Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 4 Page 2

  “R-right!”

  I explained that the sound of sizzling fat was a good indicator of the temperature of the frying pan.

  I must have been getting closer while I was talking, because Lulu was bright red up to her ears. She looked so cute that I couldn’t help whispering in her ear while I explained the techniques.

  “Once you’ve prepared the meat and put it on the pan, you have to restrain yourself until the juices start to come to the surface.”

  “R-right, I-I’ll restrain myself!”

  The pitch of Lulu’s voice was reaching new heights.

  Whoops, looks like I went too far. I didn’t want to cross the line into sexual harassment, so I backed off, but this just made her disappointed. It’s hard to figure out what to do with adolescent girls.

  As I affectionately watched her serious profile, I continued my culinary lecture.

  After a few attempts, Lulu had gotten the hang of it, so I plated the steaks, including Lulu’s failures, and made a Japanese-style sauce with the juices from the meat and soy sauce.

  I figured if the failed steaks were still left over at the end, I’d take responsibility and finish them, but the beastfolk girls took care of them in no time flat.

  Leaving the after-dinner cleanup to the other kids, I sat in the shadow of the carriage and started preparing magic-tool materials to create some appliances for warmth.

  My plan was to make a heating device for the interior of our carriage. I figured a floor heater would be ideal so that we could use it while we slept.

  I tried to employ the know-how I’d gotten from making the magic circuits.

  I figured the best approach would be to fashion a slatted wooden frame and place a metal pipe containing the heating circuit inside.

  My documents had nothing on how to make a magic battery, but I had pulled together a workable substitute for my hand warmer by combining the basic magic circuit, the anti-diffusion magic from the potion vials, and so on. I figured I could use that here as well.

  It would work for only about three hours at a time at most, but it should be fine if I just had each night-watch replacement refill the magic supply.

  I’d stocked up on wood and metal in Sedum City, so the work proceeded quickly enough.

  Of course, without my many skills supporting me, I’d never have been able to produce a magic floor heater for a carriage in less than an hour.

  I stowed the completed tool in Storage for a moment, then installed it in the carriage.

  I gave it a try by infusing it with magic and lying down, and a gentle, pleasant warmth came up through the floor.

  There was a bit of a draft, though, so I’d have to get everyone to help do some weather stripping later.

  “What’re you up to?”

  “Making a heater.”

  Arisa poked her head into the carriage inquisitively.

  “Warm.”

  “I never knew there was a magic tool like this. You’re amazing, master!”

  Following Arisa’s lead, Mia and Lulu came in, patted the floor experimentally, and offered their impressions.

  “I never imagined I’d find floor heating in this world.” Sprawled out lazily on the floor to bask in the warmth, Arisa suddenly opened her eyes wide and closed in on me.

  “K-k-kotatsu! Make a kotatsu next!”

  “Why would we need a heated table if the carriage is already warm?”

  “Aww, come onnn… Don’t be like that! Pleeease, make a kotatsu next! Pretty please!”

  Arisa’s desperate pleading threatened to overpower me.

  “Oh, Arisa, that’s enough. Can’t you see you’re bothering master?” Lulu scolded Arisa gently.

  At times like this, it was easy to think of them as sisters.

  “Awwww. But kotatsu are the best things everrr… That’s one bit of Japanese culture that I think we should spread to this parallel world.”

  I thought she was exaggerating a bit, but I didn’t want to take the wind out of her sails.

  Arisa gazed up at me with teary eyes, so I had no choice but to nod reluctantly.

  “All right, all right. I’ll make one when I have some time to kill, all right? But you’ll have to make the blanket part yourself.”

  “Hooraaaay!”

  Arisa leaped joyously inside the carriage. Her skirt flipped up past her navel, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “Kotatsu, good.”

  Mia nodded with quiet approval as Arisa rejoiced.

  Right… I guess there was a hero hundreds of years ago who handed down some Japanese culture to the elves.

  Arisa fervently explained the structure and virtues of a kotatsu to an attentive Lulu.

  At this rate, she’d be asking me to cultivate mandarin oranges and make mochi. Since there was rice in the Ougoch Duchy, sticky rice for mochi shouldn’t be a problem, but I had no idea where to get oranges.

  I’ll have to look for them when we get to a good trading city.

  Now, putting that aside, I wanted to show off my invention to everyone else.

  “This feeling is truly superb. It isn’t quite as warm as a hot bath, but the temperature is excellent in its own right.”

  Liza gave me rave reviews with unusual passion.

  It was popular with the other girls, too, of course.

  Just as I’d predicted, the effect lasted only about three hours, but that was good enough.

  It had gotten cold, so I planned to reduce the night watch to three shifts. I was planning on taking the graveyard shift, so as long as I refilled the magic supply before and after my watch, we should be able to keep warm all night.

  For the night watch, each shift would include either Pochi, Tama, or me, since we three had heightened senses for detecting enemies.

  The inside of the carriage was nice and warm with the combination of the floor heating and weather stripping, so everyone would be able to sleep soundly without a cold draft.

  That evening, Arisa and I read a picture book aloud, complete with spirited reenactment for the others, so I gained the skills “Ad Lib” and “Ventriloquism,” along with the title Lousy Actor.

  I don’t know who comes up with these titles, but I wish they’d stop giving me such insulting ones.

  On the late-night shift with me, Arisa was shivering in the cold wind, so I decided to try using the Shelter spell I’d just learned from a Magic Scroll in Sedum City.

  When I selected it from the menu, a transparent dome about ten feet around covered us.

  “Ooh, it’s not cold anymore. Is this a spell you learned in Sedum City?”

  “Yep! …Oh, but this’ll be a problem.”

  It was keeping out the wind well enough, but the smoke from the burning bonfire was accumulating inside the dome.

  I guess this defense magic stopped air from flowing in or out of the barrier.

  “Oh dear, you’re right. If we’d nodded off without noticing, we might well have choked to death.”

  “Seriously. I’ll cancel it for now.”

  I deactivated the Shelter spell, and the smoke escaped into the sky.

  “Perhaps you ought to make a chimney?”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  I took three rods out of the Garage Bag, stuck them in the ground, and wrapped cloth around them to make a simple tube about three feet tall.

  Then I made a Shelter barrier that would intersect with the tube.

  The tube stayed as it was. This was good, since I wasn’t sure if the barrier would crush it or cut it off.

  When I collected the cloth and rods, there was a hole where the tube had been.

  Unlike Shield, you couldn’t change the position of the barrier, so it wouldn’t be usable on the move, but if I added a hole for going in and out like an igloo, it would likely come in handy for the night watch.

  Like the heater, this spell lasted for three hours. Even when I used it from the magic menu, this didn’t change. It was probably a precaution to make sure the people inside wouldn’t suffoc
ate.

  The menu version seemed stronger than when I used it from the scroll, but I didn’t know how much stronger, since both versions broke from a single punch. Maybe I’ll do a strength test with the help of the beastfolk girls in the future.

  By the way, Shelter wasn’t the only spell I acquired in Sedum City.

  I also got the Practical Magic spells Short Stun and Magic Arrow and the Earth Magic spell Pitfall.

  On the day I’d gotten the scrolls, I went to the abandoned village near Sedum City late at night to test-fire each spell so that I would be able to select them from the magic menu later.

  Just as when I used Fire Shot, the spells were fairly weak when I used them directly from the scrolls, but their performance improved by leaps and bounds once I used them from the magic menu.

  The two attack spells could now fire up to a hundred and twenty shots at once, and even Short Stun, which was intended to be nonlethal, gained enough attack power to lay waste to a large tree.

  Both of them consumed a base amount of ten MP, plus one point per every two additional shots.

  In terms of efficiency, they were still no match for Fire Shot, which could melt a rock wall into lava with just ten points, but they’d be easier to use against monsters than my usual Magic Gun.

  The Pitfall spell initially created a hole that was just four inches wide and four inches deep, but once I used it from the magic column of the menu, it could make a hole up to forty feet wide and deep.

  This size could be altered in units of four inches, so the spell would have uses besides its intended purpose. Mainly, making holes to use as toilets or for throwing away garbage.

  However, it didn’t provide any way to fill the holes it created, which was a bit of an issue for me.

  When I made a hole with Pitfall, where did the dirt go? The earth on the sides and bottom of the hole became hard as rocks, but if all of it had been compressed, the walls should be way harder than that. I had to assume that most of the dirt was disappearing somewhere.

  I was somewhat intrigued, but not enough to go out of my way to do extensive research, so I figured I’d ask an Earth Magic expert or researcher if I met one.

  While Arisa and I were chatting about the sillier points of magic, our night-watch shift flew by in no time at all.

  The next day, we prepared to depart at early dawn and headed to the fort just as the sun rose.

  “Hey, you’re the guy from yesterday. I’ve heard that the Muno Barony is in such desperate poverty that the robbers from there have been coming this way instead. You gotta be careful, not just with bandits and soldiers but even with ordinary villagers.”

  “We will. Thank you for your advice.”

  Whoa there, you equated Muno Barony soldiers to bandits without even batting an eye, I mentally quipped. My verbal response was simply to thank the soldier for his kindness.

  Apparently, there weren’t any tolls to cross the barrier.

  On the contrary…

  “If you encounter any unreasonable demands on the other side of the fortress, you just run back here. Once you’ve crossed the border, our soldiers can come right to your aid.”

  “I appreciate your concern. If anything should happen, I’ll be sure to take you up on your kind offer.”

  Thanking the soldier again, we started the carriage toward the barony.

  While I drove, I thought back on the rumors I’d heard in Sedum City about the Muno Barony.

  The territory had always been dangerous, but thanks to a famine that had been going on for the past three years, much of the population had fallen into slavery or turned to crime.

  Not only had fraud and embezzlement by government officials become standard there, but the negligence of the soldiers meant that the main road was overflowing with monsters and bandits.

  The border fortress that we’d be passing next would be just as bad, with scoundrels who would take all your cargo under the pretense of a “tariff” or kidnap women from nearby villages.

  The reason we were leaving for the Muno Barony so early in the morning was to try to avoid these nasty soldiers.

  Such disgraceful men weren’t likely to go to work that early, and I knew there was no barrier on the Muno Barony side of the fortress.

  I had some alcohol ready to use as a bribe just in case, but I figured if anyone approached us the wrong way, I could just have Arisa put them to sleep with Psychic Magic and get through.

  Idle soldiers doze off on the job all the time, after all.

  Once we came out from the fort on the Kuhanou County side, we found ourselves traveling along a narrow road wedged between steep cliffs on both flanks. It was barely wide enough for two carriages to pass each other, and visibility was quite poor.

  After we continued through this ravine for ten minutes or so, we made it to the roughest part of the border.

  Before us was a valley about a hundred feet wide and almost a thousand feet deep, along with a rope bridge just barely wide enough for a single carriage. The Muno Barony waited on the other side.

  “Liza, Nana, pull back. Wait here with everyone else, please.”

  I called to Liza and Nana before they could cross on their horses ahead of us, and they returned to wait with the rest of the group.

  “I’m going to make sure it’s safe on the other side. If I tell you from over there to run, don’t wait for me—just make a break for it, all right?”

  “’kay!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “…R-right.”

  Pochi, Tama, and Lulu were the only three who obediently agreed.

  “Satou.”

  “You’re not going to do something insane on your own again, are you?”

  Mia and Arisa were anxious to stop me.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve seen what the fort over there is like.”

  I patted their heads, then left Lulu as the coachman and jumped down from the carriage.

  “Master, permit me to accompany you, I entreat.”

  “Forgive my presumption, master, but please allow me to join you as your guard.”

  Nana and Liza both wanted to come along, but I decided to minimize the number of people and bring only Liza. If anything did happen, I was confident she could take care of herself.

  “All right, Liza, come with me. Nana, you wait here.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Understood, I respond.”

  I took over Nana’s horse, and Liza and I safely crossed the rope bridge.

  On the other side was a plaza with enough parking space for a few carriages and a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot rock wall that blocked my view of anything beyond it.

  Now, it was time to collect some information.

  I selected Search Entire Map from the magic menu as a starting point to learn about the Muno Barony.

  I’d known the area was big, but I was still surprised by how vast it was. Its strange shape made it hard to tell, but I’d say it was at least the size of Hokkaido. However, that was a rough estimate, since I didn’t actually remember how big Hokkaido was.

  The entire territory was relatively flat, and northwest of Muno City was a forest that covered about 30 percent of the territory. The rivers came together in a lake at the center of the forest, then continued on as one large river that flowed past Muno City toward Ougoch Duchy.

  The main road connecting Kuhanou County and Ougoch Duchy ran along mostly level ground except for a few low mountains.

  On the other hand, a range of much higher mountains bordered the barony.

  Like Kuhanou County, this area’s map also had a few blank zones of various sizes. The biggest one was located inside the large forest.

  Now that I had a basic grasp of the geography, I moved on to investigate enemy presences and refined the search parameters on the map.

  First I checked whether there were any reincarnations with Skills: Unknown like Arisa—none.

  Next, anyone over level 50—also none.

  Then, anythi
ng over level 30 that might be a threat to the kids—this time there were results.

  Several targets fit my parameters. And the nearest one was in the fort in front of us.

  The rest were pretty far away, so I suspended my search for now and brought Liza with me to get a closer look.

  Following the path that cut through the rock face, we reached a desert slope.

  The fort was in the middle of the barren region, and sitting atop the half-crushed structure was a hydra. Its four heads were rooting around underneath the rubble.

  The cold, dry wind carried the crunching of huge teeth gnawing on something.

  I checked the map, but there were no survivors nearby.

  “Liza, take care of my horse, please.”

  Leaving Liza in charge of the animal, I started descending the slope.

  The hydra’s perch was about a thousand feet away from me as the crow flies.

  This thing was level 44 and nearly twice as large as the one I’d seen between Seiryuu County and Kuhanou County.

  “M-master, please forgive my arrogance, but I believe we really must retreat in this situation.”

  Liza stared, ashen-faced, at the enormous beast that would have been right at home in a monster movie.

  “Don’t worry. It’ll only take a minute, so just wait here.”

  In order to ease Liza’s worries, I decided to show her a bit of my real strength. I figured she could keep a secret, so it should be all right.

  Once I was a bit farther away from Liza, I chose the Magic Arrow spell from my magic menu.

  Since this was such a wasteland, I probably could have used Fire Shot without a problem, but since the spell moved at only about fifty-five miles per hour, there was a risk that the hydra would dodge it from this distance.

  Thus, I chose the slightly faster Magic Arrow this time.

  When I activated the spell, a menu popped up to let me select how many arrows to fire. I could choose any number between one and one hundred and twenty. Without hesitation, I chose the maximum.

  A small red circle appeared on the hydra in my AR display, just like a target mark in an air-battle simulator.

  However, since its heads were currently hidden, my attack might not be fatal.