by Sakon Kaidou
It involves a face-off between the strongest monster and the kingdom’s strongest Masters. It’s a story from before the time when Ray and his gang had their humble beginnings.
Please look forward to one of the highest-class battles in the history of Infinite Dendrogram.
Six: “Volume 11, The Glory Selector, is coming out in October 2019. Please look forward to it... Oh? We’re not emphasizing the announcement with spacing this time?”
Cat: “The amount of space we can dedicate to the afterword changes sometimes, and we got only three pages for this onnne. Your proper introduction to this corner and the author’s comment took up most of iiit.”
Six: (I see. I guess that is also why it’s just the two of us this time.)
Cat: “Anyway, it’s goodbye for now. Please continue supporting this seriiies.”
Six: “May we meet again. I appear in the next volume, as well, by the way.”
Bonus Short Stories
Embryo Motifs
A certain place in Tenchi
On his first day of college, Winterbaum, AKA Alex Fuyuki, stayed home to go on a quest in Dendro. He traveled alongside two of Hokugen’in’s Elite Four, checking up on a number of villages and talking about various things.
“Tenchi’s Embryos are relatively simple in that they often focus on pure power,” Eashtan commented.
“Really?” asked Winterbaum.
“You could say it’s due to the nature of the people who pick this country. Bigman’s Brocken is especially simple — it just enlarges his items. It’s literally based on the childish idea that size is equal to power, but childish or not, there is truth in that.”
He was describing the fellow member of the Elite Four who had just soloed Gakido and his group.
“I suppose it’s based on the Brocken specter phenomenon,” said Winterbaum.
“Brocken specter” was a name for the shadows dispersed and enlarged by mists or clouds. Their otherworldly appearance earned them a place in folklore all across the world.
“Speaking of Embryos and their motifs, what are your Embryos called?” Winterbaum asked. They went out on the same quest, yet he still didn’t know that much.
“Try guessing,” said Eashtan.
“Umm... your Embryo spawns ants, so... Myrmecoleon? Myrmidon, maybe?”
Those were the only two ant-related myths that Winterbaum could think of.
“You were close with the second one,” said Eashtan. “My Embryo is ‘Zeus.’”
The unexpectedly major name caught Winterbaum off-guard. “Ehhh? Oh, wait... Zeus was the one who made the Myrmidons.”
Greek myth had several theories for their origin, and one of them was that they were a warrior tribe created when Zeus transformed some ants into humans.
“That’s a very famous name,” he added.
“Your Horus is impressive, as well,” Eashtan replied. “Hm... you should keep in mind that famous motifs with many legends to their name can be used on multiple Embryos.”
“Oh, so the names aren’t exclusive?”
“Embryos are unlimited, while motifs aren’t. My Zeus is based on a smaller myth, but of course there are Zeuses that are all about just throwing lightning.”
“...I wonder if there are Zeuses with no control over their private parts,” Winterbaum said wryly.
Zeus was mainly associated with lightning or his strangely vast number of children. Even the Myrmidon myth had a version where he transformed into an ant and had many offspring.
“Perhaps there are,” said Eashtan. “Even Horus has many other forms. It’s just how it is.”
I wonder if I’ll ever meet another Horus user, Winterbaum thought before continuing the conversation. “By the way, what’s Probe’s Embryo?”
“I don’t know,” Eashtan replied without hesitation.
“Eh?” Winterbaum was confused that Eashtan wouldn’t know something so fundamental about his long-time companion.
“Think about it. Do you really believe she would say it in a way we can understand?”
“Corporate secret. Firm refusal. No questioning.” Probe made it very clear that she would not talk. You could see it as a sign that she was a careful woman who wouldn’t reveal her hand, but...
Well, I think I know what Mr. Eashtan means, Winterbaum thought.
Probe spoke in sentences of just two words, so if her Embryo’s name was one or more than two words long, she couldn’t say it even if she wasn’t secretive about it. It made him realize just how many Embryo motifs and weirdo Masters Dendro had to offer.
The End
The Triangle of Bygone Days
A certain day of a certain month
This happened back when Triangle of Wisdom was just another crafting clan among many others in Dryfe. Franklin, a Master with an Embryo in its fourth form, was sitting in a wooden shack attached to a shabby warehouse incomparable to the headquarters he would eventually have. The leader and originator of this clan, which he had started with the idea to create a humanoid robot, was silently facing the documents on his desk and reading them with a bitter expression.
“Fran, ya heeeere?” AR-I-CA, the clan member who had been with Franklin since the start, opened the creaking door and went inside... but as she did so, the door came off the hinges and became nothing more than a board with handles on it. “Whoops. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You can expect that sort of thing from this cheap shack,” Franklin replied. He didn’t sound like the mad scientist most people knew him as — he was actually being “herself.” The reason for this was because “she” was alone with AR-I-CA, one of the few people she could be completely honest with.
“Why not make this place a bit better?” AR-I-CA asked.
This place had been built by the ToW’s clan members, but the material was some of the cheapest possible. There was no security here to speak of; instead, any valuables were in their inventories at all times and the clan barely had anything worth stealing, anyway, so this shack was only used for office work.
“If I had funds I could spare for our living environment, I’d fund our prototypes instead. That’s what Holheim would want, too,” said Franklin.
“Ahahah. Yeah, he really would.” AR-I-CA laughed as she remembered the exhausted face of the clan’s sub-leader who doubled as the accountant. It always made him look like an overworked-yet-skilled secretary.
Franklin cracked a wry grin, too.
“So, what’s that?” AR-I-CA asked as she pointed at the documents Franklin was holding.
“Most of these are logs concerning the prototype we lost yesterday,” Franklin replied with a bitter expression.
“Ohhh...”
“Prototype” could only refer to the humanoid Magingear their clan was trying to create. It didn’t have a proper name yet — it wasn’t even complete.
“That’s a whole fifty we’ve lost...” Franklin sighed.
Thanks to the existence of crafting skills, creating parts and building the robots didn’t take a lot of time. Even so, designing and creating fifty robots was time-consuming, and they hadn’t had a single success yet.
“It’s a nice number, but it looks like there’re still lots of problems,” said AR-I-CA.
“In the real world, the main problem behind building humanoid robots is power,” Franklin explained. “Here, though, that’s solved by the mystery voodoo we call ‘magic,’ which can be converted into all sorts of energy. But using it complicates the way the energy flows, which causes all these self-destructions.”
They were using the already-existing powered suit Magingears as a reference to create prototypes that were basically bigger versions of those, but that almost always caused some circuits to overflow or become underpowered, making it impossible for the mech to even move.
“Maybe I should refer to the tanks instead?” Franklin added. “I’d whip up a simple mechanism where you just make the wheels spin and... but that would come at the cost of combat ability...”
�
�Hey, don’t worry about it alone, okay?” AR-I-CA said as she hugged Franklin’s head from behind.
“...What are you doing?”
“Breast cushion. Happy?”
“No. How many times do I have to tell you that I’m a woman in real life?”
In fact, your size kinda irritates me, Franklin added in thought.
“Oh. Well, it calmed you down, didn’t it?”
“Well... I guess.”
The warmth of another human being did have a calming effect.
“Aroused?”
“No.”
“Oh, okay. Anyway, this clan’s got lots of smarties, so I’m sure you’ll solve the problem if you just talk to them!”
“That’s not a good idea.”
There was the saying “Two heads are better than one,” and this clan was built with the idea of research and development using the combined knowledge and brainpower of many individuals. However, Franklin was controlling and directing the development to prevent a “Too many cooks spoil the broth” situation. With so many hobbyists here, it was obvious that letting everyone do what they wanted would make the project lose structure and make completion that much more distant.
“There’s the risk of others trying to take charge or having disputes over minor things. I really can’t ask for their opinions,” Franklin explained.
Another problem with being a group of hobbyists was that people were likely to become upset or try to take matters into their own hands when their ideas went unused. Franklin wanted to provide them with an environment where everyone could develop what they wanted, but for that, they had to complete the very first unit, and that problem troubled him to no end.
“I get it now,” said AR-I-CA. “By the way, you said that ‘most of these’ are logs. What else is there?”
Franklin still had a wry grin on his face, but a select few would be able to tell that the question made him a bit depressed. “Letters of resignation...”
“Ohh? Again?”
“Blitz and Waterloo left. That’s another two of our fighters gone. They even called me a parasite here. Not that I can argue. I’ve wasted a lot of our money.”
It was impossible to make something from nothing. You always needed money to create something, and building robots was a costly task even here in Infinite Dendrogram.
The ToW raised funds by either selling products crafted by Holheim and the other crafters, or by trading in quest rewards or monster loot gathered by the fighters. Both sides played a part, but there was a big difference in the way they saw things. The fighters could only participate in mech development by being test pilots or mock battle targets, but the development hadn’t even progressed to that point yet. There were even cases of test pilots getting the death penalty due to the robots exploding. From the fighters’ perspective, the crafters were just burning the money they gathered, which was leading many to quit. Some crafters also left due to the lack of prospects.
Franklin silently pondered just how bleak the outlook was. Holheim was doing his best, but despite his efforts, people were leaving, and their funds were dwindling. Whether they would even achieve their goal was an open question, and it worried Franklin to no end.
She hid it with the personality she played, but her thoughts were always on the negative side.
“It’s fine! Don’t worry, Fran!” said AR-I-CA, puffing her chest.
“I can see it! It’ll go great!” she continued as she pointed at her artificial eye, which was her Embryo.
“Your Embryo can’t see that far, can it?” Franklin retorted.
AR-I-CA’s Cassandra could see the future, but it was limited to near-immediate events, and only to dangers directed at her, so there was no way she could see their clan succeeding in what they were trying to do.
“Yep! That’s why I’m seeing it with my normal eyes! I believe in you and everyone else in the clan! I can see our bright future!”
“I’m... not sure if I appreciate those words.”
Baseless confidence and optimistic observations were an enemy to all tech developers. Still...
“But if you trust me that much... it makes me want to meet your expectations,” Franklin said at last.
She felt like she could keep on trying. AR-I-CA was the only person she could show weakness to, and the only person who brought her back on her feet when she was close to breaking. With AR-I-CA supporting her mental state and Holheim supporting her environment, she was a balanced triangle. Because of this, she felt like could keep on trying — keep moving forward.
“All right. I guess I’ll go, then. Getting it all back on track once this is done is gonna be a pain in the ass, though.” Franklin stood up, log in hand, to go consult the other members about the problems with the prototype and take their ideas for the development direction.
AR-I-CA watched her best friend off with a smile on her face.
◇◆
A month of such difficult days later, the Triangle of Wisdom completed the first Marshall II.
A while after that, AR-I-CA left the clan.
Her reason for doing that was a mystery to all but Franklin and AR-I-CA herself, but the influence it had on Franklin must’ve been immense.
The End
The Relationship Between AAA and BBB
Prism Rider, Ray Starling
“I must say, the way you change is quite something,” Azurite commented. “The impression you give off is like night and day.”
“‘Change’?” B3 repeated. “Whatever do you mean?”
We were on the way back to Altea. Sitting in the coachman’s seat, Azurite and B3 were talking about something. Knowing the peculiar relationship between them, I was kinda worried.
“I am impressed that that armor could contract this much. Does it use an anthropomorphization spell?” asked Azurite.
“Let me to inform you that this is my default apparel. Not the armor,” B3 replied.
“That was a joke. I understand that much.”
So Azurite was just messing with her.
“Also, I can’t say I expected you to know how I appear in my armor,” B3 added.
“Oh, I do. I was investigating you to decide whether I should put you on the wanted list, after all,” Azurite explained. “Honestly, though, my impression of you has changed. You are far more refined than I thought.”
“Well, thank you very much, but... did you think I was brutish or something?” B3 spoke as if to argue against that point.
Azurite looked at her in confusion. “Aren’t you the one who harassed a low-level Master? Does the sentence ‘Kyah ha ha! Come on! Damage me for at least 1 HP and I’ll let ya go!’ ring a bell?”
Oh, I’m pretty sure I saw that, too, I thought. Marie showed it to me. There was no sound in what she showed me, though. Man, that’s a villain-y phrase.
“Cough...!” B3 made a sound like she choked on her own blood. “H-How do you know that...?”
“I just said I investigated you. That includes getting testimonies from your victims.”
This was probably like having someone else bring up something cringy you did in high school.
“I guess you could say that hiding my face makes my mind excited,” B3 admitted, looking embarrassed.
B3 had mentioned something about having to be “turned on” in some way to switch. So it was all about hiding her face, huh? Going by how she’d sounded back in Torne, the helmet even had some sort of voice-modifying device to fit the change.
“I see. I wear a mask myself, so I do understand you a bit,” said Azurite.
“Well, but... isn’t it the other way around for you?”
“What do you mean?” Azurite asked.
B3 paused for a second before saying, “Without a mask on, sword in hand, you struck a pose and said, ‘Are you prepared?’”
“Cough...!” Now I heard Azurite choke.
Oh, that’s from the battle against the crab. I saw a recording of it online, and I guess B3 did, too.
“How do y
ou know that...? An impressive counterattack, though, I will give you that much,” Azurite admitted.
“I didn’t intend it that way.”
“My Truth Discernment just flared up a bit. But... very well. Let us not have conversations in this vein again.”
“Understood.”
Due to her prior offense, Azurite was treating B3 with a bit of harshness and a lot of sarcasm, while B3, though generally on the receiving end, occasionally went in for counterattacks.
Why do they insist on repeating these self-destructive exchanges? I wondered.
“I have a feeling that you are an indirect cause,” said Nemesis telepathically.
W h y ?
“Well, it is nothing I should say. More importantly, you should stop letting them distract you and return to your coachman duties.”
Nemesis had a point, so I focused on Silver’s reins.
The two ladies inside continued their exchanges until we arrived at Altea.
The End
Sisters
Bow Hunter, Gerbera
A depressing rain was falling upon the gaol.
Our clan leader, Sechs, had left to get coffee beans for the café, leaving me alone with April.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, you had to get coffee beans even here.
The gaol had no proper restaurants or vendor tians, but there were some vending machine-like shops. Was that where he was going?
The alternative was that he would farm coffee beans in a dungeon, but I found it hard to believe that.
Oh, speaking of dungeons...
“Hey, April, can I ask you something?” I called out to the robot.
“What-is-it?” she replied in monotone.
“The leader picked you up in a dungeon, right?” I asked, remembering him saying something about a treasure chest.
“Af-fir-ma-tive. This-u-nit-was-dis-a-bled-du-ring-a-bat-tle-at-the-end-of-the-pre-an-cient-civ-i-li-za-tion. The-ow-ner-ship-in-for-ma-tion-was-re-set, as-well. Af-ter-re-ac-ti-va-ting, I-re-gis-tered-the-cur-rent-own-er-as-my-ow-ner.”
