Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 9

by Hiro Ainana

  “I get why we’re putting off visiting Lalagi for a while, but why aren’t we heading straight for Ishrallie as soon as we leave?”

  “For appearances, that’s all.”

  We were heading west first to give the impression that we were going to the Ganika Marquisate. Once we passed the border between the Ougoch Duchy and the Ganika Marquisate and kept going for a little while, we would change course and head straight for Ishrallie.

  “If we head south-southwest right away, certain profiteering types might try to come after us.”

  In fact, I could already see on the map that a few high-speed ships were following us from a distance.

  They were probably trackers from fleets like the Weaselman and Saga empires.

  “I don’t know how long it’ll take if we follow the normal route at a leisurely pace, so we’ll just have to keep going until they give up.”

  The normal route would be to head toward the long peninsula at the western tip of the Ganika Marquisate, then pass from one small island to another until reaching the Kingdom of Sorcery Lalagi, until finally heading northeast from there to Ishrallie.

  The route I chose was faster, but there were few safe places to drop anchor and lots of monsters in the waters.

  But that also meant we were less likely to be seen by others.

  This route was ideal for making full use of our flying ship.

  “Arisaaa?”

  “Lulu’s sampling, sir.”

  Tama and Pochi, who were wearing sailor outfits as well, called Arisa over to the cabin.

  Judging by Pochi’s suspicious wording, they were probably working on some kind of meat dish.

  Since they didn’t call for me, Lulu was probably making some experimental dish, so I decided not to poke my head in until I was called.

  “”

  “”

  Rei, who was dressed in the same outfit as the rest of the younger crew, came over to peer curiously at the scrolls I was using.

  Since we left the harbor, she hadn’t gone into a trance to rattle off information again, but she said that she sometimes got headaches along with fragmented flashbacks.

  Her memories must have been starting to come back.

  Trying to force her to remember seemed to cause her pain, so I’d decided to wait until they came back naturally.

  She should remember the past, including her self-proclaimed sister, Yuuneia, soon enough.

  However, I wasn’t sure whether those memories returning would really make her happy.

  Based on what little information I had so far, it didn’t exactly seem like Rei had a fun, carefree past.

  From what I understood, her key-shaped hair ornament was a device that activated the heart of Lalakie, and the Skeleton King, who was very likely her father, was coming after it. On top of that, there was Rei’s Sacrificial Maiden title and the Skeleton King’s ominous statement about no matter who or what I must sacrifice.

  He probably intended to sacrifice his own daughter to return Lalakie to the skies.

  I wasn’t sure about the Coffin that Captain Ghost from the sunken ship had mentioned, but my guess was that it referred to the Lalakie Box that was reportedly in the Kingdom of Sorcery Lalagi.

  Yuuneia also mentioned that the combination of a box and Rei’s key could bring Lalakie back to the skies, and that would explain why the Skeleton King kept attacking Lalagi, the home of the descendants of Lalakie.

  Glancing at the marker list on my map, I saw that the Skeleton King was still staying quiet in the Spirit World.

  As long as Rei was with us and had the key, the Skeleton King and Yuuneia would probably attack us again, so I was trying to keep an eye on their movements.

  “”

  “”

  The seven scrolls I purchased in Sutoandell were as follows:

  Mana Light, a Practical Magic spell for illumination.

  Create Water and Purify Seawater, two spells said to be indispensable for traveling by sea.

  Translation: Lesser, an intermediate Practical Magic spell that could translate to and from various languages.

  Water Breathing and Resist Water Pressure, two Water Magic spells to help with underwater mobility.

  Water Wall, a useful defense spell for battles at sea.

  Big Wave, which was more useful for disturbance strategies than a full-on attack. Surfers would probably love this one.

  Finally, Remote Harpoon, a Water Magic spell that produced harpoons that could lock on to and chase a target—similar to my Remote Arrow spell but for underwater use only.

  All of them except Mana Light were outrageously overpriced, but I was confident that they would be worth the money.

  Rei watched me use each of the scrolls with unwavering interest.

  Obviously, I wasn’t going to let the Skeleton King take her, but if her memories didn’t return after visiting Ishrallie or Lalagi, maybe I should just take her with us to Labyrinth City.

  Of course, even if her memories did return, I still planned on inviting her to join us.

  “Whoooosh?”

  “I can spin it even faster, sir.”

  Tama and Pochi were playing with a prototype artillery rack I’d made, essentially designed after a revolver cylinder.

  It wasn’t a plaything, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop them when they looked like they were having so much fun.

  “What’s that? A Gatling?” Arisa asked.

  “It’s a rack for the Magic Cannon. I’m trying to come up with a way to reduce the lag between shots and create the possibility of rapid-fire.”

  We probably wouldn’t need them, but I wanted to add self-defense capabilities to the flying ship in case it was attacked while I wasn’t around.

  It was taking a long time to implement, but I was hoping to have it finished by the end of this journey at sea.

  Tama and Pochi, abandoning their game with my prototype, shifted their attention to pointing at the shore.

  “Baaay?”

  “A bay, sir!”

  An entrance to a bay that enclosed a few small towns and fishing villages had come into sight.

  It had been only about half a day since we left Sutoandell, but it would be a long while until we reached the next bay, so I’d decided we should stay the night here.

  Like the entrance to Sutoandell, this place was equipped with a water gate.

  This one, too, had some anti-monster pillars, but the gate was more primitive, with a crank device like the gates of a city wall.

  Instead of Magic Cannons, it was equipped only with catapults and large crossbows.

  “Master, a small boat is approaching, I report.”

  “It must be the harbor authority.”

  The yacht-like vessel stopped next to our ship and requested permission to board, so I lowered a rope ladder for them.

  “Hello, we are from the harbor authority, tax department. We are here to collect your bay entrance fee, if you please.”

  Since our ship had the air of nobility, the government officials spoke to me very politely.

  Nobles were generally exempt from city entrance taxes, but apparently, that didn’t apply here, probably because we were aboard a potential trading vessel.

  “Thank you very much.”

  I paid the amount they requested.

  The fee seemed to be based on the displacement volume of the ship, since they didn’t make any effort to inspect our cargo or anything. We continued into the bay without incident.

  It wasn’t a particularly large bay, but there was one major town and a number of fishing villages.

  We decided to spend the rest of the day wandering around the port town.

  “Big caaatch?”

  “So many little fish, sir.”

  “You could probably catch tons of these with some sabiki rigs.”

  Standing on the pier, the kids seemed to be having fun gazing at the swa
rms of fish in the water.

  “You don’t have any, do you, master?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  I did have rods and fishing line from when we went mountain stream fishing near the elf village, but I didn’t have any small lures like that.

  “Yeah, I guess that was too much to ask…”

  “I’ll make you one, though. Just give me a minute.”

  “…Wait, what?”

  I ignored Arisa’s confused expression, picking out some materials from Storage to make the sabiki. I had all kinds of colorful objects that might work as the reflector, so it was fairly simple.

  “There, all done.”

  I attached the finished lures to a fishing rod and cast it out into the water.

  In a matter of moments, small fish were swarming to the sabiki.

  I didn’t even need to scatter bait first.

  “Lots of biiites?”

  “There are tons of them, sir!”

  “”

  Tama, Pochi, and Rei all looked very impressed by the amount of small fish I’d hooked with my makeshift sabiki rigs.

  I handed the fishing rod off to the younger group and started making more lures.

  “Fiiive?”

  “Pochi will catch fish on all six hooks, sir— Aaaah! Don’t run away, sirs!”

  “This manner of fishing is quite involved, it seems.”

  Each of the beastfolk girls enjoyed her own unique way of fishing.

  “I knew sabiki would catch lots of ’em.”

  “Arisa, I’ve got a bite! What do I do?!”

  “Reel it in quickly, or it’ll get away.”

  Seeing Lulu acting all excited for a change while Arisa stayed calm was an amusing role reversal.

  “”

  “Mm. Pleasant.”

  Rei and Mia were humming as they cast their sabiki, which gathered a noticeably bigger crowd of fish.

  Humming seemed to attract the fish, too.

  “Are these small fish larvae?”

  “No, they’re fully grown. They’re just different species from the bigger kinds of fish.”

  “Master, your advice is appreciated, I declare.”

  Nana seemed to be going through some kind of internal conflict, so I helped her out.

  “Whoa, get a load of that!”

  “Are they magic users or something?”

  “Maybe he’s a fish mage!”

  “Dang, that’s amazing.”

  We seemed to have drawn the attention of some locals.

  “Would you like to try, too?”

  I’d made some extras in case my companions got their lures tangled, so I let the local kids use them.

  “Whoa, this is nuts! I’m catchin’ tons of ’em!”

  “Mister Mage! Can I borrow one, too?”

  “Sure, go right ahead.”

  I subscribed to the philosophy of “the more, the merrier,” so I ended up popularizing the sabiki rigs.

  By the time we’d caught several bucketfuls, there was practically a festival going on around us.

  Maybe that was because I started frying up the freshly caught fish on the spot into deep-fried fish and so on.

  Even the local guard wound up coming to check things out, so as an apology for causing trouble, I gave the baron of the guard a model sabiki rig.

  “Sir Pendragon, we knew you were a miracle chef, but you appear to be a miracle fisherman, as well. We shall treasure this sabiki as a family heirloom!”

  I didn’t know whether the baron’s words caused it, but I wound up getting titles like Master Fisherman and Avid Angler.

  Since the sun was about to set, we asked some of the spectators to point us to the best seafood restaurant in town and left the baron and the other townspeople absorbed in the sabiki rigs.

  “I’m sooo fulllll.”

  “Oh, Arisa…”

  Lulu gently chided Arisa, who was rubbing her stomach as we left the restaurant.

  “That was a pretty great restaurant.”

  The full-course meal, which featured local specialties like shrimp and crab, was absolutely delicious.

  “Putting the shrimp on the bread and eating it with that scallop dip was the perfect bite.”

  We weren’t very far away from Sutoandell, so I found it interesting how much the menus and cooking styles varied between there and here.

  “Indeed. The grilled crab had a particularly wonderful mouthfeel.”

  “The shrimp was yummyyy?”

  As usual, Liza and Tama ate the crustaceans shell and all, surprising the waitstaff.

  I was glad we’d rented out a separate room of the restaurant.

  “Pochi liked the mountain goat meat best, sir.”

  For some reason, one of the middle courses included some kind of preserved mountain goat dish.

  Maybe it was supposed to be a palate-cleansing type of thing.

  “Meat doesn’t cooount?”

  “That’s right. Meat is always delicious.”

  Pochi’s comment prompted Tama and Liza to start rambling about the merits of meat.

  I guess it’s still in a league of its own for the beastfolk girls.

  “The crab meat paella was also delicious, I report.”

  “Mm. Yummy.”

  “”

  Nana, Mia, and Rei enjoyed the seafood paella best.

  Mia gave most of her seafood portions to the other kids, but she seemed to like the seasoning.

  “…Master, what is that?”

  As we came out into the town square, Arisa pointed at the monument in the center, looking rather alarmed.

  “A stone sculpture of…a gaming console?”

  “”

  Rei entered a trance state and answered my murmured question.

  I guess Lalakie’s influence is more widespread than I thought.

  “There’s an explanation over here.”

  A stone tablet in front of the monument explained that it was a symbol of peace and prosperity that had been in place since before the Shiga Kingdom was founded.

  I tried putting a little magic into it to test it out, but the magic circuits of the Dragonturn Rock seemed to have deteriorated over time; it didn’t work at all.

  We chatted for a while in front of the monument, then started walking toward the inn.

  “Are we being followed again?” Arisa whispered.

  “Yes, we seem to have an expert spy on our hands.”

  I checked the radar for more information.

  The spy was hiding his presence well, but it was very obvious to Tama and me. Pochi seemed to be sensing some kind of presence, too, but the spy’s “Invisibility” skill prevented her from seeing him.

  He seemed to be monitoring the inn all night but didn’t appear to notice when I used “Invisibility” myself to slip out.

  Checking my map to make sure I wasn’t followed, I placed a few seal slates for the Return spell in discreet areas along our route.

  I took a quick look around the pleasure quarter just for fun but decided to go straight back to the inn for the night.

  For the next few days, we continued traveling like a normal sailing ship during the day and staying in port cities and towns at night.

  Fortunately, by the time we reached the border, the Saga Empire ship that had been tailing us turned back toward Sutoandell, presumably convinced by our act.

  There were a great deal of islands of all sizes not far from land in the vicinity of the border and a lot of reefs, meaning the route forward was fairly narrow unless you took the long way around through open waters.

  Because of all that, we wound up passing a lot of other ships throughout the day.

  “Reminds me of the Seto Inland Sea,”
Arisa remarked.

  “That’s true.” I nodded. “The water’s pretty calm, and there are a lot of small islands.”

  Since we’d passed over the border, I used “Search Entire Map.”

  Just as it said on my chart, the Ganika Marquisate was a lengthy territory that continued for a while. If I had to compare it to anything on Earth, I might say it was like Chile but stretching to the east and west instead of north and south.

  The Fealty Mountains to the north and the long peninsula surrounded by the sea made up the borders; most of the population seemed to live in cities and towns that were in bays or otherwise close to the ocean. Most of the fishing villages were in the bays as well.

  It was difficult to compare, but I thought it was between the Ougoch Duchy and the Muno Barony in terms of surface area. Its population was less than half that of the Ougoch Duchy.

  As I was distracted with the map, an incident began to occur…

  “Fightiiing?”

  “Master! A ship is being bullied, sir!”

  Tama and Pochi shouted down from the lookout.

  Please help them! was written all over their faces as they pointed desperately.

  As far as I could tell, some pirates whose turf was the barrier area were attacking a midsize merchant ship.

  The pirates had three galleys of easily two hundred tons of displacement each, which were firing Fire Shots and arrows at the merchant ship’s sails.

  There was a small escort vessel accompanying the merchant ship, but it seemed to have already fallen under the control of the pirates.

  As I assessed the situation, our ship drew closer to the merchant vessel being chased by the pirates.

  “Master, preparations are complete.”

  While I was investigating, my companions had changed into their armor on the deck.

  Tama and Pochi, who had joined in late, were being helped into theirs by Lulu and Nana.

  “I guess we’ll go fight some pirates, then.”

  I put the ship’s defensive shield on max power and headed toward the battle.

  The captain was level 26, but even the rest of the pirates averaged around level 10, stronger than many soldiers on land.

  They probably encountered monsters more frequently at sea.

  “Ready, Mia?”

  “Mm.”

  Mia and I stood at the helm, firing with our bows.

  We’d equipped them with non-lethal stun arrows from the Magic Bow stash we’d found in the sunken ship.