by Hiro Ainana
That about sums it up, I think.
Next, I’d just have to do some field tests.
“Miss Aaze, please approach the jellyfish at the end of that thin branch there.”
“This one?”
To help come up with a plan to get rid of the jellyfish, I was on a pleasant swim around the void with Miss Aaze.
It would take some time to prepare the necessary materials and workshop spaces for the golems and the void suits, so I decided to spend that time experimenting with a relatively isolated jellyfish.
This area was somewhere in the middle of a branch that was easily six miles long but only about three feet thick.
Emerald-like crystal growths and thinner branches protruded from the brown branch.
As the name suggested, these structures were most certainly the emerald branches.
“Let’s start with lesser magic.”
I tried firing a Short Stun shot. The invisible bullet lost most of its power when it came close to the jellyfish, but…
“…You actually hit it.”
Aaze looked surprised.
The shot nearly dissolved before reaching the jellyfish, but it managed to hit its target, albeit with reduced impact.
As long as its composition was stable enough, even magic besides pseudo-spirits could hit them.
My intermediate magic would probably be able to defeat the jellies without a problem, then.
“Next let’s try one of your pseudo-spirits, Miss Aaze.”
“Hmm. What should I use, I wonder?”
“Whatever your best is, if you please.”
I wanted to see her bust out a special move.
“My best? All right! ……”
Looking triumphant, Aaze held a special golden staff in both hands as she began her chant.
The AR display showed her MP decreasing at an alarming rate.
Light Magic circles formed around her, multiplying over and over.
Noticing her impressive display, the jellyfish stretched its tentacles in an intimidating pose.
It was probably alarmed by the amount of magic Aaze was amassing.
“… Create Behemoth Majuu Ou Souzou!”
A huge magic circle appeared directly in front of Aaze, and a pseudo-spirit emerged that looked like a cross between an elephant and a hippopotamus.
PAROOOOOOAR!
Despite being in the vacuum of the void, its roar echoed powerfully.
It looked extremely strong, being a destroyer-like giant over level 50 and all.
However, our friend the behemoth didn’t have any wings.
Meaning it couldn’t fly.
Its legs scrabbled in the air for a moment like a cartoon character, then a look of terror passed over its face as gravity pulled it down.
I’d been told that pseudo-spirits didn’t feel fear or pain, but I still couldn’t help pitying it.
We shared a moment of silence for the behemoth as it disappeared, leaving only a trace of red light in its wake.
The jellyfish seemed as disappointed as we did, lowering its raised tentacles and wrapping them back around the World Tree.
“…Um, redo! That one didn’t count! This one’s for real, okay?”
Aaze carefully avoided my eyes as she started another chant, and soon she’d invoked “Create Wisp” to make a little four-inch floating ball of light.
I had her move the wisp over to the jellyfish.
Once it came within a certain distance, the jellyfish noticed it and reached out its tentacles.
When the jellyfish’s tentacle wrapped around the wisp, the wisp lost its shape and disappeared. With my “Magic Power Vision” skill, I could see the tentacle sucking up the remains of the light.
Next, Aaze made a sylph, a wind spirit, which was stronger than the wisp and able to endure the jellyfish’s tentacles.
However, the resulting visual had a bit too much of an 18+ vibe to it, so I had Aaze cancel the spell partway through that particular experiment.
It was cute how her face turned red as she panicked a little.
Next, we experimented with physical attacks.
The jellyfish seemed to be just as weak as it looked: My fairy sword was able to cut through a tentacle easily. I put the tentacle sample away in Storage for use in further experiments.
When I tossed a magic-charged bronze spear near the jellyfish, it actually caught the spear and carried it to its mouth. It’d probably be easy to poison them, then.
Finally, I tried using items.
Holy Stones, which fended off monsters, and Holy Water, which was used against the undead, had no effect at all.
The jellyfish seemed to be little more than protist creatures of the void, not monsters or demons.
Even if I had the demon-sealing bell, which was currently in Miss Karina’s care, I doubted it would have any effect.
“Are you done experimenting already?”
“No, I think I’ll test their stamina next.”
I started lopping off the tentacles one by one, avoiding the jellyfish’s attacks as I went.
To my surprise, the first tentacle I cut off earlier had already started growing back, but at least it didn’t reappear as soon as it was lost or anything.
Once I’d cut off all the tentacles, I had Aaze resummon the sylph and use it to pull the umbrella part of the jellyfish away from the World Tree.
When it got a few hundred feet away, the light inside the jellyfish started blinking furiously.
Then the light turned red, outlining the jellyfish in crimson. According to Aaze, this was a characteristic of the rampage state initiating, and it would cause the World Tree to go into alert mode.
In this initial phase, only the World Tree would react, but if it went on long enough, the rampage state would spread to other nearby jellyfish.
Even as Aaze was explaining this, the branches of the World Tree began discharging electricity in all directions.
Since I was with Aaze, it didn’t approach us, but the severed tentacles still attached to the World Tree were burned to a crisp, and an emerald branch nearby was snapped off by the shocks and started to fall.
This seemed like a waste, so I caught it with Magic Hand and put it away in Storage. It might make good material for a magic wand or staff.
Next, once the jellyfish umbrella was far enough away, I had Aaze’s sylph let go of it.
As it started to fall, I attacked it with Fire Ball, the strongest of my lesser magic attacks.
The Fire Ball flew without interruption from the electricity, landed a direct hit on the jellyfish, and exploded, burning up its target with far more power than its lesser counterpart Fire Shot. I guess the lack of oxygen didn’t matter.
This didn’t cause any rampages from the other jellyfish or additional electricity from the World Tree, perhaps because I’d defeated it in one blow.
If we were able to destroy all of them in one attack, then the World Tree would be safe.
But that was probably impossible, since so many of them were sheltered by branches of the World Tree.
“I-incredible… Was that Blast Ball? Or perhaps Flare Ball?”
I was a little proud to have impressed Aaze, but I tried to focus on what happened when my Fire Ball hit.
I watched with my “Magic Power Vision” skill the whole time, so I saw that just before the Fire Ball hit, the jellyfish sucked up only a tiny amount of magic.
Most of their magic-sucking power must come from their tentacles.
And while just slicing off the tentacles would provoke attacks from the jellyfish itself, it wouldn’t cause any electrical reactions from the World Tree.
I filed these results away in my mind as I moved on with Aaze to our next test location.
“Satou, you mustn’t break the eggs, remember?”
“Yes, I know.”
Our destination was a jellyfish that had just laid eggs.
Jellyfish with eggs were extra-sensitive, so we were observing this one from a few hundr
ed feet away.
About ten transparent basketball-size eggs were lined up on the branch.
The broken shells of thirty or so other eggs lay scattered around it; the parts of the World Tree branch that had been tainted with liquid from the eggs were now discolored.
Looking around, I saw several jellyfish larvae clinging to the mother’s tentacles.
There weren’t nearly as many larvae as there were broken eggs, so I asked Aaze why.
“Hmm, what was it again? I’ll ask Jia.”
Aaze cast the Space Magic spell World Phone, connecting both of us to Jia back in the observatory.
In the void, this spell covered about six miles of distance.
“…The number of eggs and larvae?”
“Yes, I thought the number of larvae seemed small compared to the amount of broken eggs.”
“Many jellyfish eggs are unfertilized. You see, with the research data we got from other elf families, like the Bulainan and Beliunan clans…”
Jia explained that the liquid from the broken eggs contaminated the sap, summoning the antibodies of the World Tree, then taking in the dense magic power from those antibodies as nutrients for the few larvae to hatch.
“However, none of them has witnessed the moment when the larvae hatch. We’ve tried observing the jellyfish eggs, too, but the mother covers the egg with her body when it hatches…”
While we were at it, I asked more about the sap pollution.
“Does that have a negative effect on the World Tree?”
“Of course it does. Aside from the antibodies I mentioned, it can alter or clog the sap, decreasing the amount of mana that reaches the trunk.”
The Beliunan clan had already helped to develop a chemical that would melt hardened sap, which was being used in areas where the clogging was most severe.
However, getting rid of the clogged sap in range of a jellyfish would cause the same rampage state as destroying an egg, so they could use it only if no jellyfish were too close by.
…Huh? Something about that explanation stuck out to me, but I wasn’t sure what.
I tried to ruminate on everything I’d just been told.
However, my thoughts were scattered before I could collect them into words.
“Satou, where shall we go next?”
Aaze looked up at me from an unexpectedly close distance, jumbling my mind immediately.
“Hmm. Let me see…”
I wanted to continue our little date in the void, but I’d already investigated everything I needed to about the jellyfish.
I used Magic Hand to collect samples of the polluted sap and the broken eggs, then went back with Miss Aaze.
The sun was at our backs as we flew toward the World Tree.
Beneath the observatory, I noticed something glittering in a dent in the trunk.
It was a light ship, which looked just like Hayato’s ship, the Jules Verne.
Part of its silver hull had turned black.
“It looks as if it’s been burned pretty severely.”
“Yes. I’m told it was protecting a golem from an electric discharge attack.”
The light ships, like Aaze and the other high elves, were considered part of the World Tree, so normally it would never take an attack like that.
“It’s only damaged on the surface, though, so it’ll fix itself soon enough now that it’s back in the World Tree.”
As it turned out, these ships had automatic restoration functions.
Looking more closely, I saw that it was covered in a transparent gel of sorts.
“Are there light ships that go into those other hollows, too?”
Judging by the distance between them, there were probably about eight docks in total.
“There are only four in Bolenan, all told. Ordinarily, all World Trees come with eight light ships, but…”
As we discussed this, we passed through the dome of the observatory.
As soon as we landed, Lua and Jia came running up to greet us.
There didn’t seem to be too much of a rush, so we continued our conversation, moving to a little side room in one part of the observatory.
“Did the other four deteriorate over time?”
“No, no. You see, some hundreds of thousands of years ago, a goblin demon lord was wreaking havoc. The world was nearly destroyed, so we provided our light ships at Lady Parion’s request, but…”
“Many of them sank.”
“Yes. We sent out eight, but only half returned.”
Aaze looked depressed, so Jia, who was over two thousand years old herself, helped tell the story. Lua the shrine maiden was still relatively young, so she didn’t know about that.
The Saga Empire hadn’t existed yet at the time, so they couldn’t do a hero summoning.
“In the end, all we could do was hunt the demon lord’s army down to the edge of the continent. Then Lady Parion had the dragon god teach her the art of hero summoning, and the rest was up to the first hero, or so I’m told.”
“Yes, I remember it somewhat. That little hero managed to defeat the goblin with those two Holy Swords from Lady Parion and the dragon god.”
So the first hero was a dual-wielding swordsman?
He must have been pretty strong to beat a demon lord that not even a bunch of light ships could handle.
“And heroes have been truly bizarre beings ever since.”
Please don’t look at me as you say that. It’s making me very self-conscious.
“That hero was a sneaky one, too. Repairing and appropriating one of Bolenan’s lost light ships!”
“Oh? We didn’t give that as a reward for defeating the demon lord? I think I remember saying something about passing it down through the generations…”
That must be how the Jules Verne came to belong to the Saga Empire, then.
Still, if the light ships had been lost thousands of years ago, why hadn’t they just rebuilt them since then?
“The other clans all used their Holytree Stone reserves to replenish their light ship fleets back to eight.”
I waited a moment, but Jia didn’t explain why the Bolenan clan alone didn’t rebuild theirs.
When pressed, she said that making a light ship required about a ton of Holytree Stone. Since the stones had a lot of other important uses, it could take up to a hundred thousand years to save up enough for a single ship.
“But Bolenan has a shortage of Holytree Stones,” Miss Aaze explained, sounding a little guilty.
Once, when the Flue Empire began to prosper, they sent royal ambassadors to the elves with game equipment. Two high elves became addicted to the game.
“There was nothing you could have done, Lady Aaze. Of the three high elves at the time, two of them were completely addicted, and instead of scolding them, most of us elves got into it along with them…”
Hooked on the gaming equipment, the elves and high elves ended up paying for it with the Holytree Stones they’d been saving up to rebuild the light ships.
It sounded to me like the Flue Empire royalty took advantage of the elves’ natural lack of business sense.
Unbidden, I remembered the elves who were frantically determined to play me in shogi.
“Eventually, all the gaming devices broke, and now none remain.”
I was curious about this gaming device the elves had gone mad for, but apparently none was left that worked.
Jia said that the games broke exactly a thousand years after they had been purchased.
It sounded like home appliances from certain shady companies. A Flue Timer, if you will?
“I understand getting depressed, but I wish they hadn’t gone to sulk in the sleep tanks…”
“Same for the elder elves… So many of them retired abruptly that there weren’t enough successors to fill their places.”
I see… Wait a second.
Didn’t someone tell me that the elves in the sleep tanks were there because they wanted to preserve special memories?
That cou
ldn’t possibly be referring to the memories of playing some video game, right?
Yeah, I’m sure that’s not it. Let’s just change the subject.
“So what did the Flue Empire do with all those Holytree Stones?”
“They became a magic empire that dominated all the continents within three hundred years. It’s said that the bluecoins they made from the Holytree Stones made up a core part of their high-performance magic devices, as well as serving as the activation key for them. They were proof of nobility in that empire, too.”
Bluecoins, huh…? Wait, what?
I’m pretty sure I have those.
A quick search of my currency folder in Storage revealed that I had more than twenty thousand Flue Empire bluecoins. They were probably spoils from the Valley of Dragons.
When I’d first looked through all my gains from that time, I was so overwhelmed by the sheer variety and amount of coins I had, including more than ten million Flue gold coins, that I just stuffed them away and forgot about them.
I had yet to find a use for any of the currency that wasn’t for the Shiga Kingdom, so I guess I just put them all in a Foreign Currency folder.
“…Mr. Satou, isn’t that…?!”
“Yes, a Flue Empire bluecoin.”
Nodding at Jia, I toyed with a bluecoin in the palm of my hand.
It was bigger than I’d expected, probably weighing about a hundred grams. If we used all of them, maybe we could rebuild some of those light ships?
If I could get permission to borrow one just while I was alive, I’d have no problem putting up twenty thousand bluecoins for it.
I’d still have several thousand left, so I could use those for making potions and tools and such.
At least, that was my hope, but…
“Holytree Stones that have been processed into bluecoins cannot be returned to the World Tree. Though they can be used for transmuting magic metal and making golem intelligence circuits…”
“I see. In that case, please use them for those purposes.”
I produced a bag full of a thousand bluecoins from Storage via my Garage Bag and placed it on the table.
“A-are these all bluecoins?”
“Yes, please help yourself.”
“Satou, we’re short on Holytree Stones and all, so this is wonderful, but…you really don’t need to do all that for us when you’re not even from Bolenan, you know?”
