Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 9

by Hiro Ainana

I supposed in that case, the ship’s anti-monster barrier would’ve had a stronger effect anyway.

  Putting on the Flying Shoes, I sped our journey along by shuttling the ship through the air.

  The Flying Shoes I’d found in the salvaged goods automatically adjusted their size, so they could fit anyone without a problem, but they weren’t very easy to use.

  With my “Skyrunning” experience, I was the only one who was able to use them.

  Tama seemed pretty close, though, so she might get the hang of them soon.

  “Funeral song.”

  Once we offered the flowers, Arisa had a moment of silence, and Mia started playing a lilting tune on her lute.

  It reminded me of the memorial we’d held for the lost ratmen at a battlefield in Seiryuu County.

  “”

  Rei began to sing a requiem, matching the tune to Mia’s song.

  It was a calming song, almost like a lullaby.

  I listened peacefully to their singing and playing for a while.

  Then Mia put her lute away in her Fairy Pack and pointed to a well-lit area.

  “Satou, seeds.”

  “You mean you want me to plant some seeds there?”

  She was referring to the Treant seeds from her hometown, which the high elf Aaze had asked us to plant on our travels.

  “Mm. Best.”

  It was a good spot, and the purification barrier would prevent miasma from harming them.

  Mia was probably right that it was the perfect place for some.

  “Can you all help me plant some Treant seeds?”

  “Aye-aaaye!”

  “Of course, sir!”

  With the girls’ help, I planted ten or so of the Treant seeds.

  “Master, will one fertilizer orb do?”

  “It should. Bury it a little ways away, please.”

  The golden fruits that contained the seeds had been removed for use in magic potions, so instead we were using fertilizer orbs to promote healthy growth.

  These were given to us by Jia, the elf gardener.

  “Larva, you must not pack the earth too tightly when you bury it, I advise.”

  “”

  “Mm. Experience.”

  Nana and Mia were helping Rei plant.

  She was fitting in with the group faster than I’d expected.

  “Are you worried about how to deal with that girl?”

  Having planted her seeds, Arisa came over to me, her mature expression at odds with her age.

  “Yeah, a little.”

  Judging by Rei’s Last Princess of Lalakie title and the Skeleton King proclaiming himself as the companion to the final queen of Lalakie, the chances were good that Rei was the Skeleton King’s daughter.

  Normally, I would assume I should return her to her father, but between her Sacrificial Maiden title and the Skeleton King’s insane-sounding promise to return Lalakie to the skies…no matter what I must offer up in exchange, I was hesitant to put her in harm’s way.

  If the Skeleton King was going to try to sacrifice Rei, I would prefer to keep her safe at least until her memories returned.

  However, the warning of the sunken ship’s ghost captain—without its key, Lalakie cannot fly—seemed too obviously linked to Rei’s key-shaped hair ornament to be a coincidence.

  My concern was that the Skeleton King might be after Rei’s hair ornament in order to return Lalakie to the skies.

  If I blindly took Rei in, knowing she might be targeted by the dangerous and elusive Skeleton King, I would be putting my companions in danger.

  “I see…”

  Once I explained my concerns to Arisa, she folded her arms and nodded thoughtfully.

  “I don’t think the Skeleton King would be able to reach her if she’s protected by the purification barrier on this island, but…I don’t want to leave her here after she’s been alone for so long.”

  “Alone? How do you know that?”

  “I mean, she seems to really want company. She’s always staying close to one of us, and even when Nana and Mia fuss over her too much, she actually seems happy about it.”

  Obviously, Arisa was more observant about other people than I was.

  “Thank you, Arisa.”

  I smiled at her, grateful for the push.

  “Everyone, I’d like to talk to you about something…”

  When I proposed that Rei travel with us until her memories returned, everyone was in total agreement.

  “”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk!”

  “You can just say ‘thanks,’ sir!”

  “”

  Rei was trying to be polite, but Tama and Pochi shook their fingers at her.

  Pochi didn’t seem to be very good at clicking her tongue, so she just said “Tsk” out loud.

  Meanwhile, as far as the Skeleton King’s movements were concerned…

  I’d been keeping an eye on his status since the day before via the marker on my map. It seemed like my attack had hit him harder than I realized, though, as his health gauge was recovering very slowly. His stamina and magic gauges were still totally empty.

  His location hadn’t changed from the Spirit World area, either.

  For now, I would just have to keep checking on a regular basis.

  “”

  “”

  As I was leaning over the side of the ship and looking at the sunrise, Rei showed up, barely awake and in her younger form.

  She didn’t seem particularly surprised that the ship was flying.

  When Captain Ghost was raging about Lalakie, he had used phrases like floating ships, so she was probably accustomed to this kind of thing.

  “”

  “”

  Opening my Item Box, I produced a glass of yellorange fruit juice with ice.

  The ice was actually cubes of juice that I’d created with the Freeze Water spell.

  “”

  Rei gulped down the juice in one go, letting out a contended sigh.

  She must have been thirsty after sweating in her sleep.

  “”

  “”

  I handed her the candy, and she popped it into her mouth immediately.

  The magic candy was a version of one of the magic recovery potion recipes I’d learned in the elf village. Sucking on it would continuously restore your magic.

  The original recipe for the candy restored six points of magic per second, but the one I’d just given Rei was a type I’d specially made for her that restored only one point per second.

  With this, even if she ate the whole thing, she would stay in her little-girl form.

  I’d come up with this solution because if she kept growing and shrinking, her clothes would keep ripping or coming off.

  At first I thought I should stop giving her magic, but if she ran out completely, her status would change to Starvation.

  If she stayed in that state for too long, she would enter a magic-hungry trance like the day we first met her, which was why I’d created these candies.

  While she sucked on the one I’d just given her, Rei gazed out at the sea, resting her head against me.

  “”

  “”

  A shadow person? The Skeleton King, perhaps?

  “”

  Normally, a bad dream was still nothing more than that, but in Rei’s case, I had the feeling it might be some kind of omen.

  Just in case, I decided to stay on guard for a while.

  “Master! Do not monopolize the larva for yourself, I beseech.”

  “”

  “Good morning, Rei, I greet.”

  As soon as Nana came onto the deck, she picked up Rei an
d rubbed her cheek against her.

  Rei had been bewildered by Nana’s behavior at first, but now she seemed accustomed to it.

  “Mrrr. Excessive.”

  Mia emerged next, shaking her head at Nana.

  “Cuteness is justice, I declare.” Nana seemed undaunted.

  “”

  “Mm. Morning.”

  Rei smiled sheepishly at Mia, who gave up on her efforts to stop Nana, instead securing a spot on my lap.

  “Good morniiing.”

  “Good morning, sirs!”

  Tama and Pochi bounded onto the deck, arm in arm with Arisa.

  Like a student who had recently come back from summer vacation, Arisa had been late to rise since we left Bolenan Forest.

  “Wake uuup?”

  “Time for calisthenics, sir.”

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  Tama and Pochi pushed Arisa forward, but she just slumped tiredly to the deck.

  “Part one.”

  With that, Mia started playing a lute version of a radio calisthenics tune from Japan.

  Rei escaped from Nana’s grasp to join Tama and Pochi.

  She seemed to have become quite fond of this little morning exercise.

  “Master toooo?”

  “Join us, sir.”

  Nana had started doing the calisthenics with Rei, so I would’ve preferred to stay off to the side and watch her, but Tama and Pochi insisted that I line up next to them.

  While I was at it, I dragged Arisa to her feet to participate along with me.

  “Ughhh, I hate mornings…”

  Despite Arisa’s grumbling, she was back to her usual energetic self by the time part one of the calisthenics was over.

  Once we finished part two, a delicious smell drifted up from the vent of the galley, and the girls’ stomachs began to growl.

  When Liza emerged onto the deck carrying an enormous stockpot, everyone’s attention was riveted on her.

  “Breakfast is ready.”

  Lulu’s call was met with a chorus of cheers, and everyone scrambled to reach the food.

  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, I report.”

  “Mm. Let’s go.”

  “”

  Even Rei was among them, dragged along by Nana and Mia.

  “Master, I’ve spotted a ship run aground.”

  I was in the ship’s hold making a magic tool to deal with the Skeleton King when Liza came in to give me her report.

  “Thanks, I’ll be right there.”

  As I stood, I opened the menu to check the time and found that it was later than I realized. If that much time had passed, it meant that we had to leave for the Seadragon Islands area fairly soon.

  I needed to set up another seal slate here, or I wouldn’t be able to return to the city-rock island with only the Return spell from a long distance.

  “Satou, look.”

  Once I reached the deck, Mia pointed at an island up ahead.

  Among the reefs surrounding the island, I could barely make out the shadow of what looked like a ship.

  Using my “Telescopic Sight” skill and the Clairvoyance spell, I took a closer look.

  The ship’s three masts all seemed to be intact, but there were holes all over the hull of the ship itself. There didn’t seem to be much evidence of acid attacks, so they’d probably managed to avoid sea serpents.

  “Isn’t that a Shiga Kingdom flag?”

  “Yeah. And the one below it is from the Ougoch Duchy—it’s Viscount Emerin’s flag.”

  So the missing ship from the viscount’s fleet had actually run aground here.

  The area up ahead was unexplored territory, so I couldn’t check the status of the ship.

  It would be a pain to explain things if they saw us flying, so I lowered the ship into the water to sail toward the island normally.

  As we traversed the few miles between us and the ship, we were attacked by monsters like flying manta rays and the mosasaur-like sea monster I’d seen elsewhere in the Seadragon Islands.

  Liza’s harpoons and Mia’s bow made quick work of the flying rays, but the sea monster attacking the bottom of the ship was hard to reach directly, so I used my Remote Arrow to take care of it.

  Remote Arrow was only half as effective underwater, but since it was already overkill to begin with, that didn’t matter much.

  Once Mia mastered her Spirit Magic skill a little more and could use Create Water Spirit, she would probably be able to help with underwater battles more.

  “There are survivors. That’s a relief.”

  As soon as we passed into the new area, I used “Search Entire Map” and found there were some thirty-seven people alive on the other side of the fairly large island. All of them were sailors from the ship that had run aground.

  “Then we’d better save them right away.”

  I was about to nod, but I wasn’t sure how we were going to fit that many people onto our little ship.

  Our best bet was to repair their ship for their transportation.

  “We have to prepare a bit first.”

  I stopped the ship at the edge of the reef area and took off with my Flying Shoes, heading for the grounded ship. The shoes were so that Rei wouldn’t question why I was flying.

  “It’s more beat-up than I expected.”

  The two lower decks of the four-deck ship were flooded, and there was a huge hole in the bottom of the hull.

  I had planned on just repairing it normally, but this would probably require some special maneuvers.

  “Arisa, you’re on.”

  “Okey-dokey!”

  Using the Space Magic spell Telephone to contact Arisa, I instructed her to begin Operation: Keep Rei Distracted.

  “We’re good to go.”

  Once Arisa gave me the okay, I put the grounded ship into Storage and separated the seawater.

  Next, I used Freeze Water to solidify the surface of the sea, took the ship out on top of the ice, and sealed up the holes from the outside with boards. Conveniently, I had the parts from the other sunken ships we’d stumbled onto in the Seadragon Islands.

  Once they were reasonably covered, I used Treespirit Pearls to adhere the boards to the ship.

  All I needed was for the ship to be able to sail again, so I casually ignored the dents in the hull.

  With the repairs completed, I used Storage to bring the ship back to safe sailing waters and got rid of the ice I’d been using to hold it up.

  Now all that was left was to put up the sails. For some reason, there were no spares to be found on the formerly grounded ship, so I used the most intact ones from the sunken ships of the same build.

  Then I towed the ship—a carrack—with Magic Hand and returned to our own ship.

  “All done.”

  “Welcome back, master.”

  Liza was the only one to come greet me; the rest of the girls were playing dress-up in the main cabin with Rei as their doll.

  “I better get things set up now,” I murmured, opening the biggest Fairy Pack.

  “”

  When I gave these orders in Elvish, large wooden living dolls around the height of brownies marched forth from the Fairy Pack. There were a few gargoyle-style dolls for reconnaissance, as well. I had made them as practice in an elf workshop, so they all moved rather clumsily.

  The living dolls had squat, gnomelike bodies and were wearing loose, hooded brown robes. It might look a bit strange in this hot weather, but at least it wasn’t obvious that they were living dolls.

  These low-cost versions didn’t use Holytree Stone, but they were made with a lot of the elves’ secret techniques, so I didn’t want any thieves coming after them.

  “Scarecrow, control the living dolls according to the ‘sailor’ preset.”

  When I gave the order to the figurehead golem Scarecrow, the living dolls began moving about briskly, miming various sailor
-like tasks.

  Since I’d made the Scarecrow golem after mastering the art of controller units, it was pretty high performance.

  Hearing the living dolls’ footsteps, my companions came up to the deck and were caught completely by surprise.

  I explained to them that these were dummy crew members so we would look like a normal sailing ship.

  This might’ve been a small galleon, but it still wasn’t very realistic to claim that it was being operated by nine people, most of whom were children.

  “Master, there are people on the beach, I report.”

  “Yeah, they probably came because they saw the ship.”

  “I believe there are people hidden in the woods near the beach as well, master.”

  I nodded at Nana and Liza.

  I was aboard the newly repaired ship, which I’d brought over to the inlet where the survivors were living.

  The rest of my group was on the galleon, which was stopped nearby, out of range of any possible attacks from the beach.

  Of course, I’d put the flash anti-monster magic into stealth mode.

  I lowered the bigger ship’s anchor in a safe area away from the reef and had my “sailors” take a small lifeboat back to our ship. The sailors were actually living dolls made to look like humans with the Light Magic spell Illusion.

  I was actually operating the ship myself with Magic Hand, but my official story was that I couldn’t use magic, hence the facade.

  “I am a noble of the Ougoch Duchy in the Shiga Kingdom. For my valiant battles against monsters, I have been granted the Ougoch Duchy Blazing Scarlet Medal. They call me Baron Jeetbert!”

  A middle-aged man who was carrying a two-handed sword like a walking stick greeted me in a clear voice. The emblem with the red gem on his chest must be the aforementioned Blazing Scarlet Medal.

  He must have introduced himself preemptively because I was wearing noble clothing.

  “His Excellency has introduced himself. Now it is your turn!”

  A smaller man standing next to the baron in mage-like robes shouted at me next.

  There were a few other men stationed nearby with large shields, ready to guard the baron at a moment’s notice. Since they were sailors to begin with, none of them was wearing heavy metal armor.

  “I am a noble of the Muno Barony in the Shiga Kingdom. For fending off a lesser hell demon in Gururian City, I have been granted the Ougoch Duchy Sapphire Medal. My name is Satou Pendragon, hereditary knight.”