Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 3 Read online

  The author seemed to have deliberately made the text especially difficult to follow, too, but that wasn’t devious enough to stop me.

  The way the variables and codes changed meanings depending on what section I was reading was an unpleasant reminder of my days as an assembler, but all I really had to do was divide it up by section. Decoding it became a breeze.

  It might have taken me a little longer before, but since I had such a high INT stat now, I could flip through the book and absorb information with unnatural ease.

  I hadn’t thought about it when I’d first read a low-level manual, but the more I learned about the magic in this world, the more I realized how startlingly similar it was to a programming language.

  As if the person who’d invented magic here had been a programmer, too.

  …I felt something warm on the palm of my hand. Maybe Pochi or Tama was messing around with it?

  I swept the idle thought to the back of my mind and returned to my spell analysis.

  Soon enough, I’d completed my study of elementary Shadow Magic and was ready to move on to Everyday Magic next.

  My main goal was to figure out how to use Water Magic to reproduce the Everyday Magic spell Soft Wash, which I’d wanted back when I was helping Pochi wash up.

  As soon as I started researching Everyday Magic, though, I realized how different it was.

  It was fundamentally unlike any other magic. The former allowed users to transform or create things freely as long as they abided by the laws of magic, but the latter could call on only existing functionalities that behaved like a black box system. At most, one could only do things like expand a spell’s range of effect.

  In that case, re-creating Everyday Magic with Water Magic might be impossible.

  Just as Mia had copied Arisa’s humming by ear, I’d have to consider the techniques necessary to Everyday Magic and copy and paste existing parts of Water Magic into the formula to manufacture a new spell.

  I couldn’t help but enjoy this kind of research and analysis. Slowly but surely, I lost myself completely in the depths of contemplation.

  I could have stayed like that for hours…

  …Hmm? I felt something soft and supple under my hand.

  Closing the full-screen menu obscuring my vision, I looked over to find that Arisa had pressed my hand onto Nana’s ample chest.

  …Oh.

  My fingers were sinking in. Instinctively, I gave a few light squeezes.

  Mia and Arisa quickly yanked my hand out of paradise.

  “Lewd.”

  “H-hey, how long are you planning on doing that?! Let her go!”

  Mia was one thing, but Arisa was being awfully rude, considering she’d put my hand there in the first place.

  Nana lowered her head, putting a hand over her right breast where I’d squeezed it. Although she looked like an adult, she was actually less than a year old.

  I opened my mouth to apologize.

  She looked up without the slightest flush on her face and tilted her head inquisitively.

  “Master, would you like to touch the left one as well?”

  “Can I?”

  At Nana’s saintly suggestion, I instinctively reached out my other hand, but Arisa quickly interposed herself between us.

  As a result, her flat chest stopped my hand short. Very disappointing.

  “What do you mean, ‘Can I?’?!”

  Arisa bellowed, her lilac hair thoroughly disheveled.

  “Satou, you mustn’t be indecent. It’s unseemly! You shouldn’t touch the body of an unmarried woman, you know. So no touching.”

  Kneeling, Mia scolded me with uncharacteristically long sentences.

  It’s a man’s basic instinct to want to touch large breasts, okay? Although that sounds pretty bad now that I think about it, so I’d better keep it to myself.

  Nana’s head tilted farther to the side as the two girls in front of me exploded with anger. Her face suggested she didn’t understand what had upset them. I’d have to ask Lulu or Liza to explain it to her soon.

  “Good morning, sir?”

  “Myaaa…”

  Pochi and Tama stretched and yawned, woken up by the commotion.

  I’d thought they were being quiet on purpose, but I guess they’d worn themselves out from the singing and had fallen asleep.

  The sight of Pochi and Tama rubbing their eyes sleepily had drained some of the fire from Mia’s and Arisa’s fury, and they lapsed into silence. Their cheeks were still puffed up with a hint of pouty rage, though.

  Time to deal with this like a proper adult.

  “I’ll do my best to avoid any thoughtless contact from now on.”

  “You sound like a greasy politician, but fine. I’ll forgive you. An adult should use more discretion! Next time you feel like touching something, just talk to your darling Arisa. We’ll have a private session just for you, okay?”

  “Mrrrr. Arisa.”

  Arisa’s flippant words made her the new target of Mia’s wrath.

  Mercifully, I was able to leave the matter for the two of them to work out and return to the coachman’s box with Liza and Lulu.

  “Master, it sounded like Arisa was making a fuss. Did something happen?”

  Thanks to the clattering of the horse-drawn carriage, Lulu hadn’t heard the incident in the back.

  “Oh, we just got a little sidetracked by one of Arisa’s pranks.”

  “Really?”

  Once I’d successfully dodged Lulu’s question, I shifted to Liza to change the subject.

  “So, have you gotten the hang of driving the carriage?”

  “Yes. Thanks to Lulu’s guidance, I am able to lead us along the road without any trouble, though I still get nervous when we pass other people and the horses don’t go straight.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  Liza was still holding the reins of the carriage and seemed to be doing all right on her own. Now we could have a three-person rotation among Lulu, Liza, and me.

  “Master, I would like to steer the carriage as well, I entreat.”

  “Sure. You can take Liza’s place after the next break and have her teach you, all right?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Now that Nana was interested, too, we might very well have four drivers by the next day.

  Since I couldn’t hear Mia lecturing in the back anymore, I poked my head in.

  Arisa had a few choice words for how quickly I’d abandoned her.

  Normally I would have ignored her, but since this time her rash nature had created a good memory for me, I decided to hear her out.

  Her complaints ended surprisingly quickly—I decided to cut to the chase with my questions.

  “So, what were you trying to do?”

  “Nothing, really. I mean, you didn’t respond to anything at all, even though your eyes were open. You were acting strangely on top of the rock, too, so I got impatient.”

  So that was why Arisa was so outraged. I certainly had no excuse.

  I’ll have to remember to close my eyes when I use the menu full-screen.

  “I’m sorry. I was so focused on designing a new spell that I lost all—”

  “A new spell?!”

  Arisa shrieked in surprise, cutting off my apology.

  “What about it?”

  “Master, you’re a spell researcher?”

  “No, I was just trying to make one based on an idea I had a little while ago.”

  Arisa looked very intrigued.

  “What spell were you using, though?”

  “Like I said, I was creating a new one.”

  “…You can’t just make a spell like that. It would take a research institution decades of work and inordinate funds and human resources to do a thing like that!”

  That seemed like an exaggeration.

  “Maybe for a large-scale tactical magic spell or something. Right? I’m just trying to make a Water Magic spell that resembles the Everyday Magic Soft Wash, that’s all.” />
  “…‘That’s all,’ huh?”

  I shrugged as I corrected Arisa’s misunderstanding. But she didn’t act convinced.

  Since we were on the subject anyway, I figured I’d consult Mia about it, as I’d been planning to request her help with the experiment.

  She was studying a spell book right next to me when I said, “It’s almost ready, so I was hoping you could try it out for me next time we take a break, Mia. Do you mind?”

  “Mm, sure.”

  With Mia readily in agreement, I’d have to perfect the spell before our next break.

  I checked my log and noticed I’d gained the Researcher title, but no useful skills like “Magicology” or “Spell Creation.”

  Oh, I’d forgotten about what Arisa wanted to say.

  I apologized for getting off subject and asked her why she’d wanted my attention in the first place.

  “I was hoping there was a board or something so we could play cards in the carriage. Do you have anything?”

  “Mm, instruments.”

  I had some wood, but it would be hard to make much of anything right now.

  I technically had the skills to fashion a musical instrument like Mia wanted, but I didn’t have any guidelines or recipes, so I couldn’t. There was nothing useful in the documents I had on hand, at any rate.

  “I don’t have anything on me, no. Shall we stop at a town tomorrow to buy some cards and instruments and such?”

  The nearest place was a small town called Kainona. It had a population of only about three thousand, but it would probably be easy enough to find the requested items. I wanted to buy a wooden table set anyway. Some kind of worktop might be nice, too.

  As our journey continued in the afternoon, my Water Magic version of a cleaning spell slowly took form.

  This time, I made sure to close my eyes while I worked so as not to worry anyone.

  When I reached a good stopping point and opened my eyes, I was under a pile of little girls, but in the chilly weather, their body warmth was welcome.

  Each time we took a two-hour break, I asked Mia to test out my new spell as an experiment.

  On the first break, I found I’d made a careless error that prevented the magic from activating, but by the second try, the experiment worked successfully on some laundry.

  It consumed a little too much magic, so I’d have to improve it by the next break.

  About an hour after our second break, I was more or less finished with my revisions. I had a few other spells to use as reference for reducing the magic cost, and thus I figured it out easily enough.

  Because I didn’t want to spend too much time developing the new spell, I switched over to the map to check our current position and find a campsite for the night.

  The site I’d initially settled on was the bank of a pond around twenty-five miles away from Seiryuu City as the crow flies, but our progress had been slower than I expected.

  …Hmm? The clock in my menu surprised me, so I woke Arisa from her nap on my knee.

  “Arisa…”

  “Nn… Wha…? I didn’t do anything…”

  Half-asleep, Arisa rubbed her eyes and sat up.

  “Arisa, I have a question. How many hours are in a day here?”

  “Huh? Twenty-four, right? Since the clock tower in the castle was off-limits, all I ever had to go by was the sound of chimes signaling the hour.”

  Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any clocks in Seiryuu City, either. And I didn’t remember encountering any when we stayed in the castle.

  “I see. Then you don’t know how long an hour is here, right?”

  “Mm, well, it feels like it’s about the same to me… Why, do you think it isn’t?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “Yeah, one of my Unique Skills lets me determine what the time is here. When I compared it with the clock on the cell phone I brought with me from the other side, the length of a minute was the same, but…”

  I paused for a moment, then explained my recent discovery to Arisa.

  “I think an hour is seventy minutes.”

  I hadn’t noticed until I happened to catch with my own eyes as the clock’s minute display turned to :60. As I watched, it continued to :69, then turned back over to :00, so there was no other explanation as far as I could tell.

  And if each hour was seventy minutes, then each day would be twenty-eight hours.

  “Really? I thought that since a year is three hundred days here, things would be different from the other world, but maybe it’s about the same?”

  One year is three hundred days? That’s news to me.

  Since a month was thirty days, each year would have ten months. Converted to twenty-four-hour time, that’d be three hundred and fifty days, a difference of about 4 percent. So over the course of a century, there’d be a deviation of about four years.

  I shared the results of my mental arithmetic with Arisa.

  Still, I would’ve expected a four-hour change in the length of a day to affect me physically, but I hadn’t felt off-color in the least since I’d arrived.

  Really, compared to the restoration to my fifteen-year-old self, a little change in health would be hardly a blip on the radar.

  All right. My discovery had distracted me, but it was time to get back to the map and figure out how far we had to go before my planned campsite.

  Our breaks must have been too long, or maybe my initial estimation had been naive. At this rate, the sun would set well before we reached our destination.

  It would be difficult to set up camp for the first time in total darkness. I decided to hunt for a different site.

  According to the Camping Advice book I’d bought in Seiryuu City, lighting a fire in a highly visible area would risk attracting insect-type monsters, so I opted to camp in the shadows of a small forest along the way instead.

  The spot would be completely visible from the nearby hills, but the only monsters lurking in that direction were extremely far away. I determined they shouldn’t pose any problems.

  I had bought something called “monster repellent powder,” but I wanted to respect the wisdom of my predecessors just in case.

  I informed Liza of the change of plan. Since we didn’t have a map or an address, the best I could tell her was, “We’ll make camp by the forest over that hill.”

  I did have the map Nadi from the general store had drawn for us, but it was a sketch and wouldn’t be of much use in this case.

  It certainly would have been easier if I explained my Unique Skills to her, but I was trying to keep the Menu, especially the Map and Storage systems, a secret.

  Between that, the enormous amount of treasure I had in Storage, and the fact that I was level 310 with a ton of skills, I was keeping a lot of things hidden. In fact, I’d probably withheld more information than I’d shared.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust everyone—it was a matter of safety. If they didn’t know, there was little risk of them letting something slip or making comments that might allow others to guess.

  No, it was my policy to sow as few seeds of trouble as possible for the sake of my safe and carefree sightseeing tour.

  So, in order to reduce the risk of sowing any dangerous seeds, I kept my level and skills a secret. At most, I would give only vague explanations like, “I’m actually a really high level,” “I’m good at sensing enemies,” or “I’m a bit of a jack-of-all-trades.”

  Eventually, once everyone was strong enough to protect themselves or we gained some powerful supporters, I figured I would let them in on some of it.

  Since we’d changed to a different campsite, we arrived well before the sun set.

  “So we really aren’t getting to a village today.”

  “I told you that before, didn’t I?”

  Arisa sighed, and I shrugged.

  Back when they traveled with the slave trader Nidoren, they had always made sure to set up camp in a village square somewhere, even if the villagers shunned them. Camping without the
protection of barrier posts was the rash behavior of homeless people and thieves.

  “Don’t worry, I bought monster repellent powder to use for camping.”

  “You’ll go bankrupt in no time if you use such an expensive chemical every day.”

  Arisa shook her head in utter disbelief.

  Apparently, repellent powder was meant for emergencies when one had no choice but to camp with no human habitation around for miles.

  Still, it cost only one silver coin for a night’s worth. If a single silver coin was all it took to ensure my party wouldn’t have to fear for their own safety, it was well worth the price.

  But since I hadn’t told them about the large fortune sleeping in my Storage, I’d caused them some worry. Next time I had a chance, I’d have to let Arisa and the older girls know I could spend a few hundred gold coins without issue.

  “All right, since it’s still a little early, let’s go hunting.”

  Once we’d finished setting up camp, I made a proposal to everyone.

  The reason, of course, was so that Tama could get her revenge. I wanted to overwrite her regret with a happy memory as soon as possible.

  “I’ll do my best, sir!”

  “Me too. This time I’ll catch something huge.”

  “Master, I shall come along as well.”

  “Mrrrr. Bow.”

  Mia wanted to participate, too, but she couldn’t join in without a bow. Her usual magic took some time to activate, so it wasn’t well suited to chasing prey.

  “Well, why don’t you and I practice magic, then?”

  “Mm.”

  Mia had been sulking, but Arisa swooped in to the rescue.

  I handed a piece of paper to Mia with the final version of the new spell, now with an added explanation in Elvish.

  “I will peel vegetables for tonight’s dinner with Ms. Nana.”

  “I shall do what I can, I declare.”

  “Great, thank you.”

  Once Liza had given instructions for preparing dinner to Lulu and Nana, the beastfolk girls and I left the campsite.

  Naturally, I could hardly go hiking in a long robe. I’d changed into a long-sleeve shirt and trousers. Pochi and Tama had slipped into shirts and trousers, too. In place of armor, I gave them heavy coats for extra protection.