They all slowly began to drive their cars as I looked on with the emperor of Refreese.
“That reminds me, Touya... You really helped out with that pirate matter the other day. The merchants in my region are all thankful.”
“Did you take them all out?”
“We did. However... Of the ships that headed out to take care of the pirates, one went missing... We’re searching for it, but would it be within your power to locate it?”
“I should be able to do that... Can you describe the ship at all?” I heard a brief description from the emperor and ran a search of the Refreese coastline on my map. There were no hits. That meant it had likely sunk... If it had fallen apart to debris and sank to the bottom of the ocean, then my spell wouldn’t be able to pick it up.
“Hmph... I suppose it must have been destroyed by a beast of the sea... Forgive me, Grand Duke, for wasting your time... I shall call off the search.” Sea monsters that were capable of sinking ships were usually limited to Krakens and Sea Serpents.
Adventurers were generally fine with taking out monsters on the land, but the world didn’t have much it could do against sea-dwelling nasties.
The ship was called The McClane, which made me slightly amused. But it wasn’t like the bald-headed emperor next to me would know anything about famous Hollywood movies... It was just a coincidence.
But still, for the ship to bear the name of the world’s unluckiest detective... It was a bad omen from the start. If only it had as much will to survive as John McClane had in his movies.
The world leaders were all so pleased with the Ether Vehicles that they asked to buy several each. I was satisfied with how things had gone.
The Ether Liquid that came with the cars would last over half a year, but I gave them all an extra bottle as a bonus. I also threw in some spare tires and off-road wheels. Mismede and Xenoahs had rougher areas, after all.
I also informed them that the cars could be reverse-engineered. If they dismantled them they’d be able to make their own changes. I didn’t plan on directly profiting, so I just wanted to see what each country could make of the vehicles in the coming years.
The money earned from the Ether Liquid would be enough, anyway. To be honest, it was possible for the other nations to produce it themselves after enough research, so I was waiting to see if they’d manage it.
“I think we might need to pave the roads a bit more if these vehicles become more commonplace, though...”
“Actually, the Dwarves have recently created a magical construction vehicle that might make that easier. It should allow you to terraform without the use of Earth magic.” The development was proceeding as scheduled, and would soon be available on the market. That was all up to Olba, though. He was the one deciding the points of sale and the price. I wasn’t really profiting from that, either.
The others continued to ride their cars for a while. It was obvious they were having fun, even if they were trying to pretend it was all formal testing. They even started a little race.
For what it was worth, the young king of Palouf was faster than all the others. It wasn’t a matter of skill, though. He was just the lightest.
The next day I made sure to deliver the Ether Vehicles to each nation. They were only allowed to order a maximum of five each. I collected the payment and then took it to Kousaka.
I was looking down at the castle courtyard from my balcony. Lapis and the maids were practicing how to drive the cars.
We’d built a simple race course in the courtyard. It was simple, kind of like the tutorial level in a racing game.
The head maid sure got excited as she hopped into the car, but it didn’t really need as much finesse as a bicycle so I was sure she’d be fine.
The controls were simplistic, really. Much like a go-kart. Even a kid could do it, honestly. I probably should’ve made the controls a little more complex, but it wasn’t like we had driving schools or anything.
Lapis started up the car and started to drive slowly. She made a single lap around the course and gradually got used to it. She was driving safely, for the most part. She’d probably be able to take the car out to town, it’d help with shopping runs... Then again, the head maid wasn’t really tasked with going out and shopping.
I continued to watch them practice in the courtyard when my smartphone began to ring. The display said it was the overlord of Xenoahs. I wondered if there was an issue with the cars I’d delivered.
“Hey, ‘sup?”
“Ah, Grand Duke?”
“Something up? If you’re calling to ask about Sakura, I don’t really have time.”
“Hold on a moment! She’s my daughter, and I... Wait, this isn’t the time for that...”
“So, what’s wrong?”
“That information you gave us some time ago! The mutant variation of the Phrase... Those metal devils? One appeared in my country!”
“What...?!”
A mutant in Xenoahs?!
“It was in a town called Radom. The town was known for being a hive of scum and villainy, crime there happened often... It’s the kind of place where negative emotions gather, so it fits the bill for their target.”
“What happened to the citizens?”
“All dead. Turned into crystallized zombies. There was only one of the monsters, thankfully. I dispatched the Ogre Squad and they managed to kill it, but not without suffering losses.”
Ogre Squad, huh...? I guess one Ogre has the strength of ten men, so it makes sense they’d be able to take it out. Still, it couldn’t have been easy...
The fact that crystal skeletons appeared meant that souls had been consumed. The wicked god appeared in Sandora and Lestia to strengthen itself by eating souls... So I was worried that it was another case of that happening. First the Reverse World incident, now this... Clearly, the wicked god was up to something.
It could probably happen again, too. The sensors that the guilds were equipped with could only pick up regular Phrase signals. If we captured a metal devil alive and researched it, we could probably make a separate scanner.
“The dead mutant melted into goop, as we were informed... The skeletons all collapsed once their cores were shattered, too. We collected the pieces, just in case. Are they made of that, er... Phrasium material?”
“On a base level, yeah. They’ll harden if you pour magic into the fragments, and they’re purer than spellstones. You can’t put the fragments together, though, so they’ll be largely useless in such small chunks.”
“They’re valuable, at the very least... But we are hesitant to make use of them, given that they’re the remains of the victims... They won’t be able to rest in peace, either.”
The overlord knew that those who had their souls devoured couldn’t reach salvation. They weren’t allowed to pass on to the other side, being effectively obliterated and removed from the cycle of reincarnation. It was a pretty horrific fate.
Maybe the wicked god is collecting the soul energy and using it to create the metal devils... I’m honestly getting a little scared of the power it’s gradually building...
Either way, Xenoahs had taken care of it, so they were free to do what they wanted with the Phrasium. They would probably trade it for money and pay it out to the families or relatives of the deceased. Alternatively, they could improve their own weapons or armor. Even small fragments could be made into something similar to scale mail.
I ended the call with the overlord. The conversation made me wonder if I needed to start gathering allies in the Reverse World in case any incidents like this happened again.
I sighed and shook my head...
Looking down at the courtyard, I noticed Lapis driving a car at insane speeds toward a corner.
Whoa, holy shit! You’re going too fast! You’re gonna... What the?! Lapis was somehow making the car glide on its side, causing the vehicle to lean as it cleanly changed its direction without compromising any speed.
She’s drifting... Or, wait... She’s hanging off
? Holy crap! That’s crazy...!
I stood, dumbfounded, by how insane her technique was. Frankly, I was getting worried about the tires... She was definitely damaging them.
I started wondering if we could do some kind of street-based grand prix like the Circuit de Monaco.
Either way, the maids of Brunhild were clearly a force to be reckoned with.
Chapter II: The Successor of the Gods
“They’re in the Pallin Desert within the former Sandora Kingdom’s territory... At the very least there are ten-thousand. It’s an invasion force similar to the number that appeared in Yulong.”
“And when can we expect them?”
“I’d say we have less than a day.” I was on the phone with Guildmaster Relisha, quietly concerned about what she was telling me. A large Phrase invasion was incoming.
The only saving grace of the situation was that they were in the desert. Their emergence spot was also several hundred kilometers from Draggah, the nearest town.
Since I liberated the slaves, the region was largely disrupted. Regular farmers and traders who didn’t own slaves weren’t really affected all that much. I also heard that several of the freed slaves who remained in Sandora had gotten proper employment, as well.
The problem came from the nobles and large-scale merchants that had subjected the slaves to abuse.
They feared that the freed slaves would want to take revenge, so they ended up fleeing the region and taking all their assets with them. Even their guardsmen were slaves, so it wasn’t like there were many people available to help them, either.
As a result of the mass exodus of the elite, those that governed the major cities and towns were all gone. The people remaining ended up dividing the territory into city state-like nations.
Among those city-states were even settlements that were founded and built upon by liberated slaves. It wasn’t as if every noble was abusive. There were some who remained because they had good relationships with their workers to begin with, even if they were indentured.
Sandora was a dictatorship that didn’t interact much with the outside world, so they had good self-sufficiency when it came to things like food. That hadn’t changed after the country dissolved, so people were still able to eat. Either way, the nobles had gone and the lower classes were running the place in their own way.
Sandora was a desert, for the most part, but a lot of the inhabited territory had so much agricultural boon that it almost seemed impossible. I wondered if this was the work of nature spirits, contradicting the natural environment.
There were split opinions on what had happened to Sandora. Some viewed it as a heroic act that freed the slaves, while others viewed it as the work of a demon that had crushed a country.
I wasn’t too surprised to hear stories had grown to that extent, hyperbole was just another fact of life, after all. But one of the rumors said that I had destroyed that one city the wicked god ended up consuming...
It was true that I’d burned it to the ground, but that was more a cremation than anything.
Either way, it wasn’t as bad as the Yulong rumors, so I wasn’t too irritated. But there were still people out there who thought I was the source of the Phrase invasion... I couldn’t see why they’d think that. Those things are a pain in the ass to everyone.
I decided to focus on the current emergency, I needed help from the other world leaders, pronto. I opened up an app on my smartphone...
By the end of it all, we had four-hundred-and-twelve Frame Gears lined up in the desert. They belonged to the following nations:
The Kingdom of Belfast
The Refreese Imperium
The Kingdom of Mismede
The Regulus Empire
The Ramissh Theocracy
The Roadmare Union
The Kingdom of Lihnea
The Kingdom of Palouf
The Knight Kingdom of Lestia
The Demon Kingdom of Xenoahs
The Magic Kingdom of Felsen
Each nation had three Knight Barons and twenty-seven Chevaliers, a total of thirty each.
Brunhild had its nine Valkyries, the three commanding units (Shining Count, Knight Baron, and Blue Moon), and seventy Chevaliers.
Assuming ten-thousand Phrase appeared, that meant each Frame Gear needed to kill about twenty-four enemies. I anticipated that the majority of the creatures would just be small-fry, Lesser Constructs, but I couldn’t be sure until they appeared. We needed to take care not to be swarmed, though.
“This heat really sucks. Only the custom Frame Gears have cooling functions added... It’s fine while the hatch is open, but once we get fighting it’ll be a bit of a pain.”
“I hope they appear at night, then.”
“If that happens we’ll have low visibility.” The knight king of Lestia and the king of Lihnea replied to my complaining. It was probably annoying when we had to fight at night in the past. I didn’t know for sure because I passed out after killing Gila during the last night battle.
Frame Gears were coated with protective paint that meant they wouldn’t get so hot you could fry an egg on them, but it would still become stuffy and uncomfortable in the cockpit.
“We’ve prepared plenty of water, so don’t get dehydrated out there. And be mindful of the terrain, too. There’s a possibility of losing your footing, so I’d recommend you all try to move a bit before the fight starts.” There was the possibility of death if the Frame Gears fell, after all. We did have an emergency protocol that I’d programmed into the Frame Gears, one that teleported people away from their mechs after enough damage was sustained...
But if the cockpit itself was crushed too quickly, it wouldn’t have enough time to activate.
The Phrase were targeting human heartbeats, so it stood to reason they might just directly go for the cockpits.
We’d set up a ramshackle command center in the middle of the desert. It was built out of several shipping container-like structures, all joined together with a central tent. The world leaders were all in here, checking over their plans in conjunction with the map spread across the central table.
We’d used magic to keep the command center nice and cool, but leaving the safety bubble caused things to get very hot, very fast.
“We’ll likely get an Upper Construct, right?”
“Like the one that destroyed Yulong’s capital? I’d like to avoid seeing one, if possible...” The doge of Roadmare and the overlord both murmured to each other as they watched the live video feeds of the desert outside.
“I don’t think we’ll see one this time. I think it’ll mostly just be Lesser and Intermediate Constructs. There might be some metal devils, though...”
“You mean the golden ones?”
“Yes. They’re only slightly stronger than regular Phrase to start, but they can feast on their former kin to become even stronger. If we see any, make them the primary targets.” I didn’t know for sure if they’d appear, but it was better to be safe than sorry. I was personally more worried that another Dominant Construct could appear.
We also had an emergency escape route in place within the command center, it was a portal we could run through to escape back to Brunhild in a worst-case scenario.
Lapis came walking through that very portal, bringing a meal for everyone within the building. It was lunchtime.
The Frame Gear pilots all got rice balls, a flask of fresh water, and some bite-sized sandwiches. The world leaders, on the other hand, got some chilled ramen.
Chilled ramen was a specialty from the Yamagata prefecture. It was much like regular ramen, but it was cooled down and didn’t have as much congealed fat or oil. The soup and the noodles were entirely cold.
It wasn’t sour like chilled Chinese noodles, and it was the kind of thing that just made you wanna keep eating it. I once visited relatives in Yamagata and basically became a chilled ramen addict as a result.
The soup was good, it had plenty of soy sauce in it. The noodles were nice and stretchy, and it
had sliced chicken, a boiled egg, menma, narutomaki, and green onions alongside it. There were lots of peppers, too.
“Ohoho... I’ve never had this before, but it is rather refreshing.”
“Ahh... The meat’s so tender... I love it!” The other world leaders seemed to enjoy it. I made a mental note to pass on their compliments to Crea later on.
Given that the world leaders had spent their lunches eating in Brunhild after our monthly conferences, they were all accustomed to eating with chopsticks. The new members from Felsen, Xenoahs, and Palouf were still using forks, though.
“Oh, that reminds me... Grand Duke. Will you be sharing the Phrasium fragments with us this time around?” The king of Felsen spoke up as he slurped his ramen. He was probably thinking about how much purer Phrasium chunks were than spellstones. It would be a golden chance for Felsen to get their hands on some. He likely wanted to incorporate them into the magic train development.
“Yeah, sounds fine. We’ll ask for a cut since you’re renting the Frame Gears from us, but everything else you guys can divide up and split.” If the Frame Gears were damaged, I expected them to pay up in raw materials. They’d only have to pay the material needed to cover the repairs, though. Our Workshop was fully automated, meaning there were no labor fees... But that was a national secret.
Yumina and the girls took it in turns coming into the command center to enjoy some ramen, too. It ended up being quite the hit dish. I ended up giving the chilled ramen recipe to the other world leaders, so they could enjoy it themselves.
The heat outside only intensified as the day went on. Monsters that nested in the desert sands also emerged from time to time. They weren’t a match for our Frame Gears... Unless you counted the Sand Crawlers, they were huge and a pain in the ass. Either way, we decided not to engage them unless they engaged us.
I found myself quietly hoping the Phrase would just appear so I could go home and rest.
I left the tent and looked across the desert. But nothing happened. Typical. They appear when I don’t want them to, and stay away when I want them to show up.
In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 14 Page 3
