by Hiro Ainana
Copyright
Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 8
Hiro Ainana
Translation by Jenny McKeon
Cover art by shri
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
© Hiro Ainana, shri 2016
First published in Japan in 2016 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.
English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
English translation © 2019 by Yen Press, LLC
Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ainana, Hiro, author. | Shri, illustrator. | McKeon, Jenny, translator.
Title: Death march to the parallel world rhapsody / Hiro Ainana ; illustrations by shri ; translation by Jenny McKeon.
Other titles: Desu machi kara hajimaru isekai kyosokyoku. English
Description: First Yen On edition. | New York, NY : Yen ON, 2017–
Identifiers: LCCN 2016050512 | ISBN 9780316504638 (v. 1 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316507974 (v. 2 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316556088 (v. 3 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316556095 (v. 4 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316556101 (v. 5 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316556125 (v. 6 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975301552 (v. 7 : pbk.) | ISBN 9781975301576 (v. 8 : pbk.)
Subjects: GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PL867.5.I56 D413 2017 | DDC 895.6/36d—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050512
ISBNs: 978-1-9753-0157-6 (paperback)
978-1-9753-0158-3 (ebook)
E3-20190424-JV-NF-ORI
The Secret of Bolenan
Satou here. I like to relax after I’ve finished a job, but that’s always when some new problem rears its ugly head. In fact, I get even more nervous when I don’t receive any feedback, because it makes me think I must’ve missed a huge bug…
“Satou.”
Mia called out to me from across the crowd of elves.
We had just entered the Bolenan Forest, a huge forest in the southeast of the Shiga Kingdom.
After we left behind the old capital and our new friends, the hero and his party, we got caught up in a bit of intrigue in a town called Puta and ended up rescuing the white tigerfolk princess.
Somewhere along the way, I made friends with the black dragon Hei Long, who helped us cross a treacherous mountain range to arrive at the Bolenan Forest, Mia’s home.
When we reached a clearing there, tons of elves and fairies came out to greet us, including Mia’s parents.
As I was reflecting on these recent events, Mia came running up to me, pulling along an elf boy and girl who didn’t look any older than your average middle schooler.
Her pale-aqua-blue pigtails danced around her slightly pointed ears as she ran.
“Parents.”
They looked only a year or two older than Mia, but the difference was actually centuries.
Unsurprisingly, their daughter was the spitting image. From what I could tell, all elves seemed to have hair in shades of blue or green.
They were wearing what seemed to be the traditional clothing of elves: an emerald-green tunic with a leaf design and a green tricornered hat. Their shoes were made of brown cloth.
Overall, they looked like fairies straight out of a children’s book.
“I am Misanaria’s father, Lamisauya, son of Uramufuya and Laleilea. Satou of the Shiga Kingdom, I thank thee.”
“I am Misanaria’s mother, Lilinatoa, daughter of Trazayuya and Selinaria.”
…Trazayuya?
So Mia’s mother was the daughter of Trazayuya, the elf who made the Cradle?
I had better return his journals later, then.
“Satou of the Shiga Kingdom, I am in your debt.”
After their words of gratitude, the pair touched their palms to their foreheads and then their chests in some kind of salute, probably an Elvish gesture of thanks.
“It is my pleasure to return Miss Misanaria to your—”
“Mrrr. Mia.”
Mia grouchily interrupted as I was replying to her parents.
I was just trying to be polite, but clearly she didn’t like it.
Once I corrected myself, Mia introduced the rest of our group to her parents.
“Liza. Spear master.”
Beneath her crimson hair, Liza of the orangescale tribe blushed at Mia’s epithet.
Her orange scale–covered tail flicked back and forth, revealing her pride.
“Tama. Cute.”
The cat-eared, cat-tailed Tama giggled and then covered her face with her pink hood, hiding her white hair.
So even the laid-back Tama got embarrassed when someone complimented her.
“Pochi. Happy.”
With her brown bob haircut and dog ears, Pochi struck a triumphant pose.
Her canine tail was wagging excitedly.
“Nana. Big.”
Mia patted her own flat chest as she said this.
Her golden hair tied back in a ponytail, Nana was expressionless as ever as she pushed her ample breasts together with both hands.
Mia’s father let out a little “ooh” of admiration, prompting her mother to smack the back of his head. So he likes ’em big, too? We’ll get along just fine.
Incidentally, while Nana might look like a human adult, she was actually a homunculus and less than a year old, so there was no seduction intended in her playful movements.
“Arisa. Wow.”
“Wow?” Arisa repeated, doubt rising in her large eyes. Her purple hair, considered an ill omen by most, was covered by a blond wig.
She was probably trying to figure out whether “wow” referred to the fact that she researched magic with Mia or to the strange cultural things she tended to do and say as a reincarnated Japanese person.
“Lulu. Good cook.”
Lulu, with her dark eyes and Japanese features, bowed gracefully.
Her long, glossy black hair swayed smoothly, making her look all the more alluring.
Being in her early teens, she was far too young to be a romantic interest for me, but I couldn’t help admiring her loveliness.
Unfortunately, she was considered homely by the standards of most humans in this world, but it didn’t seem like the elves had a particular sense of beauty or ugliness. Good on them.
“Satou. Pretty.”
Wait, what?
That would be a valid assessment of Lulu, but me, on the other hand… No one in this world but
Arisa had ever complimented my looks.
I hadn’t been treated like I was ugly or anything, but since being reborn from my twenty-nine-year-old body to this fifteen-year-old one, I still had the kind of face that just blended into a crowd.
Mia’s parents and the other nearby elves seemed to agree with my self-evaluation, as they simply looked at me in puzzlement. But then…
“Pretty!”
“Yes, very pretty.”
“I agree!”
The silver-eyed fairies sitting on Mia’s head and shoulders all chorused in agreement.
Mia’s mother’s eyes changed from blue-green to silver as she looked at me again.
“You’re right—it’s true! Pretty, very pretty indeed! What a marvelous variety of spirits, and so many, too! It’s hard to see, but the rainbow-colored spirit light is beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Mia’s mother sounded exactly like her daughter whenever she got excited or (on one occasion) drunk.
“Clearly he is beloved by spirits.”
“I have never seen such a gathering of spirits outside a mana source or underground vein.”
“How unusual. Why, it is almost as if Lady Aaze is here.”
Everyone who thus gathered around to proclaim my beauty had the skill “Spirit Vision.”
According to them, these so-called spirits were flocking around me like moths to a flame, making an aura called a “spirit light” that fairies were quite fond of. It sounded like it was quite a sight to behold.
Mia explained later that the reason she was able to find me no matter where I went was because she followed the souls of the spirits gathering around me.
That explained why she had asked if I was a “spiritualist” when we first met.
Using a fairy ring located in the clearing where the elves had met us, we followed Mia’s parents to their home.
This seemed to be a common method of travel in the elf village and fortunately didn’t require kissing any dryads.
According to my map, this forest was so large that it was four or five times the size of the vast Ougoch Duchy, but with teleportation, it was possible to travel from the outer edge of the forest to the center in an instant.
We found ourselves on a small hill in the middle of the forest, where we could see the mountain-like roots of the World Tree and the forest of Mountain-Trees growing around it.
It was amazing. Almost too much, really.
I looked up in awe at the overwhelmingly huge World Tree.
Clouds clung to its branches like snow.
High above the clouds, it spread out into more branches and leaves, but above that, its thick trunk alone extended beyond where the eye could see.
The Mountain-Trees, which were indeed the size of mountains, looked like ordinary shrubbery compared to the World Tree.
Honestly, the scale was so insane that I almost doubted my eyes.
“Satou.”
As I stared dumbstruck at the World Tree, Mia tugged on my hand, leading me down the hill.
“Treetop Village.”
Her slender finger pointed at a plaza built around a fountain. The elves’ houses were in the giant trees that surrounded it.
The mushroom-like formations growing out of the trunks formed the roofs of the houses and were connected to one another with something like suspension bridges. The AR display simply labeled them as tree houses.
Perfect. Now, that was a fantasy town if I’d ever seen one.
“““Mia!””” a chorus of voices cried. “““Welcome home!”””
Turning toward the source of the voices, I saw elves crowding at the windows of the tree houses and on the suspension bridges, waving excitedly at Mia. Some were even celebrating her return by singing or playing music.
Checking the map, I saw that there was another elf residential district in a semi-underground area near the roots of the World Tree.
I wasn’t sure what the difference was between the neighborhoods, so I decided to find out during our stay.
“
Mia’s father said the word in Elvish from atop a stone platform near the hill, and glowing sheets of light began to form floating stairs in the air.
“Sparklyyy?”
“The light turned into stairs, sir!”
Tama and Pochi looked at me, obviously eager to go racing up the stairs.
I would’ve liked to give them permission, but since there weren’t any railings, I had them hold hands with me so that we could walk up together instead.
When we placed our feet on the first step, it emitted a lilting note like a piano.
So the stairs themselves were instruments, too. It reminded me of the nightingale floors I saw on a Kyoto trip.
“Wow, what a fun staircase,” Arisa remarked.
Lulu nodded in agreement. “It’s very much what you’d expect from Mia’s hometown, isn’t it?”
Eventually, the stairway stopped at a tree house, and from there we transferred to a staircase of wood and ivy carved around the trunk.
“M-master, please be careful! The stairs move!”
Much to Liza’s alarm, the stairs began to move like an escalator.
“A wooden escalator, huh? That’s pretty avant-garde.”
Arisa looked unfazed, but the rest of the children tiptoed gingerly up the stairs.
I tried to help them along as I looked around the trees.
Aside from branches that were large enough to rival the Mountain-Trees, there were also short branches only a few feet long, from which various kinds of fruit were growing in jumbled bunches.
“Master, I have located fruits of the same varieties found in the Cradle, I report.”
Nana pointed to a branch that boasted pears and grapes.
Thinking back, I remembered that the Cradle of Trazayuya, where I rescued Mia, also had similar branches that bore multiple kinds of fruit.
“Looks yummyyy?”
“They smell good, sir.”
“Correct. Choose.”
Mia’s father nodded at Tama and Pochi, allowing them to take the fruits of their choosing.
His instructions were brief, to say the least, but the pair seemed to understand just fine.
Tama and Pochi grabbed some fruits, then looked back at me. They were probably waiting for permission, so I nodded to them, and they happily dug in.
“Deliiicious?”
“So crunchy, sir.”
Tama had chosen grapes, while Pochi chose a pear.
“Mikan.”
Mia pulled a few mandarin oranges off another branch and handed them to Arisa and Lulu.
“Mm, that’s the stuff!”
“So this is the legendary mikan, the fruit best eaten while sitting under a kotatsu. How wonderful!”
Lulu seemed exaggeratedly impressed, while Arisa simply peeled the little orange open and shoved as much of it into her mouth as humanly possible, chewing away in satisfaction.
“This grape has a very fine texture.”
“Agreed. It is delicious, I report.”
Liza and Nana, too, accepted some large grapes from Mia’s mother and ate them with pleasure.
I guess they’re all getting hungry, huh?
When we arrived at the veranda of a tree house, it looked like some of the girls might be too scared to get off the escalator, so I dealt with the situation by helping them down myself.
“I apologize for causing you such trouble, master.”
“Don’t worry about it, Liza.”
Liza looked ashamed, so I smiled reassuringly at her before Mia took my hand and led me inside.
The interior was large, much larger than I’d expected from the outside.
Grass covered the floor like it was an indoor lawn, and flowers bloomed from the ivy that crept around the walls and ceiling, bearing citrus fruits that produced a refreshing fragrance.
The grass was as soft as a luxurious carpet.
“
“
More elves who hadn’t been in the clearing before showed up to celebrate Mia’s return.
Sending silent waves of encouragement to Mia as she was jostled around by the crowd, I headed toward the center of the room with Mia’s parents and the rest of my group.
“
Mia’s father murmured in Elvish in the center of the room, and a tree stump–like table emerged from the lawn.
Next, Mia’s mother said, “
Mia’s father snapped his fingers, and fairies brought enough goblets to the table for everyone.
Belatedly, I noticed there were two different kinds of fairies: Some had dragonfly wings, while others had butterfly wings.
When Mia’s father snapped again, growths that looked like pitcher plants lowered from the ceiling and poured a transparent, sweet-smelling liquid into the goblets.
It looked delicious, but it was definitely the sap of the pitcher plants.
Is that safe to drink?
“Yummyyy?”
“It’s tasty, sir.”
Unlike me, however, Tama and Pochi were already drinking the liquid and giving it rave reviews. That’s good, I guess.
While we were distracted by the fantasy scene unfolding before our eyes, it seemed we had neglected to stay alert for certain suspicious characters.
Only when I heard small voices of protest did I realize the danger.
“Leggo!”
“Hey, let go of me!”
“Help! Laya, help us!”
Turning, I saw that Nana had captured three of the winged fairies, who were tearfully crying out for help from Mia’s father.
One was held in each of Nana’s hands; the third, most inexcusably of all, was trapped between her breasts.
Trade places with me.
Mia’s father, too, was just staring at the fairy flailing about in Nana’s cleavage, making no attempt to help.
Eventually, his eyes met mine, and we exchanged a nod.
…Ow.
Arisa smacked my head from behind. Lulu had stepped in to rescue the fairies.
“What are you, pervs from Planet Cleavage?”
“You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Mm. Wrong.”
I turned away from the accusing eyes of Arisa and Lulu and sought out Mia, who was still being crushed by a well-meaning crowd.
