In a Different World with a Smartphone (LN) - Volume 24 - Chapter 1.1

Chapter I: The Wicked Devout

“Come to think of it...what Null magic can you use?”

It’d been a day since Arcia had arrived at the castle. She’d hounded me to take her to the nearby market, so that's where we were.

“My Null magic? I can use [Search] and [Apport], The range on them is rather short, however, so there’s little to no tactical application.

Therefore, I mostly use them for easy access to ingredients while I cook.”

“Huh, that’s a pretty novel usage...”

[Search] was handy for foraging in the wild, while [Apport] made it easy for you to harvest fruit from high places. If she was finding use out of it in such a simple way, that was fine... Probably.

“I can also use it to identify poisoned or rotten ingredients.”

That seemed smart. I’d used [Search] to find poison before. It actually seemed like a pretty useful spell for a cook to have.

“Ah, father! They have apples! I’d like to make an apple pie, so let’s buy some!”

“Do you make a lot of desserts, Arcia?”

“If anything, I’d say they’re my specialty! You’re not the biggest fan of sweet treats, but my siblings constantly ask for them.”

It's not that I don’t like sweet stuff, I just can’t eat too many of them...

If I were able to, I’d certainly have eaten a great many cakes. But there simply reached a point where my stomach and tongue could take no more. The mystery of how women could consume dessert after dessert boggled my mind, even now.

Yae was capable of eating a whole cake in one fell swoop... Though that was more on account of her being a Yae than her being a woman.

Maybe I should buy something to bring back for the kids?

Just as I was wondering what to buy, the crowd around me started to murmur and stir. What were they getting so worked up about?

“Huh? What’s that up in the sky?”

“Beats me. One of the grand duke’s newest magic whatsits, probably?”

I glanced upward and, sure enough, there was some kind of flying object far off above the clouds... It was slowly moving forward.

“[Long Sense].”

I projected my vision into the air to try to make some sense of this unidentified flying object.

Is that...an airship?

Beneath the rugby ball shaped gasbag, I could see a flight deck flanked by two winged propellers. The hull had a pair of long arm-like parts protruding from the front.

It wasn’t a magical artifact like people around here expected, but an invention from the western continent. The former Reverse World. It was probably a Gollem of some sort.

I wondered what they wanted from me... I didn't like taking new arrivals without advance warning, but we didn’t really have any set precedent when it came to airspace violations.

Gollems that large were usually exclusively owned by the rich and powerful, or states themselves. Either way, it meant whoever was in that thing was probably a big deal.

I’d heard Gollem airships weren’t capable of traversing huge distances, either...so I couldn’t help but wonder where this thing was from. One thing was clear, though. I couldn’t just stand by and wait to see what it did. I didn't think they were hostile, but I also couldn’t really afford to gamble.

“Let's go, Arcia.”

Arcia was still looking over the apples when I grabbed her hand and invoked [Teleport]. We vanished, then reappeared at the northern training field.

I pulled Reginleif out of [Storage] and clambered up to the cockpit. It was designed for a single pilot, but there was enough room for a small child to squeeze in with me.

Well, I was hardly gonna leave her behind...but why’s she sitting on my lap?

It's hard to see the monitor from here...

I activated Reginleif and launched up into the sky. In a flash, I flew in front of the airship and activated my [Speaker] spell to project my voice ahead.

“Attention, incoming airship. This airspace falls under the territory of the Duchy of Brunhild. Disembark immediately and make your reasons for entry known. Should sufficient time pass without a response, we will be forced to remove you from our airspace.”

I figured I’d just issue a warning. It could lead to them becoming hostile, or maybe they’d change course. It'd be annoying if they went to a different country, though... Air travel was still a relatively unknown thing on the eastern continent, so I figured I'd make it a topic of discussion next time all the world leaders gathered.

To be honest, one [Fire Ball] shot would be enough to bring the whole thing crashing down... Provided it didn’t have some kind of protective barrier, anyway.

“Father, it’s making a descent.”

“Oh, guess they’re listening.”

I brought Reginleif down to the ground, parking it in tandem with the airship.

A long, leg-like landing gear emerged from the hull, allowing the airship to quietly settle on a nearby hill.

I left Arcia in the cockpit and hopped out, ready to greet whoever was inside this thing. The hatch opened...and various people came out. A few of them even looked like dwarves. I wondered if they were the ship’s mechanics.

Huh? What the...?

An old man with a bushy, bear-like mustache was sprinting toward me at full pelt. His eyes were glimmering and he was yelling incoherent stuff.

The hell is he doing?!

“[Shield]!”

“Gwaugh!”

The old man collided with the invisible barrier and fell backward. His nose was completely busted, his mustache soaked with blood.

What the hell, man?! How fast did you wanna run into that thing?

“Don’t just start chargin’ at them outta nowhere! Ya got rusty parts fer brains?!”

A gorgeous woman suddenly appeared, kicking the old man repeatedly in the side. She looked to be in her thirties.

...Wiat is going on?

“Sorry' for the shock there, partner. This moron saw that fancy Gollem of yours and couldn’t help himself.”

“R-Right...”

Reginleifs not a Gollem, but III put that aside for now.

The woman chuckled slightly as she stomped on the man some more.

It was...quite the sight to behold, honestly. Her light brown hair was tied up and she wore coarse-Iooking grey coveralls. She had a greasy towel at her waist and a leather bag of tools tied to her side. She was the very picture of a craftswoman.

I glanced down at the mustached man again and noticed that he was dressed the same. The two were likely Gollem engineers.

“The rumors about this place really were true, eh? Worth the trip from Gandhilis, that's fer sure!”

“Gandhilis? So you’re envoys from the Steel Nation?”

Gandhilis, the Steel Nation, was a mining country south of Allent and east of Gardio. It was abundant in natural resources, so they exported a lot of the materials required to make Gollems.

“Naw, not quite. We’re just from Gandhilis. Ain’t here on nothin' official. We’re a group called the Seekers.”

...Seekers? Think I’ve heard of that before... Oh, right! They're that group on the same level as Elluka! One of the five great gollemancers!

“We’re an engineerin' guild. Since we're a collective, our title applies to the group an’ no one person. By the by, that sorry sack've screws on the floor next to me is Mario Phalanx, of Gilmouth. I'm Ripple Phalanx, his lady fair.”

“Wait, you're married?!”

Why were you kicking him, then?! That’s domestic abuse!

I felt a little sorry for the guy, honestly.

Alario, huh? With that mustache? Yeah, that tracks.

“Wait...are you two Parallel's parents?”

When I said that, Ripple’s eyes went wide.

“You know our daughter?”

“Well, I met her once. She was with the princess of Gandhilis...”

It was back when we held that matchmaking party in Refreese.

Parallel and Princess Cornelia had masterminded a plan to switch out one of the attendees with a Gollem replacement. And that meant these two were the ones who created that Gollem... Or rather, they were the two who’d restored it.

“By the way, you ain’t introduced yourself yet.”

“Oh, my bad. I'm Mochizuki Touya, the grand duke of Brunhild. I run things around here.”

“Y-Yer the ruler’ve the country?!”

When I mentioned who I was, she started freaking out. It was a sight I’d seen many times before, so I wasn’t surprised... I just wondered when I’d have the presence or royal air required for people to know at a glance.

Maybe I needed a beard...

“...Uhhh, well, please fergive my hubby’s disrespectful conduct... An’ my own, obviously.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t worry about that. I was originally an adventurer, so you don't need to put on airs with me.”

“Whew! S'a relief to me. Our lot don't got much in the way’ve decorum an’ whatnot. S’why I left our little lass with the princess.”

Ripple looked more than relieved by my words. Did she think I was gonna arrest her husband or something?

“So, uh, what brings you guys to Brunhild?”

“Oh, aye. Two reasons. One, to see yer giant Gollems like that one up close. Two, we heard Elluka’s kickin’ about here. Can we see her?"

They know Elluka? Guess that makes sense, since she’s one of the five great gollemancers... The Restoration Queen, as I recall. What do they want with her, though?

“Before that, though...I’d love to take a lookit this thing up close an' personal,” Ripple said that and suddenly pointed over at Reginleif, her eyes burning with all the same fervor I’d seen in Mario’s earlier.

W-Welp... She’s clearly just as nutty about tech as he is.

“Well, I guess you can take a look...”

“Hear that, lads? We got consent!”

“HOOOOOOOOOH!”

The ground rumbled as dwarves and men charged full steam ahead toward Reginleif.

“Wot’s it made of? Ain't mvthril're orichalcum, izzit?”

“Hey! The armor plating has magical stuff coated right over it!”

“How’s it supportin’ all that bulk on these slim legs?!”

It was a weird sight, seeing a group of mostly middle-aged men clinging and scuttling around Reginleif s feet like they were ants. I wondered if all tech fanatics were like this...

“E-Eek! Father! Th-This is scan'!”

“Oh, oops...”

I looked up at Arcia, who was sitting in the cockpit and trembling at the sight of the weird old guys crawling all over the mech. She was a gold or silver rank adventurer, so she was hardly in any danger, but she was probably too understandably freaked out by the situation to think like that.

I used [Fly] to zoom up and rescue Arcia, and the moment we came down, the hungry-eyed mechanics started crawling up even higher...

Damn it, guys. I thought you just wanted to look!

I quickly packed my Reginleif back into [Storage] and pulled out a Chevalier in its place. I didn't want them damaging my masterpiece.

“There's another one?!”

The men immediately started swarming the Chevalier. They were like ants. Even Mario scrambled up, apparently having fully recovered from his busted nose, to clamber over the Chevalier’s foot.

“Gosh, son... This is plenty crazy. How many’ve these things you got?”

“You mean, like, how many Frame Gears? Probably a bit less than a thousand.”

“A th-thousand?!” Ripple roared, then froze in disbelief.

I’d stopped mass-producing the Frame Gears after we beat the wicked god, so it wasn’t as many as there could’ve been. The main thing Brunhild used them for nowadays was killing Behemoths, since they’d started popping up a little more frequently all over the world. They were also used for disaster prevention and general relief efforts. I had a feeling that if the engineers from both east and west put their minds together, they'd be able to make something good based on the technology...

Nothing like those shoddy knock-offs I’d destroyed a while back at least.

I had a feeling these guys were itching to put their creative minds to use. But there was no point pondering on their intentions just yet. I decided to call up Elluka and see what she had to say first.

O O O

“Hm? What's going on here?” Doc Babylon, who’d come down with Elluka after I’d called, couldn’t help but mutter in disbelief upon seeing the group of engineers crowding around the chevalier.

“Don’t ask me, they’re just doing what they want...”

“They're just excited to see some rare magitech. They’re like little kids, really. It’s cute. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

"Mh... If it’s botherin' ya that much, I can always make 'em knock it off.”

At Elluka’s words, Ripple grinned and waved around the wrench in her hand.

...Don't think you need to go that far, right? You don’t need to beat them up!

“Ohoooh! This is a very rare Gollem airship! Is this mithril?! Wait, it’s partially composed of high-mithril, isn’t it?! That’s genius! It'll help absorb impacts considerably...”

My daughter, Quun, was freaking out about the Seekers’ airship. It didn’t seem all that different from how they were freaking out about our Frame Gear, sadly.

That was definitely like her... The moment I’d mentioned the group had come here, she'd charged down from Babylon with the others.

“She’s always the same, that girl...” Arcia mumbled as she gazed over at her sister and shook her head.

Quun, snap out of it... You're gonna lose some of your sister’s respect!

Elluka glanced over at me with a shrug, then turned to Ripple.

“So, why Brunhild? You didn’t come this far just to see little old me, did you?”

“Oh, yer sayin’ we oughta not’ve come to see ya, then? Psh... Well, it ain’t a leisure visit. There’s somethin’ we need you to look at," Ripple said that, then reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a few sheets of paper. They looked to be photographs...or at least very photorealistic sketches.

“Oh my...”

“Mhm. These’re the latest excavations from our Gandhilis dig. Know anythin’ about it?”

“It’s some kind of ship, surely... But that size...

I glanced over from behind Elluka to get a good look at the pictures.

The snapshots showed what appeared to be some kind of massive underground dock, and docked there was an equally massive ship. The person standing next to it in the photo was so dwarfed by it that it had to be half the size of one of the Babylon islands.

...This ship looks...kind of like a spaceship, doesn’t it?

“This must be a vessel from an ancient civilization! Wait, that mark...

Is that emblem...?” Elluka trailed off and stared at the image in disbelief.

There was an insignia etched into the ship’s hull, and I vaguely recognized what it meant too...

“That's the same mark all the crown Gollems have!”

“Precisely... This ship may have been built by Chrom Ranchesse, the genius from the far past. He created the crowns, after all.”

Chrom Ranchesse was a brilliant man from the far past who’d used his vast abilities to create the black and white crown Gollems, utilizing their power to transcend the space and time barrier between the regular and Reverse Worlds. What’s more, he was the one who’d stopped the Phrase invasion five-thousand years ago, even if it was incidental. However, the white crown going into overdrive caused him to lose all his memories...

“Don't tell me the ship itself could be a crown... That's impossible, right?!"

“It ain’t impossible, but s’hard to say right now. We couldn’t get in the ship to investigate, y’see. S’why I figured we oughta investigate the crowns a bit more closely an’ get some clues. I heard the black, white, an’ red ones were here, so yeah.”

Makes sense... So Ripple and the others came here to look into the crowns...

The purple one’s here too, but it’s not exactly good at communicating.

“The blue an' green crowns belong to royals, so we figured cornin' out here would be our best bet, yknow?”

“The white crown technically belongs to a royal family, just saying...”

Illuminati Albus, the white crown, was provisionally contracted to Yumina, which meant it was tied to the Brunhild royal family.

“It’s barely been a year since your wife made a contract with it, Touya.

The blue and green crowns have been with their royals for generations.

It’s hard enough just meeting a crown, and by requesting an audience, they'd have to make those royal families privy to the discovery of the great ship. We should be thankful they came to us, as it means they trust us with the information!”

That made a lot of sense. The ship was a massive discovery, and any country would probably have loved to get their hands on that kind of information. I didn’t personally have an interest in it, so they were smart coming to us. We had similar stuff in Babylon’s hangar anyway.

I guess if they wanna talk to Albus, that's fine...

I was suddenly pulled from my inner monologue by a tugging at my sleeve.

“Father! This is incredible! An ancient Gollem...and one created by the crowns’ progenitor at that?! What a discovery!”

Oh crap... Forgot to account for my fanatic of a daughter.

I didn’t know how long she’d been staring at the pictures, but Quun’s eyes were brimming with a curious light.

“Hoh... I’m rather interested in this, Touya. I think we should investigate.”

I turned toward Doc Babylon and let out a small sigh.

Dammit... Guess I can’t just pawn this off and call it a day, huh? Well, wha tever. Time to grab Yumina and Albus, I guess! 

o o o

“A ship? Constructed by Chrom Ranchesse? Probable outcome: The Ark,” Illuminati Albus, the white crown, spoke plainly.

“The... Ark?”

“The Ark. Chrom Ranchesse’s mobile factory. Crowns such as myself were produced there.”

...So it's a moving structure for creating Gollems? That’s pretty similar to Babylon's workshop...

According to Albus, Chrom Ranchesse was an eccentric wanderer who’d pledged allegiance to no particular country. Thus, he roamed the land in his mobile ship-cum-fortress, the Ark.

I couldn't help but notice the similarities he had to a certain annoying doctor in my own entourage.

“Hey, Albus... There aren’t nine Arks, are there? Please tell me there aren't.”

“Negative. As far as I am aware, there is only one.”

Oh, thank goodness...

I was scared for a minute there.”

Ripple, who was standing nearby with the rest of her Seekers, suddenly spoke up.

“So, uh, how d’we get inta this ark’ve yours?”

“We crowns are the key. Any of us should be able to open it.”

I see...

So the crowns themselves are the only way to access it. No wonder they couldn't get into it."

“Mister Grand Duke... Wouldja be able to lend us yer white crown?

We really need to start investigating that ship...” Mario, the old mustachioed man, said that and turned his pleading eyes my way. But as sympathetic as I felt, I couldn’t just lend it out to him that easily.

“Well, I’m not sure...”

“Father! I have an idea! Send me over there with Albus as a representative of Brunhild! It’ll be a fine act to benefit our international_"

“Denied. You think we aren’t aware of your lustful gaze for all things technological? I see through you, girl,” Leen coldly rejected Quun's proposal. I wasn’t too surprised, to be honest.

“Mother, please!”

I was actually somewhat interested in this Ark, though. If it was the ancient legacy of the master gollemancer who’d crafted the crowns, then it had to be of considerable historical value. Though, more importantly than that, the power of the Ark was a complete mystery, so it felt like I was obligated to investigate in case it housed some vast and terrible ability that could be misused.

“If it’s Chrom Ranchesse’s workshop, then I must see it! We could decipher the mysteries of the crowns!”

“Indeed, I’m rather curious as well. How can you expect us to hold back when it comes to unknown technology, Touya?”

Elluka and Babylon were both staring at me as if they’d already made their minds up.

Now hold on! If I let you go, then Quun'll get madlAgh, whatever... There's not mudi I can do here...

I’d been wanting to visit Gandhilis at least once. Princess Cordelia had mentioned that the ruler of the country was a kind and gentle man.

“All right... We'll escort Albus to the ruins with you. Is that okay, Yumina?"

“Of course. No objections here.”

Albus belonged to the Brunhild royal family, but he was still contracted to Yumina. That was why it was only polite to ask for proper permission.

“Father! If you're going, then I’m going! I can’t miss out on this!”

“No fair, father! If she goes, then I get to go as well!”

“You two...” I groaned quietly as Quun and Arcia started bickering right next to me.

Fine, you can join me... But this isn't a grand day out, you know? It's serious stuff!