Outbreak Company: Volume 8 (Premium)

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “You can use bombs to put out a fire in an oil field, after all...”

  “Shinichi-kun?” Minori-san looked at me, trying to figure out why I wasn’t getting into the carriage. “What’s wrong? Hurry up and—”

  “Minori-san, I’ve got an idea.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t know if it’ll work, but... there’s only one way to find out.”

  “What are you talking ab—”

  “You guys go on ahead!” I interrupted, then ran into the castle. I heard Minori-san and the knights shouting after me to stop, but I ignored them.

  I knew this was crazy, but we had an emergency on our hands. We had to do whatever we could. If this worked, it would save everyone. Me and my friends, the knights and mages who had gone to investigate that pillar—and Petralka, here in the castle.

  “Gosh, I’m acting like a real MC for once!”

  I hoped my little joke would take some of the tension out of my limbs as I ran for the room where they kept Imarufe Bisurupeguze.

  My name is Kanou Shinichi, otaku and former home security guard.

  ...............

  All that really means is that I don’t have ESP, amazing strength in battle, or anything else. I don’t really have any of the qualities you would expect of a protagonist in a story.

  And so...

  “Stupid, stupid me...”

  What had I been doing, trying to act like an MC? I was just a naïve idiot all along.

  “Arrrgh... What am I gonna do?”

  The way I came dashing in like an awesome hero, that was good.

  The fact that I miraculously didn’t get lost, that was good, too.

  But then I stood there in front of the storeroom door, and it hit me.

  “It won’t open...”

  The door was shut tight. I pushed and pulled on the handle, but it didn’t budge. I assumed I was dealing with more than a conventional lock here. It was probably like the system of magical keys we used at the mansion. Which meant the door might open for somebody, but it wouldn’t be for me.

  Then I remembered—Petralka had said something about it not being easy to get the bomb out of there. It should have been obvious! Geez, I was even more of an idiot than I thought! How embarrassing! I wish there was a hole here so I could dive right into it!

  “Umm...”

  Maybe I could go to Petralka and explain my idea to her, and get her to open the door? But I had no idea where the empress was at that moment. I only ever saw her in one of the audience chambers or in the training room. If she had an office or something, I didn’t know about it, and given that this was a crisis, she might well be in some kind of war room or something.

  I was just upbraiding myself once more for having let myself hit a dead end like this when I saw someone coming down the hall.

  “Hey...”

  Holy heck.

  It wasn’t Petralka or Prime Minister Zahar, obviously, but it was still someone I recognized.

  “Lauron?!”

  “Shinichi-sensei...?” She stopped and looked at me in surprise.

  “Wh-What are you doing here...!?” Lauron watched me with her usual impassive expression as I came running up to her. “Didn’t they tell you to evacuate?”

  “Evacuate?” Lauron blinked.

  “Everyone who lives near the castle was ordered to get away.”

  “I see. But it’s time for our practice with the puppet of Her Majesty.”

  “Hello...?”

  I guess she had come to the castle right on time, as always, still following her internal rules. I was amazed she’d made it this far, but maybe the knights had been too busy to stop one young girl wandering through the castle. Heck, they hadn’t stopped me, either.

  “Let’s go, Sensei. We’re going to be late.”

  “How can you worry about that? Didn’t you see that weird thing?”

  “I saw it. But it’s practice time now.”

  “I’m telling you...”

  I had passed through anger at having the same conversation with Lauron over and over and arrived at simple exhaustion. We were beyond obsession here. There was obviously no persuading her, and if I tried to force her to run away, there was a good chance she would just start crying.

  Argh, why do I have to deal with this now of all—

  “...Wait.” I suddenly had an idea. “Lauron, come here for a moment. You see that door? It’s magically locked. Think you might be able to open it?”

  “Impossible,” she said flatly. “This type of magic can only be undone by the one who cast it.”

  “I guess you’ve got me there...” I hung my head, disheartened. But at that moment...

  Ba-bum.

  We heard a dull, heavy noise.

  I turned to look and saw that the door, which had been shut tight, was ever so slightly ajar.

  “Huh...? Wh-Why’d it just...?”

  I hadn’t done anything special.

  As I stood there flabbergasted, though, Lauron said, “The magic has disappeared.”

  I caught my breath. The vanishing magic! Petralka had said nobody knew when or where it might occur...

  “Er, Lauron, are you okay?”

  “Am I okay how?”

  “I mean, dwarves...” I thought they usually got tired when the magic drained away. But Lauron was standing there looking perfectly steady and alert. “Don’t dwarves fall asleep when they lose their magic?”

  “Ah. Yes. But I have this.” Lauron reached back and produced a crystal about the size of a closed fist. When I looked closely, I could see a faint glow shifting and shimmering within the jewel. Were those... sprites?

  I remembered now that the Faldra had had a magical gem in its chest...

  “Underground, you sometimes run into places where magic is weak, especially in newly excavated tunnels. All dwarven workers carry one of these.”

  “Sort of like an oxygen tank, huh...”

  Unlike Lauron, the dwarf students at school were the children of the privileged, and didn’t have to spend their time cooped up in workshops or digging out tunnels. They didn’t need, or carry, “magic tanks” like this one. But since Lauron had come to the castle directly from work, she had hers with her.

  Anyway...

  “All right, then, Lauron, come with me.”

  I decided it was actually a stroke of good luck that she’d shown up. Imarufe Bisurupeguze, the Consuming Flame, was a magical weapon. I had seen how it was used when the Assembly of Patriots took over the school, and between that and what Petralka had told me earlier, I had a pretty good idea of what to do with it. But even so, being basically a complete novice when it came to handling magic, I was awfully glad to have Lauron along.

  Lauron, though, was shaking her head. “That’s not allowed.” Her tone was firm, without a hint of hesitation. Was this about her “rules” again?

  “This is an emergency,” I said. “If we use the thing in there, we might be able to do something about that weird pillar.”

  “But that isn’t allowed.” My desperation didn’t appear to have the slightest effect on her. In fact, now she was holding onto my arm with both hands. “What we’re supposed to do now is practice with the doll. Let’s go, Sensei.”

  “Ow, that hurts!” She was startlingly strong for someone so small. “Just—just wait a minute!” I sank my weight and tried to resist being dragged away. “This is no time to be worrying about that! Lauron, listen to me! I need you to help me—or if you really can’t, then at least let go of me!”

  “N—”

  “I’m begging you! Please, we don’t have time to go through the same stupid conversation over and over!” I tried to talk too quickly for her to object. “Let’s be flexible, please!”

  Wordlessly, Lauron let go of my hand, seeming surprised. Maybe she was startled to hear me yell—not that I was really yelling, but it might have sounded like it. I had never really raised my voice to her before.

  “B... But...” Her expression stiffe
ned, her voice suddenly thick. “We have to... obey the rules... Or else...”

  Those huge eyes filled up even as I watched, the tears forcing their way down her cheeks.

  Arrrrgh, again?

  Expressionless or crying: it seemed like she only had two moods, and they were on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

  “I can’t do it,” she wailed. “I feel sick...”

  It was just like at practice. If she was about to break her internal rules, her emotional response kicked in and made her cry before she could consider whether or not it was rational. And once she was in this state, she would stop thinking and just give herself over to the tears.

  No... She had never been thinking. She set up rules to keep from having to worry about anything—and then she just followed them, unreflectively, like a puppet. It was almost as if she herself was under a curse that had turned her into a doll. And as bad as I felt for her, I didn’t have time to coddle her right then.

  “Stop crying!”

  “Hic...?” She caught her breath a little, shocked to hear me shout.

  “You think you’re going to solve anything by sitting there bawling?!”

  “Sob... sniff...” Lauron wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

  I took her face, tears and all, in my hands and looked into her eyes. “It’s important to keep your word,” I said. “I think you’re right to do it—most of the time. But don’t get obsessed with obeying the rules. Don’t you feel like you should think about what will happen if you obey the rules—and what will happen if you don’t?”

  Lauron looked at me, seeming completely flummoxed.

  I said firmly, “You told us that bird died because you forgot to take care of it, right? I’ll bet that was really unpleasant. I’m sure you felt bad about it. That’s why you’re so set on following specific rules, instead of just messing around, right?”

  Still she didn’t speak.

  “But we’re not talking about a bird here. Humans—in fact, dwarves and elves, maybe someone you know—might die here! If we let this get any worse, it might be too late. People might start getting hurt!”

  “...hic...” Lauron’s eyes were wide.

  “But if we can use Imarufe Bisurupeguze to neutralize that pillar... Well, people might get mad at us for taking matters into our own hands, but that’s all. If it works, we’ll save everybody.”

  Lauron couldn’t quite seem to decide where to put her eyes. They had stopped running with tears, though. All that was left were the tracks on her cheeks.

  “What was it really that made you feel so bad? Was it being shouted at because you didn’t take care of that bird? Or was it the fact that the bird died? Or was there something else?”

  “I...”

  For the first time, I thought I heard a note of doubt in her voice. One more push might be all it would take.

  “What do you want to do? Don’t tell me what it is that you should do. Your responsibility. Tell me what it is that you want to do—.”

  Geez—only a lost-cause otaku like me could fall back on a line from a robot anime at a desperate moment like this. I guess a Byar**nt Custom would be overkill in the situation, though...

  Okay, forget about that.

  “I...” Lauron looked down. I could see how torn she was. But we were running out of time.

  “If somebody doesn’t do something, people could end up dead.”

  No response.

  “You said you have to follow the rules. Are you bothered by the fact that you haven’t been able to control the puppet? Or that you were shunned by your friends? Or is it that you let that bird die?”

  There was an instant’s hesitation before Lauron whispered, “It’s that... that I let it die.”

  Finally, I had gotten an answer. After all this time mindlessly forcing herself to obey rules, Lauron had thought it over and given the answer herself. She’d finally faced the reality she’d been trying to run from through mindless obedience.

  That was important progress for her, I was sure. So I wasn’t surprised to see, when she looked up at me a moment later, that she looked somehow different from before. Just a little. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  “I understand. I’ll go with you.”

  “Thank you!”

  I shoved open the door, and Lauron and I started into the storeroom.

  Before us was a spiral staircase that led down, down, down, as if into the depths of hell.

  It was dusty in there, and with no windows, it was dark, too. Without the faint light provided by Lauron’s magic tank (or whatever it was), we wouldn’t have been able to see our hands in front of our faces.

  It made some sense: light is one thing you don’t want in a storage area. Along with oxygen and temperature changes, it’s one of the primary causes of material degradation. I should have expected this.

  “Umm...” I strained my eyes, looking around the storeroom, which was full of a haphazard collection of items. Swords and bows, things that were obviously weapons. But then there were also mirrors and chairs, things that looked totally random at first glance. There was even a fancy dress. Knowing how closely this area was guarded, I had to assume even these seeming cast-offs were really magical items of some sort...

  “...There.”

  In fact, though, the storage area wasn’t that big. It wasn’t long before I found what we were looking for. Sitting on a shelf was a silver sphere. It had a wooden frame around it to keep it from rolling away, and it was surrounded by interlinked silver rings. It would have been easy to take it for nothing more than a globe.

  But this was Imarufe Bisurupeguze, the Consuming Flame.

  What’s more, beside it was a sort of metal card. If you inserted the card into a slot on the side of Imarufe Bisurupeguze and intoned the spell, the fire sprites inside would fly out all at once, causing something like an explosion. Or so I had been told.

  I picked up the card first, then made to grab the weapon...

  “Hrgh?!”

  I pitched forward. This thing was heavy! What the heck was in it?!

  From the shape, I’d assumed it was just a heavy globe, but this thing had to weigh more than thirty kilograms. What in the world was it made out of?!

  It was going to be a very slow trek back up those stairs at this rate.

  “What am I going to do?” I muttered, looking around the room, but I didn’t see anything obviously helpful.

  “Shinichi-sensei?”

  “It’s too heavy. And we need to move fast,” I said softly.

  Lauron’s voice rang through the small room. “Ia ma esu reruu fo esu surae ruree fo esu kou ruree fo nori zurou fo suruto esu shisabu fo iteirosua ia riu redoro ti shi irarobumetto eshiirupu uorofu imu suredoro.” The words meant: I take upon myself the True Words and the rights of the Chieftain of Earth, the Chieftain of Rock, and the Chieftain of Steel, and I order, howsoever briefly, that they obey my words.

  No sooner had she spoke than, to my surprise, some of the packed earth at my feet rose up into a misshapen but humanoid form. A clay doll. Like the ones they used in the dwarven workshops...

  “I get it...” The magical deficits were localized, and subject to fluctuations. Apparently, magic was still usable down here. “That’s a huge help!” I grinned at Lauron as the clay doll picked up Imarufe Bisurupeguze.

  “Yes, sir.”

  And for probably the first time since I’d met her, Lauron gave me a genuinely happy smile.

  I heard someone call my name as we kept back to the castle gate.

  “Shinichi-kun!” I looked up to see Minori-san running up—from behind us.

  Huh? Why?

  “What on earth are you doing?!” she demanded as she caught us.

  “Minori-san, why are you—”

  “You think I was just going to evacuate by myself, without you?! I’m your bodyguard, for crying out loud!”

  “...Oh.”

  I realized what had happened: Minori-san had gone into the castle afte
r me but had lost track of me somewhere along the line. So when we came back out, Minori-san was likewise heading back to the gate.

  “I had Hikaru-kun go ahead and get out of here, but—wait, Lauron, what are you doing here?”

  “Ah... Well...”

  “And what’s that?!”

  She was talking about the clay doll behind us, carrying Imarufe Bisurupeguze. It was only thanks to this helper—thanks to Lauron’s magic—that we had managed to get the heavy, unwieldy object out here so quickly. In fact, we’d run into one of the magic vacuums on the way out, which had caused the clay doll to disintegrate. Between us, Lauron and I had somehow managed to carry Imarufe Bisurupeguze past the dead spot. Lauron was small, but being a dwarf, she was a lot stronger than she looked.

  And now...

  “Arrgh... You can fill me in on the details later. Hop in!” Minori-san said, pointing to the bird-drawn carriage standing by the gate. It wasn’t the same one that had been waiting for us earlier. I guess after evacuating Hikaru-san, Minori-san must have had them get a new one ready.

  “Get in! You too, Lauron! We’ve got to get out of—”

  “Wait, Minori-san,” I said as she tried to shove me into the passenger compartment. “Have them take us to that black pillar.”

  “Are you insane?!”

  “We’re going to use this thing to blow it away,” I said. “Like how they use bombs to fight oil field fires.”

  “That’s completely—” Minori-san began, but then she stopped, her expression turning thoughtful. She seemed to be giving my idea due consideration, for which I was very grateful.

  Finally...

  “Okay. It’s at least worth a shot. But I have a duty to protect you,” she added firmly. “After I get you two out of here, I’ll take that thing to the vortex. And then—”

  “We don’t have time for that!”

  I didn’t know where they planned to evacuate us to, but if Minori-san meant to see us to a safe location before going back to the pillar, she wouldn’t get there for a long time. Plus, it would be hard to find yet another carriage when half the city was trying to get away all at once.

  “Even inside the castle, there are places where magic is dropping out. You know how we got into where they keep Imarufe Bisurupeguze? The magic keeping the door locked dropped out.” I looked at Lauron for confirmation, and she nodded. “The castle is nowhere near that vortex, and look what’s happening. This loss of magic is only going to get worse, right?