Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 3

by Ichirou Sakaki

  “...I can’t believe someone like you is a god,” Arlen muttered. “You could at least pay a little mind to how you behave.”

  “How I behave?” Yukinari asked, raising his eyebrows. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean exactly what I said! You are hopeless!”

  “Hey, Lansdowne...” The knights behind him said his name with a touch of panic, but he ignored them.

  “These people may follow outrageous frontier superstitions, but you are the object of their worship! If you’re going to be a god, then act like one! Do you not even understand that?!”

  “‘Act like one’...?”

  The definition of what a “god” was was very vague. It was simply a catchall term people used for entities more powerful than they were, so what qualified as a “god” could vary from person to person.

  The True Church of Harris, to which Arlen and the other knights belonged, was a monotheistic faith, but their God was simply something they worshipped; there was no actual person who claimed to embody the deity. In that sense, the Harris Church was very similar to the religions Yukinari was familiar with.

  In contrast, this world was also home to erdgods and demigods, deities that could be seen with the naked eye. There were exceptions, of course, but most of them were wild animals that had lived a long time and stored up a great deal of spiritual power. Their physical forms as well as their personalities were diverse, and their numbers were constantly fluctuating. A wild animal might “graduate” to being a god, while other divinities might die or fade away for any number of reasons. If it had to be categorized, it was in essence a kind of polytheism.

  All this only went to show the immense variety in what a “god” might be. Not that Yukinari thought there were any rules saying it had to be one thing or another.

  “A god needs dignity!” Arlen said, clenching his fist to emphasize his point.

  “I guess your god does,” Yukinari said without hostility, “but I’m a pretty different kind of deity...”

  “As dirty as I feel comparing the two, our true faith and your savage one are still both religions! It’s precisely the ultimate dignity that makes something worth worshiping!”

  “Uh... huh.”

  “It’s awe-inspiring because it’s set apart. And it’s respected because it’s awe-inspiring. It uses its power to overwhelm, control, and finally rule all around it! That is how a god should act. And look at you. Chatting with the peasantry like you’re best friends. Don’t do that! Your behavior only dilutes the value of your power!”

  There was a moment of awkward silence. Yukinari couldn’t understand why this was such a big deal to Arlen. They hadn’t been on the best of terms to begin with, obviously, but he had expected that Arlen, like the other two knights, would avoid saying anything that might upset him. But apparently, Arlen found Yukinari’s behavior so infuriating that he ignored the risk to life and limb and set aside any thought of self-preservation. Perhaps he could do this exactly because Yukinari, in Arlen’s own words, was lacking in the fearsome dignity of a god.

  On the other hand, there was some sense to what Arlen was saying. The thought came upon Yukinari suddenly. As we mentioned, he had stopped using polite or formal language with the elderly villagers or anyone else who might normally warrant it. He had accepted the role of god, even if only temporarily, and it was possible things would go more smoothly if he were more careful to act the part.

  But still...

  Arlen was still ranting. “After all this you’re—”

  “...Shut up.”

  It was not Yukinari, but Dasa who had spoken. She was glaring at Arlen from behind her glasses.

  Instantly, the two knights behind Arlen jumped forward and restrained him.

  “Very sorry,” one of them said.

  “We keep telling him,” the other added.

  They both bowed their heads and hurried past Yukinari’s party, dragging Arlen—who didn’t actually seem to be finished speaking yet—with them. It was then that Yukinari saw that one of the knights’ suits of armor had a hole in it—specifically, at the waist.

  A bullet hole.

  He must be one of the missionaries Dasa had shot when they first came to Friedland. In other words, he’d had the ultimate first-hand experience of just how powerful the .44 Magnum rounds fired by Dasa’s Red Chili and Yukinari’s Durandall were—how they could punch through armor.

  Apparently, the knight didn’t want to incur Dasa’s wrath again.

  “You might be more godlike than me, Dasa,” Yukinari said thoughtfully.

  Dasa gave him a questioning look.

  “Never mind. Let’s hurry.” Yukinari smiled and gave Dasa a little push on the back, and they were walking again.

  ●

  The young woman delivered her verdict on the state of Friedland:

  “Everything’s going well.”

  Her rich, golden hair shone in the light that poured in through the window. She was very pretty.

  “Crops are growing in the new fields as expected, and there haven’t been any reported sightings of demigods or xenobeasts. If things keep going like this, we can expect a twenty or thirty percent increase in the harvest.”

  It wasn’t just her symmetrical features. She spoke without verbal clutter, and her facial expressions were clarity itself. She was obviously an intellectual, and her every movement radiated refinement. That she was not only well-bred but intelligent would have been obvious after only a short conversation. On top of all this, the force of her personality was evident in her emerald eyes.

  In some sense, all of this was only natural. She came from such a bloodline and held such an office that in our own world, she might well have been a princess.

  This was Fiona Schillings, the daughter of Friedland’s mayor and the town’s current acting leader.

  In many cases, the “mayors” of these remote regions were the kings or aristocrats of the small nations that had existed in the past, simply given a new title. The Schillings family had administered Friedland for generations without any particular objection from the villagers, and so they continued as mayors.

  With her father’s health failing, leaving him bedridden, it was now Fiona who had practical responsibility for nearly every aspect of town life.

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” said Yukinari, seated directly across from her. Dasa sat to his left and Ulrike to his right, and Berta was there, too. The group of them had come into town to discuss a number of issues with Deputy Mayor Fiona.

  “Just twenty or thirty percent, though?” Yukinari said. “I wasn’t expecting it to double or anything, but I thought it might be a little more than that.” He grinned ruefully.

  Irrigation ditches had been dug. Fertilizer had been put down. Fields had been added. Yukinari and the Friedlanders had put in a good deal of labor to alter the environment, but it wasn’t clear yet whether they would see a corresponding increase in the harvest. The number of villagers—the number of people who could do farm work—was unchanged, so maybe they just didn’t have enough manpower.

  “Logic is as logic does,” Fiona said, not seeming very bothered. If anything, her sly smile suggested how important that twenty or thirty percent was. “There are a lot of things we won’t know for sure until we try them. But even a ten percent increase in the harvest would be big.”

  “Well, that makes me feel a little better,” Yukinari said with a shrug.

  As we’ve said, he may have taken on the duties of guarding the town in place of the erdgod, but he lacked the ability to fulfill the deity’s other role—making the land abundant. He had no way of assuring the villagers a particular result as the prior erdgod had under the system of living sacrifice.

  As a result of saving one person—Berta—from the jaws of a man-eating deity, dozens or hundreds of people might die of starvation. If that happened—well, the math just didn’t work out.

  “Next is trade,” Fiona said, shooting a glance at Ulrike. “I’m happy to say
that the people of Rostruch showed an interest in several of the items we sent them. In exchange, they’re willing to give us food, as well as seeds and sprouts that we can plant in our tilled fields.”

  “More good news. Fields weren’t going to do us any good if we didn’t have anything to plant in them.”

  A diversity of crops is important from both a nutritional and a disaster-prevention standpoint. The nutrients contained in each kind of crop are subtly different, and while some plants stand up to the cold well, others endure strong sunlight easily. Introducing other crops in addition to the ones the Friedlanders had traditionally raised would help address both of these concerns.

  The fields had been expanded not just to better the harvest, but also so there would be some room to experiment with new products.

  Most of the townspeople didn’t grasp the details, but Fiona, who had been educated in the capital, was quick to pick up on what Yukinari had in mind. She had good intuition and learned readily. She was also good at applying her knowledge. One reason Yukinari was able to put these ideas to the test was because she was there to help him.

  “The trade routes seem to be problem-free, too,” she said. “Lord Yggdra is keeping xenobeasts and demigods at bay, and the missionary knights appear to be taking their work very seriously.”

  “Yeah, I got the same impression,” Yukinari said, thinking back to his encounter with Arlen and the other knights.

  He had decided to ask the missionary knights to act as bodyguards for trade with Rostruch, as well as to patrol the farming areas. True, they had come to the area as religious invaders and he couldn’t put all his trust in them yet, but this was at least a little better than taking away their weapons and putting them in chains like slaves. They were knights, and battle was their business. They were ideal candidates for patrol and guard work.

  “Neither has there been any concern with the familiars.” This came from Ulrike. She herself was a sort of terminal—that is, a familiar—for Yggdra, and the fact that she could speak and act here, so far from Rostruch, was because there was a chain of “intermediary” familiars placed at regular intervals along the trade route.

  These familiars not only acted as a relay between Yggdra and Ulrike, but also helped protect trade. They gave off Yggdra’s aura, essentially marking the route as part of the erdgod’s territory and discouraging demigods and xenobeasts from getting too close.

  “We intend to create a shrine for the other familiars as soon as possible,” Fiona said.

  “Mm,” Ulrike replied.

  Most of the intermediary familiars were currently living outdoors. Yggdra was a plant, so the elements didn’t seem to bother her familiars much, but it also wasn’t very polite to keep a god’s messengers living in the rough. Fiona and the townspeople had suggested a series of simple shrines that would give the familiars somewhere to live as well as serving to mark out the trade route.

  A thought came unbidden into Yukinari’s mind: It’s a lot like those Jizo statues that live in roadside shrines in Japan.

  In Yukinari’s previous world, Japan, there had been a folk religious entity known as Dosojin, “the god of roads and ancestors.” Sometimes known as “the roadside god,” he protected borders, made sure families flourished, and kept travelers safe. “Jizo” was the Japanese name of the bodhisattva Kshitigarbha, from Buddhism, but he had merged with the Dosojin cult, and now he could be found in small shrines that dotted the roadways.

  “What is it?” Ulrike looked at him quizzically. Yukinari realized he must have been smiling.

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just a little bit like this deity from my homeland.”

  “Ah. Now that is most interesting,” Ulrike said, leaning in.

  “Eh, let’s save it for another time.” He changed the subject. “You know, we ran into Arlen on the way here.”

  “And I suppose he was perfectly polite to you,” Fiona said with a grim smile.

  Arlen and Fiona happened to know each other. They had been classmates at the academy in the capital, and she had never known him to hold back from self-important, extreme pronouncements.

  “Oh, uh, as polite as ever,” Yukinari said evasively, glancing at Dasa. Stay quiet, the look seemed to say. Arlen had been aggressive, yes, but it wasn’t Yukinari’s style to report the knight’s every minor transgression to Fiona. In fact, things would probably be worse if he didn’t treat it as water under the bridge. If Yukinari told Fiona what had happened, she would feel obligated to punish Arlen, and then the relationship between the townspeople and the knights, which seemed to be getting better ever so slowly, would crumble again. He wanted to avoid that.

  “So it looks like we’ve started to lay a foundation,” Yukinari said, his arms crossed. “The next question is what we build on it. And I have an idea.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Just a little something I’d like to try on some of the cultivated fields. I wanted to get your approval.”

  “You don’t need that. If you want to do something, Yukinari, none of us have any right to stop you. What is it you want to try?”

  “I want to whip up something from my knowledge. Use it to cover the farmland.”

  “Cover it...? To retain heat?” Fiona raised an eyebrow. She seemed to be running a number of possible scenarios through her mind. “With all due respect, Yukinari, if you cover the ground, there won’t be enough light for the crops to grow, will there?”

  Friedland did have a tradition of periodically using pieces of cloth or rush mats to cover the fields in order to preserve warmth or moisture, but Yukinari was thinking of something fundamentally different.

  “You would be right, if we were talking about cloth or a wood board or something.” Yukinari pointed to Dasa’s glasses, the spectacles that sat across her face. “But I’m talking about glass. I’ll make a lot of glass and build a greenhouse with it.”

  “A greenhouse...? Oh, you know, I saw one of those in the capital. They were using it to grow flowers from the south. You mean like that?”

  “Same idea, sure.”

  Trade and commerce brought many things to the capital. Among them were plants and animals from all over, brought in to satisfy the curiosity and amusement of the nobles. But that made them nothing more than a pastime for the rich, and the greenhouse was part of that.

  “But greenhouses for flowers, they’re pretty small, right? Maybe just the size of one room?”

  “Yes...” Fiona nodded, a fresh look of surprise on her face. “Surely you don’t mean to make one big enough to enclose an entire field?”

  “I sure do. And it’s glass, so light can still get in.” He laughed.

  Dasa, who had been silent until that moment, suddenly spoke. “A greenhouse made of... glass. It can allow enough light in for the plants to thrive, but because it’s a walled structure, it may... also restrict the flow of air. Opening and... closing a door can keep the temperature... and humidity at the levels necessary for cultivation.”

  “You’re saying...”

  “Of course, it can also keep... away bugs.”

  “It can do that?” Even Fiona didn’t seem to have thought of this. A structure that could keep away harmful insects would require a fair degree of isolation. To the extent Fiona hadn’t imagined a greenhouse large enough for an entire field, she certainly hadn’t imagined one enclosed enough to keep out bugs.

  This was where Dasa’s time as the assistant to an alchemist came in handy. She was quite familiar with airtight vessels and glass experimental devices designed to remain bacteria-free. She presumably saw this as the same thing on a larger scale.

  As long as Yukinari produced the pieces, there would be no concern about making them to the necessary tolerances. From the parts of a gun to an artificial lens for a human eye, as long as he knew how to build something, he could make it correct down to the micron.

  “With a greenhouse, we can keep growing things even when it’s cold out. We still have to be careful not to exhaust the soil, but we
should be able to grow crops throughout the year, regardless of the season, and that’s got to mean better harvests.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Fiona said, blinking. “It just never occurred to me to enclose an entire field in glass.”

  In this world, glass, especially if it was very translucent, was a valuable material. Obtaining much of it would normally require a good deal of money. No one would have thought to use such a rare resource just to build a house around a field.

  “Of course, glass alone isn’t strong enough. We’ll need pillars and a framework to hold everything up.”

  Glass is heavy. Of course, a support made from a large tree trunk might well do the job, but in order to maximize the surface area that would receive light, it would be better to make the frame out of something like steel.

  “I’ll let you take care of the materials, then,” Fiona said. “But I’ll handle the workforce. If you don’t have enough people, just let me know.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks.”

  “I know I keep saying this,” Fiona said with a wry grin. “But all you really have to do is give orders, Yukinari. You don’t have to thank us for anything. You’re our god.”

  Yukinari found himself lost for words. In his view, all of this farming and trade was a way of atoning for showing up in Friedland, killing their erdgod, and single-handedly dismantling their religion before he really knew anything about it. He didn’t regret saving Berta, but he felt he had to take responsibility for the results of his actions. So he didn’t, in fact, see himself as being in a position to give orders through Fiona to the villagers. He thought of himself as making a request or asking for help.

  I guess this is exactly the sort of thing that would piss Arlen off, he thought. If a god didn’t act authoritatively—even arrogantly—it might sow doubt among his followers. As long as he was going to play the part of a god, perhaps he would have to distance himself from his personal feelings about it.