.

  There wasn’t much I could do about that trade-off. For me personally, the disadvantages were all but irrelevant.

  “Will you be able to make them into scrolls?”

  “Yeah, no prob. They’re a little weird, but they still follow the normal rules of magic, so I think I can figure it out…sir.”

  Noticing Mr. Djang’s glare, Natalina hastily added an honorific with an apologetic tone.

  “Well then, Sir Knight. It will take some time to gather the inventory for your order. Would you like to see the workshop while you wait?”

  “Oh yes, please.”

  We headed over for a tour. I brought Arisa along to alleviate her obvious boredom.

  The workshop was underground below the viscount’s property, with powerful security provided by both people and magic equipment.

  The security guards were all level 20 or higher, with espionage-related skills like “Detect” and “Observation.” There were also magic items for surveillance and alarms, including small guard golems that patrolled around the vents.

  While they couldn’t tell me the details, the workshop was clearly very thoroughly protected against any kind of spying magic.

  The workshop was also divided into several small rooms, each of which was used only for specific parts of the process.

  This way, very few people actually knew the entire process. It might be inefficient, but keeping their techniques secret seemed to be of utmost importance. They were extremely thorough.

  The paper for the scrolls was made in a different place; when I appraised it, the results said things like scroll paper: B.

  From the artisans’ conversations, I gathered that core powder was needed to make the ink. It turned out Mr. Hosarris had been in the royal capital for the express purpose of stocking up on high-quality cores. The ones needed to make an intermediate magic scroll could be obtained only from powerful monsters of level 30 or higher.

  The unprocessed core they showed me as an example was an even deeper red than the ones I got from the hard newts a while back.

  “This room is where the ink is made.”

  Mr. Djang cracked the door open and let me peek inside, but I wasn’t allowed to enter. They were currently making scroll ink: A in this room. I was able to identify most of the ingredients, one of which was scroll ink: B. The whole process seemed very involved.