Godhorn Tech:Volume2 Chapter5

Chapter 5, Section 1

The Wicked God horn brought peace.

But it also fueled the next catastrophe.

Night had fully fallen.

They could not relax enough for a strategy meeting inside the ruined Empire covered in the mystery red dust called rusty mana. How could they when it could destroy the Divine Doll when at high enough concentrations? They could not leave Number 8 where he was either. Washing off the red sludge was not enough to rouse him.

That was why Miyabi’s party returned to the ship abandoned on dry land near the Empire’s ruins.

Maybe the wind played a role, but the red had not yet encroached upon the wasteland to the north.

The fact that the mysterious abandoned ship actually seemed comfortable may have shown just how tough they had gotten.

“Phew. Purification magic just can’t compete with some everyday necessities. Like a shower,” said Celina. “I just hope that little adventure didn’t take years off of our lives.”

“Based on the samples the Republic has taken, short-term skin contact has no effect on life,” said Helen. “Assuming it hasn’t been concentrated into that sludge, of course. Long-term oral or mucus membrane intake has been shown to cause abnormal growth in certain Beast Novae.”

“Discriminatory language!!” shouted Alicia. “What are you saying, that my chest is going to grow overnight!? Am I going to have watermelons bouncing around on my chest!? Oh, Alma, they can be so hurtful! Please comfort me!!”

The girls’ voices sounded muffled but not because Miyabi Blackgarden’s mind was elsewhere.

The abandoned ship’s interior remained intact and that included the bath.

That was one of the main reasons they had turned back instead of continuing onward. They had wanted someplace they knew they could rest, but they had also been dying for a bath. And there was still plenty of firewood made from the felled masts.

The radio had been thrown to the deck outside.

Miyabi was sitting with his back to a weathered wood wall and he could hear the girls’ voices through that wall.

He shut his eyes and focused on the fact that everyone was safe.

“These are the moments you live for, aren’t they?”

“Moebius?”

The young man rolled up with a smile.

He had fought using the Lucifer Horn more often than Miyabi and saved many more people. He had fought with entire regions, whole countries, and maybe even the full continent riding on the outcome. How many times had he been able to indulge in the relief of knowing his party members were all safe afterwards?

He was a legend – a fixer who made a living taking jobs that saved entire countries.

“The girls have let their guard down due to the unique mixture of exhaustion and the joy of survival, so now’s your chance to peep!!”

“It scares me that someone like you controlled a Godhorn Tech for even a moment.” The redhead boy breathed a somewhat exasperated sigh. “What are you going to do now? Stick with us?”

“No, giving you the Lucifer Horn would’ve been pretty pointless if I did that. I want to leave the world’s troubles behind and relax. Live that slow life that’s all the rage these days☆”

“…”

Scratch the somewhat.

Miyabi was truly exasperated now. Meanwhile, Moebius Entrance whispered something under his breath.

“(Also, you’ve started down a different path from me. The power of creation, huh? If I helped you out, you’d be right back on the boring-as-hell path of destruction, destruction, and more destruction.)”

“Moebius?”

“It’s nothing.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I’ll be searching for some comfortable place in the middle of nowhere to settle down. Some friendly place with no sign of Godhorn Techs or the fight against the 11th.”

“Then I know just the place.”

Miyabi grabbed the short control sword in both hands and stabbed it into the ship’s deck.

“Lucifer Horn!” he roared before Moebius could say a word. “One-way trip for one!!”

A wire dangling from the heavens caught the grinning young man’s wheelchair.

“Wait, what are you doing!?”

“Oh, right! I forget to mention!!” Miyabi quickly shouted to the wheelchair being yanked from the deck. “The Lucifer Horn can use bombs now! You should have told me it could adapt to new weapons like that! I might never have figured it out!!”

Moebius himself had set up Horn Fortress as a secret base, so he was in no position to refuse.

Moebius Entrance was enjoying a pleasure flight with imminent death as a constant companion.

But while he clutched the wheelchair’s armrests for dear life, a different tension filled him too.

He must have known no one could hear him way up in the air, but he still spoke aloud. Or maybe he said it aloud because he knew no one could hear him.

“Hold on. The Lucifer Horn’s horn extraction system was witchcraft. It should only have that energy beam attack created by injecting a special potion into the horn to forcibly boost its light.”

He looked straight up at the Godhorn Tech carrying him.

The legendary fixer seemed to be complaining directly to his former partner.

“I had no idea you could do that.”

Back on the abandoned ship, Celina Bodenburg had apparently finished her bath. She still had steam rising from her as she poked her head out and saw Miyabi.

“We’re all done in there. Oh? What are you doing out here?”

“Ridding us of a peeping tom.”

Celina gave a start and moved back a few steps when she heard that. Then Alicia Blueforest, also fresh out of the bath, arrived with Alma’s black cat form in her arms.

“There you are, boy. The bath is free. Go soak in our used bathwater.”

“I-in what world is that a normal thing to say!?” protested Celina. “There is something wrong with you!”

The elf usually bathed outdoors, so she could be careless about such things. An unexpected encounter with a defenseless elf was sometimes how an innocent boy got a crash course on the female body.

Helen arrived last and sighed in exasperation.

“This elf might live a wild life of stealing vegetables from people’s fields, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t more civilized. Speaking of which, our next stop is your hometown, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Celina Bodenburg got down to business. “Our next destination is the criminal port city where my company has its headquarters. It is south from here and will take a while on foot.”

Alicia Blueforest gave her a skeptical look.

“I don’t like the sound of that description.”

“Ahem. To make this as simple as possible, I would describe the city like this.” The local actually cleared her throat first. “That place is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad news.”

Wet-haired Helen Clockgear held her head.

“The Republic really does have it marked as ‘visit with extreme caution’. It’s best to assume it isn’t anything like a normal city.”

“Koo?”

“Then maybe we should make some preparations before we go there.” Miyabi Blackgarden rubbed his chin. “Do we head straight there, or do we make a detour to a safe town beforehand?”

They ended up choosing the direct route.

Their reasoning was simple: they had to deal with Number 8. They had no idea if he was even fixable, but any chance they had now might go to waste if the vibrations of dragging him around or the wind, rain, and other weather conditions caused further internal damage.

“This would be so much easier if you had the Lucifer Horn take him to Horn Fortress,” complained the radio hanging from Alicia’s neck.

“Wouldn’t we tear that half-broken thing to pieces if we tried snagging him with that wire? Then we would lose any information he has on the 11th.”

Miyabi had exposed an injured man to that exact same treatment, but that was a sign of how much he trusted Moebius Entrance. He knew dropping that legendary fixer from the sky wasn’t enough to kill him.

Helen took charge like usual and spread out a parchment map.

“This is how it looks on the map. Once we arrive south of the Empire’s ruins, we take a curving path southeast to reach the southernmost point of the continent.”

“We can’t just pass through here?”

Miyabi pointed at the actual plains, not the ones on the map. A stone-paved road drew a line across the green grassy ground.

“The map shows a crack there, so no.” Helen shook her head and traced her finger along a sewing needle to magically transform it into a compass. “How it works still isn’t known, but there are impassible deep cracks in the ground at some places. Dangerous miasma flows out, so no one knows what things are like deep inside.”

“There are rumors saying a Wicked God will crawl back out if you throw a nonhuman species inside,” said Alicia.

She went on to explain that those rumors were entirely baseless.

Miyabi’s takeaway was that they had to read the map carefully to avoid dying. They ended up leaving the stone-paved road to travel along a side path of packed-down grass.

It helped to have an experienced traveler in your party.

The color of the sky seemed to have changed. It was now a brilliant bright blue.

The air also carried an odd smell.

It was not quite the same as rot. It was a unique scent, but not a bad one.

“I can finally smell the salt in the air,” said Celina.

“Salt?”

Miyabi pictured the small shaker on the dinner table, but that could not be what she meant.

“Oh? Miyabi, is this your first time to see the sea?”

“See the see? What?”

“Hee hee. Then this might come as a shock for you.”

The rich girl was in a stupendous mood.

Miyabi noticed something else before they arrived. He heard something he did not recognize.

“What’s that? I’ve never heard so much meowing. Does your city have a lot of cats?”

“Ho ho ho. Kitties aren’t the only creature to hunt down fish at the oceanside, Miyabi. Those are seabirds.”

It turned out there were a lot of different seabirds.

There were some crow-sized ones with white wings that were related to swallows and there were even some that looked like scantily-clad girls with wings for arms.

“Gasp, those are harpies!” shouted Helen. “They’re dangerous Beast Novae!!”

No one paid the elf’s cry of “discriminatory language!!” any heed.

“It’s just that kind of city.” Celina shrugged. “And harpies are great. They’re smart enough to do what you tell them and they always return home when you send them out from your window. Both humans and monsters trust them. You can love them as a pet or give them jobs. They’re especially useful as hunter harpies who accompany you on hunting trips or as messenger harpies that deliver letters to distant locations.”

“If you want a clever pet, just get a dog. Why would you start talking about chaining up nonhumans and raising them as pets when you know an elf can hear you?”

“If a dog had the face of a cute girl, it would be a thing of nightmares, you stupid elf. There’s nothing beautiful about them.”

They heard the flapping of wings and then a large form swooped down toward Celina, so she held her arm out horizontally as a perch.

“My Millovannes is very well behaved, as you can see. Hee hee. Now, now, Millovannes, we can love on each other later. Oh, you spoiled thing, you’ll make Miyabi jealous if we do this in front of him. Oh, you☆”

U-um, uh, isn’t it slashing at your face with its thick talons? Um. Miyabi very much wanted to say something, but the more mature Helen and Eliza covered his mouth.

He was not to shatter the friendly girl’s dreams.

Celina was smiling so happily even with something red spurting from her badly-damaged forehead and temple.

“Anyway, you will see plenty of the port’s many seabirds once we are in the city. So, Miyabi, are you a dog person or a cat person. If the former, you can take a look at the well-trained guard dogs and military dogs. If the latter, you can check out the swarms of thieving cats hoping to snag some fish. Welcome to the criminal city where everyone loves their pets☆”

“Hm, so it works on the theory that delinquents have a soft spot for abandoned cats, does it?” said the radio. “It is true the lonely delinquent girl with a damaged heart is something you’ll only find in a fantasy world! I’m hoping for a fashionable and good-looking blonde gyaru!! Especially if she’s handy around the house, loves baths, and looks after any of the gang when they catch a cold!!”

“Oh, no. A big city like this is sure to be crawling with elfphobes!” said Alicia. “Please don’t let me be captured in a giant bug net and sold off at some market somewhere!!!!!”

And.

“Ohh!” shouted Miyabi.

Once they crossed a certain line, the view changed.

A city was built along a gentle downwards slope. All the buildings had white walls and orange roofs and it had a very different feel from his village or Eliza’s Arsenal Kingdom. There was no wall around the city, so it felt a lot more open.

But Miyabi Blackgarden’s focus was elsewhere.

He was not even viewing the city.

His eyes moved past the gentle slope and to the great expanse beyond it.

“What is that? There’s a huge body of water over there!! Is that more than just a lake!?”

“Heh heh heh. That, my friend, is the ocean. Shipbuilding is yet another of the Bodenburg Company’s major industries, so- hey, wait, Miyabi!”

The boy was not listening to her any more than he was viewing the city.

He and black cat Alma rushed off at full speed. They had never seen anything like the ocean before.

“Whoa! Hey, jackass! Watch where you’re fucking going!!!!!”

On his third step down the gentle slope, someone cussed him out.

It would have been one thing if the culprit was a rough-looking young man, but unfortunately, this was what looked like a lovely flower seller girl. And this was her reaction when he only almost ran into her.

Seeing the boy tearfully curled up on the side of the road and trembling, Celina put a hand on her hip and smacked her forehead with the other hand.

“How many times do I have to tell you this is a criminal city? C’mon, having your bittersweet fantasies about girls shattered isn’t that big a deal. And word to the wise? Always watch where you’re going in this city.”

“Ohh. Ohhhhhhhh…”

“Leave him be!!” For some reason the radio sided with the depressed boy. “The shattering of your dreams is a rite of passage – a baptism of blood – we all must go through! He just had his soul shredded, so let him mourn!!”

“Oh, dear. That hit him pretty bad, so it might take a while before he recovers. Fine, then. I will help refuel his fantasies. Look, Miyabi, do you see this slight gap between my miniskirt and black socks? Now watch as I lift my skirt and make it grow☆”

“Oh, there is good in the world after all.”

“Dammit, Miyabi! I defended you! And now you don’t even know the difference between pure and lewd? I swear, the young have no taste at all. If you want that obvious junk food sexiness, you already have Curvy McGlassesTits over there! She’s only pretending to be so mature, so if you go crying to her, I guarantee you she’ll hug your face right into her chest!!”

“Don’t drag me into this silly nonsense!!” protested a blushing Helen, her attempt at being an uninvolved observer failing miserably. She did not want to be viewed in the same category as the skirt teaser (who had miscalculated and accidentally lifted the skirt enough to see everything).

The bright sun shined down through dry air, so even a light breeze felt like a great treasure in this memorable tourist destination.

The way the sun reflected off the white walls and orange roofs made it look like the entire city was sending out welcoming rays of light.

However.

Now that the unintentional panty flasher had guided him back to reality, Miyabi took his time to observe the city more carefully.

While the lit areas were indeed bright, that accentuated the darkness of the alleys between the homes and stores. When he peeked inside one of those, he saw the sharp light of several eyes glaring back at him. He got the feeling they belonged to people who did not take kindly to intruders on their turf. In fact, he was pretty sure some of the lights were the glint of sharp blades.

Helen looked around in fear, clutching her bag in both hands. Compress Cargo magic made travel easier since you could fit so much in a small bag, but that also meant you would lose everything if that one bag was stolen. Easy to carry was also easy to steal.

“U-um, where are the knights or guards in this city? I haven’t seen a single one out on patrol.”

“Sigh, we don’t have any of those wet blankets here. We’ve long since driven out anyone who use their supposed ‘justice’ to attack anyone who criticizes their own illicit actions. Order here is preserved by the private troops of the Bodenburg Company!”

“Sounds like the South American and Eastern European cities were the gangs make the rules. She really does hold all the power here, doesn’t she?”

Even the radio was dumbfounded.

If what they saw here was the result of those private troops “preserving order”, they could guess just how effective that really was. It also explained why the Bodenburg Company was so successful. With no government officials to monitor or crack down on their dirty business practices, they were free to go hog wild.

But if you ignored the frequency of encountering crime, the quality of life here did not appear all that bad. The roads were all paved with perfectly smooth and sparkling stones, the white-walled and orange-roofed homes and shops were clean, and the street stalls had plenty of fresh fruits and fishes to go around. The Bodenburg Company apparently brought plenty of benefits to its hometown, so the locals never went hungry. People’s fashion was a lot more refined than at Miyabi’s home village. Befitting the hometown of the girl who was willing to tease a view of her underwear to cheer someone up (while oblivious to the fact that she was actually doing more than just teasing), there was no shortage of exposed skin in the criminal port town. Bare midriffs and exposed underwear straps were apparently the norm here.

Miyabi looked around in a mixture of interest and fear.

“I don’t get how a city can run on crime. How does that work?”

“Wait, Miyabi! Looking down alleys is a good way to get yourself into troub-!”

The local girl tried to stop him, but it was too late.

He had already found some trouble.

A blonde girl around his age or a little older was accompanied by several people dressed all in black. She wore a coat with the hood up…but what was that? Two thick belts hung down from the back of the coat and those belts had several knife blades sticking out. They almost looked like wings made from sharp saws, but letting them flutter in the wind had to be dangerous.

Also, she was not wearing a skirt or pants below the coat. Other than the protectors on her legs, she only wore thick belts around her chest and hips. She was certainly easy on the eyes.

Celina Bodenburg groaned loudly when she peeked into the alley. Seeing this person was enough to make you “a witness”, especially when you knew who she was. The rifle-wielding girl was especially tense because she knew the proper etiquette in this criminal city.

“Geh, why did it have to be the Neverjudge Family? Worse, it’s Phobia, the big boss’s only daughter! You have the worst luck imaginable, Miyabi!”

“What, is she a friend of yours?”

“Miyabi, this is a serious issue. She is from an unbelievably brutal gang. Any ordinary person who gets involved with them is rumored to either end up feeding the fish out at sea or finding themselves at the bottom of a special sort of bath.”

“The fish? A bath?”

Celina cleared her throat with her face somewhat red.

Suddenly finding herself left all alone to explain this to him, the precocious girl spoke more quickly than normal.

“While our company buys and sells goods and information with money, they are a professional criminal group that makes money renting out ‘violence’ as a product. They will do threats, kidnappings, robberies, murders, revenge assistance, eliminating false charges, bodyguarding, rescues, and anything else that can be accomplished through violence. And they do not ask many questions about the ethics of the job. They might attack or defend the same person depending on the specific job they receive.”

“Huh? You mean they do good things too?”

“Either way, their exorbitant fees and the rapidly snowballing interest send all of their clients to hell eventually. Our private troops will work to ‘mop them up’ from time to time, but we never can get rid of these morally-bankrupt loan sharks.”

The gang was surrounding a very different sort of person.

She was wearing a shiny black…was it called a high-leg leotard? Anyway, a very revealing leather thing plus a vest, bunny ears, fishnet stockings, and stilettos. The curvy young woman with her long red hair in twintails was exactly what she looked like.

The radio gave the correct answer.

“Take it all in, Miyabi, and take one step closer to adulthood!! That is an orthodox tuxedo-style bunny girl, one of the classy ladies who work at casinos!!!!!!”

“Could you not imply that I’m a fake one!” cut in Helen.

She would prefer to not transform into Venus, but she also did not want her efforts to go unappreciated.

Meanwhile, a conversation was underway in the back alley.

Celina stayed by Miyabi’s side and leaned forward. She seemed very curious what was going on here.

The first to speak was the gang daughter named Phobia Neverjudge.

She addressed the bunny girl her gang had surrounded.

“Work as our magician.”

“Ugh.”

“Our previous magician was trash. Terrible at following directions, no real skill to speak of, and never covered things up properly. So if you take over that position, we will overlook all that cheating at our casino.”

“Um, and if I say no?”

“You get the usual treatment. We have a special brand for cheaters. Burns an appropriate message onto their face: ‘I’m a filthy cheater. Keep an eye on me, everyone.’ D’you think any casino’ll let you in with that covering your entire face?”

“Ha ha ha, yeah. But I think half the fun in gambling is seeing how long it takes before my cheating is found out.”

“Then your life is already a failure. Interested in buying it back?”

“Ha ha ha, yeah.” The bunny girl’s laughter was weak, but she did have a reason to be laughing. “But, but. It might be miniscule, but I still have a chance. Gambling is so much fun because everyone has a chance to turn things around.”

She had noticed the newcomers and she was very hopeful.

The hope was practically radiating from her.

Miyabi’s mouth formed a small triangle and Celina slapped her forehead.

“Oh, god. Really? Fine, Miyabi, which side are you going to take? The gangsters or the cheater? Neither one is exactly a good person, so just choose whichever one strikes your fancy. Oh, but keep in mind that pretending you never saw anything counts as siding with the Neverjudge Family.”

Miyabi Blackgarden nodded deeply.

The decision was an easy one.

“Why wouldn’t I choose the sexy bunny!? I mean, she’s sexy!!”

“Sigh, is that all Miyabi sees when he looks at me?”

The bespectacled version of Venus looked like she was witnessing the end of the world.

“Tch.”

The born gangster clicked her tongue.

Phobia had also noticed the people at the alleyway entrance. When up to no good, such as when surrounding a target, the gang would naturally be focused on the entrance whether there was someone there or not.

The blade wings shook behind her as she turned to face them.

“Well, well, well. If isn’t the new money girl that thinks she’s a fairy tale knight by sending in private troops she’s paid to fight for her! How badly did you rip off that country bumpkin there when you hired him? Scratch that. I don’t care. Your forces might be more powerful, but the Family is second to none when it comes to pinpoint urban assassina-”

“Lucifer Horn!! Take her away before she can attack!!!!!!”

The Lucifer Horn roared by overhead and its wire snagged the gang daughter, whisking her away. Probably all the way to Horn Fortress somewhere out in the ocean.

The gangsters in black stared blankly now that their boss’s only daughter had vanished before their eyes.

“Ha ha.” Celina burst out laughing while aiming her flintlock rifle at the gangsters. “Ah ha ha ha ha ha!! Miyabi, you are the absolute best! So what now? We have your gang’s heir. And since she’s our new party member, you’ll want to start this new relationship off on the right foot, right?”

“…”

“March on back to whatever hideout that greedy old geezer is rotting away in and pass on a message for me. If he doesn’t want his gang torn apart over some new succession issues at this late stage in his life, he needs to start accepting only the moral jobs that come in and to be a lot more flexible in the payment plans he accepts for the people trying to pay back their loans. And convey it all verbatim. It would be a shame if any miscommunication here led to a misunderstanding that bred unnecessary ill will between us☆”

The several shadowy figures clicked their tongues and left. Miyabi’s peaceful rural upbringing left him unprepared to note the significance of them setting aside their pride and turning their backs on Celina.

Then the shiny black bunny girl collapsed limply to the ground. She ended up with her legs splayed out beneath her in an oddly sexy way. She was around the same age as Eliza and Phobia, but she had an entirely different feel to her.

“Ohhhh, ohhhhhhhh!! You saved me. What even are the odds of turning that one around? Ahh, I’m all tinglyyyyy.”

However, he got the impression she had not collapsed from relief once the fear faded away.

After enjoying some kind of sensation that sent an alluring tremor up her spine, she finally looked up at the others from the ground.

“I’m Eluné. Eluné Jackpot. FYI: professional gamblers almost never give you their real name when you first meet them☆”

“What now? People who go by fake names are almost always up to no good.”

“I did warn you, Miyabi: neither one is exactly a good person. The same applies to anyone in this city.”

Celina sounded exasperated, but was she aware that applied to her too since this was her hometown?

Eluné smiled with her round-tailed butt still pressed against the ground.

“I need to repay you for this. Boy, is this your first time in the city? Then I can introduce you to the absolute best places here.”

“You want him to take information from someone who forgot to check who owned the casino she was cheating in and got dragged into a back alley? That can only end badly.”

“But I want to repay him.”

“Ugh, enough of this,” said Alicia. “Miyabi, why not let her join the party?”

“Fine, but what can a bunny girl do for the party?”

“She can give Venus a few pointers, making her even sexier. And I’m talking about things too indecent for the daylight hours.”

“That is not happening!!” protested the glasses woman, but no one was listening.

The real bunny girl’s face lit up.

“Join your party? I accept, I accept! I can just tell you’re on some exciting adventure! If I let this opportunity pass me by, I might as well retire as a gambler. I’m in, I’m in, I am so in!!”

“Um, okay then. I’ve got another one for you, Lucifer Horn!!”

Another wire arrived to collect the black bunny girl. She was such a risk junky that she actually managed to blow him a kiss while she was swept away into the sky.

After a bit, Eliza tilted her head.

“Wait.”

“What is it?”

“Well…sending that gang daughter – Phobia was it? – to Horn Fortress was fine, but you just sent Eluné there as well. Won’t that just lead to Round 2 once they encounter each other there?”

“…”

“And isn’t that a remote island surrounded by powerful barriers? Sh-she’s trapped there with Phobia.”

They all fell silent. The Lucifer Horn was no longer visible in the sliver of blue sky seen from the narrow alley.

Eventually, Miyabi nodded.

“Well, she seemed to like high-stakes gambles.”

“I just hope this doesn’t end with a dead body in the ocean over there,” said Alicia.

Miyabi’s party had already received an initiation into how the criminal city worked, but they could not let that scare them away.

The only way to make use of the city’s unique resources was to get used to the city’s ways.

They needed to repair the imperial automaton and ask him about the 11th who had pretended to be the emperor to command him.

Eliza glanced around while carrying Number 8’s limp form on her back.

“There is so much here my kingdom lacked. For one, the city is not lit by fires and tallow lamps.”

“Yes, these are cutting-edge gas lamps you see alongside the road. Hee hee. You are in for a surprise tonight. Metal foil is used to color the fires red, yellow, and blue. Each and every shop appears to be shining.”

“Hm. I had noticed glass tubes bent into letters like balloon art, but are those made to be illuminated? That explains why all the signs are transparent and hard to read. For example, what is that shop supposed to be?”

“…”

Celina sealed her lips shut and refused to answer.

She must have been unwilling to speak the name Bubble Bath Paradise out loud.

Helen the hall monitor placed a finger on the bridge of her glasses and stared like she could not believe her eyes.

“The bars are garish, the casinos have no rate limits and are buddy-buddy with loan sharks, I’m willing to bet the pawn shops are full of stolen goods, and those ‘theatres’ look more like the kind of place where the performers take their clothes of for tips. Wow, there’s even a battle arena where people actually lose their lives. Nothing on this street would be legal in the Republic. And the other street at this intersection appears to be nothing but hotels.”

“You’re awfully good at recognizing such establishments for someone who doesn’t approve of them,” said Alicia. “Got more of an interest in some of them than you’re letting on, perhaps?”

“Th-that information is necessary for working undercover!!”

Alma was looking all around from Miyabi’s feet.

“Koo…” said the black cat creature with a shiver.

“What’s wrong, Alma?” asked Alicia. “If you’re scared, then I’ll make a hammock out of my skirt for you. Ha ha ha. Yes, just jump on in!”

“Country Girl Limited Edition Strawberry Picker Chef’s Special Elf! Lift that skirt a little higher! Yes, even higher than that!! Wait, but how am I ever supposed to see that glorious fabric triangle when looking down from your neck!?”

The radio made a ruckus, earning a punch from Eliza and Helen both.

The pure knight was still having trouble reading the signs, but even she was starting to pick up on the indecent atmosphere. She had more doubt and caution in her voice while she carried the deactivated magical automaton around.

“Where is the Bodenburg Company? Don’t we need to visit them to fix Number 8 and get his information on the 11th?”

Celina winked and raised a finger.

“It’s the biggest building of them all. It’s impossible to miss.”

They were walking along the widest and most conspicuous road, but Miyabi still caught glimpses of a world he had never known.

For example, he peeked inside a weapon shop along the way.

“Welcome…except I would recommend against shopping here, kid. Carrying a weapon only makes it more likely you’ll be stabbed.”

For some reason, the shop’s owner firmly turned him away, which seemed like a terrible way to stay in business. The gloomy maid tending to the sharp and blunt weapons in the shop gave him a thin smile.

“Oh? Were you not expecting to find a maid here?” she said. “Hee hee. As a mercenary, I happen to be another of the products for sale. Stop by again if you have a job for me.”

Out of curiosity (a curiosity mostly directed toward the darker side of society glimpsed in this city), Miyabi nervously peeked inside all the stores they passed by. Either they refused to sell to first-timers, or they appeared to have all the more interesting items unlisted so they had to be requested by name. The major port had to be a starting point for a lot of journeys, but the place was not made for tourists.

“The food looks good, though,” said Miyabi, watching some sweets being cooked at a street stall.

“That is known as a crepe, Miyabi. People call this a criminal city, but it actually values freedom more than anywhere else on the continent and people from all sorts of backgrounds end up here. We are second to none when it comes to culture and the arts. Food is no exception.”

But their destination was the Bodenburg Company.

They had the most powerful card in their deck for that. Celina was the company’s only daughter. She was right about it being impossible to miss. The biggest building was visible from any part of the city.

As they approached, they came across a large iron gate. They could see a garden with rose hedges and fountains past the sturdy bars. It was too large to even call a park. Miyabi thought his entire village might have fit inside it. Maids and gardeners were coming and going within and they even saw a carriage driving by. The grand white mansion was enough to leave even Helen of the Republic and Eliza of the Arsenal Kingdom speechless. It was fancier even than the residences of their heads of state.

Miyabi gasped just from looking through the gate.

“That’s incredible.”

“Heh heh. It is, isn’t it?”

“Why is there a naked statue of you in the middle of that fountain? Was it some kind of punishment?”

“Th-that is of my mother when she was younger! And it was not some bizarre form of punishment!!”

Celina had clearly corrected exactly this misunderstanding on more than a few occasions.

She approached the gate with a bright blush on the face that took after her mother.

“Anyway, this is the headquarters of our company. Rudolf!”

“Oh?”

A gray-haired old man – presumably Rudolf – approached from the other side of the gate, but he did not bow. Powerful old men were in no short supply in a logging village, so for Miyabi, this muscular old-timer was like a point of familiarity in an otherwise strange city.

The air was dry, the sun was bright, and Rudolf wore black dress clothes, yet he was not sweating.

“Rudolf, I would like to discuss the company’s inventory. I require a list of all imperial automaton components we have in stock. I have reason to repair this automaton named Number 8.

Rudolf was smiling.

And he continued smiling as he responded.

“And why would I give you that?”

“Surely you aren’t going to say you do not recognize me.”

“I am afraid I must. The Bodenburg Company is run by the wealthiest family at Galletfron Trade Port. Being known far and wide comes at a price. Just the other day, a girl who looked exactly like the young lady rashly stopped by to scam us out of some travel expenses, so the master has ordered us to be stricter in our dealings with anyone, even if they appear to be family.”

“Even your family is turning you away, rich girl?” asked Alicia.

“(Kh!!)”

After the world-famous girl gave the elf one hell of a look, Rudolf made a suggestion.

“You might be a well-disguised fake, but I know I would recognize the real young lady’s exceptional business acumen. Let’s see…this city uses guns more than swords or sorcery, so why not acquire a Divine Crystal Bullet? Yes, just one will do. Bring that to me and I will be able to tell at a glance that you are the real young lady.”

“Hm, that isn’t much info to go on,” said Alicia.

The intellectual glasses woman gave a start.

The elf grinned and turned toward the woman, ready to boss her around.

“Heh heh heh. This sounds like a job for Venus, don’t you think?”

“L-let’s go take a look around, Miyabi! We’ll go over the city with a fine-tooth comb!!”

Thus, Operation Fine-Tooth Comb began.

“We’ll be asking around?”

Miyabi gave a thoughtful look toward Eliza.

Armor and weapons were a common sight in this criminal city full of thugs, so the problem was the thing she was carrying as their “muscle”.

“Then shouldn’t we find some place to keep Number 8? He looks so realistic people might think we’re carrying around a corpse.”

“But people carry drunks out of bars all the time here.”

The local girl sounded casual enough, but Miyabi wondered worriedly why she hadn’t specified where the drunks were being carried to.

They were in front of Celina’s mansion, but they were not allowed inside. Helen was in charge of their finances and she fell to her knees at the thought of renting out an inn room large enough for them all when a party member’s home was this very city.

“The corner room is open right now. I could move you there.”

“No, thank you!! I refuse to even consider any further expenses!!”

For some reason, Helen’s refusal elicited a quiet tongue click from the innkeeper.

The party gathered in a 2nd floor room where they were finally able to lay Number 8 down in a bed.

They needed to speak with him to get information on the 11th.

Miyabi nodded.

“Okay, let’s go find that Divine Crystal Bullet thing.”

“Yes, we cannot get the repair parts without convincing Rudolf.”

Would they find a bullet at a weapon shop?

They discussed the possibilities while descending the stairs, but they received a hint much sooner than expected.

A filthy middle-aged man wrapped in old rags spoke to them as soon as they stepped out of the inn.

“Hee hee hee. I’ve got some information you might just be interested in.”

“If you were that well informed, you wouldn’t look like you crawled out of a trash heap,” said Alicia.

“Now, now. Just hear me out.”

The elf’s exasperated comment was not enough to get him down.

“It’s about that inn you just left. Hm, so you managed to avoid the corner room, did you? That’s good to hear. Wanna know why the place is always empty but always makes a killing? Anyone who stays in the corner room is put to sleep by the special spores or insect scales rubbed onto the pillows and blankets. Once you’re out, they can steal everything of value. The innkeeper’s vault is crammed full of rare prizes.”

“…”

Normally, that would scare them enough to find a different inn.

In fact, this man was probably working for a different inn to guide customers that way. Those rags were a type of uniform. They looked filthy, but the sour smell was more reminiscent of watered-down vinegar than human body odor. It even had a touch of apply sweetness.

But Miyabi’s party had a goal in mind.

“(That means the innkeeper might have some rare weapons. Like the Divine Crystal Bullet that Rudolf guy asked for.)”

“(Even if he doesn’t have one, he might have done some research into potential targets that would have one. When a customer looks like they probably have a lot of valuables, he must try to get them to take the corner room.)”

So it was time to turn right around.

When they brought up the corner room, the innkeeper looked troubled.

But not because he was begging for mercy.

“50 thousand methods.”

“Huh?”

Celina had thought they had him dead to rights, so her eyes widened.

With a solid thunk, he placed a crystal smaller than his thumb down on the counter. The shadow cast by the clear crystal contained a colorful band of light just like when light shined through a water tank.

He grinned and leaned forward.

“For the Divine Crystal Bullet. Believe me, that’s a bargain. You should really be thanking me.”

The criminal city was indeed a criminal city.

Celina’s mouth flapped wordlessly a bit before she got her voice out.

“You expect me to pay 50 thousand methods for a sketchy item with nothing to prove it’s legit!? You could build a house with a decent garden in a rural village for that! You do understand you’ll be out of business if we reveal your misdeeds here, don’t you!?”

“Um, isn’t it wrong to let him get away with it just because we get what we want out of him?” quietly commented Helen, but no one was listening.

The innkeeper had the upper hand here and he was not letting go. He almost seemed to be enjoying it like a game.

“I stole this inn and its land with a forged title deed, so it’s no skin off my nose if I have to move elsewhere. There are tons of poorly-managed vacant buildings around here. Now. I believe the real issue here is that you need this Divine Crystal Bullet for some reason or another.”

“…”

“50 thousand and not a method less. If you’re short on cash, then sell that jewel-encrusted dress of yours. And if that isn’t enough, your underwear too. We can talk after that.”

“~ ~ ~!!!!!!”

Being outdone in a business discussion must have been unforgivable for Celina. She tugged on panicking Miyabi’s sleeve, guiding him away from the counter, and then whispered in his ear. With her bayonetted rifle held close.

“(Let’s rob him.)”

“This escalated quickly!!!”

“(Shh. Let’s teach that fucker the meaning of freedom in this criminal city. There’s no use haggling with him. I have a sixth sense for deals that aren’t going to work out. We’d be here for a century without making any progress.)”

“Says the girl who was all over us when we said we would sell our Wicked God horn.”

Celina glared over at the elf.

As for Miyabi…

“We do need that thing to convince Mr. Rudolf…”

“(This innkeeper is clearly taking advantage of us. That Divine Crystal Bullet is no more a piece of glasswork!)”

“But what are we supposed to do?” asked the pure boy.

Celina rubbed a finger against her temple.

“(Well, if we aren’t just going to blow his brains out…oh, I know. We can create our own. You saw what it looks like, right? We can counterfeit ourselves one!)”

The Lucifer Horn connected them to Horn Fortress.

The wire dangling from the bomber could carry people and things to and from that island. They did not know how developed Horn Fortress was at this point, but they did know they had a useful party member there.

The dwarf named Garett Goldcave was an Arsenal Kingdom blacksmith skilled enough to be considered a national treasure.

“That might just work. If we did the work here, someone might notice and word might reach Rudolf.”

They had approval from the glasses woman who preferred to follow the rules but still excelled at conspiracies.

They left the dumbfounded innkeeper behind and returned to their room in his inn. Their only option was to send a letter via the Lucifer Horn and trust in Garett’s skill.

It was complete before sunset.

The dish called pizza turned out to be a controversial choice. Helen and Celina were arguing over whether garlic shrimps were an acceptable topping when the Lucifer Horn delivered a small box wrapped in cushioning.

“Is this it?”

“Miyabi, you don’t know a thing about how guns work, from the firing mechanism to how the lead deforms on impact, do you?” said Celina. “I will give you a thorough lecture later on, but for now, let’s get back to Rudolf.”

They walked to the Bodenburg residence and found Rudolf waiting in the same place as before.

He had not given them a time limit, so had he been waiting there the entire time?

“That was fast. Do you have the Divine Crystal Bullet?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“I would like to see it, if you don’t mind. Excuse me.”

Miyabi had trouble looking the man in the eye, so Celina surreptitiously stomped on his foot with a smile.

“…”

“…”

“Interesting,” said Rudolf with a nod.

Was that a yes or a no? It was a tense moment. Miyabi did not know how things worked in this city, but he was worried they would be subjected to some very creative punishments if it was discovered they had given the man a fake.

“It really is you, milady.” Rudolf smiled. “I knew you would never pay such an absurd price.”

“It was such an obvious setup. That wasn’t even worth haggling over. I bet you knew it was me and decided to have some fun!”

“Ho ho. That is the Bodenburg way.”

Then I’ll never understand it, thought Commoner Miyabi. He could never stand living in a home where everyone made such stomachache-inducing jokes.

“You wished to discuss an imperial automaton, correct?”

“Wait, we’re just going to chat out here? Invite us in already.”

The elf’s complaints did nothing to wipe the smile off of Rudolf’s face.

He continued standing perfectly still in front of the gate.

“I apologize, but the master is in a bad mood within.”

“What’s upset father this time?”

“Pirates,” replied Rudolf. “The loss of the armored train required the company to switch to ocean shipping routes, but a pirate took advantage of the shipping fleet’s poor coordination during the confusion of the switchover. Their defenses should have been sufficient, but they were gathered in a hurry and thus unable to work together so soon.”

“…”

The girl fell silent.

This was a complicated issue, but she may have felt responsible for losing the Schwarz Schütze.

“Only the cargo was targeted, so the crew and mercenaries were unharmed. …However, the pirate was very thorough, almost to the point of mockery. The magical automaton parts you want were no exception. Items from the ruined Empire are rare, so it will be difficult to find replacements on such short notice. Your only option may be to attack the pirate and take back what was stolen.”

“Um, a pirate?”

Miyabi had grown up in the mountains, so the word only vaguely rang a bell.

Rudolf shook his head.

“This one is quite famous, sadly enough.”

He identified the pirate.

“Onelife Shiftup, the one-eyed pirate. He is known to use a special prosthetic arm, so he may have need for imperial technology.”

“Hm.” Eliza brought a hand to her chin. “Does he use a high-tech automaton arm?”

“But not even our company has managed to track him down. People say he is a gentleman thief and that he singlehandedly defeated a Wicked God and broke off its horn. It is hard to say how much of it is a coincidence and how much of it is an intentional strategy on his part, but all the unconfirmed rumors have confused our attempts to find real information on him. We know he is somewhere in this port city, but not his exact location.”

“…”

“We do know, however, that he possesses a powerful Godhorn Tech: the King Knot pirate ship. Unfortunately, that part is undoubtedly true because it is registered as one of the continent’s 10 Godhorn Techs.”

Chapter 5, Section 2

Night had fallen.

It was finally time for the dangerous criminal city to awaken.

Back in their inn room, Celina Bodenburg placed her hands on her hips and breathed from her nose.

“Asking around during the day would be a waste of time. The outlaws are only out and about at night. Now, let’s track down that pirate who stole my company’s cargo! Then we teach him a painful lesson on why that was a bad idea!!”

Village Boy Miyabi Blackgarden was terrified.

He took a nervous look out from the 2nd story window. For reasons he could not explain, the city was now filled with lights dyed in pinks, yellows, and other colors. The place was so much busier than during the day. He knew he had to be imagining it, but he could have sworn the stench of alcohol was seeping in through the window.

“Are you sure this is a good idea? It looks extremely dangerous out there.”

“She’s the expert, so I’m sure she’ll explain it for us.”

Alicia Blueforest jerked her thumb over toward the bunny girl sans glasses.

“Hello, hello! Venus here, at your service!!”

“Don’t you dare gloss over the fanservice like it’s nothing!! I don’t care how many times it’s happened, you’ve gotta show it all in detail! You can’t forget your embarrassment or the impact it has on your innocent heart!! …Miss Elf, I know this will make you jealous, but you need to place me on the floor. This requires drastic measures, so I need a low angle view of that V-shape between the bunny’s legs!!”

The elf tossed the radio to the floor and the sexy young woman crushed it below her sharp heel. It was reminiscent of stopping a rolling ball underfoot.

The bunny girl ignored any possible damage to the jerk.

“Anyway, this city works differently than a normal one. It’s full of thieves, assassins, and resupplying pirates, so there are wanted criminals everywhere you turn.”

“Wait,” said Miyabi. “Are thieves different from bandits?”

“Thieves work very differently from the bandits running rampant in the fields. They are experts at working in a city. Although I can’t tell you if it’s the authorities or the criminals who are so picky about the nomenclature.”

However, one of them was not going to let this go without comment.

Someone even more strait-laced than Helen Clockgear was actually trembling. That person was of course Eliza Silverstorm.

“Wh-wh-what?”

“Oh, yeah. Eliza never saw Venus before this. But didn’t she see the black bunny during the day?”

“Why are you waring that highly indecent and utterly insane rabbit costume, you horny titty monsterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!???”

“Really!? You’re actually drawing your lance over this!? I’m not doing this because I want to, you know!?”

Helen preferred not becoming a mutilated corpse while dressed like that, so she paled and shouted a defense.

This was also Celina’s first time seeing it, but she did not seem all that surprised. She picked up black cat Alma in a classy way.

“Oh, is that all? I was expecting something more after everything I heard. Hee hee. You see bunny girls like that all over this city at night.”

“There’s something wrong with a city that has bunny girls walking around! You don’t wear this kind of thing outside!!”

“I was expecting some kind of strange gimmick, like zippers or bows in some risqué places that could be undone to spice things up, or a special fabric that becomes see-through when viewed through a special magnifying glass. Or maybe thick padlocks on either hip to show you can’t take it off on your own.”

“???”

“Ksh! Wh-where can I buy Bodenburg stock! And I’m not talking about making a quick buck off of some day trading! I want the special shareholder treatment! These ideas are brilliant! Ksh, their next manger has a bright future!!!!!!”

The radio was even more excitable than usual, perhaps due to the beautiful woman stepping on it.

The entire discussion went way over Miyabi’s head.

Afraid Celina would smile and offer to customize their bunny to demonstrate what she meant, Venus spoke rapidly and hurried to the door.

“Yes, well, thank you, but I think I’m going to go change! Just a sec!!”

“Sh-she must want to be fully prepared when the fun begins,” suggested the radio as Alicia finally collected it from the floor.

Helen returned in the jacket and tight skirt of her government official outfit. The glasses were back as well.

“Yes, fully prepared,” she said.

“What!? Not so fast! Why did that lousy door not pop open while she was changing!?”

Being stepped on had not slowed the radio down at all, but Alicia was focused on something else.

“Was she in such a hurry she changed out in the hallway?”

“Is everything she does indecent?” muttered Eliza.

The knight’s comment came as a shock to the glasses woman.

“Wait just a second! Is no one on my side!? Miyabi, you know I’m not like that, don’t you? No, don’t blush and look the other way, Miyabiiii!!”

“Mom, try taking some deep breaths!!”

“I’m not your mom! How can I be indecent and your mom!? Did some Montage magic mess with your mind!?”

Helen tearfully tried to hide her body, but Eliza was ready to get down to business.

“So we’re up against a pirate?” asked the righteous person. “I am more than willing to punish a villain. We should get started as soon as possible.”

Alicia sighed.

“Yes, but we can’t just obliterate the city with a Godhorn Tech.”

“Onelife Shiftup, a one-eyed pirate with a prosthetic arm.” Miyabi repeated the information to make sure he had it right. “Let’s ask around for some information on him.”

Outside, the city was a deluge of lights.

The red, yellow, and blue gas lights were not limited to the main street. Signs everywhere glowed with strange colored fire, the glass tubes shining from within.

Pure as the driven snow, Eliza read off the glowing signs in puzzlement.

“Bubble Bath Paradise?”

“M-Miyabi? Let’s hurry on to find Onelife. Immediately!!”

Celine shouted and pushed on Eliza’s back with both hands before the reality could sink in.

The streets were aflood with noise.

“Just one! You make just the one order and there aren’t any additional charges to worry about!!”

“Hey there, handsome. Remember the name on this sign, okay?☆ We’re open all night long, so you can stop by after the other places close. I won’t force you to stop by now, but how about ending the night here after you visit two or three other places?☆”

“The information desk? Don’t even bother. If you want to have some real fun, you need to know where the unlisted places are. So if you don’t want your courage and savings to go to waste, stop by the Secret Diviner.”

Miyabi had known it was a large city, but he could not believe how many people were crammed inside. It was on an entirely different level from the daytime. He was surrounded by the smell of alcohol and perfume, cheerful cries calling for customers, little shrieks made mostly in jest, and an unidentifiable scent created by the greasy smoke of all the different grilled and fried street foods. Disinfectant magic made with a purifying silver could not even dent the effect this place had.

Miyabi felt dizzy.

“It’s like a whole other world. I don’t understand half the things they’re saying.”

“Nhhh☆ I’m finally home.”

Meanwhile, Celina stretched her arms up with a relaxed smile.

The city operated under different rules at night and these rules must have felt more like home to her. They were surrounded by garish signs and (practically naked) young women in such skimpy outfits it was unclear if they counted as dresses or underwear, but she had the same look as a country child seeing the rhino beetles and shaved ice after returning home.

“Has no one here heard of restraint?” asked a fed-up Alicia.

However, the city’s overwhelming night was not limited to the outdoors. Once they began entering shops to ask around, Miyabi quickly ran into an obstacle.

For example, the owner of a weapons shop had this to say.

“What are you doing out this late? The night is Juicy, so get your ass back home!”

For example, a grinning customer whispered to him while perusing the products at an item shop.

“Oh, dear. Everyone has been so uneasy at night lately. Maybe because Ripped has been causing so much trouble. It’s weird I haven’t seen any of his other pirates around lately though.”

For example, the gorgeous woman serving drinks at a bar welcomed him with a smile.

“Oh, welcome! You might go looking for the younger girls, but my skills at Hard are quite something if I say so myself.”

He had listened carefully, but he had no idea what they meant.

He was stuck blinking in confusion.

“Wh-what? What are they even saying?”

“Oh, dear,” said Celina. “It sounds like some strange new rules have spread across the city while I was away.”

“If it happened recently, it might be related to that celebrity,” suggested Helen.

“Celebrity? You mean that pirate?” Alicia looked bitter. “He isn’t some gentleman thief in a play – he’s an actual criminal. There’s something wrong with a town that lionizes someone like that.”

They found some more unusual people around the city’s night. A young man was drinking at a table outside a bar.

And his long ears were twitching.

Miyabi did not even try to beat around the bush.

“Huh? Are you an elf!?”

“Hm, what gave it away?”

The slender male knight did not seem bothered and did not even set down his mug. He had long blond hair, white skin, and the handsome face of a stage actor, but he was wearing armor and a cape. And instead of deflecting attacks with thick metal, the armor was designed to efficiently and economically spread defense magic across his body. Eliza eyed the armor with a hint of jealousy.

As a fellow elf, Alicia put her hands on her hips.

“What are you doing in this disgusting city? Did you take one wrong step and get sold off by the humans?”

“They finally abandoned that bad habit centuries ago. Modern humans aren’t quite that unreasonable. The world is at peace.”

“Ho ho? I see. So you can look at the world out there and call it peaceful, can you?”

Alicia grinned at him with some obvious hidden meaning behind the look. Almost like she was sneering at a rich kid who had no idea how the real world worked.

Miyabi tilted his head.

“What, do you know each other?”

“My apologies. I am Cliff Blueforest. I originally guarded the Blue Forest, but I had reason to leave and travel the outside world instead.”

“Blue…?”

Miyabi looked over at Alicia, but she shook her head, looking disgusted.

“No, no. We’re not siblings or anything. We’re just both from the Blueforest race. Every elf born in that forest uses the Blueforest name.”

“I also get the feeling he has his act together a lot more than you.”

“Shut up. I can live my life however I want.”

And then…

“Heh heh. Yes, if only we could all live our lives however we want. That would make things so much easier for me.”

Miyabi gasped.

What was that?

It didn’t seem to be ventriloquism, but it had sounded an awful lot like a seductive female voice had come from Cliff.

Cliff himself grimaced.

“You don’t usually make your presence known in front of others.”

“Get a clue, dullard. You seemed to be enjoying yourself for once, so I was feeling jealous.”

Miyabi was not imagining things.

Two different voices were coming from Cliff, but the female one did not match his lips. He also seemed to be conversing with that other voice.

“Hm? Do you, um, have a crystal radio like Alicia?”

“Oh, is that elf a skilled enough alchemist to create a philosopher’s stone? Yes, elves tend to be exceptionally skilled in magic. For me, that means summoning the Demon Lord. Unfortunately, my ceremony worked just fine for summoning her, but entirely failed to control her afterwards.”

“The Demon Lord?”

“Correct, boy. The very same Demon Lords you see in picture books and plays. Those twelve rulers are said to determine the nature of the world around them with their mere presence. This irritating woman who never leaves me alone is one of those Demon Lords that include the great Philia Shout and Rising Dark. This one claims to be Under Lilith.”

“?”

Miyabi was even more confused now.

He recognized that name. She had been involved in transferring the Lucifer Horn’s contract from Moebius and in the incantation used to control the Palette Dice.

According to Angela Custardmare, the armor-trapped maid he had taken as a party member before, that name showed up in contract ceremonies so powerful they were classified as Super Kingdom level.

“Contract Owner…”

“…Under Lilith?”

Celina and Eliza had also used Godhorn Techs, so their eyes grew wide. They likely recognized the name from the incantation they used to link their control device with the Godhorn Tech itself.

Helen, who had never used one, held a finger to the side of her glasses.

“Well, setting aside issues of strength and compatibility, there are a few legends of beings that act as intermediaries. There’s Freyja who commands the heavenly Valkyries and there’s Legba Atibon who is said to manage the ceremonies themselves. It all follows the basic idea of using them to control something else.”

“Like a giant Beast Nova?”

“Discriminatory language!!” shouted Alicia, red in the face and long ears fully vertical.

But different elves must have had different views on the matter because Cliff did not seem bothered by the term Miyabi had used. His pointed ears kept their horizontal orientation.

Miyabi found this strange.

He had thought the name Under Lilith was just part of the incantation. Even if it was someone’s name, he had assumed they were someone who had lived centuries or even millennia ago.

He had never imagined he would be able to chat with them in a bar.

“But we only have her word to go on.”

When Miyabi thought about it, he realized he did not actually know how old any of these elves were. Cliff himself gave a dismissive wave of the hand not holding his mug.

“Taking a demon at her word is never a good idea. She’s just making stuff up since I lost my memories. Trusting her would end badly.”

“Heh heh heh. Believe what you wish,” said the female voice. “Your mind might not survive full knowledge of the truth anyway.”

The elf knight had just mentioned something else that sounded important. He had a lot going on.

“Um, what was that about your memories?”

“I lost them all. I was lucky to even remember the name Blueforest as a clue to my origins.” Cliff sounded bitter. “I was apparently in love with a human and I dabbled in the dark arts to save her from illness, but that’s why I’m stuck with this evil being now. My memories were the price I paid, so now I can’t even remember what she looked like. That is why I now travel the continent searching for some proof that she survived. No matter how small it might be.”

“…”

Under Lilith (or the voice claiming the name) said nothing.

She had mentioned jealousy before, so maybe this was more of that.

And…

“Oh? When did you find some more drinking buddies?”

“They showed up on their own. Just like you always do.”

Someone else walked up to the table.

She too had long ears.

However, the woman had shoulder-length silver hair and alluring brown skin. Her only clothing were some bandages and dark strips of cloth wrapped around her. What had once been a cape was in tatters. However, the way she carried herself showed no sign of injury, so that may have been her idea of fashion.

The whip at her hip looked like it was made from a rose vine and she toyed with it in her fingers as she spoke.

“I am Lillian Greenforest. As you can plainly see, I am a dark elf.”

“Green…?”

Alicia was dumbfounded and the brown woman responded with a bewitching laugh.

“Yes, I come from that forest that was burned to the ground. The survivors are few but we are around. And we have not forgotten what was done to us.”

That last line sounded plenty ominous.

Alicia even had some unnatural beads of sweat on her forehead.

But Miyabi was fixated on another detail.

“D-dark?”

“Hm? Do you need something?”

“A dark elf!? That’s a thing!? That sounds so cool! And the dark part makes you sound rare!!”

“Eh? Huh?”

Lillian was taken aback when he approached with eyes aglitter. The look on her face made it clear she was not accustomed to compliments.

“Boy,” interrupted Alicia. “You need to stop talking about our noble species like a rare collectible. It’s insulting.”

“Oh, did you say something, ordinary elf?”

“Ordinary elf!!!??? That’s even worse!! It is high time I took you aside and taught you just how noble elves are. I never should have let you get away with lifting my skirt and tugging on my ears when you were little!!”

Cliff sighed and provided some advice.

“Be careful around Lillian. She looks cute and all, but her lifelong goal is to destroy humanity.”

“Eh?”

“Oh, you have nothing to worry about. You don’t seem interested in that sort of thing.” Lillian snapped her lithe fingers to call over a waiter and accepted a pink cocktail, the name of which Miyabi could not even imagine. “I consider myself a ‘passive avenger’. My primary targets are sorcery researchers. They make so much progress when I let them use my body as a specimen. Progress on developing magic that will destroy them all. Godhorn Tech is not enough. One day, humanity will create some truly uncontrollable magic that will send them straight down the path to extinction. That is my idea of revenge.”

“…”

“There are so many excellent potential triggers: the aerosol ballistic missiles developed by the Republic’s old monarchy, the Necromancer…oh, and let’s not forget Holy Gate who it’s said truly mastered alchemy. Unfortunately, all those people are half legendary, so contacting them is no easy task.”

Miyabi was unsure how to react to her thin smile.

He could not even tell if she was deadly serious or if she was teasing him. The cocktail glass she was toying with made it even harder to judge.

“By the way, what has you out this late?” Cliff reached for the bar nuts. “You look a little young to be drinking.”

“Solving a riddle.”

“?”

Cliff looked puzzled but curious.

Miyabi hoped he would know what Juicy or Hard meant, but no such luck.

Cliff did have some advice, though.

“I see. I would recommend finding multiple people who use the same term.”

“Why?”

Miyabi frowned and Cliff gave an exaggerated nod.

“For example…yes, let’s say one of the words is Hot.”

“Okay.”

“If a customer at one table orders a Hot, you have no way of narrowing down what kind of dish it is. But what if you also hear a fisherman at the port saying he caught a lot Hots today? And what if a small child pouts and complains that Hots are good but removing all the little bones is a pain? Then you can conclude that a Hot is a fish, right?”

“Hee hee. And this goes beyond codes. Multiple sources is crucial when researching any kind of information,” added Lillian. “Conversely, the key to tricking someone is to isolate them, cutting them off from any information outside of yours.”

Miyabi thanked the two elves and prepared to brave the city’s night once more, but then he turned back and asked them a question.

“Oh, right. What are you two planning to do after this? Will we meet again somewhere?”

“Hard to say. I don’t really have any solid plans.”

“I don’t want to search the entire continent to find you again, so I think I’ll call in the Lucifer Horn and have you join my party. I’d love to borrow your wisdom again, but more than that, I feel like we get along well.”

Cliff smiled a little.

Lillian looked seriously exasperated. She had announced her intentions to destroy humanity, so she was unsure what to make of this human saying they got along well.

But she also looked amused.

“Yes, I am searching the entire world for signs my lover once lived there. I want to be thorough and avoid missing anything, but I can’t reach that Horn Fortress through normal means, can I? Then accepting your invitation seems the best course of action to me.”

“A Godhorn Tech, you say? That sorcery technology is a little too small-scale and – worse – manageable for my use, but I might be able to direct its evolution in a more malicious direction. Besides, I have more lifespan than I know what to do with, so it can’t hurt to take a short detour and check out a new possibility. Hee hee. And the 11th’s sorcery bombs might also make an interesting trigger.”

Once Cliff Blueforest and Lillian Greenforest had been sent to Horn Fortress by the Lucifer Horn, Miyabi’s party resumed their investigation.

They had to find the one-armed pirate Onelife no matter what it took.

“Miyabi, the plan was to ask around some more and find a pattern to the codewords, wasn’t it?”

At Eliza’s prompting, they patiently gathered even more information. They even found a sketchy old man who claimed to be selling a list of codes, but they had no way of knowing if it was legit until they bought it. Celina knew the city best and she advised they refuse.

Still, they managed to find some patterns. They regathered below the colorful gas lamps to discuss their findings.

Alicia counted off on her fingers.

“Um, they said you can find Joy in the Creepy…”

“Koo koo!”

“Hold on, Alma. I’ll get confused if you interrupt!” shouted Miyabi.

They were going to be at it all night at this rate. The city was so different at night, so they wanted to find their answers before dawn. They continued walking around the city gathering information for a while longer.

And eventually…

“Joy is money…Juicy is dangerous…hm, this is actually working.”

“Let’s share what we know so we won’t forget it. And this doesn’t mean I’ve given up on figuring it out on my own!!”

On Celina’s suggestion, they wrote down all of their findings on a piece of paper to compare it all.

“Umm, let’s go with what we know for sure. Tight is the port, Creepy is the back alleys…and Ripped is Onelife himself.” Miyabi went over his thoughts under his breath. “Does that mean he isn’t at the port and is hiding somewhere in the back alleys?”

“Let’s go, Miyabi. Let’s show him exactly whose cargo he decided to steal!”

Celina was liable to charge in on her own, but her rifle was too scary for them to claim she couldn’t handle herself. Their only choice was to rush after her.

They found a dark, narrow alleyway.

Even the moonlight seemed to steer clear of the place.

This underground side of the city would be hidden in shadows during the day and people like Miyabi would never get close, but strangely, it actually brought his guard down once night fell. He felt some relief when he stepped into the alleyway. The gentle shadows seemed to protect him from the garish lights of all the signs.

But that may have been why real tragedy seemed to coat the walls and ground.

“So he’s here?”

The darkness seemed to absorb Miyabi’s question.

The Mobile Fire magic lit at the end of Celina’s bayonet was nowhere near sufficient.

There was only one path with no side paths branching off. All of the windows were boarded up. Almost like whoever was inside wanted to preemptively ensure their safety by ensuring they could never witness something they shouldn’t have.

The boards were like a sign saying “we allow any and all criminal acts here”.

“This is exactly where I would expect to find a criminal,” said Eliza while observing her surroundings.

“Koo?” cried the creepy Greymalkin walking at Miyabi’s feet.

No, Alma was grabbing at the boy’s leg to say it had found something.

“Koo koo!!”

And not just from one direction.

Miyabi looked out ahead and behind him.

“Damn, an ambush!”

Young men wearing rough shirts and bandannas stepped out to block the back alley’s exits.

Even without a ship, they were clearly pirates.

There were of course several of them.

“We know you’re looking for Onelife, so don’t bother pretending to be searching for a lost cat. You’ve left tracks everywhere. Did you never think we’d get wind of what you were planning?”

One of the pirates spoke in a deep voice while creeping closer to lay on the pressure.

Why did outlaws care so much about internal rules and hierarchies? Then again, they probably didn’t care if Miyabi’s party understood. They were essentially waving a cat toy in the party’s faces, hoping they would take a step too far. They hoped to lure the party into confirming they were after Onelife.

“With that look in your eyes and the weapons, I get the feeling you aren’t just some tourists hoping to hitch a ride on a wagon,” said the bandanna pirate. “So here’s a word of advice: old-fashioned swords and sorcery aren’t everything in this city. And if you need proof, we’re more than happy to oblige.”

The pirates looked like they belonged on a theatre stage, but with one crucial difference.

They did not use swords or sorcery. Miyabi expected them to draw guns like Celina’s, but even that was wrong.

They pulled out strange bottles with a silver foil pasted all over them. The two wires sticking out from the lid at the top were connected by the intermittent flashing of brutal electricity.

Informed Celina Bodenburg’s eyes widened.

“Leyden jars!? Thugs are making electric toys these days!?”

“Electric?”

Miyabi had no idea what that meant, but the crackling noise was enough to scare him.

“Think of it like mini-lightning,” explained Helen. “When combined with ocean spray, it can knock people out over a wide area, so be careful. I imagine these thugs have them to capture runaway sex workers without leaving any kind of scar.”

“…”

“M-Miyabi? Um, uh, why are you turning away with such a wounded look? N-no! This isn’t about me!! It’s about the enemy!!”

“Mom…”

“Please stop confusing me for your mother whenever you panic!!!!!!”

“Stepmom?”

“What difference is that supposed to make!!!???”

Anyway, if what she said about those bottles was true, they were in trouble.

Even a boy raised in a village of swords and sorcery understood that lightning could travel through water.

The alley was straight and narrow. If they filled the entire space with some kind of spray and then released the electricity, the entire party would be knocked out regardless of how strong any of them was individually.

“The codes spread throughout the city may have been a trap meant to lure us here,” said Alicia.

“I can’t believe how popular that Onelife crook is!” roared Celina.

None of the pirates even flinched.

In fact, they continued to creep closer from both directions.

Eliza’s enormous lance must have been a poor match for the narrow alley because she whispered a question.

“What now? Will you use your Godhorn Tech?”

“…”

“Hey, what now!?”

“…”

The pirates moved even closer, maybe to be absolutely certain. At this range, a pistol or even a blade would be a threat.

But then…

“Hold it right therrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre!!”

A voice boomed out like an explosion.

Then booming footsteps and a booming impact sent a few of the pirates crashing into the wall.

The culprit was a muscular macho man.

He had wild hair and an equally wild beard and he wore a thick coat and a distinctive tricorn hat. Instead of an ordinary eyepatch held in place by string, he had a golden metal plate embedded in the eye socket itself.

He was about as piratey as pirates came and he was extremely fit despite being on the borderline between middle age and old age.

“I appreciate the attempt to protect me!”

A scream was drowned out by another loud impact.

The large man had punched another pirate and the Leyden jar he held.

“But I never asked you to dirty your hands for me!!”

The gust of wind created by his massive fist was enough to blow away the sea spray that would carry the artificial lightning. The target of the punch flew even further than that.

The strangely metallic sound of the blow led Miyabi to realize the man’s arm was a prosthetic.

Then that heavy metal fist dropped down toward him.

The one-eyed old man raised an unintelligible cry.

“Whoa, watch out!?”

“Hm? Oh, my bad. I’ve got a bad habit of losing control in battle.”

Miyabi had held his control sword in both hands to block, but his fingers were still throbbing with pain from the force of the impact. The man laughed it off like it didn’t matter, but without the link to the Godhorn Tech, Miyabi would have been helplessly engulfed in a storm of blows.

Mostly taken aback, Helen listed off some observations to make absolutely certain.

“A pirate. A prosthetic arm. Says they were protecting him.”

“You mean this filthy guy is him?” The radio sounded upset. “Why!? Where’s my eyepatch girl with a miniskirt and cutlass!?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then why respond at all!?”

Everyone ignored the radio’s laments.

The large man pointed at his own chest with his metal thumb.

“I am indeed Onelife Shiftup, the great pirate whose reputation extends out into the ocean since the continent wasn’t enough to contain me.”

He was at least willing to have a conversation, so they explained their situation to him.

“So the automaton parts we need should be within the cargo you stole.”

“I see.” Onelife leaned back against the dark alleyway’s wall, crossed his arms, and groaned in thought. “First, I would like to apologize for what happened here. Nhh, my immense popularity is usually a good thing, but some of them look up to me so much they get a little carried away. But they were acting out of concern for me and meant no harm, so please forgive them.”

“Look up to you?” asked Miyabi with a tilt of the head.

“This guy’s the real deal. He even called himself immensely popular,” added the radio, sounding impressed.

Did this mean those bandanna pirates were not part of his crew?

Celina was of course the one to argue back.

“Don’t you have something more to apologize for? All of that cargo belonged to my company! Return it all this instant!!”

“I already said I was sorry and a true man among men knows how to let bygones be bygones. Still, this is a problem. I need those automaton parts myself.”

“For your arm?” asked Helen.

The one-eyed pirate shook his head.

“No. Well, it’d be faster to just show you. Come with me to the port.”

He gestured them over. He could never be a king or a knight captain, but his actions had a way of drawing everyone’s eye.

He did in fact gather a lot of attention in the city.

There was a clear change as they exited the damp back alley and entered the alcohol-smelling street.

Everyone focused on the one-armed pirate and cleared a path for him in the colorful light of the gas lamps. But not out of fear. Their eyes contained admiration.

The calls for customers ceased entirely and were replaced by heartfelt cheers.

It was like an outlaw parade.

Everyone gathered on the side of the road to see the legendary pirate.

“Everyone looks up to Captain Onelife!” A kleptomaniac girl’s eyes shined bright. “Even groups that never get along will work together for him!”

“He even owns a Godhorn Tech. Rumor has it he broke off a Wicked God’s horn and installed it in his own ship.” An assassin lurking in the shadows truly believed the rumors. “His greatest weapon has to be that powerful presence that makes such a crazy story sound so plausible.”

“A monster who can break off a Wicked God horn and the King Knot pirate ship,” whispered an assassin disguised as a flower seller girl. “Not someone I want to be on the wrong side of.”

The one-eyed pirate led them down the city’s gentle slope until they arrived at the port bordering the ocean.

Seeing the ocean after it absorbed the dark color of the night sky was more of a shock than Miyabi had been expecting. It was so dark, deep, and terrifying. The lamplight grew sparser here and could not hold the darkness at bay and the noise of the city faded into the background. The place seemed cold.

He felt like he was approaching the realm of the dead.

Several wooden piers jutted out from the stone coast of the port. Those appeared to be docks for the ships that stopped here, so many large sailing ships could be seen. They all had large symbols on their sails. Miyabi did not know what any of them meant, but Helen’s jaw dropped as she viewed them.

“That one is from the Empty Fleet that hints at a baseless legend of a sunken ship to trick people into buying fake treasure maps, and that one is from the Blind family of smugglers. A-are none of the ships here legal!?”

“The best thing about this city is how it will let any villain resupply and stay the night as long as they can pay,” said Celina.

“Oh? That’s the same mark I saw on the Schwarz Schütze,” noted Miyabi. “So is that why the Bodenburg Company uses the city so much?”

Celina puffed out her cheeks and kicked him in the shin for that observation, but he had not yet earned enough experience to consider that a reward.

However, the ships were not their biggest problem.

“Hmm. You said his name was Number 8?”

“Have you heard of him?” asked Miyabi.

Surprisingly, the larger-than-life pirate nodded.

“I do own some similar products, after all.”

“No, you stole them from our company!!”

Miyabi was fairly certain the Bodenburg Company had gotten them by paying criminally low prices for items stolen from the Empire’s ruins, but he held his tongue to avoid another kick to the shin.

“The Number Whatever series were special automatons built to have direct audiences with the emperor…or so I’ve heard. A useless privilege now that the Empire itself is gone,” said Onelife. “That one was probably even more special since he was chosen to protect the vast Empire on all sides, but he would have used the same basic design. They would have taken the standard core and reinforced all the external parts to make their strongest model yet. By using ordinary automaton parts, you might just be able to repair him for the time begin. But…”

“But what?”

The man had trailed off for some reason.

He answered Miyabi’s question by jerking his chin over toward some wooden boxes stacked up on the wharf.

“As you can see, all the imperial automatons are packed up already.”

“In those boxes!? Where?”

Miyabi was surprised, but Celina was incensed.

The boxes were stacked up to twice her height, creating a small mountain.

“You stole that much from us, you crook!?”

“Not again!? All those inconvenient facts slipped my miiiiiiiiiiiiiiind!!”

“How can a criminal be so pure!?”

He further proved himself by not letting Eliza’s comment faze him.

“Anyway, the automatons are packed up because I was planning to ship them out.”

“To where?” asked Miyabi.

“This might be hard to grasp for someone from the continent, but there are islands out at sea.”

“At sea? So you’re sending them to a remote island country?” asked Helen.

When Celina noticed Miyabi and Eliza both looking out to sea, she quietly stopped them.

“They’re not close enough to see from here, you idiots.”

“Meh heh heh. I’m talking about a proper monarchy. They’re a lot more peaceful than here.” Onelife needlessly crossed his arms, but he did not look particularly cheerful. “But their king died of disease recently and a boy of only 12 was placed on the throne. They have people who question the succession, others who want to bring down the monarchy altogether, and then there are external forces to worry about. Since they have Godhorn Tech, there’s no end to people after the Wicked God horn. …It’s left a giant mess on the young king’s plate. It’s so bad he can’t even trust his own aides.”

“That’s sad and all, but why are you supporting him?” Alicia gave him a skeptical look. “I doubt you were born and raised there and criminals don’t follow the rules anyway.”

For some reason, he pushed his chest out proudly and grinned.

“The previous king valued the freedom of the ocean. If someone fell overboard or was shipwrecked, he would save them even if they were a foreigner or a pirate. He saved my own men on more than one occasion.”

“In other words, even a pirate can feel indebted to his savior?” cautiously asked Eliza.

“He accepted you regardless of your background. That’s much easier said than done. Especially for someone who has to rule a kingdom. But he did it. I shared his view of a free ocean, so if the new king is having trouble, I’m willing to help out a little. At least until he can find his footing and carry the weight himself.”

Miyabi looked up at the pile of boxes.

“And that means sending automatons?”

“Like I said, he’s surrounded by chaos and confusion and can’t even rely on his own aides. But an automaton army never betrays its master. They’d make decent bodyguards while he solidifies his position. We pirates don’t want any unneeded conflict out on the ocean, so I’m sending a gift to the new king!”

“S-stop acting like the good guy when you stole all of this! B-besides, we only need one of those boxes! We only want to repair Number 8 and hear what he has to say!!”

That Celina was sounding reasonable may have been the biggest sign of how larger-than-life Onelife was.

“Hmm. Okay, what parts do you need to repair him?”

“Eh?”

Flustered, Miyabi turned to Celina for help, but she was little better.

“W-well…”

“How are you going to find the parts you need when you don’t even know what they’re called or what they look like? And let’s not forget there isn’t much light to search by at night.”

Onelife pointed at the “mountain” with his powerful fake thumb and Miyabi had no rebuttal.

“…”

“T-to hell with it!” shouted Celina. “No point in backing out now. We just have to find some automaton parts even if it means opening up every last one of those boxes!!”

It was like a battle.

They had to pull the nails from the wooden boxes, remove the lids, and pull out the contents. The first contained completely unrelated cookware. The next one had books and the one after that had bottles of fruit wine cushioned by balled up cloth. The work never seemed to end and they quickly lost track of how much they had already done.

“U-ughh,” groaned Alicia. “I can’t keep going. I need sleep.”

“Stay awake, you useless elf!” shouted Celina. “We haven’t even opened half of them yet!!”

“S-sorry,” said Eliza. “I did not expect the journey to have worn me out so much. Zzz…”

“You too, Miss Muscles!? How are we supposed to finish with these boxes if our strait-laced and high-horsepower knight gives up!?”

The black sky gradually grew navy blue and then orange. The ocean appeared to be burning.

Dawn had arrived.

Onelife yawned and Alma was curled up asleep nearby, but Miyabi was still working since he always liked to be helpful. He had started to drift off a few times, but he had refused to give in after seeing Celina biting her lip and giving him a tearful but wordless look. The way she tugged at his sleeve and gave him the puppy dog eyes felt like a threat. Curse that younger girl. What did she think she was, his little sister?

In the end, their efforts went unrewarded.

Once even Helen fell asleep, her boobs resting on a box (and her tight skirt butt sticking out toward Miyabi), Celina finally snapped.

“Pant, gasp, pant. Kh, we still haven’t found anything at all!!”

The radio spoke up from around Alicia’s neck as the elf lay face up on the wooden pier.

“It’s like the black hole that forms in a messy person’s room. You end up buying multiple copies of a manga volume because you completely forget you already own it.”

“Argh!! We don’t have time for this!” shouted Onelife. “The new king could be violently dethroned by a conspiracy at any moment!!”

“Th-this is your fault!! You’re the one that stole this stuff and then didn’t even bother organizing it!!”

Celina’s very high-class teeth-grinding did not faze Onelife.

“I’m a pirate! What’d you expect!?”

“Ugh, that shouldn’t be as convincing as it is!!”

Celina flinched back, but Miyabi sighed.

“Hmm. But in that case…”

“Zzz…koo?”

“If we fix Number 8, the 12-year-old king is doomed. If we save the new king, we lose our only clue to the 11th.”

He weighed two terrible options against each other, but then the one-eyed pirate grinned.

“There is one way of having it both ways.”

“?”

“First, I’ll give you the automatons contained in these boxes. No problem with that, I assume?”

“You’d better! They belong to me!” griped Celina, but Miyabi was interested in something else.

“But then what happens to that island kingdom?”

“Oh, that’s simple enough. I wanted to send him some fighters who would never betray him. Emotionless automatons were one option, but outsiders with nothing at stake work just as well. So I just have to give you the job instead. …Assuming you can save 12-year-old King Kananka Fulpen, that is.”

Between the Lines 3

Onelife Shiftup was officially known as a pirate.

There was no doubting that. Finding the criminal city comfortable and choosing it as your home were enough to know someone had something to hide, but he was a known threat who gathered people into a professional criminal group that sailed the sea.

Yet his large-sailed pirate ship looked downright carefree.

It was a Godhorn Tech named King Knot.

Onelife himself had slain the Wicked God and broken off its horn.

Perhaps he only had the luxury of peace because he was surrounded by the greatest power out there.

“Captain.”

A new pirate in a short-sleeved sailor uniform and shorts hopped up and leaned out over the railing. The new pirate was peering out with an extendable telescope and were young enough to appear androgynous.

“Some light is reflecting near the horizon at 5 o’clock. It’s an SOS.”

“Hmm, from a merchant ship?”

The large and muscular man named Onelife Shiftup crossed his arms and listened to the response from the newcomer who kicked their skinny legs with their belly resting on the railing.

“Hard to tell since they’ve almost fully sunk, but I think it’s a warship. Ah ha ha. Maybe they ran right into a reef. The sail is dyed with a gear pattern, so I think they’re from the Republic.”

That made them an enemy of the pirates.

The criminal city did not belong to any country, so it had no military or police agency. The Bodenburg Company’s private troops took the role of knights and guards…but that was just something they did and it was not supported by any international treaties.

So at times, some people with way too much time on their hands would sail out to the distant sea and wipe out every pirate they saw, all in the name of preserving the peace out at sea.

A young man walked over and joined the conversation.

Their criminal group was quite polished as an organization, but their ability to freely share information allowed them lighter footwork.

The young man used the number and position of the gears on the sail to decode the ship’s affiliation like he was identifying a constellation.

“What is a C1 fleet doing this far south? Their glider cannons require frequent resupplying. Hm, are they trying to cover up some kind of scandal maybe? Come to think of it, a lot of Republic funding earmarked for tracking down a Wicked God horn has gone missing recently.”

The skinny young man wore glasses and had an intellectual look, so he was basically asking for a nickname of ‘strategist’, ‘scholar’, or ‘string bean’, but all his information came from the light and frivolous rumors running rampant through the criminal city. In a city where outlaws of various cultures interacted, there was no shortage of gossip and scandalous information. It was their ability to sniff out what was real and what was fake that allowed them to skillfully evade the surprise inspections made by the Bodenburg Company’s private troops either late at night or early in the morning.

At any rate, the sinking ship was Onelife and his crew’s enemy.

But that man among men did not even hesitate.

“Understood. Prepare the rope and boats. How many empty barrels do we have left? Gather them on the deck so we can dump them in the water as floats.”

Outlaws were not generally in the habit of helping those in need.

For one thing…

“What are we even doing? Didn’t we start this hoping to be a naval rescue squad?”

Yes, Onelife’s crew were not thieves who attacked other ships.

The criminal city on the southern end of the continent received a lot of naval traffic, but it was also known as a dangerous region of sea full of reefs, rapid currents, and fierce and violent oceanic Beast Novae. Ships could not even get through if the pirates did not fight the monsters and bring down their numbers (mostly for their own purposes). And since the criminal city was not supported by any specific country, it had no naval rescue squad to help any sinking ships or stranded crews.

So Onelife and his crew had decided to make one themselves.

They had been attacked for it and forced to arm themselves.

They had done so by retrieving the wooden boxes thrown into the ocean by sinking ships. The one exception was their Wicked God horn.

The androgynous young newcomer cackled with their soft stomach resting on the railing.

“We can’t help it. Naval accidents are great for meeting new people. We’d normally never get to meet kings, nobles, holy men, or millionaires, but even they’ll grab a commoner’s hand when they’re drowning out at sea. And once they owe you one for saving their lives, you’re set for life. You can’t guarantee it though, so it’s more like a big lottery.”

“Some people can guarantee those things. Unlike the children’s story about the glass slipper, there are ways of getting ahead outside of those fancy balls us commoners aren’t allowed in. If you calculate everything out and follow a plan while purchasing enough lottery tickets, it counts as a financial investment giving you a stable fortune. Those greedy people think we’re interfering with their business of probability and statistics. It’s pathetic.”

Onelife sighed from his nose as the short kid and the glasses man spoke.

They had saved any lives that would be lost at sea and they had protected those with the same ideals. And eventually, he had become known as the strongest pirate.

He had ended up the exact opposite of what he had wanted to be.

He was sick of stealing. He had grown accustomed to fighting. He had lost count of how many times he had stolen to protect people, let a dangerous weapon sink into the depths, and freed slaves packed tightly into the limited space below a ship’s deck.

“Your thoughts on the matter don’t change what’s happening before your eyes. You can worry about those philosophical issues after saving all the drowning people out there.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Ideally we’ll be discussing what a great job we did in a bar supplied with barrels upon barrels of bourbon. Gah hah hah!!”

That man at the top did have his thoughts, but he knew it did no one any good if he let his crew see the worry on his face.

“Are you ready, men!? We’ve got some rescuing to do!!!!”

Chapter 5, Section 3

Another morning arrived.

Miyabi Blackgarden had overslept for a variety of reasons, but Alicia Blueforest did not even hesitate to throw open the door to his room. They used to bathe together when he was little, so she did not even bother knocking.

“Hey, that buff pirate is waiting at the port. We need to fix Number 8 and ask him about the 11th. I’ll give you time for some coffee to wake up, but then we need to set sail, cross the ocean, and help out that remote island kingdom.”

“How in the world are you so refreshed?”

“Ha ha ha. Because I was the very first to give up last night!!”

Miyabi had stuck with it to the end (after succumbing to Celina’s tearful puppy dog eyes), so he held Alicia’s head between his fists and rubbed at her temples. It did not actually do anything about his drowsiness, but he still felt a little more awake afterwards.

They joined the others in the inn’s small lobby.

They were leaving Number 8 in a room at the same inn. Carrying the motionless automaton onto a ship could raise suspicions that they were planning to dump a body at sea.

They already knew the inn was untrustworthy, so they went out to eat.

Food was one area where the criminal city excelled. Mornings tended to have limited food options, but there was a wide variety of tasty things for sale. Miyabi noticed something as he observed it all.

“An awful lot of it is made to carry with you while you eat it.”

“Because it was all developed for sailors to eat while they worked on their ships.”

For some reason, a hot dog apparently did not count as a sandwich. Celina explained it all to him while munching on a burrito – chopped vegetables and ground meat wrapped in thin bread known as a tortilla. She managed to look strangely graceful while she walked and ate at the same time.

“Man, that burrito you got looks good.”

“Miyabi. I know boys your age love meat, but you need a balanced diet of meat, vegetables, and grains. An extra-large frankfurter is not enough.”

“She’s right, you know? Munch, munch.”

“You too, elf. Grilled corn is not enough for a meal either.”

Black cat Alma ended up with a perfectly balanced meal since Helen Clockgear fed it some of her small canape topped with vegetables and seafood.

“Burrito…”

“O-okay, fine! Here, Miyabi. You can have one bite. …Hold it yourself when you do!!”

They walked to the harbor while eating a light meal of simple but varied foods. Once there, they found the muscle man needlessly crossing his arms in the sun.

“There you are!”

“You have guts showing up in the light of day, thief!” shouted Celina.

“Men of the sea are early to rise. Also, the continent’s rules don’t apply in the island kingdom, so be careful.”

Onelife Shiftup was not even listening.

That may have been why Helen sounded exasperated when she responded.

“And it sounds like they’re going through a lot of political upheaval.”

“Maybe we should go shopping before we leave,” suggested Alicia.

“How about it!? Nwohhh! Ready to set sail!?”

When Miyabi nodded, the man slapped him on the back with his heavy prosthetic hand.

“That’s the spirit! You can have the imperial automatons, but make sure you deliver my gifts to King Kananka!”

“I’m not sure how to feel about this when you stole it all from us.”

Celina Bodenburg looked up at the stacked boxes in disgust, but then something occurred to Miyabi.

“Wait. You aren’t taking us on your ship?”

“Unfortunately, I’ve got other business to attend to.”

“…”

The one-eyed muscle pirate did not even glance over at the glaring local girl.

“I thought for sure she was only a lookalike, but that really is the Bodenburg Company’s heir, isn’t it!? Gotta go!!”

“The coward is making a run for it!! Stop him!!!!!”

But…

“Drat…he’s already gone.”

“The entire city is on his side, so we would never find him,” said Alicia.

Celina clicked her tongue with her rifle ominously at the ready, but it actually looked comical after how fast Onelife managed to skedaddle. He had mastered the technique of hiding behind cover to escape projectiles. No matter how charismatic he was, he was a criminal at heart.

Helen agreed with Alicia’s assessment.

“Tracking down that utter moron would only exhaust us further. Let’s get this errand done with so we can repair Number 8.”

“That is important, but we need to make sure we really help Kananka,” said Miyabi.

The glasses woman looked troubled and kept her response short.

“Involving yourself in another country’s chaos never ends well.”

“Hm,” groaned Eliza Silverstorm with a shadow over her face.

She may have been thinking of the riot in the Arsenal Kingdom. Being as strait-laced as her was a good way to take damage when no one was even talking about you.

“Even so.” Miyabi looked to the horizon out at sea. “It would be easy to do the bare minimum here and just complete the job without worrying about how it turns out. But the other side doesn’t get to choose who comes to help. They have to accept it even if it isn’t enough.”

If they did that here, it was the 12-year-old king who would suffer.

It did not affect them in any way, but it was not a pleasant thing to consider.

“Let’s truly complete this errand before we fix Number 8. We can’t focus on our job if we haven’t repaid our debts.”

“We don’t owe that thief squat! He stole it all from my company!”

Before long, Miyabi’s party was being rocked by the waves on the ship.

The sailing ship was about 30m long.

Instead of giant gears and shafts, the many sailors used thick ropes and a sail to catch the wind and move the ship, giving it a different charm from the Lucifer Horn or Schwarz Schütze. Tugging on the ropes required great strength, but the manipulation of the sail was a complex and precise task.

As a cargo ship, it was covered in wooden boxes tied down with ropes and wires. Compress Cargo was apparently not an option with the gifts meant for the young king. That magic wrapped the microscopic Palette Dice like a ribbon to compress them, but it did not work with living things or with artwork where authenticity was key.

They had spent two nights aboard a sailing ship abandoned on the land near the ruined Empire, but that did not really count. This was a brand new experience for a boy who grew up in the mountains. Eliza had lived in the north, so she did not even dare approach the railing.

“Oh, ohhh. It keeps shaking.”

“Eliza, it’s been three days.”

“Th-that does not make this any less frightening! Please, Miyabi. Do not let go of my hand!!”

Miyabi was not about to argue when she was clinging to him like this. All the softness he felt had him worried that her miniskirt armor did not provide much in the way of defense. That armor prioritized magical defense, so its design was less straightforward.

“Th-the White Seidr Chosen Knights appear before the people on the king’s orders, so our appearance is a matter of national pride. Our armor was designed with parades and other public appearances in mind.”

“Neat.”

“My point is: wipe that grin off your face. This is a symbol of our kingdom’s courage and strength, so viewing it in a sexual light is an insult to the entire kingdom! Don’t you dare think of this as a lucky break!!”

The fact that she felt the need to warn him suggested she was somewhat aware how it made her look.

Meanwhile, someone else had bigger issues to worry about.

“Urp, blehh…”

“Why have you wilted, Alicia? Do elves plant their roots in the land or something?”

“H-how are just fine after spending three days rocking in the waves? My hair is all gross from the sea breeze and I swear the sun is being extra bright just to spite me. …Oh, no. I don’t think I can hold it in any longer!!”

“Hey! Don’t just open my cover out of desperation! I’m into a lot of things, but low-angle shots of a barfing elf is not one of them!!”

The radio sounded truly desperate this time.

The elf’s long ears drooped (after she barely avoided catastrophe), but the trip was full of exciting new surprises for Miyabi. Unlike Eliza, his excitement won out over his fear of the ocean. He got the crew to teach him how to work out the directions using the stars, how to tie some basic knots, and the trick to washing dishes while preserving their valuable fresh water. It all felt like a grand adventure to him. He was a little disappointed the sailors wouldn’t let him have any of the gin and rum they loved so much.

Eventually, they heard some sea birds crying in the distance.

“Oh, I think I see an island!” exclaimed Celina.

“Ugh, gwehh… A-as long as it has a beautiful forest, nothing else matters,” groaned Alicia.

A seabird flew a large circle through a sky much bluer than on the continent and eventually landed on the ship. The large white bird skillfully alighted on the deck’s railing. Eliza had never seen one up close, so she blinked while clinging to Miyabi’s arm.

“So this is a seabird. Interesting. It looks so different from the birds I am used to.”

“You there. If you have business with my kingdom, I shall guide you.”

The seabird…talked?

Miyabi and Alicia stared in shock, but Eliza gave a firm nod (while still clinging to the boy). The white seabird opened its hard-looking beak to speak more.

“As beautiful as our ocean is, the coral is fairly labyrinthine and there are also reefs to worry about.”

“Interesting. So seabirds know how to speak human language. Smart things, aren’t they?”

“I-I assure you that is not normal!” shouted Helen.

With a loud boom, a sharp conical spike burst vertically from the ocean surface just off the ship’s side. It rose higher than the ship’s mast and it appeared to be made of…maybe stone? It could have easily sunk the ship by piercing it from below, but a head-on collision with it would also have been disastrous. The crew frantically turned the wheel and adjusted the sails to turn the bow as much as possible while a few more of the spikes burst from the ocean.

At this point, they felt more like a metal fence surrounding a mansion’s garden.

They appeared to be forcibly guiding the ship along a certain course.

“Whoa!?”

“Follow the path I provide and you can pass the labyrinth of reefs,” commanded the seabird.

“Is this a type of magic that lifts the ocean floor to pierce a ship’s hull with sharp stone?” asked a Celina in disbelief.

“We call it the Shark Tooth. That said, it was originally peaceful magic that fished a livable island out of the ocean.”

With a splashing sound, a massive silhouette cut by below the surface and below the sailing ship.

Whoever this was had full control. Even if their ship was equipped with cannons, they could not have attacked something lurking below the water.

With a more extended splashing sound, the ocean split open and something emerged.

It was…not quite a ship.

Something resembling a massive shark traveled freely through the watery depths.

“That is the Mother Shark submarine,” explained the seabird. “My kingdom’s Godhorn Tech is unbeatable in the ocean. I am praying you do not make yourselves my enemy, visitors.”

This errand was already off to a rocky start.

Nevertheless, they arrived safely on the southern island.

The wharf was very different from the criminal city’s. There was no more than a simple wooden pier sticking out from the white sandy beach. There was no lighthouse or breakwater. They may have dug deep into the sandy ocean floor to accommodate larger ships, but it still felt a lot more natural.

There were bright red flowers Miyabi had never before seen and blue butterflies that looked like fluttering gems.

The strange trees growing directly from the sand were apparently known as palm trees.

“Coconuts are used in a lot of sweets and drinks, so you can find them for sale at the criminal city.”

If Celina saw them as a rare delicacy, Miyabi knew he would never have another chance to try one, so he wanted to try everything he could while he was here.

“Ughh…f-finally back on solid ground,” groaned Alicia, looking truly worn out.

She collapsed face down onto the beach and the radio to protested being plunged into the sand.

“Hey, are you okay? How about some water?”

“Thanks. No, wait, boy! That’s seawat- blehhhh!!!”

“?”

Miyabi looked puzzled and Celina rubbed her temples. Beyond the simple freshwater/saltwater issue, a city dweller like her could not believe he would try to give someone water he simply found lying around. Even when journeying outdoors, she made sure to use her mug-sized filter or to boil it in a kettle first.

“Okay, that’s enough of the classic gags, ocean newbies. We need to get moving.”

“Ew, why is it so salty!? Eh? Eh? Is the whole ocean like that?”

“How far behind are you!? Surely even your mountain village has a salt shaker on the dinner table.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying rock salt isn’t something they dig up from the ground?”

He had seen the ocean at the criminal city, but he had not had a chance to interact with it while on the stone harbor. Same while he was on the ship.

“Sorry, Alicia. I’ll borrow Celina’s thingy to filter the seawater.”

“Not in a million years!! Filtering out that much salt would ruin it in one go! It isn’t designed for that!!”

“Koo,” cheerfully cried Alma.

Miyabi glanced down to see the stuffed animal of a creature had transformed again. This time, it was white with a bluish swimsuit and goggles. The striped one-piece swimsuit was something Miyabi had only ever seen in plays. Except this was a fur pattern, not clothing, highlighting how strange that creature was. Miyabi felt the same as when he first saw a ladybug or butterfly in the forest when he was little.

“Oh, Alma,” said Alicia. “What a cute Kraken you are. I just have to pick you up. I’ll let you nuzzle against me, so come and comfort me.”

“Why is the foul beast the first one in a swimsuit? What about the elf, the glasses woman, the rich girl, or the knight!?”

The sandy radio complained, but the seasick elf was in no mood to respond.

Miyabi looked around curiously.

“So this is the remote island kingdom Onelife was talking about.”

“Ugh, it sure is hot here.”

Eliza’s composed face was dripping with sweat.

Ever-capable Helen looked worried and exasperated at the same time.

“This can’t be a comfortable place for a knight from a snowy kingdom.”

“B-but the place doesn’t feel as on edge as I expected,” said Alicia.

“True. The talk of political upheaval reminded me of the Arsenal Kingdom.”

“Gulp!”

Weakened by the sun, Eliza jumped at the mention of her kingdom’s troubles. Meanwhile, the radio decided to speak some cursed words.

“Who cares about that when there are swimsuits to be worn? This is a tropical island! Where’s all the bare skin!? Of the feminine variety, I mean!!”

There was indeed no sign of rioting or fighting.

A small crab crawled across the white beach without a care in the world.

Standing around near the ship was not going to help anything. The messenger seabird had been flying above their heads, but now it flew inland and above the island’s colorful forest. It may have been asking them to follow, so they nervously prepared to leave the beach for the first time.

But…

“Sneak, sneak.”

“Excuse me, everyone, but someone is attempting to board our ship. Someone who thinks saying ‘sneak’ out loud makes them sneakier, I might add. Attack, attack!!”

A small figure shrieked and jumped straight up.

Acting like a thief was simply not possible with the bright sun shining down on the white sand. Miyabi’s party turned around looking skeptical and found a girl curled up in a pitiful ball on the sand.

She had long wavy hair with a bluish tint to it.

Her skin was abnormally bright and pale for the sunny beach.

And her chest earned at least a “decent” rating.

She looked to be around Miyabi’s age. Kids these days had apparently adopted some bold fashion choices because she wore a tank top and a miniskirt. To be blunt, she looked more fashionable than Miyabi.

But that aside, there were a few major problems. For example, she wore a flintlock gun at her hip, she wore a thick coat to keep the sun and sea breeze off of her, and she wore a black leather eyepatch and tricorn hat that would have looked perfect on a jolly roger.

The gun must have only been a sidearm because she rested a trident on her shoulder. It was unclear if the weapon had its origins in agriculture or fishing, but it would hurt just the same if it stabbed you. Miyabi recalled how a play mentioned that pirates preferred projectiles and long-handled spears or sickles to help attack from one ship to another.

“Let’s gooooooo!!” rejoiced the radio at Alicia’s chest. “No big muscles and no giant beard! This is the kind of sexy fantasy pirate girl I wanted! Who else would you want to nurse you back to health when you come down with heatstroke!? The big hat and miniskirt are so much better than a pathetic bandanna!! Ask anyone what they want in a pirate and this is what they’ll tell you!!!!!!”

Yes, she was a pirate.

Celina was 100% anti-pirate, so her eyebrows arched upwards.

“Heh heh heh. I see, so the vermin of society run rampant in this remote island kingdom too, do they? Very well. I will cleanse this world of them to lay the groundwork for the Bodenburg Company’s greater glory!!!!!!”

“Wait, no, no! I’m not a pirate!! Please take a deep breath and calm down!!”

Helen sighed with a hand on her cheek.

Something about this had bothered her.

“Hm, another fancy-sounding girl. This could get confusing.”

“You even steal my speech patterns, you filthy pirate!?”

“Again, I’m not a pirate!! My name is Charlotte Nightlagoon and I am well-known in the mermaid world. What, did I misinterpret what I saw from the ocean? I can’t believe this!! I thought this was the latest in human fashion!”

The bare-midriff pirate(?) girl’s claim was a little confusing, but then she noticed something and jumped to her feet. Before Miyabi could figure out what was going on, she had pressed up against his back and started whistling nonchalantly.

Some locals with bloodshot eyes arrived.

The brown-skinned men and women in grass skirts and scraps of cloth were carrying fishing nets and harpoons. They wore pots over their heads and held bath covers as shields.

“Where’d she go!? Where did that mermaid go!?”

“She had legs, so she has to still be on the island. If we can only slice up that mermaid flesh, we’d be set!!”

Hadn’t he just met someone who thought saying ‘sneak’ out loud made her sneakier?

He could tell now was not the time to be enjoying the boobs pressed against his back.

He waited until the dangerously-equipped but oddly lighthearted people ran off down the coast before he slowly turned around.

“A…mermaid?”

“Heh heh. Eh heh heh.”

“A well-known one???”

“It’s kind of embarrassing, but I have had several picture books made about me.”

It was hard to notice with her fluffy hair and large hat, but one of her ears looked like a webbed flipper. Miyabi was unsure what to say when he saw her poking her index fingers together in front of her decent or better chest.

“(Wait, so the people on this island eat mermaids? Now I’m worried about this place’s customs.)”

“(Th-their culture might take an ‘anything goes’ stance when it comes to Beast Novae in any form. In fact, I have heard of a country on the continent that slices up only the snake portion of an echidna for food. They apparently have an extreme reaction to certain White Sorcery Items, so the snake tail grows back, giving them an endless food source.)”

Eliza’s unnecessary trivia only worried Miyabi further.

Alicia needed to be extremely cautious as another humanoid Beast Nova, yet she calmly clapped her hands together in realization.

“A mermaid? Oh, is this about the stories of gaining immortality and eternal youth by eating their flesh?”

“Wha-!?”

“Eternal youth…we’d make billions! No, wait. In the long term, we would stop selling anything but the youth-targeted products.”

The glasses woman reacted with excitement and the rich girl by calculating out possible profits, but the legged mermaid waved her hands to stop them.

“W-wait, no, that’s only a superstition! It’s not true!!”

“Hm?”

Alicia only frowned, looking confused, so the long-lived hag elf must not have been too interested in eternal youth.

The mermaid’s gentle tone of voice slipped when she was panicked.

“Mermaid meat doesn’t do that!! Where did that crazy belief even come from? I mean, yikes! I’d dreamed of visiting the land for years, but when I finally get here for a secret vacation, it turns into a terrifying fight for survival.”

Miyabi had a more fundamental question.

“I thought mermaids had the lower body of a fish and swam around in the ocean.”

“I changed that by chugging a magic potion.”

She demonstrated by putting a hand on her hip and tilting her head back.

The way she arched her back pushed out her chest to a troubling extent.

“So I got legs and that was great, but now I can’t get my fishtail back. That means I can’t return to the ocean and I have to live on this hellish island where the superstitions turn my days into a dangerous cooking school of eat or be eaten.”

It was quite possible she was just an idiot.

The oblivious idiot kicked at the white sand with one of the legs she had gone to such lengths to obtain.

“I can’t stand it anymore! If I’m stuck on this remote island any longer, they really are going to devour my delicious body! And not in the sexy way, either! I mean filet me and serve me with your choice of sides!! I need to get off this island! That elf who reeks of grass makes it sound like the superstition has made it to the mainland too, but it should at least be easier to hide there. I just want out of this endless game of tag!!”

“This cargo ship isn’t scheduled to leave for a while, you stupid mermaid who leaves a trail of salty puddles. The ship needs maintenance, it needs to be resupplied with food and water, the cargo bound for the continent needs to be loaded, and the crew needs time off, so it won’t be leaving for two or three more days at least.”

“…”

Charlotte paled and collapsed to the sand. Her soul was trying to escape through her mouth.

“(Miyabi, Miyabi,)” whispered Eliza.

“How about you show her some kindness? The Lucifer Horn can cross the ocean and take her to Horn Fortress. I’ve heard mermaids use an entirely different system of magic from humans, so it can’t hurt to have her on our side.”

The half-dead mermaid lifted her head from the sand.

She got up on her knees, clasped her hands in front of her face, and looked up at Miyabi with unbelievable pressure in her gaze. He could see stars twinkling in her eyes.

“You know a way out of here!? Please let me use it!! I might just find a solution if I can escape to the continent. The alchemist named Holy Gate is practically a legend at this point, but if I can find them, I can have a magic potion made to give me my tail back!”

“Eh!?” This turn of events came as a surprise to pirate-hating Celina.

The against side made their argument:

“We don’t really know who she even is, so we could be accepting a traitor into our midst. We only have her word to go on that she isn’t a pirate, so she might still be a filthy thief. Miyabi, working in a group requires strict management of your wallet. For the above reasons, it would be illogical to accept this suspicious individual into our party. Yes, this has nothing to do with my personal belief that you cannot trust anyone who wants to be a pirate! This is nothing but a logical analysis of the facts!!”

The for side made their much more succinct argument:

“Mermaid equals clamshell bikini.”

“Welcome aboard, Charlotte!! I don’t know what a bikini is, but something about the word calls out to my very soul!!”

“Four words!? Don’t let her seduce you that quick, Miyabi!!”

Celina’s tearful plea did nothing to overturn his decision. The human girl was not willing to strip for this particular issue.

The eyepatch trident flintlock miniskirt bare-midriff mermaid pirate girl idiot (the list never seemed to end) fidgeted awkwardly.

“Um, so could you please send me across the ocean to the mainland now? How are we even going to leave this remote island anyway?”

“Oh, that’s simple enough. Lucifer Horn, we’ve got another one.”

The mermaid tilted her head. It was much too late by the time she realized what was happening.

A massive shape flew by overhead and a wire whipped through the air and snagged the back of Charlotte’s pirate coat.

“Wait, what!? Surely you aren’t going to send me across the ocean like this! If this is supposed to be a joke about catching a mermaid like a fish, it isn’t funnyyyyyyyyyyy!!!”

The doppler effect distorted her voice.

“Sigh.” Helen stared into the distance. “Goodbye eternal youth…”

“Were you really planning to chop her up and eat her, Miss Aging Skin?” asked Alicia. “Anyway, are you sure that was a good idea? I hope the locals don’t mistake us for a sketchy gang of kidnappers.”

However.

Miyabi continued tilting his head even after Charlotte Nightlagoon was long gone. She had left a very appealing word in his mind.

“So what is a bikini anyway?” asked the mountain village boy.

“Yes, yes. It’s only natural to be interested in that sort of thing, but we’re here to meet with King Fulpen and help him however we can. We don’t really have time for any more detours, so-”

Helen came to a stop midsentence.

She had a good reason for it.

Celina Bodenburg put on a full-face smile, flipped her giant travel bag upside down, and shook it.

A pile of colorful cloth formed on the ground.

And a while later…

“Sorry about the wait, Miyabi. Ho ho ho. You were very right. How could we leave the hustle and bustle of the city, travel all the way to one of the finest beaches around, and not put on swimsuits? The serious atmosphere made it so hard to let everyone know I had brought enough to share, but this country boy gave me exactly the opening I needed!”

Celina emerged from a thicket, but Miyabi was far too preoccupied to listen.

What was that?

She stood there with a hand on her hip, but all she was wearing were three triangles of black cloth. They only covered her chest and around her hips and were held in place with some strings. They were also decorated with pure gold and red gems.

This was nothing like the swimsuits he had seen in plays. Those covered the entire body down to the feet. Miyabi gathered all of the fragmentary knowledge he had and found only one thing this could be.

“Eh? Eh? Why are you in your underwear!? We’re outside!!”

“Heh heh. You’re the one who wanted to know what a bikini is.”

“But it’s only three triangles, so…ehhh!? Why is this okay, but seeing up someone’s skirt isn’t!?”

“Now, now, Miyabi. There are some questions you just don’t ask. Don’t try to answer a question that no one wants an answer to. When a girl is willing to bare her skin in public, you don’t look that gift horse in the mouth.” The crystal radio tried to make this sound like a serious issue. “Mwa ha ha! Finally! I was getting worried it might never happen, but the swimsuit event is as much a staple as miniskirt Santas on Christmas and kimonos on New Year’s!! We just needed a hot enough environment to make them strip themselves!! The North Wind and the Sun effect has blessed us once again!!!!!!”

As for the radio’s owner, Alicia’s swimsuit was more modest than Celina’s. It looked a lot like a too-short white shirt and skintight shorts, but the two pieces were fully separated, showing off her navel and thighs.

She formed a hook with a finger to fix the butt.

“How strange. I know this is meant to wear in the water, but I can’t get used to this water-repelling material.”

“Oh, right. I forget you were so shameless you always just go skinny dipping.”

“Boy!! Now is not the time to dig up that mistake from your younger days when you saw me in the forest spring and froze up! I have since learned shame!!”

That swimsuit did not belong to Alicia. She had borrowed it from Celina’s collection.

The elf’s long ears cautiously twisted this way and that.

“Are you sure it’s safe to strip down and play on the beach like this? I thought the locals were upset with their new king for being too young. A riot or armed conflict could break out at any time with that kind of political upheaval.”

“What do you think happens if a group of outsiders with a Godhorn Tech shows up and immediately visits their new king?” asked Celina. “The king will assume it is a trap and grow cautious while the opposition might fear he is gathering power and pull the trigger on a civil war.”

“So you want us to take things slow and get a feel for things first?”

“This is a remote island kingdom located well off the continent, but it has enough of a trade infrastructure to receive regular cargo ships. It is also a little-known resort for the wealthy, so this should put them at ease a lot more than rushing in with a Godhorn Tech and control device at the ready.”

Celina’s reasoning was sound, but Miyabi had trouble following it because he had no idea where he was supposed to look. Her bare belly drew his eye far more than he could have predicted. Were all swimsuits like this, was this an indecent trend derived from the criminal tastes of her hometown, or was it Celina’s personal tastes?

(Wait. If all of them were Celina’s, won’t they all be in her size?)

When Eliza emerged from the thicket a little later, she was wearing a trio of triangles just like Celina. Her figure must not have been that different because she wore it without issue, but her greater height changed the overall impression. It accentuated her slenderness first and foremost.

And…

“U-ugh…”

Helen was the real problem.

Instead of a triangle trio or a two piece, hers had the same silhouette as the bunny girl costume. Celina exasperatedly explained that it was known as a one piece.

But why was she so exasperated?

Helen, an adult, had forced herself into a swimsuit in Celina’s size, so it was full to bursting in certain key places!!

Miyabi stared into the distance.

“Helen…”

“Finally stooped to out-and-out seducing the boy to get at Alma, have you?” asked Alicia. “Glad I’m not a government official.”

“N-no!!”

Helen was practically in tears as she desperately tried to hide the parts where the too-small swimsuit was digging into her body, but she could not fully hide what was going on at her crotch and butt. Not to mention her chest, which was noticeable no matter what she wore.

Eliza put a hand on her hip and sighed. The Celina-sized orange triangles were a little small for her, so she kept having to bend her finger into a hook and fix the butt after she moved.

“This is why I said you should wear one of these…bikinis were they called? Since they are tied together by strings, your height doesn’t matter.”

“I thought covering the most skin would be the least inappropriate option! Why am I always the one sacrificed on the altar of sexy!?”

Yes, a bikini had a separate top and bottom and the chest and hips could be adjusted with the strings, so some extra height was barely an issue. The extra size was only so much of an issue because she had chosen a one piece with the top and bottom connected in a single tube of fabric.

Now, the bikini bottoms looked a lot like triangular underwear, but Miyabi was told he could not wear one. He was new to swimsuits, so all the little rules confused him.

“Stop, Miyabi!!” yelled the radio. “The girls can handle all the swimsuits and bare skin themselves. This is enough. I do not want a punchline where you take a step off that figurative cliff!!”

“Pff. Heh heh heh. If you’re into that, Miyabi, my Bodenburg Company will support you wholeheartedly. Now, what would you like? I recommend this thong with cute frills along both sides.”

Meanwhile, Miyabi’s party moved inland from the coast to the green island.

The boy once more tilted his head.

“Wait, I thought swimsuits were for swimming.”

“Miyabi,” said Celina. “No one chooses a swimsuit for being warm and waterproofed. How are you supposed to show off its design if you get in the water? A swimsuit is meant for the beach or the poolside.”

“???”

He was even more confused now. The full-body swimsuits he had seen in plays had been in swimming scenes. But the formula to answer his question would require flipping several chapters back in his rich and sexy tutor’s textbook (Swimsuits II-B).

They of course found more than just a forest.

Even Miyabi could sense people’s presence further inland.

They made their way toward the most populated area and found something like a village in the tropical forest. The trees apparently kept the wind and the sand out. The buildings all had a unique design. First, they were made out of plant stems and thick logs. For ventilation purposes, all of the walls had been removed. Miyabi had lived in a log cabin himself, but it had not been so open.

All the people’s skin was tanned brown by the bright sun. Their clothing looked like a hybrid of colorfully-dyed cloths and palm leaves, so the girls often had their navels and backs exposed. Their well-tanned and healthy skin was dazzling.

The kingdom did not receive many visitors, but it was open to them. The people who spotted them seemed used to it. That may have been the influence of the previous king who had apparently rescued people at sea regardless of their status or affiliation.

They had been chasing after a legendary mermaid with nets and harpoons, but they seemed to be much more relaxed when an unexpected treasure(?) was not in the offing.

None of them seemed fazed by Alicia or Eliza’s swimsuits.

Celina must have been right about the island receiving relatively frequent tourists from the continent. Helen (with her overly small swimsuit wrapped so tightly around her body) opted to hide behind Miyabi. His back stiffened at the various sensations and breaths reaching it.

“This is the holy island ruled by King Kananka Fulpen! The Godhorn Tech our king inherited is super strong! The Mother Shark keeps our island peaceful!”

An energetic boy gave a fairly generic greeting, but they heard some other things as well.

“I don’t care whose butt is on the throne as long as we’re guaranteed a good catch. That’s the king’s #1 job since only he can speak with the invisible spirits. The Godhorn Tech honestly scares me. Makes me think the mainland’s gonna show up to get at its horn.”

The young fisherman described his king in a very different way from the old man who had sat on the Arsenal Kingdom’s throne.

“I look slim? Why, thank you,” said a girl who was proud of her figure. “A diet of fish and seaweed is the secret to health. I’ve never eaten non-seafood meat, so life on the mainland sounds so strange to me.”

The island was overflowing with nature, but it was fairly small. They had to be reliant on the sea to survive. Receiving the sea’s blessings was their top priority, so it sounded like protecting the sea was just one part of that.

Helen nervously looked around from behind Miyabi.

“(Hm, is eating a mermaid the ultimate form of receiving the sea’s blessings?)”

“(I have to wonder if any humans have actually eaten one,)” said Alicia. “(Wouldn’t there be stories of an immortal islander here if they had?)”

It may have been an imaginary food for these islanders. They may have thought mermaids were as real as the tsuchinoko or skyfish. No one had ever caught one, so you could claim whatever you liked about them.

All the islanders mentioned the House of the King and Spirits, which was the largest mansion in the village. But its lack of walls kept it from feeling as imposing as mansions usually did.

It felt more warm than grand or daunting. Miyabi felt at home in this small village surrounded by trees.

He looked up at the building made from palm trees and a grass roof.

“This one is bigger than the others, so is this the place?”

“Only two guards…a-and the entire building feels too simple for a king’s residence,” said Eliza. “Do they not decorate things in their culture? No, they must have gold and emeralds on the island. Maybe they just treat royalty differently from the continent.”

You could view it as a form of honorable poverty.

The lack of walls presented the king as an advisor the people were free to visit.

When the king and the people lived similar lives, there was less friction between them and the king could detect any problems in the kingdom as quickly as the people could.

Even in a small society, the powerful could horde wealth and build themselves up above the rest, but the royalty here did not. Choosing to suppress one’s greed and live alongside the people was a virtue. That gave the island kingdom a very different look from Eliza’s Arsenal Kingdom or Number 8’s Empire.

“But it’s a double-edged sword.”

Celina chose to deflate Miyabi’s honest admiration.

She may have sniffed this out with the senses she had developed in the company her parents had built from the ground up.

“Declining your own majesty allows people to think you don’t deserve the power you have. We already heard someone complaining about the king. This might work during the good times, but when the kingdom is shaken by misgovernment or natural disaster, it may allow others to plot to overthrow the king.”

“You mean kindness isn’t enough?”

“For those in power, standing above the rest is partially a safety measure. An isolated island like this needs to be self-sufficient, so a poor fishing season or a lack of water could easily be blamed on the king’s power.”

Come to think of it, Onelife had been worried about this.

The new king had taken the throne at only 12 after his father died, but not everyone agreed with that.

Kindness was not enough.

An outlaw pirate may have understood those blunt rules more than anyone, so he had sent Miyabi’s party in to break the jinx. He had asked them to help the new king in exchange for the magical automatons.

“Sigh, thank goodness. I shouldn’t need to do that on this peaceful island.”

Since they had found the king’s residence so easily, the glasses woman breathed a sigh of relief (blowing a heated adult breath onto the back of Miyabi’s neck).

“Yes, I shouldn’t need to transform into Venus.”

But Alicia whispered into her ear.

“Don’t be so sure. If the people here have never seen a bunny girl, it might catch on as an explosive new fad.”

“Wow, this place is a treasure trove of possibilities!” rejoiced the radio. “Let’s remake the island into a fishnet stocking empire!!”

“That’s all the more reason not to! I don’t want to be responsible for that!!”

Helen shuddered as the party entered the House of the King and Spirits.

After an aide welcomed them in, a brown boy with short, bluish hair emerged to greet them. His clothing was dyed a bright blue using some fish or flower found in the ocean or on the island, but he was very clearly nothing more than a small child. He was young enough that the distinctions between the sexes were blurred. Miyabi could see why even a criminal like Onelife would be worried about the boy’s wellbeing.

He looked too soft to place in harm’s way in the dog-eat-dog world of royal politics.

“I was already informed of your arrival.” His voice would have sounded regal if it were not such a high-pitched soprano. “You are the foreigners from the mainland, aren’t you?”

“Are you the king?”

There were no chairs or sofas, so the young king sat directly on the empty floor. It was an unusual arrangement for Miyabi’s party, but if the king was doing it, it had to be the polite thing to do. They followed suit. Celina and Eliza were more familiar with the continent’s etiquette, so they were more uncomfortable with this than the others.

“I would like to introduce myself right away, but we have certain courtesies that must be followed in our kingdom.”

“S-such as?”

Had it been rude to visit the king without being invited first?

Miyabi shrank down nervously, but the brown boy shook his head to say the problem was not with who they were.

He winked as he explained.

“The sun shining down from heaven and the azure sea surrounding our kingdom are our greatest treasures and I do understand it must have been exhilarating to see them for the very first time. I am even willing to take it as a compliment. That said, how about you change into ordinary clothing before we discuss the future of my kingdom?”

So…

“Sigh. That swimsuit was weird, but it feels wrong taking it off before ever swimming in it.”

“S-sorry about the wait, everyone.”

Alicia, Helen, and the rest soon returned, back in their normal clothing. That clothing was meant for journeying in, so it was not quite formal wear. Still, it was about right for holding a secret discussion.

“Now, then.”

The brown boy waited until they had all settled in before straightening up himself.

Straightening his spine was all it took to change the atmosphere around them. No matter his age or how he looked, he had what it took to be a leader.

“I am Kananka Fulpen, the new king ruling over the islands, people, and spirits of the Fulpen Maknika Ocean Kingdom.”

“I’m surprised you gave us an audience without an appointment,” said Celina.

“We have long received a lot of useful knowledge from those who arrive on our shores. Plus, one of you owns a Godhorn Tech. Outside knowledge, technology, and excitement is a much-needed cultural stimulant for a closed environment like ours, so I could never ignore this opportunity. That said, we are very busy with the upcoming coronation, so we cannot do much even for valued guests like you.”

“About that.”

Eliza glared at Miyabi for interrupting. She was all about chivalry, so she demanded respect of kings from any culture.

“Do you know a pirate named Onelife?”

“…”

Kananka wordlessly prompted him to continue.

Still seated on the floor, Miyabi explained the situation with plenty of gesturing. Alma mimicked the gestures, but probably didn’t know what any of it meant.

“He asked us to come here and gave us some gifts for you. I just hope there’s something we can do to help.”

“I see. So you know him.”

“Are you saying you really do know him too?”

Miyabi’s face lit up, but something was wrong.

“If I had known, I might have handled this differently,” continued Kananka. “No, enough about Onelife. What is your name?”

“M-me? Miyabi. Miyabi Blackgarden.”

“Miyabi, you do not seem like a bad person. In fact, I quite like you.”

That was an ominously phrased compliment.

And that impression was accurate.

“But unfortunately, you have brought a great calamity to this island.”

“Eh?”

Something rang in his mind.

He recognized the regular, high-pitched alarm.

“What!? I’m detecting…a sorcery bomb!?”

With an island this small, one of those could wipe the entire kingdom off the map.

“Does that mean the 11th is on this island!?”

He sprang to his feet, but Kananka remained calm.

“Wait a moment. I think it must have been hidden among the gifts you brought. Miyabi, you seem capable of sensing this bomb.”

“…”

“But did you think you were the only one in the entire world capable of that? The spirits speak to us all equally. It is just that not many know how to listen.”

Kananka winked and he seemed to be calling n some kind of invisible power or phenomenon that he referred to as “the spirits”.

“Are you, um, using your Godhorn Tech’s power?”

“I see. So you use that to boost your natural ability? Fascinating. That is not what I do. The ability to converse with the spirits is a requirement to rule as king here. I can use this power to predict the weather and the height of the waves. One of the king’s duties is to ensure the people can catch enough fish. Not even I understand how it works. All I can say is I was born this way.”

That put him above Moebius and Miyabi.

But the upshot here was that Kananka could also sense the sorcery bomb’s threat.

Maybe even more accurately than Miyabi could.

“Maybe it used a timer to switch on and maybe its box was shielded in some way. Either one would explain why we did not sense it until now.”

“Why would they be so careful about it this time?” asked Alicia.

“It may be a response to the previous bombs being disarmed,” suggested the radio.

“Meaning?” asked Miyabi.

The philosopher’s stone spat out the correct answer, just as a philosopher’s stone was meant to do.

Even if no one wanted to hear that answer.

“Listen, the last two bombs – the one in the forest and the one at the Schwarz Schütze – were both bluffs by Moebius. That would mean, Miyabi, that this is your first time encountering a sorcery bomb from the real 11th.”

“Oh.”

“Again, Moebius’s bluffs were only meant to draw out the 11th, so they would have been set up so they wouldn’t actually detonate. But that changes from here on out.”

“So the real 11th would have been watching Moebius’s decoy bombs from afar, or sending Number 8 in to check it out for them? So they know everything that happened, including how those decoy bombs were disarmed by someone?”

“That would mean they already see you as a major threat. They go to the effort of disguising the bombs as part of the scenery, remember? But not because they’re bored and setting up a high-stakes game of spot-the-difference. The real 11th doesn’t want you interfering at all. If they’ve figured out that you can detect them in advance, of course they’ll think up a way of keeping you from doing that.”

That was a truly unpleasant idea.

Eliza was getting antsy.

“We can discuss the reasoning behind it later. This is not my kingdom, but I cannot sit here and let innocent people die!!”

“Like I said before, my Mother Shark is unbeatable in the ocean. It can pierce any warship from below and bring down any flying object. But it’s powerless against an enemy once they arrive on the beach.”

This was not an attack by brute force.

Whoever had set it up had won the kingdom’s trust and learned detailed information on its internal situation before putting together the plan. And they had to know that detonating a sorcery bomb here could destroy the entire island.

“Onelife Shiftup…” muttered Miyabi.

Moebius had had his reasons, but this was different. The 11th had deceived Number 8 into setting up the sorcery bombs. Miyabi knew he should have been more careful after learning their enemy used such underhanded methods. Feeling used, he repeated that hated man’s name to himself.

“So was he the 11th? I should have paid more attention! Now I see why he found every excuse he could to keep us from repairing Number 8!! Because he didn’t want the automaton to give us his name!!”

Miyabi and Eliza rushed from the House of the King and Spirits. They were initially surprised that Kananka didn’t follow them, but then they recalled him saying he was unbeatable in the ocean but powerless on land.

Anything could happen in a confused situation and there were apparently some who did not approve of his coronation. The king had to avoid being killed at all costs. If he was, it would plunge the kingdom into chaos.

“We need to locate and destroy the sorcery bomb.”

The glaring sun worked against them.

Miyabi had to work hard to organize his confused thoughts and figure out what he needed to do.

“We can identify Onelife’s gifts by the wooden boxes. He tricked us, so the boxes should already be inside the village. I’ll just destroy them all until the bomb’s reading is gone!”

“Koo!!”

The threat likely came from the boxes they had brought with them, but those boxes had already been unloaded from the ship and carried to locations around the village. When Miyabi’s party attempted to remove the nails from one, a slender human arm punched through the wood from within.

No, it only looked human.

“A magical automaton!?”

“You mean he loaded the boxes with more than just the bomb!?”

This one did not look as human as Number 8. It was more like a well-made ball-jointed doll. It had no clothing or skin.

Onelife had said he would not send the automatons if Miyabi’s party visited the remote island kingdom instead.

But that promise too had been nothing but words. That traitor had been planning all along to send in this fighting force.

Celina clicked her tongue.

“He said he wasn’t using Compress Cargo on the gifts to preserve the artwork, but now we know the real reason. Sorcery bombs and magical automatons are too complex to store that way!”

The rustic islanders looked confused at first.

They did not properly grasp the threat, so their initial fear may not have been directed at the sorcery bomb or the imperial automatons.

It was only when Alicia’s staff gave a roar and Celina obliterated the automaton’s head with her rifle that the entire village erupted with screams. When the people paled, fled in a panic, tripped, and cowered in place, they were not trying to escape the automatons. They feared the people wielding real violence capable of dealing out death. They shook their heads in protest after seeing Miyabi’s control sword, not the automatons bursting from the boxes.

“Ugh, no good deed goes unpunished, I see!” complained Alicia.

“Seeing their fear is better than seeing them as silent corpses!!” said Eliza.

The pure white knight wielding a giant lance in both hands was the perfect honor student through and through.

Several automatons appeared around Miyabi, the sand crunching beneath their feet.

Miyabi’s eyes met those of one of the automatons.

He thought he might be able to strike back and break through their formation. He thought he might be able to destroy them by ordering an aerial bombing from the Lucifer Horn.

But he hesitated for just a moment.

In that moment, Eliza thrust her enormous lance in from the side, smashing the automaton’s head.

Inorganic parts scattered with a sound deeper than a plant pot breaking.

“Miyabi!! Don’t look at them like Number 8. These are mass-produced models without any high-level intelligence!!”

“Kh.”

His fear must have shown.

But more and more of the boxes were being broken from within and more magical automatons appeared, swinging their limbs wildly. They were targeting the panicked and fleeing islanders.

They only ever fought as ordered.

There was nothing they wished to protect and nothing they detested. Those empty ball-jointed dolls simply carried out their orders one after another.

Miyabi squeezed his eyes shut.

Then he raised his control sword for the sake of the living people here.

“Sorry!!”

He heard a dull impact and the dry crack of something breaking.

He felt the splitting destruction of something inhuman.

He clenched his teeth and felt like vomiting…and he hated that he was able to suppress it.

“That said, the automatons are appearing from multiple locations simultaneously,” said Helen. “The ordinary houses here have no walls, preventing the people from locking themselves in. If we don’t prepare a better location before beginning the battle, we’ll have a hard time protecting all of the islanders!”

“I’m aware of that!!”

Miyabi raised the hand not holding the control sword.

He had a power that sat opposite of destruction.

“Contract Owner: Under Lilith, grant me the power to move the Palette Dice!!”

Something rose from the sandy ground in response. It was an iron hemisphere larger than a tent and made from gathered iron sand. That shelter could protect against the automaton’s blade-hard fingers.

“Get in!!”

He gestured toward a cowering youth and raised his control sword again to buy time. Dodging was not an option, so he had to clash directly with the automaton arms.

His bones strained and pain spread across his palms.

He was receiving the special power of a Godhorn Tech, but he was not actually trained in swordplay. The fragility of his fundamentals was all too clear in a direct battle like this.

But he still clenched his teeth, endured, and pushed back.

“Hurry inside!! You’ll be safe in there!!”

The paralysis finally wore off and the brown-skinned youth took a small child’s hand and rushed inside the metal shelter.

The automaton clashing with Miyabi was destroyed by a giant lance.

Eliza spoke to the boy while they stood back to back.

“Do you know why they were suddenly able to move just now, Miyabi?”

“?”

“Because the people accepted that your sword is a tool to protect them, not a weapon to threaten their lives. So they no longer need to fear it. Now they can rely on it. …Remember this, Miyabi, because this is the joy of being a protector knight. If you never forget this accomplishment, you can always grow stronger!!”

One of those iron shelters was not enough.

They could use as many of them as they could get.

Of course, those makeshift shelters were meaningless if the sorcery bomb detonated. The entire island kingdom could be wiped off the map or sink into the ocean.

So he would not let that happen.

He had put the islanders at ease. He had earned their trust. So now he had to hold up his end of the bargain. He had to locate the sorcery bomb and keep it from detonating. This was his own battle now.

“Ohhh!!”

He would not let it end prematurely.

He clenched his teeth, challenged a new automaton, and asked about something he had noticed.

“These are imperial, right? But they don’t seem as persistent or unpredictable as Number 8.”

“Eliza said these are the mass-produced models, remember?” said Celina. “Their internal parts are mutually compatible, but they are much simpler than the eight primary models that answered directly to the emperor and guarded the Empire from eight directions.”

That meant there were a lot of them, but they brought nothing new to the table.

If they were inferior to Number 8, a tactic that worked against him would work here.

The magical automatons alone would not be enough to destroy the island, which was why Onelife had focused on the sorcery bomb and sent the automatons to buy time as insurance. The automatons were slow and not all that durable, so they were easily damaged with Eliza’s lance and Celina’s gun.

After they had destroyed around half of the boxes, the ground shook and an explosive blast reached their ears.

But it was nowhere near them.

“Whoa!? Wh-what!?”

Miyabi’s jumpiness must have been contagious because Helen clung to the younger boy without thinking. She was certainly soft in places, but he was mostly afraid of the thick knife she was holding and being none too careful with.

“Eek!? Did it detonate!?”

“No, that was too far away. And I recognize this…”

Eliza and Celina joined the conversation because they too had operated one of those strongest weapons.

“That sounds like Godhorn Techs fighting,” said Celina. “But whose are they!?”

“Whatever the answer, there won’t be much left of this island if we don’t deal with the sorcery bomb. We can deal with that later. We need to address with the more immediate problem first!”

With a goal in mind, Miyabi used the resonance alarm ringing in his mind to search out the sorcery bomb.

His sixth sense finally gathered on a single point.

“It’s in that box!!”

He raised his control sword, stabbed it into the box, and smashed up the contents.

Until the sound in his head completely vanished.

The 11th was an artist, just like a top-rate pâtissier who could create sweets indistinguishable from an actual shoe or jewel. The sorcery bomb could replace anything and it was apparently powerful enough to wipe out an entire castle and its castle town once it detonated.

But on the other hand, the detonation method was so complex that it would not trigger when attacked. Finding it was the hard part because it would be smashed by brute force once it was located. Moebius had taught him that, so Miyabi felt no fear.

“Pant, pant.”

“I-is it gone? Is it safe now!?”

The box had been destroyed. Alicia repeatedly asked for confirmation while holding swimsuit Alma tight. Only Miyabi could tell the reading was gone, so of course she was worried.

“Damn that pirate. I bet he was originally going to bring the boxes himself, but he saw an opportunity to have us bring those ‘gifts’ for him!”

They heard footsteps on the forest sand.

Kananka Fulpen was walking their way. The giant weapon in his hand was a bent…what even was it? It may have been his Godhorn Tech’s control device. But his balance was off and he was clearly favoring one leg.

The young king did not let the pain show in his voice.

“Yes, I had a feeling this would happen.”

“King Kananka, you’re hurt!” shouted Helen.

The king himself did not seem bothered.

“I only have my own naivete to blame. The possibility of a trap occurred to me, but I still opted not to sink you and your entire ship.”

He wobbled to the side.

Miyabi rushed over to support him and the younger boy slipped down to the sandy beach.

Eliza looked unwell as she watched.

“W-we need to treat him. If the king collapses here, the panicked and anxious people’s emotions will explode!”

“Gh…don’t worry about me. I simply had some trouble calming the raging spirits. I was caught in the anger erupting from the control wing.”

“The spirits” appeared to be a general term for any unseen powers, but those powers came in many forms. Miyabi’s party was unsure how this one translated into their own words.

Kananka smiled bitterly and waved his giant weapon made of stone polished so bright it shined like a gemstone.

That had to be his Godhorn Tech control device. If that had done it, he must not have been injured in an attack by the automatons. Could damage to the Godhorn Tech itself reach the wielder through the control device? Miyabi had not used his enough to know.

Kananka had called it a control wing, but what was that weapon called? Miyabi was curious, but he could not quite find an answer. It didn’t seem to be a bent sword or club.

“What is that thing? Could it be an axe!?”

“Miyabi, why are your eyes sparkling? Also, that is not an axe.” World-traveler Celina’s eyes widened. “How unusual. Not everyday you see a boomerang.”

“Oh? You’re familiar with them?”

“There is not a product my Bodenburg Company doesn’t sell☆” She winked with a hand on her chest. “But the ones created by the continent’s craftsmen do not actually return to the thrower. They are such a strange device.”

“They are, but why does Miyabi look so disappointed?”

“Oh, this forest-obsessed boy just loves axes,” explained Helen, rubbing her temples.

According to Kananka, his control device had attacked him after his Godhorn Tech went berserk in some way.

The question was what had caused it to go berserk. But…

“You hurt your ankle, didn’t you?” said Alicia. “Miyabi! Go find something to cool it with!!”

According to the villagers who nervously peeked out from their shelters, the blessings of the ocean always took priority on the island. He ended up bringing back several types of seaweed they had in stock. They must have been similar to mint because his fingertips felt a cool sensation as he massaged in freshwater to rehydrate them.

“Will this work?”

“Wrap it around his ankle.”

“The pirate wants to create a diversion and confusion,” said Kananka, seated with his small leg extended. “My Mother Shark is unbeatable in the ocean, so he intentionally caused chaos on land to create problems for the island’s protector. Even the sorcery bomb was a diversion.”

“You mean…?”

Miyabi was cut off by an especially loud explosion.

It was a scary thought, but if true, it meant Kananka could not run away.

“My Mother Shark was defeated while patrolling the ocean. Because I was distracted.”

“It was defeated so easily?” groaned Knight Eliza, but King Kananka was unshaken. He was the kind of leader who accepted his failures and used them to do better in the future.

“There is no denying it.”

“Hm, we should probably fix his ankle in place,” said Alicia

“What about with taping? Are there any vines around here?” asked the radio.

Miyabi entered the forest full of unfamiliar plants, but he was fortunate to find plenty of vines.

“Here you go. Let’s get his ankle fixed up.”

“Yes. It might hurt some when we bind it, but bear with it, new king,” said Eliza.

Kananka did not even wait for them to finish their treatment before continuing the conversation.

“More importantly, the Mother Shark is no longer defending the island. You might be able to mess with one if you’re clever enough, but it takes another Godhorn Tech to actually destroy one. I hate needing to leave the fate of my kingdom in the hands of guests, but what choice do I have?”

Miyabi thought for a bit.

“Onelife supposedly broke off a Wicked God horn and built it into his pirate ship.”

“Th-that has to be an embellishment!”

Rejecting something because it was hard to believe only narrowed your viewpoint.

Celina’s protest was mostly just wishful thinking.

“We’ll know soon enough I suppose,” bluntly concluded Alicia. “The explosion came from the beach. That damn muscle man has brought his whole Godhorn Tech onto the island!”

The battlefield was on the ocean this time.

Miyabi’s party rushed through the forest to reach the beach, hearing enormous artillery shells crashing down all the while. They were hitting much too close for comfort, so Miyabi diverted their aim with Decoy Walls while they ran across the sand.

The tropical forest opened up all of a sudden.

The two Godhorn Techs were all jumbled together.

The sharp ram on the bow of the King Knot pirate ship had pierced the side of the Mother Shark submarine, forming a giant letter T in the waves crashing down on the beach. The 50m ship and the 60m sub created a single massive work of art.

The giant sailing ship had emerged victorious.

The many sails caught the wind to spread out grandly, large cannons lined either side of the ship, and the brutal ram made from the Wicked God horn itself rose up from the bow. This was another ruler of the sea, built with a wholly different design philosophy from Kananka’s. The lord of the deep had been pierced through, pushed up onto the beach, and laid out on the chopping block. Insolent was not enough to describe this pirate.

A strange tingling pain covered Miyabi’s cheeks as he approached.

This was an act of evil, yet it appeared majestic and powerful.

Even the radio could scarcely believe it.

“It really dragged that thing onto the beach. I thought the Mother Shark was supposed to be unbeatable in the ocean!”

“You have to do whatever you can, Miyabi,” said Helen.

Nothing remained to protect the island.

Miyabi stepped forward, control sword in hand, as if to break free of the fear binding him. He finally set foot on the beach. The pirate ship was still functioning. If he didn’t stop it, it would destroy this small island in no time.

A dull rumble shook the air as the cannons on either side of the ship began to move.

A chill ran down Miyabi’s spine.

“Here it comes. Stay away from the Decoy Walls and dodge!!!!!”

A flash of light.

A deafening boom.

The King Knot kept the appearance of a ruler even as it abandoned its mobility by sailing up onto land. It could not be destroyed by any normal means and anyone who so much as approached would be obliterated by a storm of shells.

Miyabi and Celina discussed it after he created a thick wall of sand…which was really camouflage for the makeshift trench he gouged across the beach and rolled inside to hide.

“Fire, water, wind, and earth. Is there anything it can’t do?”

“This is not alchemy. I-it might be using talismans or amulets.”

“Talis-what? Amul-huh?”

“The difference is whether or not they activate automatically. T-think of them as a type of magic charm. They say sailors can tell directions by looking to the stars, so I imagine he’s developed a way of extracting that constellation power and sealing it in a charm. Gh.”

Celina’s logical analysis may have been her way of conquering the fear.

But it wasn’t enough.

This thing’s power was real. Revealing how it worked did not cause that power to wither away.

The rich girl’s slender shoulders trembled. The more she learned about it, the worse it got and she appeared to have hit her limit. She was half in tears as she clung to Miyabi.

He had never before seen the moment logic was overwhelmed by emotion.

“Wh-wh-wh-what can we even do against that kind of firepower!? Th-th-th-this is so stupid! We can’t survive that pirate’s nonsense!”

“I can control the sand, so maybe I can make the ground collapse below it. If I dig into the sand enough, it might fall on its side.”

“Th-that isn’t enough. I doubt it would explode just from falling on its side. Isn’t there some better…more foolproof and perfect plan for- yikes!?”

Just then…

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

A valiant roar erupted nearby.

The strait-laced person was strait-lacedly charging toward the headwind of shells with lance at the ready. And not even in the trench. She was on the flat beach with nothing to use as a shield.

“Th-th-that…strait-laced moron!!!”

Celina’s eyes bugged out, but none of them had expected what happened next.

Eliza made a chance discovery.

“Oh? The cannons cannot target me when I am this close to the ship.”

The cannons were lined up near the deck, so they could not aim down far enough to hit Eliza directly below them.

“Goooo!!” shouted Alicia. “Destroy the cannons while we can!!”

That was no easy feat.

This was a Godhorn Tech, after all. The fear did not go away just because it was motionless on the beach and could not directly fire on you from that close.

Another explosion erupted from the beach.

It was not a direct hit, but the blast still knocked Alicia over onto the sand. The noise of the cannon firing was enough to make you dizzy. Celina was an expert with guns and gunpowder, so she explained that artillery could do direct damage with the shell and indirect damage by wearing down the target’s morale from all the noise and shaking it produced even when it missed. Helen grimaced at exactly that pain and ran over to collect the dizzy elf.

“Damn, that thing’s tough!!” said Celina.

“But it can’t keep this up forever,” said Miyabi. “We’re wearing it down little by little.”

The thick control sword gave a roar and the cannons were destroyed one after another.

They had found a weakness and slipped into a blind spot, but they were still scared. Even in these relatively favorable conditions, there was always a possibility that the ship would crush them all with some kind of brute force attack. What if the recoil of the cannons caused the ship to lift from the ground and crush them? The Godhorn Tech gave off that sort of mythical aura. Enough to make Miyabi worry unnecessarily and nearly come to a stop.

“Contract Owner: Under Lilith, grant me the power to move the Palette Dice!!”

He plugged a cannon’s muzzle with sand, causing it to blow itself up.

His control sword smashed the last of the cannons.

And just as he neutralized all of the pirate ship’s weapons…

“Okayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!”

Someone yelled even louder than the explosions.

The scent of sweat joined the salty aroma of the ocean.

Miyabi looked up to see a man with a prosthetic arm standing on the pirate ship’s deck. He wore a distinctive hat, a gold metal plate in his empty eye socket, and a coat. It was undoubtedly Onelife Shiftup.

“There you are, pirate!!”

“Since you were using the magical automatons and a sorcery bomb, I take it you’re the 11th?”

Onelife responded to Miyabi’s question by jumping down from the ship.

He landed with a boom and a cloud of white sand burst into the air. The bright sunlight glinted off his imperial prosthetic arm and his abnormally large cutlass.

“All those inconvenient facts slipped my mind!” he roared.

“Then I’ll just have to remind you. Control sword – tactical open!!”

A clash had finally developed between the two Godhorn Tech users.

The King Knot was grounded and all of its cannons had been destroyed. The ram on the front was its most powerful weapon, but even that was useless when the ship could not move. But that was no reason to relax. The control device was a powerful weapon in and of itself. Celina and Eliza were still useful in a fight even after losing their Godhorn Techs, so they needed to be prepared for a special attack that combined an ordinary weapon with magic.

Or so Miyabi thought.

And he was not entirely wrong.

But…

“Ugh!?”

After the heavy clang, he was the one who bent backwards along with his control sword. This was more than a clash between swords. It was like a bizarre execution method where he was ordered to hold back a tackle from a rhino or elephant using only a thin metal panel. He could easily die if he did not catch the force in a way that kept his bones from bending and breaking.

Onelife’s sword technique was far from refined.

But he made up for it with such great power that he took complete control of the battle. Weight and weapon meant nothing. Clever tricks were meaningless. When he took a step, the beach exploded and a great mass of air roared out. He was a raging storm of violence that tore through the puny world around him. Miyabi did not choose any of his moves. If he did not react to each of Onelife’s attacks first and foremost, it would all fall apart. He could tell on an instinctual level.

“Bwa ha ha ha!! Pathetic!! Simply pathetic!! You should’ve trained yourself until your steel was a storm and your blade the crashing waves. If you hope to break my control blade and kill the sailor, you’ll need an attack capable of shattering an oceangoing vessel! Clench your fist then and you might just reach me!!!!!!”

This made no sense.

Something was missing here. Plus…

“How is this real? Why is he stronger without his Godhorn Tech!?”

Eliza’s eyes widened, control lance in hand.

Miyabi’s party had him outnumbered, but they could not keep up with him. In fact, he pushed them back and threatened to break their flesh and bones if they let up for even a moment. Like an invisible hand was squeezing at their spines.

“The King Knot is only a trophy celebrating my life.”

The prosthetic arm pirate laughed.

He laughed and easily raised his massive blade.

“A real man does his own fighting!!!!!!”

That meant he was not even using the control device to boost his own magic.

He really and truly was only using his own muscles and the prosthetic arm, yet he could battle Godhorn Techs and had broken off a real Wicked God’s horn. He only saw the cutlass as a stick so sturdy he didn’t have to worry about breaking it.

“I-I don’t understand. What do we do about a musclebound freak like this!?”

Celina decided it would be silly to face someone like him in a close-range battle, so she kept her distance and focused on firing her gun.

Guns promised the same destructive power to anyone who used them, but that also meant not even the greatest expert in the world could increase their power. Celina applied magic to her bullets – primarily alchemy related to lead – but she must have been reaching the limits of what that could accomplish. She clicked her tongue while quickly pushing in more powder and another bullet with the long, skinny rod.

The pirate had a pistol at his hip, but he made no attempt to draw it. He may have only used it to send signals with the light and sound. He knocked all the projectiles from the air with his thick cutlass, but he was gradually forced onto the defensive. Of course, he was enough of a monster to be fighting a long-term battle while fully exposed to the threat of magical bullets.

They outnumbered him but could not manage to surround him.

Miyabi clenched his teeth and stabbed his control sword into the beach.

“Shoot him, Lucifer Horn!!!!!!”

The bomber cut by overhead, dropping a beam of light as it went.

The thick beam tore across the beach, approaching Onelife to envelop his enormous body.

But…

“Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!”

With a boom, the light scattered like ocean spray.

The pirate’s enormous cutlass was held skyward. He had sliced through the Lucifer Horn’s beam, scorching the sand around him.

The beam had not been any weaker than usual.

It had been hot enough to melt the sand into glass. And yet…

“Worthless!! No soul in it at all. If you want to kill me, come at me with love in your blade. Yes, love – a form of admiration. A surprise confession’s enough to scare even me!! I’d be bedridden for a week, you landlubberrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!”

“I-is this idiot impervious to blades and bullets both? Not even Miyabi’s bombing worked! Do his muscles break the laws of physics or something!?”

Helen could handle everything from housework to assassinations, but she was out of breath, her shoulders rising and falling. She was not used to the tropical heat or the sand catching at her feet, so it all sapped at her stamina. At this rate, Miyabi’s party would be worn down first and then a fatal attack could reach them once their movements slowed.

“No, we might still have a chance,” said Celina, rudely wiping the sweat dripping down her chin.

“What a coincidence. I was thinking the same thing,” said Eliza.

“Care to share with the rest of us!?” shouted Miyabi.

“We took out the King Knot’s cannons, but the Wicked God horn remains.”

“Destroy the sealed container to release the horn within, and not even that musclebound freak can ignore it,” explained Celina.

Miyabi finally got it.

“So you’re saying I just have to keep attacking the ship, right!?”

He changed targets.

“Use this, strait-laced girl!”

Alicia tossed a delicate glass container.

The skinny test tube soared into Eliza’s outstretched hand and she gave the colorful liquid within a puzzled glance, so the elf alchemist grinned.

“That’s the secret alchemy potion I use to boost my physical strength. It’s pure magic, so not even caffeine can compete. You won’t be getting a wink of sleep tonight!!”

Not even that would be enough to reach Onelife’s level, but Eliza and her enormous lance was their heaviest hitter. Once the alchemical boost was added to her innate horsepower, they sent her to the ship while Miyabi and Celina faced Onelife.

“Buying time?”

The man took a thundering footstep.

That was all it took to drain all color from their surroundings. The world was deprived of freedom and pressure bore down on them from all directions. An unseen wall pressed in on Miyabi’s party.

“Against me? How? Have you forgotten I slayed a real Wicked God and broke off its horn with just my own two arms?”

But.

Onelife was not the only confident one.

“Oh? Miyabi, this idiot seems to be mistaken about some things.”

“Yeah, we aren’t here to sacrifice ourselves and buy some time.”

Onelife narrowed his one eye questioningly, but it was already too late.

They had achieved their goal.

“We were using your confidence against you to lure you to this very spot.”

A thunderous sound rang out.

Alicia and Helen had rushed in, the former swinging her staff in from the side and the latter holding her thick dagger.

The real threat there was Helen Clockgear whose assassin skills included applying magic or potions to her blade to provide special effects.

Not even an embodiment of thick muscles could ignore a paralysis potion.

“Gh…”

Even then, it only lasted a moment.

The mass of muscles stagged backwards and bumped into his own ship.

No.

He staggered back against the hole in the hull that Eliza had created, bumping against the thick outer shell of the sealed container that kept the Wicked God horn stable.

“Celina!!”

The girl fired a bullet through the crack in the armor to stimulate what lay within. She did not hesitate to pull the trigger because she knew hitting the man would not kill him. Plus, she was not aiming at the pirate. A flash of bluish-white lightning scattered from within the ship.

A hint of panic appeared on Onelife’s face.

“Nhh!?”

“Hey, Onelife. Why didn’t you just come with us?” Miyabi glared at Onelife and held his control sword at the ready so the man’s great strength could not reach Alicia, Celina, or the others. “I doubt we were originally part of your plan, but our presence shouldn’t have kept you from taking that cargo ship. If you had visited the island as part of our group, you should have had an even easier time setting up a trap close to Kananka.”

“…”

“The people at the port adore you and the butler called Rudolf said you didn’t harm any of the crew when you attacked the trade ships. You put your crew first and you don’t harm people doing honest work, right!? I thought you didn’t like earning people’s trust through deception!”

“All those inconvenient facts slipped my-”

“Like hell they have! Where is your crew!? That pirate ship only has a captain!!”

“!?”

Yes.

This had been bothering Miyabi.

Onelife was so adored at the criminal city, yet Miyabi had not seen any of his actual crewmembers. Some youths had so looked up to the man that they had attacked Miyabi’s party with something called electricity to protect him. If he had been recruiting, he would have had a flood of hopeful crewmembers.

No.

It made no sense for him to lack a crew. But then where had they gone?

“A nonsensical mission, a missing crew, and the shadow of the 11th… Yeah, I think I get it now. This is just like with Number 8. I already know the real 11th is willing to trample on people’s feelings and make use of whatever someone cares about most to get their way. So you’re telling me everything!! What is it you’re dealing with here!?”

Miyabi was done attacking bad people for being bad. With Moebius Entrance and Number 8, he had learned that everyone had their own reasons or circumstances driving whatever they did.

So.

So surely the same applied to Onelife Shiftup.

Control sword clashed with prosthetic hand.

Miyabi was the one pushed back, but then Eliza’s lance joined in. Alicia’s staff and Helen’s thick knife also cut in as soon as one of them was pushed back. They refused to let an opening develop. Celina fired her rifle to scatter the sand at Onelife’s feet, knocking him off balance.

“Contract Owner: Under Lilith, grant me the power to move the Palette Dice!!”

“Nhhh!?”

Miyabi created a large box of sand and simply chucked it at his adversary.

The pirate easily smashed it, but that scattered fine sand everywhere. It got into the joints of his complex prosthetic arm, causing it to groan.

It malfunctioned.

“Onelife!!”

Miyabi leaned in with his entire body weight.

He pushed forward on his control sword, forcing back Onelife and his metal arm.

He pushed him against the hull of the pirate ship, through the broken armor, and toward the sealed container, where sparks were flying.

The sinister serpent of sparks seized his spine.

Not even his extreme muscles could protect him from a direct attack with the horn’s power.

“Gwohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

“Out with it already!! Tell me what led you to do all this!!”

“Miyabi!! Any further and you’ll be caught too!!”

Helen shouted a frantic warning, but the boy did not even look back. He did not take his eyes off of the powerful pirate for even a second.

Even now, Onelife remained a formidable opponent.

He forced his locked-up prosthetic arm to move, pushing his cutlass against Miyabi’s control sword.

With a dull clang, the grip slipped from the boy’s hand. The sword spun through the air and stabbed into the sand a short distance away.

Ordinarily, he might have let his party members take over while he retrieved his sword.

But he moved forward instead.

Because the pirate had thrown aside his enormous cutlass.

That just left clenching their fists.

“Onelife!!!!!!”

“Nwahh!!”

They both threw their punches.

In a pure exchange of fists, Miyabi would have had no way of defeating Onelife. This was the legendary pirate who had singlehandedly slain a Wicked God and broken off its horn. What could a boy who had rarely ever gotten into fights back in his home village do against that?

Miyabi’s punch was terribly light and no match for Onelife’s.

Miyabi’s body was terribly small and no match for Onelife’s.

Miyabi’s speed was terribly slow and no match for Onelife’s.

But.

“Owwaaahhhh!!!!!!”

The roar of agony came from Onelife.

Then his biological fist tore through the air.

Miyabi dodged it so barely a few strands of red hair scattered in the wind while he sent in his own fist!

Yes.

He could not let himself fear because he was more fragile than Onelife Shiftup.

He could not let himself worry because he was smaller than Onelife Shiftup.

He could not let himself give up because he was weaker than Onelife Shiftup.

After all, all of those things pointed to another fact.

Miyabi had something that Onelife did not!!

“How!? How can you possibly keep up with me in a pure fistfight!?”

He still hadn’t been hit.

He still wasn’t dead.

Onelife was of course surprised by this. Because the boy was showing off some things that the legendary pirate could never hope to have.

He felt fear, so he carefully calculated out the best distance to attack from. His attacks were too light, so he searched for the best way of putting his weight behind them. The haves and the have-nots all had their own way of finding victory under any condition. Miyabi could not pull off the feats Onelife had demonstrated, but Onelife could not struggle as hard as Miyabi. People were not overwhelmingly powerful because they were superior and people were not obsessively persistent because they were inferior. Rock, paper, and scissors were all equal. This was no more than a person named Miyabi clashing with a person named Onelife. All of the preconceptions and added values were unnecessary.

A deafening crack shook the air.

It did not come from Miyabi’s fist.

Onelife’s metal fist had caught the boy’s cheekbone.

“Is…that…”

But there was no victorious grin on Onelife’s face.

He had landed the punch, but he was the one who looked struck.

Even after feeling the heavy blow to his cheekbone, the light in Miyabi Blackgarden’s eyes did not waver.

“Is that all you’ve got, pirate!?”

“Kh.”

This was the legendary pirate. The great man everyone admired.

Was his legend really this shallow?

The boy who should have been knocked out with the very first punch threw his other hand toward Onelife’s face.

It landed.

He was a child who didn’t know the first thing about martial arts, but Onelife’s pillar was definitely shaken.

“You’re the 11th? Defeat you and all our problems are in the past? You really expect me to believe that!!!???”

He shouted.

He roared.

Nothing he said could actually negate the damage done to his body. That one clean hit had dyed the right half of his vision an unnatural red.

But he kept going regardless.

Because there was no other way to reach this man.

“Everyone looked up to you as a pirate, so what would you gain by tricking Number 8 into setting up those sorcery bombs!? None of it fits, so no one would be satisfied with an answer like that!! You said it yourself. You did. You said a real man does his own fighting. So you’d never choose to hide a bomb no one can find and then flee to safety while the city is blown to hell!!!!!!”

More dull impacts rang out.

There was no room for Helen’s assassin techniques or Eliza’s expert warfighting skills.

It was 1-on-1.

For this moment only, the fate of the continent and the Wicked God horns didn’t even matter.

It was simply a battle between men.

“Show me.”

He was beaten and battered.

It was a hellish scene where the boy seemed to be further crushed the more he kept fighting.

Yet he did not fall back.

It was absurd, but it was puny Miyabi who pushed forward, still shouting and showing off his bloodstained teeth.

“Show me the real Onelife Shiftup, the pirate everyone looks up to!! Is the legendary pirate really someone who bites his tongue, clenches his teeth, and does some job someone forced onto him? Is that the true form of Onelife Shiftup who naturally gathers a crowd when he walks down the street, creating an impromptu parade!? Of course not. So please, I’m begging you! Look me in the eye and tell me to my face that isn’t who you are!!!”

He kept pushing.

Fist hit fist and he felt something inside him bending, but he ignored the pain and roared at close range.

A crew had gathered around this man, attracted to his way of life.

Others had unofficially worked, and even committed crimes, to protect the pirate.

Could he really be the cowardly 11th? Was that really how this journey ended? Could Miyabi shove all blame onto him, refused to listen to his side of the story, strike him down as the bad guy, and then return to first village to live happily ever after?

Why did that feel so wrong?

It had to be wrong.

Miyabi Blackgarden had to believe in this. If he could not prove that Onelife was the kind of pirate he was known to be, he would be stomping on all those people’s feelings! And if Miyabi let himself be defeated here, that was exactly what would happen!!

He had to believe.

He had to continue believing and find the true answer. He clenched his teeth to do exactly that.

Just once more. Just once.

As battered as he was, he could still clench his fist one last time!!

“Owaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

“Owaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

Two fists flew in, compressing the air between them.

A dull sound erupted.

Silence fell.

The one left with a grin on his face was Onelife. Their fists had collided head on. Miyabi’s fist had embedded itself in the pirate’s prosthetic, but it had been flattened in that shape. Almost like a clump of clay thrown against a thick fortress wall.

Onelife had caught Miyabi’s fist on his thick, heavy prosthetic and mercilessly broken it. This was not about technique. There was no trick to avoiding it.

Miyabi had lost in the field of pure solid toughness.

“It’s over, boy. You can’t defeat me.”

“As an outlaw pirate, you must know a thing or two about guns and cannons, right? So it’s funny you overlooked this.”

But.

Something strange happened. The boy with the crushed fist had a cruel smile on his face.

Because…

“You don’t want a bullet that’s just hard and nothing else. Softer lead allows it to be crushed and transfer all of its force to its target.”

Miyabi did not have a gun. Everything he knew about them came from Celina.

But that was no reason to fear every little thing.

He would use even the smallest and most trivial facts to take another step toward victory!!

After a short delay, a powerful force passed through the pirate’s prosthetic arm and entered his body through the shoulder.

Onelife teetered backwards and finally staggered back. His back plunged toward the damaged sealed container revealed through the ship’s broken hull. His great form was swallowed up by bursting sparks.

“You had no reason to attack Kananka and this island,” roared Miyabi, his crushed and badly bleeding fist still held out in front.

His eyes were directed dead ahead.

This was not over yet.

He could not call it a win until he saved this man. It was that conviction that kept him from collapsing no matter what happened.

“And the most unnatural element in all this is the 11th. What did they say to you!? What did they use to make you do this!?”

“What does it matter to you?”

“Because I’ll do something about it.”

He didn’t even need to think about it.

“So spill the beans and pass the baton to me!! I’ll fix it all for you!!!!!!”

Onelife’s giant body was shaking.

Miyabi’s attack had been powerful enough to crush his own fist, but it was unclear if it had actually affected the man.

But each of the boy’s attacks had pushed Onelife’s back against the Wicked God horn and all of its energy unleashed by the broken sealed container.

Each attack had exposed him to a shock so powerful an ordinary human – and even a powerful Beast Nova – could not have survived.

He had been knocked back, but it was only when something else inside him broke that he slowly opened his mouth.

“…”

The boy was reckless and foolish, but Onelife was defeated by the look in his eyes. As if to say that had wounded him far more than the fistfight or the sparks coming from the horn.

“Parasites…”

“?”

“My entire crew was infected…and the 11th is the only one who can heal them.”

“That’s more like it.”

That was a starting point.

Onelife had had no choice but to obey. He had clenched his teeth and done things that violated his principles, but he had been fighting all alone the entire time.

He was not the 11th. There was someone else pulling the strings.

Knowing that was enough. Those words brought new life to the boy’s half-broken soul. He had nearly sacrificed his own life for it, but now he was glad he had chosen this path.

This was enough fighting.

There was just one thing he had to say now. He owed it to this man for working up the courage to reveal the truth to him.

“Leave the rest to us. We’ll clean up this mess!!”

In that final moment, the one-eyed pirate smiled.

It was small, but nothing like the other smiles he had given.

“Boy!”

Someone tossed something to Miyabi from the side.

His battered hand caught the control sword that Alicia had thrown and he stabbed the tip into the beach. A large magic circle opened at his feet and he roared a command.

Everything was dyed white.

The King Knot pirate ship and the Mother Shark submarine were both blown to bits in two brilliant explosions when the Lucifer Horn’s beam hit them.

“D-do you think maybe you overdid it?” nervously asked Alicia.

“No, that blast only has him sleeping comfortably. Just all sprawled out there,” replied the exasperated radio.

The pirate was convulsing on the beach and looked unlikely to wake back up anytime soon.

Alicia finally turned back toward the redhead boy who had nearly been caught in the blast but was still sent rolling across the sand.

“Okay, boy, enough smiling and pretending you’re fine. Show me that hand you’re hiding behind your back! God, you really smashed that up good, and I don’t even know if I can make my usual White Sorcery Items with the different vegetation and ecosystem on this island!!”

“Miyabi, this might sound like a lecture from an old hag with stick up her butt, but this is actually a reward. You need to use the ears of your soul to translate this before her usual rebellious phase returns: ‘Oh, why must you always come home covered in mud? You are just hopeless, you know that?’ This world has no more need for towels! So before starting on dinner, fill your heart with her love and compassion and then join her in the bubble baaaaaaath!!”

The radio’s noisy nonsense got it stepped on by the complaining elf while she wrapped a special bandage around the boy’s broken fist. Helen approached, imbued her thick knife with magic, and transferred a purple light to him. But not because he was beyond saving and she wanted to put him out of his misery. She was actually applying some light paralysis magic to help him with the pain.

Eliza glanced over at them and rubbed her temples.

The chosen knight was looking down at the unconscious pirate.

“If only this man could have found a master he could serve. We need to ask him some questions, so how about we dump some water on him?”

Finding a metal bucket in this remote island kingdom would have been difficult, but they did find two empty halves of a coconut lying on the beach. Someone must have already removed the contents. Miyabi’s hand felt weird as it rapidly healed, but he used it to scoop up seawater in the coconut and approached Onelife. He had taken a lot of damage too, but Miyabi mercilessly dumped the water on the collapsed pirate’s face.

“Ugh…”

That was precisely when Kananka came to check on them, still favoring one leg.

“Hm, so is it over?”

“Kananka.”

“Relax, Miyabi. My kingdom has its own standards of propriety. We are not in the habit of beating someone who has already been punished and had a change of heart.”

Kanaka smiled a little. He may have been exasperated to see Miyabi trying to protect someone who had been his enemy just a moment before. But Kananka was little different since the pirate had also tried to destroy his kingdom.

“Our way is to welcome any who reach our shores as guests, remember?”

“…”

Onelife opened his eyes.

Young Kananka nodded and continued.

“I would like to know who our true enemy is. If you do not tell me that, I cannot punish this 11th person.”

“I don’t know when it happened.” The pirate remained on the ground, but the look on his face said this story was even more painful than his wounds. “But my beloved crew started collapsing one after another. I sought out academics, white sorcerers, and experts from the underground before finally learning it was caused by some parasites they had never seen before. But the back alley doctors available to criminals like us couldn’t do anything about it.”

Miyabi could use ordinary doctors and shops, so that was difficult for him to understand.

But someone had definitely suffered because of it.

“Only she could do it.”

“She?”

“She shamelessly called herself an expert.” Onelife gave a self-deprecating smile. “She said the target would show itself if I kept stealing imperial automatons. And if I dealt with that target in a specific way, she would remove the parasites from my crew… It’s silly really. I mean, she was obviously the one who gave them the parasites in the first place.”

“And who is this ‘she’!?”

“I don’t think anyone knows her real name.”

But that did not mean Onelife Shiftup had nothing to say.

“The Necromancer.”

That was her de facto name.

“She owns a Godhorn Tech and she uses forbidden necromancy.”

Meanwhile at Horn Fortress 4

“That’s a mermaid!!”

“Mermaid flesh makes you immortal! Find her!!”

Charlotte Nightlagoon was on the run.

It was a small island and she had given herself human legs, so there were not many hiding spots for her. She needed to slip aboard a ship and leave the island before the islanders could organize a more thorough search.

“Pant, pant, goddammit. In what world do people surround you in order to eat you?”

She was crouched down and hiding behind a relatively thick portion of the island’s tropical forest.

That was when she heard a small child sobbing.

She clicked her tongue and frowned below her decorative eyepatch.

“Father,” cried the child.

She peered out from the thicket to see a brown boy who only came up to her hips rubbing his eyes and trudging along.

He looked like he had wandered around in search of the mermaid flesh until he was sick and tired of it.

“No, please don’t die, fatherrrr!!”

(God, really!?)

Eating mermaid flesh did not actually make you immortal. If it did, the mermaids would have stooped to cannibalism long before humans got into the mix. And Charlotte was not a selfless saint who was willing to offer up her own body over some silly superstition.

She wanted to run away.

She wanted to leave this island.

But.

“What choice do I have!?”

It was the middle of the night and Charlotte knew good and well she shouldn’t be doing this, but she snuck over anyway. This was the middle of the village, the most dangerous area for her.

She approached the building known as the House of the King and Spirits.

It was a king’s residence, yet it lacked walls. The king’s lifestyle was kept open to the people, tearing down any division between him and those people. That political system relied on the goodness of the people, which just felt dangerous to Charlotte, who was from the privileged class among mermaids. It did make her fond of the king, however.

Right now, a screen was placed around the bedroom area.

The islanders considered diseases to be unclean and used the screen to keep them from escaping. They were a strange group since humans knew nothing of microbes, despite using them to make delicious wines and cheeses, but she could tell they had woven the screen from the stems of plants they had learned through experience were excellent at disinfecting disease.

Charlotte spoke through the screen.

“You’ve gotten old.”

“…Is that you?”

“You really have gotten old if you can’t defeat such a minor disease.”

She heard a quiet breath of laughter.

He must not have been able to get up.

“I apologize on behalf of my people. Our silly superstitions have caused nothing but trouble for you here.”

“They’re only so desperate for the supposed immortality my flesh brings because they want to save you, right? They’re a good people. I can see how much they care for each other.”

“In my generation, anyway.”

“You think the next will be different?”

“Can I ask something of you?”

“I’ve had my fill of trouble, so-”

“Stay with my son, Kananka. He is still young and I am sure there will be trouble as his coronation approaches.”

“God, really!? You can’t just tell me what it is before I have a chance to refuse!!”

“Ha ha. I knew you would say that, so I made sure to get it out first.”

Another laugh was followed by a coughing fit.

The coughing was terribly wet, like fluid was building deep in his chest.

“I am not asking you to watch over him until he is an adult.”

“Yeah, the next king is gonna be super vulnerable. He might even be killed before he can grow up.”

“This is my son’s and my kingdom’s responsibility. I cannot keep you here long term. A king must know what his own destruction would mean and maintain the proper tension throughout his life. He must know how to protect himself. At the same time, he must be prepared to let the crown pass to the next generation sooner rather than later.”

“…”

“So my son must handle his official duties himself, but I want you to protect him outside of that. If he wants to leave the island and have some fun, go with him. I am not asking for an absolute oath or anything. Just remember your promise from time to time and stop by when it is convenient.”

“Hmph,” snorted Charlotte, a hand on her hip. “You have gotten old. Leaving me behind like this is bad enough, but you’re also forcing a young child onto the throne before he’s even learned how to make friends.”

“Shameful, I know.”

“But I know how serious you are about this. I guess that’s worth a favor or two.”

The bedridden king made one last request.

He could barely get out of bed anymore and his death was unavoidable at this point, but he had been waiting so very long for this one thing.

“Then how about just one more before I die?”

“Fine. One last song.”

A mermaid’s song could affect people’s mind.

So of course it could numb the pain in someone’s final moments.

“So you see, it’s really a touching story!! Ha ha!!”

“Ehhh!? We had a ton of newcomers this time, so why do you get all the focus!!!???”

Profiles

Phobia Neverjudge

Age: 18

Sex: Female

Height: 157cm

Only daughter of the Neverjudge Family, which accepts any job requiring an armed solution. They do bodyguard, rescue, kidnapping, and assassination jobs, all without asking too many questions. With the presence of Wicked Gods harming the Family’s reputation, she is working to slay the Wicked Gods herself. She has failed to discover the identity of the legendary assassin Shadow Crack and she suspects they are an elf, making them impossible to track down when viewing only the human side of the equation.

Eluné Jackpot

Age: 18

Sex: Female

Height: 160cm

A gambler who constantly tests how far she can push her luck. After trying more and more crazy gambles, she has reached the point of seeing if she can survive a direct confrontation with a real Wicked God. When she speaks of luck, she includes how long it takes for her cheating to be discovered. Rumor has it she has even used her incredible luck to cheat her way into a contract with Under Lilith.

Cliff Blueforest

Apparent Age: 18 (actual age unknown)

Sex: Male

Height: 185cm

An elf knight who once risked his life binding a contract with Demon Lord Under Lilith to save his human lover from a deadly illness, successfully saving her life. As payment, all his memories of that lover were erased and he now travels the world in search of any proof that she lived a happy life. All elves of that forest use the surname Blueforest, so he and Alicia are not related.

Lillian Greenforest

Apparent Age: 18 (actual age unknown)

Sex: Female

Height: 162cm

One of the dark elves who were forced to scatter across the land after their sacred forest was destroyed. A ‘passive avenger’ who offers up her own body as a specimen for magical research to advance human military technology, hoping all the humans will kill each other with the results. She is searching for the alchemist named Holy Gate to advance humanity’s doomsday clock.

Onelife Shiftup

Age: 56

Sex: Male

Height: 200cm

The legendary pirate who once slayed a Wicked God with just the one arm, broke off its horn, and remade his own ship into a Godhorn Tech. His larger-than-life personality and refusal to sweat the small stuff gives him a powerful charisma. His popularity allows him as much notoriety as the entire Bodenburg Company that controls the criminal port city. He is more frightening when directly attacking with his prosthetic combat arm than when using a control device or Godhorn Tech.

Godhorn Tech Submarine: Mother Shark

Pilot: Kananka Fulpen

Affiliation: Fulpen Maknika Ocean Kingdom

Size (LxWxH): 60m x 30m x 11m

A submarine resembling a giant shark with the power to raise the ocean floor. By sending up the Shark Tooth reef below an enemy ship, it can sink even the most unsinkable warship. The legend of a great being fishing up islands for people to live on was remade into this weapon of war. Unbeatable at sea, but helpless once the enemy reaches the island it must protect. Motif: island creation myth.

Charlotte Nightlagoon

Apparent Age: 16 (actual age unknown)

Sex: Female

Height: 156cm

A tomboy who is well-known in the mermaid world(?). Taught herself how to make a magic potion to give herself legs so she could indulge in some wild partying on the surface. But she learned too late that she could no longer return to the ocean without her fishtail. While disguised as a pirate(?), she is searching for the unmatched alchemist named Holy Gate so she can acquire a magic potion to regain her original form.

Kananka Fulpen

Age: 12

Sex: Male

Height: 130cm

The young king who rules some islands far south of the continent after his father’s untimely death. Well-versed in a method of contacting spirits that differs from the continent’s magic, can sense coming changes in the weather and the natural environment, and is tasked with ensuring the island catches enough fish. Uses the Mother Shark Godhorn Tech to protect the islands he rules.

Godhorn Tech Pirate Ship: King Knot

Pilot: Onelife Shiftup

Size (LxWxH): 50m x 12m x 30m

A pirate ship that has mastered the use of talismans (automatically-consumed charms). The method of determining directions from the constellations has been expanded to fire that star power as a weapon. The weapons can only be charged at night, but they can imbue their shells with various elements: fire, water, wind, earth, light, shadow, etc. As a pirate, Onelife wanted the ability to respond to any national force sent to take him out. But since he has an extraordinary enough body to slay a Wicked God with nothing more than a cutlass, he only views the Godhorn Tech as support. Motif: talismans.

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