In a Different World with a Smartphone (LN) - Volume 28 - Chapter SS

Bonus Short Stories

Sports Exchange

“Hakkeyoi... Nokotta!”

Upon hearing the starting signal, two armored sumo wrestlers clashed.

You heard me. Not just two regular old sumo wrestlers, two armored sumo wrestlers. The two competitors grappling in front of us were wearing armed industrial power suits that Doc Babylon had invented, known as Armed Gear for short.

It was originally made as a toy for Quun to fiddle with, but after Quun herself spent time optimizing them and increasing their safety, it was now a vehicle that anyone could easily use.

The knights had liked the Armed Gear so much that they asked for them to be added as part of their training regimen, and before I knew it, it had turned into some weird sumo-like sport.

When they were first introduced to the concept, they would carry out their training with weapons like usual, but it was dangerous to keep it up with the pilots themselves being almost completely vulnerable. With that in mind, weapons were confiscated, and punches and kicks were disallowed, so they settled on using them for sumo instead.

The pilot was at the very least surrounded by a phrasium guard frame, so on the off-chance they did get punched, they wouldn’t get hurt directly.

Though, if the Armed Gear’s fist shattered in any way, the broken pieces would hit the pilot through the gaps, so fisticuffs were still disallowed.

“Gnnnrrrgh!”

“You...little...!”

The two people who were currently gripping each other’s waists and trying to push each other out of the ring were Rebecca and Logan, both members of the knights. Rebecca was the commander of the castle guard, while Logan was the commander of the town patrol. The stars of the defenders of the royal court and the citizenry were locked in combat.

The two of them joined the knights at the same time and they were originally part of the same adventuring party, so they had this competitive streak between them. Neither of them particularly had grudges against the other, so was it just as rivals, perhaps?

“Graaaaaaaaah!”

“Guh!”

Logan’s Armed Gear moved into an overarm throw.

Or at least...I think that’s what it’s called. I don’t know all that much about sumo. Grandpa liked it a lot, though.

Just as Rebecca’s Armed Gear was about to get thrown, she managed to hold her ground and regain her balance.

“Take that!”

“Huh?!”

Rebecca suddenly pulled back from their shoving match, causing Logan to lose his balance. She then took that moment to push down on his Armed Gear’s back.

Having fallen forward with such force, Logan fell straight onto the ground.

Um, is that...a pull down? Or no, I guess this would be a slap down? Maybe? I have no idea.

“Hell yeah!”

Rebecca pumped a victorious fist into the air. Doing that in a real sumo match would be flagrantly disrespectful to your opponent, though...

Sumo had its roots in Shinto, so each match began and ended with a bow of respect. Whether you win or lose, you bow to your opponent in consideration of them. This was another world, though, and this already wasn’t a regular sumo match the moment mechs came into the picture...

“Dammit...”

“This ‘sumo’ has its victor decided so swiftly. I like it. The rules are easy to understand too.”

Rebecca disembarked from the Armed Gear, and another of the knights immediately hopped on for the next round.

“I see you’ve gotten used to piloting it.”

“Yeah, they’re not really that different from Frame Gears, so it’s not too hard to get a hang of it. Not having to get my visuals through a screen makes it easier for me to get the sense of distance as well. Little more tiring to use, though.”

As Rebecca had said, unlike Frame Gears, Armed Gears required the pilot to physically move their arms and legs to control it. It would assist you in your movements somewhat, like an electric exercise bike, but it apparently felt a little heavy for a regular person. Luckily, due to the knights already doing training with power wrists and power ankles on, they didn’t feel it so much.

I guess to them it’s more like regular training...

Compared to Frame Gears, though, they were still more tiring to use. Frame Gears were above and beyond the easier of the two to use. It was like the difference between a motorbike and a bicycle.

“Given this is meant to be training, I wouldn’t be against their weight being increased,” Rebecca said.

“Well, we can certainly make the necessary adjustments,” Quun replied. “We can just increase the load. How about 100kg?”

“Uh, that’s maybe a bit much...”

Yeah, no kidding. Couldn’t she, y’know, be a bit more considerate about it...?

“Have you not considered stationing some of the Armed Gears with the knights?”

“It’s not like we can’t, but would there really be any situations where you’d need them? They’re pretty slow. In an actual fight, it’d be way easier to fight without them.”

“Hm, maybe you’re right...”

Armed Gear were pretty much just power suits, so they were of no use in the apprehension of criminals. Well, you could maybe use them as a deterrent. They were extremely intimidating, after all.

They increased general strength, so they might be useful to help deal with any overturned carriages, or maybe for disaster relief, but we already had the Swordsman and Guardian Knight Gollems deployed for that. And as far as construction work went, we had the dwarves’ Dvergrs.

What this Armed Gear did have above our other tech was that it served as a suitable weapon for those unaccustomed to fighting, since all they had to do was board it. Fully arm them, and they could be used as armored soldiers in a war. A regular civilian could gain the power of a mighty warrior.

Naturally, I had no intention of putting any of this into place, though. Sure, there may come a day when we would be having wars with such weapons, but...

Actually, didn’t the Reverse World...the western continent, have a large war just like that once? The Great Gollem War, where they lost the technology of ancient civilizations. I could only pray things would never come to that again.

With that in mind, limiting it to more recreational usage like this seemed ideal.

With those thoughts bouncing around in my head, I continued to watch the knights and their Armed Gear sumo matches.

◇ ◇ ◇

Yup, that sure was what I was thinking a few weeks ago. And now, here we are with a handful of Armed Gears kicking around a ball in the training grounds.

“Here! Pass here!”

“Intercept him! Get him with a sliding tackle!”

“Now’s your chance! Shoot!”

They were certainly playing soccer. It seemed a little off, but little enough that there was basically no reason not to call it soccer.

Two teams of eleven Armed Gears were running down the training grounds, kicking a metallic silver ball.

Is that mithril? It’s lighter than it looks, but it’s still a heavy metal...

One of the knights gave the mithril ball a massive kick. The ball drew an arc through the air right toward the goal, which had been made with Earth magic, but the goalkeeper managed to keep it out with a punch.

“Damn! You were so close!”

“Cover the ball! Kick it out!”

“Steal it already! Slam it into the goal!”

Another player ran up to the one who had just taken the ball and physically tackled him.

Wait, HANG THE HECK ON!

The player who tackled the other player stole the ball from him and passed it straight to one of their teammates, and the game just continued as if nothing had happened.

Wasn’t that a foul?!

“What in the world is this...?”

“Is this not what you call ‘pro socker’? Linze told me about it once before. When I brought it up to everyone else, they said it sounded fun and decided to give it a go!” Sue proudly stated from her seat on the bench.

Pro soccer? Try pro wrestling soccer... Had she really paid attention to what Linze told her? She’d definitely mixed up a bunch of stuff.

From what I could gather, the rule that the goalkeeper was the only one who could touch the ball with their hands was still intact, but any method to steal the ball off the opposing team was fair game.

Given the players with the ball could be tackled right into, had they mixed in a bit of rugby or American football?

They turned this into such a dangerous game. Are they going to be okay?

“We have already made the necessary adjustments for safety.”

It was now Quun’s turn to look proud from where she was sitting beside Sue.

“The pilot is covered by both frame and canopy, and we added shock-absorbent materials around the cockpit. They won’t injure so easily unless they’re hit with tremendous force.”

Now that I looked closer, there was, in fact, a clear canopy added in front of where the pilot used to be left vulnerable.

If they had increased the safety of it, then why not just fight with weapons? Why play this strange martial soccer?

“Uryah!”

“Gwah!”

While one of the players was busy drop-kicking the goalkeeper, one of their teammates kicked the ball into the goal.

“Wooooooh, we did it!”

“Now that’s what I call a turnabout!”

The team that scored the goal was celebrating.

But is this really a victory to be proud of...?

Did I have no choice but to just accept that this was soccer in another world?

Well, it did have its own unique sense of fun to it, and you could never do regular soccer on something as big as the Armed Gears.

I can at least teach the kids in town the proper way to play soccer...