“‘Sup. Yeah. Uh-huh... Yup. Yup... What?!”
Hold on a goddamn second. I know I beat the old cyborg guy there a while ago, but...
What the hell do you mean by “the Magitechnocracy of Isengard is falling apart?!”
◇ ◇ ◇
The Reverse World, Magitechnocracy of Isengard.
A land once governed by the fearsome and insane witch-king.
He was an insane old man, who also happened to be a cyborg. He revived an ancient weapon and attempted to ravage his own nation with it before I put a stop to it.
I wasn’t interested in anything to do with Isengard after all of that, so I didn’t bother checking in on them after the witch-king died.
But apparently, the country was now falling apart at the seams... I had no idea what had happened. Apparently it had all begun two weeks before my phone call, when golden snow started falling in different parts of the country.
The snow subsided after a short amount of time, and nobody thought anything of it. But then a few days later, people started getting sick. They burned up, got all feverish... Their insides reportedly felt like they were twisting around... And then they died. The population was wracked with fear and paranoia due to the sudden outbreak of this terrifying disease. New carriers kept appearing everywhere, and nobody could identify what was going on.
But that was only the beginning of the end for them.
It was reported by those attempting to bury the dead, that strange golden flowers had been sprouting from the bodies of the infected.
And, with time, those corpses rose back up and started attacking the living.
It happened everywhere. Small towns, bustling cities... It was said that Zombies now walked the streets of northern Isengard, shambling around with golden flowers growing from their bodies.
This plague hadn’t affected the entire country, but had mostly wiped out the northern territories.
I heard the name of the place this had originally broken out, and my blood ran cold... It was the town of Zeen.
Months back, a group of mutated Phrase had appeared near that town. I’d taken care of them, but I recalled the Ostrich-like enemy pecking at the ground over and over before it died.
It was possible that the strange behavior had something to do with all of this now.
I brought Yumina, Sakura, and Sue with me to the other world. We warped directly to the outskirts of Zeen.
“Wh-What the hell?!” I stared in horror as I looked at a massive golden tree sprawled out before me. That wasn’t there last time.
It only resembled a plant on a superficial level. It was over a hundred meters tall and had a clear metallic sheen to it. Even its leaves looked like sheets of gold.
It was enormous. There were various trees back on Earth that could rival this one in size, but I’d still never seen anything like it before.
It was hard to look at, too. The gold color meant it was constantly reflecting light. It also looked like a bizarre mismatch of various tree species. Parts of it looked like a pine tree, parts of it resembled a cypress tree, while other parts of it kind of looked like a rosebush and a bamboo grove. This giant tree was a freakish amalgamation of metallic pieces that resembled different plants.
“Touya... What is this?”
“It’s probably the same species as the mutants...” I’d convinced myself, there and then. The ostrich had likely planted this deep in the ground as a last-ditch effort before it died.
“Doesn’t that make this thing a mutant too...?” Sue posed a reasonable question.
I’d never seen a plant-based Phrase before, but it looked just like a mutant Phrase in terms of composition. It stood to reason that if there were Phrase plants out there, then they could also be corrupted and mutated in the same way.
“...Then that snow they reported probably wasn’t snow at all. It was probably spores from this tree, spreading all over Isengard.”
“...Like a mushroom...?” Sakura frowned. She wasn’t a huge fan of mushrooms. But I was of the opinion you needed them in your diet to grow big and strong. That one mustached plumber certainly knew the benefits of mushrooms.
“I guess so, yeah. I guess anyone who breathed in the spores ended up becoming those Zombies.”
Although it was probably more accurate to say that they became Phrase mutants, rather than Zombies.
“The mutants devour souls, remember? That’s probably why not everyone was affected. The ones who did succumb were probably people with deeper negative emotions.”
According to Silhouette, most of the victims were adults. That made sense, since older people typically had more stresses, prejudices, and reservations weighing on them.
That being said, there were still some children who were affected. Child Zombies had been reported in slum areas. It made sense that things like this would change based on the environment.
Zeen was basically done for. A full third of their population had been zombified, another third had been killed, and the last third had fled.
The Zombies weren’t exactly strong on their own. Combat-oriented Gollems were more than a match for them. But if their numbers swelled too much, they were overwhelming.
The afflicted people of Zeen moved towards other towns and started attacking them as well. It’s the kind of thing you’d see in a cheesy B-movie, but sadly this was all too real for the citizens.
“We gotta do something about this, Touya! Let’s get rid of this dumb old tree!”
Sue was right. We needed to uproot this thing to prevent it from causing any more harm. The only thing I wondered was where its core would be...
“I guess it could be underground or something... Hm...?” I saw something up at the top of the tree. Just for a split-second, I caught a glimpse of a blood-red object high up in the branches.
“[Long Sense].”
I projected my senses to get a closer look. About eighty meters up the tree, there was a blood-red Phrase core surrounded by thorny, golden branches.
That confirmed the tree’s status as a mutant Phrase, at least.
I was glad I could see the core so clearly, but it was also unreasonably large... It was about four meters in diameter. If this tree was a Phrase, then it was easily an Upper Construct.
Sakura and Sue noticed the core as well. It was a bit hard to see from the ground, but the color contrast made it stand out.
“...Should we break it...?”
“Yeah!”
Almost as if it had heard Sue’s affirmation to destroy it, the tree quivered. Several thorned branches shot out from underfoot and began lashing at us.
I barely had time to react before the vines were upon us, attempting to slice us up from every direction.
“[Teleport]!”
I warped myself and the three girls away from the tree. We landed at a spot several hundred meters away.
We looked at the tree in the distance, more and more thorny vines were rising from the ground and wildly lashing out. That was almost a very messy, dangerous situation...
It made sense that it’d have a defensive function, given that it was stationary. I just didn’t expect the attack to come from underground. I was thinking it’d have razor leaves that it could fire at us, or maybe the ability to grow spiky fruit to drop on us...
The wall of thorns was getting denser by the minute. Even if we were in Frame Gears we’d have a hard time getting through without being damaged. Which meant there was only one thing to be done.
“Yumina, you got this?”
“Yes, I can handle this with relative ease.” Yumina held out her engagement ring, which was enchanted with [Storage], and her Frame Gear emerged from it on the spot.
Brunnhilde, her personal silver Frame Gear. It specialized in long-range attacks.
Yumina clambered into Brunnhilde’s cockpit, brandished the sniper rifle that was on its back, and aimed straight ahead for the tree.
“One shot, one kill...”
Brunnhilde’s hefty finger
pulled down on the trigger, sending the crystal bullet in a straight beeline for the tree’s core.
The bullet found its mark easily, obliterating the golden tree’s blood-red core in a second. Just in case that wasn’t enough, the [Explosion] enchantment on the round went off, burning the fragments to ash.
The giant tree imploded like a demolished building, crumbling to the ground with a great crash.
The golden remains eventually began to liquefy, turning into blackish goo before dissolving entirely. It was an unpleasant sight as ever...
“...Will it be safe now...?”
“For the time being, I guess.”
I shrugged at Sakura. It ended up being a lot easier than I thought it would be.
That would at least put a stop to any new afflicted people in Isengard. Now all I had to do was handle the ones that were still active and dangerous.
I pulled up the map and searched for the Zombies. Just as I’d assumed, there were tons of them all over the northern area of Isengard.
I wondered how to deal with it. The range was a bit too broad for my area-of-effect spells, and they had the Phrase trait of being able to absorb magic anyway.
[Meteor Rain] was an option, but that attack was so indiscriminate that it’d obliterate everything around the Zombies too.
“Hm...?”
As I pondered my options, I noticed that the Zombie pins on the map were starting to vanish. Wait, what? The infected people are vanishing?
“What’s this supposed to mean?”
“...Maybe they’re going down because we took out the tree...”
Sue and Sakura looked at each other. That seemed like the most reasonable assumption, but it seemed like a pretty convenient turn of events...
Yumina hopped down from Brunnhilde and looked at the map before offering her own opinion.
“It’s possible that the giant tree was controlling the infected people... Don’t you think?”
That did make a lot of sense. It would be similar to the Soldats, with the giant tree operating as a transmitter.
That would make the flowers that sprouted out of their bodies the receivers. My [Search] spell no longer recognized them as mutant Phrase, so they’d probably ended up dissolving just like the tree did.
“We should go see Silhouette. She might have more info on this.”
I spoke up my plan, but Yumina wrinkled her nose in response. I wondered what was up.
“...I’m not so sure about going there... We do have Sue with us, after all.”
Ah... I could understand Yumina’s apprehension toward taking a twelve-year-old into a brothel... But she and Lu were pretty young too!
“Huh? How come I can’t come?” Sue suddenly spoke up.
Sue, no. Stop right there. I’m not going to have to explain sex work to you. That’s not my job. Then again, if I give a vague answer that’s just gonna be even more confusing...
Fiancee or not, I couldn’t bring myself to say, “A brothel is a place where people pay to do sexual things with other people.” Sue was a younger girl, that would just come off as weird! That being said, I was sure she had some degree of sexual knowledge thanks to the teachings of the perverted doctor and her freaky maid...
“F-For now, I’ll go contact Silhouette. Yumina, Sakura, you guys can explain it to Sue! See ya!”
“What?!”
“...That’s unfair, Grand Duke...”
I ignored my own irresponsibility as I turned around and pulled my phone up to my ear.
After the call, we headed to the commercial city found in the northern part of the Strain Kingdom. The city was home to Silhouette’s brothel, which was also the headquarters of the Black Cats intelligence agency.
We sat at an open cafe in the corner of the city, waiting for our contact to arrive.
As it happened, she arrived before our tea did.
“Sorry to keep you guys waiting.”
“It’s all good. We appreciate you coming.”
The bewitching, smiling beauty before us was none other than the leader of the Black Cats. She was Silhouette Lily, one of my co-operators in the Reverse World.
Sue was with us, so we didn’t want the first meeting to be at the brothel... I felt bad for dragging Silhouette all the way out here just because of that.
Silhouette sat down with us and ordered a drink from the waiter. She seemed pretty calm, but the hulking, black-clad men who came with her were freaking everyone else out!
“First, I believe I owe you my thanks. The incident in Isengard seems to mostly be over. Was that your work?”
“Ah... So the infected actually did vanish?”
“The infected? Oh, you mean those flowered corpses? Yes, they did. About an hour ago they melted into nothingness, all at once.”
I was glad to hear that. I shared the information about the giant tree with Silhouette and wrapped up my business with her.
“Mm... I feel a little guilty, then. If we’d only noticed that tree sooner...”
“The sensor tablet didn’t give off a reading at all?”
“It didn’t. I wonder why that is...”
Our sensors were meant to be foolproof detectors that could pick up readings from the Phrase and their mutated offshoots. They worked by picking up the wavelengths generated by Phrase movement as they pushed into this world. My hypothesis was that the tree wasn’t detected because it was planted in the Reverse World from the get-go, so the seed wasn’t picked up because it came in with an earlier wave of mutants.
Silhouette seemed to agree with that idea, too. It hadn’t passed through the world barrier on its own, so there was nothing about it that could’ve been detected.
After the conversation, I introduced Sue and Sakura to Silhouette. Once she learned the two of them were my fiancees, she started teasing them about various things... Only Yumina and I got flustered, though. Sakura and Sue weren’t sexually versed enough to understand most of what the devilish woman was getting at.
After she was done teasing, Silhouette brought up another point of conversation.
“I heard from Est in the Red Cats. Is it true you’ve been teaching them magic?”
“Uh... A little, I guess.”
I gulped cautiously, having already spotted the glint in Silhouette’s eyes. I knew what she wanted.
“Ah... You know... magic can only be used by people with the right aptitudes, so...”
“Can’t you check the aptitudes, sweetie?”
“Y-Yes.”
Silhouette’s bewitching smile forced me to co-operate with her. Yumina and the girls stared at me and shook their heads as I obediently took out a small pouch of spellstone shards. Look, I’m just paying her back for how much she’s helped us...
I hoped that she had no aptitude so I could be spared the bother, but men like me rarely got what they wanted. Silhouette had an excellent aptitude for darkness.
Thankfully, that was one of the easiest schools of magic to teach. I wasn’t going to teach her ancient curses, so I decided she only needed to know about summoning.
“Summoning? Like calling forth a familiar?”
“Kinda, yeah. Usually what you summon is randomized, basically down to dumb luck. But I can help you narrow those results down a little. Is there anything in particular you’d want in a summon?”
“Mm... A cat would be good, I think? One that could serve as an adept bodyguard.”
...I’m not so sure you’ll be able to do that, Silhouette. Even if you manage to make a contract, your magic reserves are so low that you’d only be able to summon it for a few minutes at a time. A bodyguard is kind of outta the question. I shrugged and decided to let her find out for herself.
I wondered why she wouldn’t be fine with a Gollem as a bodyguard. I asked her that and she said the aesthetic just wasn’t right. I couldn’t comprehend the woman’s need for form over function...
We’d cause a fuss if we summoned something in the cafe, so I moved us all to a different area.
; I summoned Kohaku to my side and began drawing a magic circle on the ground. Then, I asked Kohaku to fuse her spiritual energy into the circle, while Silhouette channeled her own magic power into it. Hopefully that would help her get a cat.
An explosion of black mist formed at the center of the circle before dispersing. Almost as if it was formed of the mist itself, a black-furred panther stepped forth from the middle of the circle.
“...White Monarch, is that you? It has been quite a while.”
“Indeed it has. You’re looking well.”
The black panther spoke to Kohaku, reverence clear in its voice. Seemed like it was the type that could speak. That was nice. Kohaku informed me that this creature was the Lightning Panther, and it had mastery over electricity.
Kohaku explained the situation, and the Lightning Panther agreed to contract itself with Silhouette. I took out a collar with a silver tag attached to it from [Storage].
“What’s this?”
“The collar’s normal, but the tag is special. I poured a large amount of my own magic into it, so it should be able to sustain the panther’s presence. That way he’ll be able to remain here as your bodyguard.”
I headed over to put the collar on the black panther, but the barrier around the magical circle stopped me. Oh, duh. I gotta wait for Silhouette to finalize the contract.
Silhouette named the panther Shade, and it stepped out from the magical circle. After that, I put the collar around its neck and left it at that.
“...Wow... I can talk to it through my mind?”
“Yeah, that’s telepathy. You should be able to talk even if you’re separated.”
But if you do end up separated then you’re doing a shitty job at bodyguarding...
Shade, unlike Kohaku, was incapable of transforming into a smaller version of itself. That meant that Silhouette would basically be walking around everywhere with a giant panther. Certainly one way to attract attention...
“I stand out a lot as it is, so this is fine by me. I’m actually pleased, since Shade here will be able to scare off bad people.”
In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 17 Page 2
