“You said gods, right? Does that mean there are others besides you?”
“But of course. Though I would like to say that I am the God of Worlds, the highest of all. Besides me, there are the lower Gods such as the God of Hunting, the God of Love, the God of Swords, the God of Agriculture, and many, many more. Oh, and the God of Love, in particular, has taken quite the interest in you.” Don’t go sticking your neck into people’s love lives, God of Love.
“We were talking about how we would all turn up for your wedding ceremony as your relatives. It was quite the fun discussion, I must say. Oh, and I would be turning up as your grandfather, of course.”
“Now you listen here...” Those gods must have had a lot of free time on their hands. What in the world would that even be like? A wedding hall filled with nothing but gods of all kinds. I mean, yeah, it wasn’t like I had any relatives in this world or anything, but still.
“I seem to recall you saying something about being unable to interfere once I was down here, or am I misremembering things?”
“I believe I said that I would be unable to do much for you directly. There are no problems with me descending to that world myself in human form if I so choose to.” I was sure there was a mountain of problems with a plan like that... But it felt like commenting on the matter any further was only going to make me seem the fool. When I thought about it, the gods of mythology back in my old world supposedly visited the human world on occasion too.
“Anyhow, I am right here watching over you, my lad. Do take your time to think things over such that you will live a life that you may look back on fondly in your later years. I am wishing you all the best and hope that you find your own path to happiness. With that, I suppose I really must be going. I will check back in on you again. Goodbye.”
“Yeah...” I cut off the call after giving a vague response. Live a life that I can look back on fondly one day, huh...?
What did it even mean to be engaged to a twelve year old...? Thinking of it in terms of a high school freshman and a girl in her sixth year of elementary school, the age difference seemed overwhelming. On the other hand, looking at it as a mere four year difference in our ages, it wasn’t really that big of a deal, was it...? Even my parents had a six year difference in their ages. I also seemed to remember hearing something about some entertainers whose wives were as much as thirty years younger than them.
Back to the situation at hand, I hadn’t even gone out with a girl even once in my life. There was no way I could be expected to understand the concept of marriage.
Hell, I just don’t get what’s even going on anymore. I should just sleep on it all for now. Yeah, I think I’ll do just that.
◇ ◇ ◇
The next day, we all headed off toward the guild together.
Yumina’s clothes were too showy for her to be wearing around in public, so she had borrowed some clothes from Elze and Linze.
She wore a white blouse with a blue ribbon, and a black top over that. She also wore a dark blue culotte skirt and black knee socks. They suited her quite well considering they were borrowed clothes, though they still seemed a little big for her.
She had also bunched her long blond hair into one large braid so that her movement was less restricted.
Personally, I had been worried that her heterochromia would be the thing to give her away, but apparently heterochromia wasn’t a sign of having Mystic Eyes.
And so, we’d succeeded in making her look like a normal girl. Well, her looks were still champion-class, which made it hard to classify her as a normal girl, so it was difficult to judge her based on such standards.
“I’ve been wondering for a while now, but if Touya and Yumina got married, wouldn’t that make Touya next in line for the throne?” Elze pondered.
“Yes, that’s right. I’d be happy if that ever came to pass. But in order to make that a reality, we’d need to have the nobles and the citizens approve of him first. On the other hand, if my parents were to give me a little brother, he would be the next to inherit the throne instead.” On the way to the guild, I happened to overhear Elze and Yumina’s conversation. I prayed from the bottom of my heart for Yumina to get a kid brother.
I’m beggin’ ya, King, you’ve gotta get this girl a younger brother, stat! I’ll even look up the recipe for stamina drinks on my smartphone for you... No, damn it, not this pattern again! Making plans like that is the same as admitting defeat in this marriage tug-of-war!
“Just so you know, I really have no intention of becoming the king of anywhere.”
“I’m aware of that. The same would hold true if my uncle had a son, or even if, um, i-if our child was a boy, th-then he would be the one to succeed the throne!”
Really, you’re pulling out “if our child was a boy”?! Also, don’t go blushing when you’re the one that said it! Now you’re making me feel embarrassed!
Before dropping by the guild, we took a detour to the weapon shop, Eight Bears, so we could get Yumina set up with the appropriate equipment. When I asked if she had any money on her, Yumina took out a jangling bag of coins and said that her father had given it to her as a parting gift. I had a really bad feeling about that, and sure enough, when I opened the bag to check, it was filled with fifty platinum coins. Back in my world that would’ve been about fifty million yen... Bit much for a parting gift, wouldn’t you say...?
Once in the store, I asked Barral to show us his selection of bows. His selection wasn’t as varied as those stores in the capital, but they still stocked some high-quality weapons. Yumina picked up a few bows and tested the bowstrings intently. In the end, she went with a light, M-shaped composite bow.
Rather than prioritize firing distance, she went with a bow that was easy to handle and quick to shoot with. Made sense, really. She probably couldn’t handle a huge longbow properly at her height and build.
She also bought a quiver, which came with a set of one hundred arrows. Finally, she bought a white leather breastplate and matching white boots.
Alrighty then, looks like we’re just about ready to roll out.
We took Yumina into the guild office, which was bustling with life like always.
Another thing that was just like always was the number of intimidating gazes locking onto me. In fact, some of the male adventurers shot me some particularly nasty glances.
At first I’d had no idea why that kept happening to me every time I went here, but by that point I understood all too well.
You didn’t have to look very hard to tell that Elze, Linze — and Yae, too — were all beautiful girls. And I was the “lucky fella” who was in the same party as all those cute girls. This was why I, in particular, was the object of their resentment. Their gazes stung like daggers from all directions.
To tell the truth, there had already been a few incidents where other adventurers had come up to me and said and done things like “People like you really piss me off” or “Come lend me your face for a second.” Guess they were trying to knock me down a peg or whatever it was those types of people do in this world. Naturally, I politely declined by making them pass out, but the real solution to it all was to just not even give people like that the time of day.
I guided Yumina over to the receptionist’s desk and helped her through the registration process. Meanwhile, Elze and the others went to go look over the details of some of the currently available requests.
When Yumina’s registration was complete, she and I made our way back to the rest of the group to find Elze holding a Green-level request paper.
“Did you manage to find a reasonable one?”
“Hmm... I guess I just thought this one might make for a decent starting point.” She handed me the paper. It was a monster hunting mission. Let’s see here...
“Defeat five King Apes... What kind of monster were they again?”
“They’re basically just large apes. They tend to move in groups and attack using pack tactics. They’re fairly unintelligent monsters, so tr
aps are highly effective against them. The only thing to watch out for is their sheer brute force attacks. Based on our experiences so far, I believe we can defeat them without a problem.” So they were a type of monster that relied on brute force. Still, for monsters with “King” in their name to form groups struck me as really weird. Such thoughts drifted through my mind as I listened to Linze’s explanation, and I passed the request paper over to Yumina.
“Well? Thoughts?”
“Not a problem. Let’s accept this one.” Our Guild Card was the Adventurer’s Green, whereas Yumina’s was the Beginner’s Black. There was no real need to bring her along on one of our higher level requests, but Yumina insisted, so we simply gave in to her demands.
I recalled that the ranks went in ascending order of Black, Purple, Green, Blue, Red, Silver, and Gold. Basically:
Black - Beginner.
Purple - Adventurer-in-training.
Green - Adventurer.
Blue - Veteran Adventurer.
Red - First-rate Adventurer.
Silver - Elite Adventurer.
Gold - Hero.
And that was what the ranks were like. Naturally, every time you went up a rank, the time it took to ascend to the next one got longer and longer. Incidentally, there were no Gold Rank adventurers in the whole country, apparently. Seemed that Heroes weren’t exactly all that easy to come across.
For the time being, we took the King Ape extermination request to the receptionist and officially accepted it. The location was somewhere to the south, across the Alain River.
Unfortunately, we had never been that far south before, so we couldn’t just use my [Gate] spell to drop us off right where we needed to be like we usually did. Instead, we settled for renting a wagon.
Elze and Linze sat up front in the driver’s seat, while Yae, Yumina, and I sat in the back. By the way, it turned out Yumina was good with horses, too. Even though she was a princess. No, maybe because she was a princess? Was she used to traveling long-distance? It might’ve just been that those who couldn’t handle horses were the minority in this world...
“Hrmm... We’re renting wagons a lot these days. Maybe it’s about time we just went and bought one?”
“There are all kinds of wagons, but even the cheapest would cost a fair bit, they would. Not to mention the need to look after the horses, yes. And we certainly could not leave a wagon parked up at the Silver Moon all the time, not at all.” Yae had a point. There were both merits and demerits to owning a wagon. Hell, I didn’t know how to look after a horse. Someone like that definitely shouldn’t be allowed to keep a horse of his own.
Three hours passed as we chatted idly in the back of the wagon, before we finally crossed the Alain River and arrived at the southern woods.
Now, where were those King Apes? It would’ve been nice if my [Search] magic located them, but if they were within range of that spell, then we’d have noticed them already even without having to cast it. I also had [Long Sense] at my disposal, but that spell worked sort of like creating a double of one’s self which took the shape of heightened senses, meaning I’d be the only one searching through the forest. There was certainly less danger that way, though.
Looking at my smartphone’s map, it was a surprisingly large forest, too. It’d be fairly difficult to find one type of monster in particular in a place that large. Wasn’t exactly like I could use the search function on my phone’s map to find animals or monsters, either...
We had no choice but to search the forest on foot. But just as we were about to do so, Yumina stopped us.
“Sorry, do you think I could use my Summoning magic before we head into the forest?”
“Summoning magic? You’re gonna call on a contracted beast?”
“Yes, that’s right. I think I have just the thing to help track down those King Apes.” Yumina made some space between us and began her incantation.
“Come forth, Dark! I seek the proud beasts wrapped in silver: [Silver Wolf]!” When she finished the incantation, a number of Silver Wolves rose out from the shadows at Yumina’s feet. Five in total. Each was about one meter from head to tail. They wagged their tails happily as they raced in circles around their summoner. Out of them all, one of the wolves in particular was slightly larger than the rest, and it had a cross-shaped mark on its forehead.
“I’ll have these boys look for the monsters. We’re mentally linked so that even if we’re apart I’ll be able to tell immediately once they’ve found the enemy.”
I see... Dogs... no, uh, wolves had a good sense of smell. They’d probably be able to find the monsters we were looking for quite quickly.
“Alright boys, I’m counting on you!” They barked in affirmation at Yumina’s order and dashed off into the forest. So this was Summoning magic. I had wondered back during the Lizardman incident, but could I summon creatures like that, too? I decided to ask Yumina while we made our way through the forest.
“It all comes down to whether or not you can form a contract with the creature you’ve summoned. If you can form a contract, then you’ll be able to summon and control that monster at will. The condition for contracting with those wolves was fairly simple, so I had no problems with them at all. Some of the conditions for contracting a monster include fighting it to show off your own strength or even just answering a question correctly. They can vary quite wildly. But as a rule of thumb, the stronger the monster, the harder it is to keep them under your control.” Right then. So the stronger the summoned beast you wanted, the harsher the conditions for contracting with them were. Though I guess that was just stating the obvious.
I was searching the surroundings as such thoughts rolled through my head when Yumina came to a sudden halt.
“...Looks like one of them found the enemy. Hmm, there are more of them than the request stipulated... Seven in total.”
“Seven, huh...? How do you wanna do it, then? We only really need to beat up five for the request.” Elze beat her gauntlets together with a loud clang.
“We should probably take care of all of them, just to be safe. If even a single one gets away, there’s a chance it could return with backup.” I agreed with Linze’s opinion. There was always the chance that there were more than just seven in the area. We should charge in and take care of them as swiftly as possible.
“Yumina, any chance you’d be able to lure those King Apes over this way somehow?”
“I can, but... do you have a plan?”
“Let’s set up some traps. We can make some pitfalls using Earth magic.” After Yumina and I used our Earth magic to set up a few pitfalls, I hid in the shadow of a tree. Before long we all heard a loud roar, and Yumina’s wolves came rushing past with several large apes charging after them.
They were slightly larger than gorillas and had larger teeth, with pointed ears and red eyes. They chased after the wolves looking utterly ferocious.
The wolves leapt over the hidden pitfalls and perfectly avoided the traps. Not questioning their behavior in the least, the King Apes charged forward with reckless abandon and fell straight into the traps.
“Goh-gruagh?!”
“Now!” Spotting our chance, Yae, Elze and I leapt out from behind the trees. There were three apes caught in the traps. They were buried in up to their chests and struggling to climb their way out.
One of those apes was immediately hit with an arrow to the eye. Must’ve been Yumina. Approaching from the monster’s now-blind spot, Yae sliced open an artery in its neck.
“Come forth, Fire! Whirling Spiral: [Fire Storm]!” The remaining two in the traps were devoured by the firestorm that Linze had called forth. Burned completely black but still alive, Elze and I finished them off.
The other four King Apes came charging at us before we even had time to catch our breath. They came at us while wildly swinging their huge, bulky arms, roaring all the while and causing small tremors in the earth.
“[Slip].”
“Grruaaah?!” The King Ape that I’d aimed for t
umbled to the ground with all of its momentum as soon as my spell hit it. Before it could get back up, a storm of arrows pierced its large frame. As a final blow, Yae put all of her body weight behind one thrust aimed at the beast’s chest, piercing straight through its heart.
“[Boost]!” Elze activated her magic nearby and charged straight at one of the other King Apes, before delivering a series of tremendously heavy blows to its abdomen. Unable to withstand her brutal onslaught, the ape collapsed to the ground and Yumina’s wolves came rushing out to finish the job. Two left.
“Come forth, Lightning! Pure Sparking Javelin: [Thunder Spear]!”
“Come forth, Fire! Crimson Javelin of Flames: [Fire Spear]!” Yumina and Linze’s magic shot forth. Two magical spears glided through the air — one Wind-type, and one Fire-type — and hit the bullseye smack bang in the center of the apes’ chests. Both of the apes dropped to the ground, writhing and spitting out their death rattles as they collapsed.
Whoa, that’s incredible. Looked like Yumina’s magic was at least as powerful as Linze’s. With the two of them together, they were even better than me with the main six magic elements. Apparently my problem was that I didn’t have very good control of my magical output, and as a direct result I had yet to acquire even a single high-tier spell. Offensive magic was particularly difficult for me. Well, at least I was fairly proficient with Light-type magic.
We had wiped out all seven of the King Apes. Our battle was over for the time being. We’d taken care of that more easily than I’d expected.
The five summoned wolves leapt back into Yumina’s shadow and disappeared.
“Umm, how did I do?” What Yumina was trying to ask was, had she held us back in any way during that skirmish. Honestly, it was the complete opposite. She had proven herself a great asset to the party. I had no idea that covering fire could be so effective.
“No problems skill-wise, that’s for sure,” Elze barked out enthusiastically.
“Your magic was also, erm, quite impressive...”
In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 1 Page 17
