Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 8

by Hiro Ainana

  A Holytree Stone was basically a magic-boosting item, so maybe the elves needed magic power to develop a fetus.

  Come to think of it, the kobolds I’d met in the Muno Barony said that they needed jewels called blue crystals to have children, too.

  Maybe it was for similar reasons.

  “What are you all talking about? I think Mia may be a bit young for this sort of education.”

  A beautiful platinum-blond woman emerged from the steam: the high elf Aialize.

  It was hard not to get flustered upon seeing the naked body of someone who was just my type.

  “Aaze.”

  “It’s unusual to see you in the public bathhouse, Lady Aaze.”

  The other elves’ words went in one ear and out the other.

  Embarrassingly enough, I was so entranced by Aialize’s gold-standard body that it was like I’d rocketed back to puberty.

  I couldn’t even tear my eyes away, let alone make some kind of clever greeting.

  And Aialize, whose face turned red before my staring eyes, seemed to be in a similar state.

  “Whatever is the matter, Lady Aaze?”

  Lua the shrine maiden appeared behind Aialize, looking at her in confusion.

  “Ah! Mia, quick!”

  “Mm. Guilty.”

  I had never felt so grateful for the iron-wall pair’s devotion and, at the same time, so bitter.

  The girls hid Aialize from my view, during which time she quickly plunged her nude body into the bathwater.

  “Thank you, Arisa.”

  “Hmph! You never get like that when you see us naked.”

  “Mm. Rude.”

  I let the angry girls scold me without arguing back and then asked Lulu to bring a robe for Aialize.

  Ideally, I would have just moved from the so-called men’s bath to the women’s bath, but a certain fellow standing at attention down below was making it impossible for me to leave at that moment.

  Instead, I would just have to muddle through a safe conversation until my “situation” calmed down.

  “I’m terribly sorry for staring so rudely, Lady Aialize.”

  “U-uh-huh…”

  Aialize simply gazed at me with her face half-underwater.

  Was it just my imagination, or were her eyes wandering around my shoulders and collarbone?

  “What has gotten into you, Lady Aaze? You’re behaving like a young maiden who…”

  “…Lua?”

  Lua trailed off mid-sentence, causing the short-spoken Miss Gia to look at her in concern.

  “N-no, it’s nothing. It couldn’t be.”

  “Mrrr.”

  Lua’s face said that it was definitely something, but she dismissed the conversation anyway.

  Gia still looked concerned, but she didn’t pry any further, since she was probably reluctant to bother Lua.

  And so the awkwardness remained for the rest of our brief bath time.

  “Ahhh! Coffee milk after a bath is the best thing ever!”

  Arisa put a hand on her hip and chugged the bottled coffee milk ecstatically.

  Fortunately, her cheerful voice banished any remaining awkwardness in the air. If people had type attributes, Arisa would definitely be Light.

  At any rate, her excitement made all the work that went into that bottle worth it.

  “Arisa, regular milk is superior, I report.”

  “Mrrr. Fruit milk.”

  Nana and Mia, who were clad only in towels wrapped around their bodies, chimed in with their own preferences.

  My guess was that Nana just liked the cute cow mascot I put on the label of the regular milk bottles.

  “Carbonation ruuules?”

  “The popping is so exciting, sir.”

  Tama and Pochi, who were wearing pajama pants with embroidered paw designs and short camisoles, slurped at their bottles to avoid spilling any of the bubbly carbonated water.

  Lulu was wearing a T-shirt and shorts as she stretched in one corner of the room, so she must have been planning on hydrating later.

  And Liza, always a bath fanatic, was still enjoying her time in the tub.

  “Mm, delicious!”

  Miss Aialize looked thrilled as she stood in front of the glass-doored refrigerator sipping fruit-flavored milk.

  For some reason, her voice was always crystal clear even in the noisiest places.

  It probably just seemed that way because it was so pleasing to my ears.

  “This yellorange fruit drink is wonderful. One of your new creations, Nea?”

  “No, Lady Aaze. All these drinks were made by Mr. Satou. He shared the recipes, too, so I can make it for you anytime.”

  “Satou made this?”

  Aialize’s surprised voice had a note of pure admiration.

  For some reason, I felt very proud of that.

  “Come to think of it, has the public bathhouse always had this magic cold-storage device?”

  “Satou.”

  “Satou made that for us as well.”

  The other elves answered Lua’s question.

  “You’re so talented, Satou!”

  “Not at all. I just happened to get a hold of a very large ice stone in the old capital, so…”

  Aialize’s earnest praise caught me so off guard that I barely registered the vague excuse I made in response.

  Just like when we were in the bath, I felt strange somehow, as if I were experiencing puberty all over again…

  But for whatever reason, part of me couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t a bad thing.

  “This is an emergency.”

  “Mm. Danger.”

  Arisa and Mia furrowed their brows and leaned together conspiratorially, but I was in such an inexplicably good mood that it didn’t bother me one bit.

  “Hambuuurg.”

  “Hooray, sir! Professor Hamburg is as wonderful as ever today, sir!”

  Tama and Pochi did a triumphant dance when they saw what was for dinner.

  Everyone from the bathhouse was gathered around the table in the tree house, as well as Nea and the other cooking-obsessed elf girls.

  I was teaching Mia’s mother and Nea the tofu hamburg steak recipe.

  “I love hamburg steak.”

  “All of Mr. Satou’s cooking is delicious, really.”

  Aialize and Lua, who I’d invited along partly as an apology for the incident in the bathhouse, seemed to be impressed with the dish as well.

  “If you’ve got this steak fried in soy sauce, why even bother with the vegetable salad?”

  “Now, now. You’ve got to eat a balanced diet,” I scolded Arisa, shaking my head.

  I’d been making a lot of protein-heavy dishes to go along with our training, but I wasn’t exactly looking to turn my party into a bunch of muscle-bound hulks, so I still included other things besides meat.

  Today’s fried dish was made with whale meat, but there was also a rocket wolf steak. The buffalo meat was delicious, too, but we’d get tired of it if we ate the same kind of meat too many times in a row.

  However, the elves had a few complaints about the monster meat dishes on the table.

  “Monster meat.”

  “Safe?”

  Did elves have an aversion to eating monster meat?

  “How unusual. But Lady Aaze is here, so we should be fine, no?”

  “Mm. No miasma.”

  Miasma was what demons collected to resurrect a demon lord, right?

  “Does monster flesh contain miasma?”

  “That’s right. But since miasma is weak to divinity and strong spirit light, it gets purified just by being near Lady Aaze, so there’s no harm done,” Hishirotoya responded.

  So if Miss Aialize wasn’t around, it could cause harm?

  But we ate it all the time, and so did a lot of people in the Muno Barony now…

  “The meat of weak monsters isn’t a problem. Besides, your spirit light is even stronger than Lady Aaze’s, so if the meat was processed near you, the miasma would dispe
rse to the point of harmlessness.”

  Hishirotoya went on to clarify that if one used something like the chaos jar or malice urn that the demon lord–worshipping cult Wings of Freedom used to collect miasma, they could purge the meat of miasma even without me around.

  Maybe the stat-raising effect from eating fried whale meat was even a result of residual miasma.

  Not that I was planning on eating any miasma-filled monster meat to test that theory.

  At any rate, with that problem solved, we started eating.

  “Satou. Tastes weird.”

  Mia, who was eating a tofu hamburg steak, frowned uncertainly.

  “It’s tastyyy.”

  “Don’t be rude to Professor Hamburg, sir!”

  Tama and Pochi defended the hamburg. At least they licked the sauce off their forks before waving them around; that was probably Lulu’s or Liza’s teachings at work.

  Today, I’d given Mia a normal tofu hamburg without any alterations. I was eating the same thing, but it tasted perfectly satisfactory to me.

  “You don’t like it? Try the tofu hamburg steak on this plate, then.”

  I pulled out a spare from the warming magic tool and placed it in front of Mia.

  “Mm. Yum.”

  Pleased with that bite, Mia started to munch away happily on that dish instead.

  Tama and Pochi split the rest of the tofu she’d abandoned, although they shoved any non-potato vegetables onto Mia’s plate.

  I guess I had better break the news.

  “Mia, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Mm?”

  I approached Mia calmly, but for some reason she closed her eyes and puckered her lips. Arisa was a bad influence on her.

  “It’s about the hamburg steaks,” I continued pointedly.

  At this, her expression immediately turned displeased.

  “The one you just ate had meat in it.”

  I’d been increasing the proportion of meat in her tofu hamburg steaks since we first started staying in the tree house. The one she’d just happily consumed was about 70 percent meat.

  “…Guilty.”

  Mia gave me a look of dramatic betrayal.

  “I know. I’m sorry. But the first hamburg steak I gave you earlier had no meat in it. It was a regular tofu hamburg steak.”

  “Mrrr.”

  Mia seemed conflicted, so I gave her one final push. “Mia, which kind would you like more of?”

  “Mrrr. This one.”

  Mia pointed at the tofu hamburg steak with meat in it.

  “Mm. Yum.”

  Overcoming her distaste, Mia gave a satisfied smile as she ate the meat-and-tofu-combination steak.

  She still didn’t seem to be able to eat a normal hamburg steak with only meat, but I’d like to think she’d overcome her dislike of meat at least a little.

  “You can have a bite of this real hamburg steak, sir.”

  “Mrrr. Uh-uh.”

  Pochi offered her a forkful with plenty of gravy, but Mia shook her head rapidly and pushed it away.

  You just couldn’t rush these things.

  Once the meal was partway over, Nea updated me on the progress of our curry operation.

  Miss Noa was the one who really wanted to reproduce the curry, but she was very shy, so Nea was running the operation for her.

  “So the spriggans and leprechauns are willing to search for the spices for us?”

  “Yes, they seemed quite excited. Said it was a race to see who could locate the legendary ingredients first.”

  Spriggans had slightly gray-brown skin, while leprechauns had coppery skin. Both were short with slightly pointed ears, as was characteristic of all fairy races.

  Unfortunately, classic races like half-elves and dark elves were sadly nonexistent.

  To think that I would never get to meet a busty brown-skinned dark elf… This parallel world wasn’t nearly fantasy enough, if you asked me.

  “By the way, the World Tree actually governs darkness, and all elves get dark skin if they’re in the sun long enough. Incidentally, it’s impossible for even fellow fairy races to interbreed. Aside from specific exceptions like humans and beastfolk, only certain similar species of beastfolk, like catfolk and tigerfolk or dogfolk and wolffolk, can reproduce with one another.”

  Wow, so humans and beastfolk could interbreed?

  I guess I had known that, since Tama and Pochi were born to humans with ancestral traits.

  “Not even elves and high elves?”

  “Of course not. Our roots are fundamentally different.”

  Roots?

  I supposed high elves did look more like humans than regular elves.

  “High elves are demi-gods. They come from the divine realm, like the World Tree or the gods themselves.”

  Lua the shrine maiden was the one who casually divulged this crucial information.

  …So Aialize is a demi-goddess?

  It was hard to think of her as divine when she was stuffing her cheeks with hamburg steak and chicken-stuffed omelet rice.

  If anything, she was more like a hapless older sister.

  …Not that there was anything wrong with a hapless older-sister figure.

  “Is the divine realm where gods and goddesses like Lady Parion live?”

  “No, it’s—”

  “Lady Aaze, please don’t speak while you’re eating.”

  “…Mph!”

  “L-Lady Aaze?”

  Aialize tried to swallow too quickly because of Lua’s scolding and ended up choking instead.

  I hurried over to her side with “Warp,” offering her a glass from the table.

  “Here, drink some water. Slowly, now.”

  She seemed to be fairly used to being cared for.

  “Th-thank you, Satou.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Once she drank the water and took a deep breath, Aialize thanked me with a faint smile.

  I’d been in such a hurry before that I used “Warp,” but nobody seemed to have noticed.

  “So what sort of place is the divine realm exactly?”

  “It’s the world of the god of creation who made us high elves and the World Trees. But we were sent out along with the World Trees when we were young, so most of us have little to no memories of the place.”

  I guess the myths I saw in those picture books a while back were true, then.

  The eight deities, including Parion, came to the world aboard the eight World Trees.

  This world itself existed independently of the god who created the World Trees, and the gods essentially came here to pioneer the place rather than being assigned here.

  Other than dragons, the original inhabitants of this world, all living things here were born of seeds that were pooled in the World Trees. They weren’t created by the gods from the picture book like Parion was.

  So were World Trees like the gods’ cross-dimensional seeding ships?

  This sounded more like science fiction than fantasy to me.

  “Satou.”

  Clearly uninterested in Aialize’s and the others’ explanations of the mythology of this world, Mia plopped into my lap, bored.

  “Mia, there’s food on your face.”

  “Clean.”

  I sighed and wiped Mia’s face with a handkerchief.

  Something had caught my attention before, but I’d forgotten what it was while I was taking care of Mia.

  Allowing my gaze to wander in the hope that it might come back to me, I noticed that Miss Aialize had some rice on her cheek.

  “Pardon me, Lady Aialize.”

  I reached out and plucked the grain of rice from her face, then popped it into my own mouth like I would while taking care of one of the younger kids.

  “Aaah!”

  Arisa and Mia cried out furiously. The word traitor was all but written across their faces.

  For some reason, even Lulu exclaimed with them, looking at me with sad eyes.

  “Lady Aaze?”
<
br />   Nea’s voice drew my eyes back to Aialize, who’d turned bright red and looked ready to pass out.

  It reminded me of Miss Karina, who was on her way to the royal capital.

  Something was strange, though. Aialize didn’t seem to be afraid of men like Karina was, and she should be accustomed to people taking care of her.

  For whatever reason, Arisa and Mia had clearly decided that Aialize was their enemy now.

  “Me too, master!”

  “Here.”

  The two of them leaned close to me, having deliberately stuck chicken rice onto their faces.

  “Don’t play with your food, girls.”

  I didn’t want them to be a bad influence on Pochi and Tama, so I moved to clean their faces with a handkerchief, but their eyes were so desperate that I gave in and took the rice off by hand instead.

  Just as I’d feared, Tama and Pochi started to copy them, but Liza told them off for me.

  The meal seemed to have died down, so I decided to bring out dessert.

  When I returned from the kitchen with pudding, Aialize and Lua were gone.

  According to Arisa, they’d been called back to work on urgent business.

  Their markers were moving high in the World Tree, so maybe something was happening in orbit or even in the void of space.

  I’d have liked to help them, but I didn’t know whether it was appropriate for an outsider like me to stick my nose into their business. I was somehow very afraid of butting in and possibly getting turned away by Aialize.

  So much for my usual nosiness.

  “Huh! What a strange fiber. It’s not rubber, but it’s not synthetic, either.”

  Arisa was very interested in the rare textiles arranged on a shelf in the sewing workshop.

  Three days had passed since the incident in the bath. Today, my ever-popular master Hishirotoya had introduced Arisa and me to a sewing workshop owner.

  I was told they had magic cloth, so I’d been looking forward to the trip.

  The workshop was in a special domed area for such places, next to the secret underground city where everyone actually lived.

  The other children were picking wild plants in the forest near the tree house under Mia’s guidance.