In a Different World with a Smartphone (LN) - Volume 30 - Chapter 1.3

“So? What do you want us to do?” Elze asked, tilting her head.

“You know that there’s that joint wedding party in Allent for Dauburn and Zadonia happening soon? Apparently, he wants you guys to attend the party wearing glasses so you can help advertise them.”

The young kings Hakim of Dauburn and Frost of Zadonia were betrothed to princesses Ariattie and Leticia of Allent, respectively. They’d already had their marriage ceremonies in their home countries, but they made the decision to hold a wedding party at their wives’ home country as well.

Naturally, we had been invited. Or more accurately, if I wasn’t there, there was no way to get each country’s representatives gathered in one place. The only one who could use teleportation magic besides me was the pumpkin-pants prince of Panaches.

That led to the plan of having the girls wear glasses at the party in order to try to market them to foreign countries.

“Glasses? I have no problem with my sight, I do not,” Yae stated, clearly perplexed as to why she was being told to wear them. It wasn’t too surprising—I hadn’t seen many people wearing glasses in Eashen, so it was purely viewed as a tool for correcting one’s sight over there.

“Glasses are not only worn by the visually impaired, my dear. They can draw out one’s beauty as well. You look as if a pair of oval lenses would suit you.”

Glassie leaped right in to clear up Yae’s confusion, instantly pulling out a pair of glasses with oval lenses. It looked like an average pair of glasses you’d find on Earth, with thin metallic frames.

Though she looked unsure, Yae slipped the glasses onto her face.

“H-How do I look...?”

Hng! To have Yae timidly asking me how she looks with glasses on! So cute!

The god of glasses seemed to have caught my reaction, as he let out a laugh.

“Powerful, aren’t they?”

“Ugh... I have no choice but to agree!”

Yae usually had an athletic feel about her, but the moment she put on those glasses, she suddenly had an intelligent vibe. I felt like I was looking at a studious literature student all of a sudden.

So this is gap moe!

“T-Touya-dono? Is it strange, is it?”

“No, definitely not! It really suits you! You look so cute! You have a totally different vibe from before, but that’s not a bad thing!”

“D-Do you think so, do you? Hehe...”

An embarrassed Yae in glasses looked so cute!

Man, these really are powerful... My heart’s beating a mile a minute because of how different she looks.

“D-Does it change you that much? Maybe I should try some on,” Elze muttered, beginning to be tempted.

“Hmm, it seems like you’re usually quite lively. How about some Wellington frames? I think this should give you a different image.”

Elze took the glasses the god recommended to her and slipped them on.

“H-How do I look?” she asked, trying to gauge our reactions as she gazed at us with her black, slightly rounded square-frame glasses.

Wow! She looks a little like a class president!

The usual rowdy Elze had calmed down, giving way to a diligent student. She had the image of a nagging but kind and put-together girl.

“You’re freakin’ adorbs, class prez!”

“C-Class...prez? Is that your way of saying it suits me?”

“Of course! A completely different side of you is getting to shine!”

“Really...? Well, I guess it doesn’t feel bad.”

Crap, even wearing glasses, my wives are adorable. All it took were some glasses to bring out a whole new side of them. Is this the magic of glasses?!

The god of glasses slapped me on the shoulder from behind, face smug as he gave me a thumbs-up. Why did his attitude piss me off so much? I kind of wanted to smash his glasses.

“This looks fun. I want to try some on too!”

“Me too! I wanna wear the same ones as mommy!”

Sue and Steph ended up curious themselves. Wearing the same glasses as your kid sounded cute.

Maybe I should wear the same ones as them...

“I want to wear the same ones as you too, mom!”

“Wait, I’ve got to wear them too?”

Seeing Sue and Steph go for matching pairs of glasses, Linne forcefully shoved some toward Linze. The rest of the mother-daughter duos wanted to do the same, so Glassie was taking out glasses one after another and passing them around as if he had been waiting for this very moment.

Before long, almost everyone in the room was wearing a pair, turning the room into one densely populated by people with glasses.

Hang on, if everyone wears glasses, won’t this become the new normal? There’s nothing exciting about that.

The way someone wearing glasses let them stand out was being erased by the glasses themselves.

“You really don’t get it, do you? It is the exact same situation as when everyone’s faces are bare. In fact, by having everyone wear their own unique pair of glasses, their individual charm points are further brought out, and a new sense of individuality is born. Is this not how humans should truly be? Glasses really are a part of one’s body!”

I had no idea what he was trying to say. I was almost convinced by his spectacle doctrine, but too much of anything was definitely a bad idea. They were literally just glasses. Regardless, it was rare that I got the opportunity to see the girls with glasses on, so I made sure to at least take a picture.

“...There’s something cast on these, isn’t there? These aren’t normal glasses,” Leen remarked, picking up a pair of Boston frames—glasses characterized by their inverted triangular shape. Had she seen something with the special sight granted to her by her fairy lineage?

“Oh my. Good eye, as I expected. I certainly have many pairs with magic cast on them. The one you hold right now, my dear fairy, is enhanced with Magnification.”

“Magnification?”

“If you slide your finger along the temple of the glasses, you can magnify your vision.”

Leen did as Glassie told her, and then her eyes widened.

“What a convenient tool. You can basically use it like a telescope, yes?”

She was sliding her finger along the side while gazing out the window. She must’ve been playing about with the magnification.

“Mother, let me try them on too!”

Naturally, her artifact-loving daughter couldn’t keep quiet with this in front of her. Quun was practically jumping at Leen to get the chance to try them on. Leen had a wry smile on her face as she handed the glasses to her daughter, who immediately put them on and was excitedly sliding her finger along the temple as she looked out the window herself.

“You’re not spreading enhanced glasses everywhere, are you?” I asked.

“Of course I’m not. I want to spread glasses, not magic items.”

I was relieved to hear his answer. If glasses like this were spread without regulations in place, there was a chance they could be used to commit crimes.

“I have plenty of other types of enhanced glasses. This is Appraisal, this is Heat Sensor, and this is Beam,” Glassie continued, placing three more glasses on top of the table.

Okay, Appraisal and Heat Sensor are easy enough to understand, but what the hell is Beam?!

“As the name implies, these let out a light beam. You could burn away something as trivial as an Orc in a flash with them. The downside is that the beam is so bright that it damages one’s eyes...”

“Maybe put away the dangerous ones, okay?!”

A glasses beam?! It sounded cool, but it definitely came across more like a gimmick than anything practical. The other two at least seemed sensible...

I put on the Heat Sensor glasses, ran my finger along the temple, and suddenly I could see heat sources glowing red, just like thermography. I felt like I’d become the Predator like this. It seemed it was possible to switch between the modes, at least. When you tapped the frames, a visual would appear indicating the swap.

But when would you even use glasses like these? When you were out hunting at night? Then again, I could see intelligence knights making use of these. Perhaps I’d take them.

But what about the Appraisal glasses? I repeated what I’d done with the Heat Sensor glasses, putting them on and running a finger along the frames. Some kind of crosshair appeared in my vision, moving wherever I looked, almost like a mouse cursor.

When I lined it up with a painting on the wall, it beeped and an explanation appeared like a text bubble in a comic.

“Painting: oil painting.”

Well, yeah, I can see that.

I turned my gaze toward the door this time.

“Door: wood.”

And I can see that too!

Could these glasses only appraise things by their outside appearance?!

“It explains whatever it sees based on the wearer’s own knowledge,” Glassie explained. “As such, it cannot know what its wearer does not know.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of an appraisal...?”

If all that came out was information that you already knew, you wouldn’t need to appraise it to know what the item was. When I looked at that painting on the wall, my knowledge amounted to “that’s a picture” and “that’s an oil painting,” so that was the information the glasses showed me. If I’d known who the painter was, or what year it was painted in, the glasses probably would’ve gone, “Painting: oil painting drawn in XXXX by the artist known as YYYY,” instead, but if I had that info already, I’d have no reason to appraise it.

Was there any point in an enhancement like this? Maybe as something to pull forth any memories you’d forgotten, like if you met someone who seemed familiar but you just couldn’t remember their name. Use the Appraisal glasses and you’d know who they were right away.

You know, maybe these are useful after all.

When it came to all the royalty and nobles I had to meet on a regular basis, I was quite often faced with the situation of not quite remembering who they were.

I tested it out by hovering the crosshair over the spectacled Yumina.

“Yumina Brunhild-Mochizuki: Female. Divine ward. One of the Grand Duke of Brunhild, Touya Mochizuki’s wives. Maiden name: Yumina Ernea Belfast. Has an affinity for Wind, Earth, and Dark magic. Possesses the Mystic Eye of Intuition and the Mystic Eye of Foresight. Eldest daughter of the king of Belfast, Tristwyn Ernes Belfast, and his queen, Yuel Ernea Belfast. Her younger brother is the first prince of Belfast, Yamato Ernes Belfast, and...”

Okay, okay, stop already!

All the information I knew about Yumina came tumbling out. It really did just display the information you knew. Honestly, I couldn’t decide if I actually thought it was useful or not.

“You don’t appear to view them that favorably, do you? Then what about these?” Glassie asked as he handed me a pair of yellow plastic frame glasses. These didn’t have another weird enhancement, did they?

As suspicious as I was, I tried them on. They...seemed to be a normal pair of glasses. Was there a switch on the frames like with the Heat Sensor ones? I slid my fingers along the temple while I looked at my surroundings, but there didn’t seem to be anything—

HANG ON!

When I turned to look at Lu, her clothes looked...slightly see-through? Huh?! I slid my fingers further along the frames, and suddenly, her clothes disappeared entirely, leaving only her underwear.

“Those are glasses enhanced with Transparent. You can look through obstructions with ease—”

“Hmph!”

“AAAAHHHH!”

I snapped the glasses in half.

“Wh-Wh-What are you doing?! To destroy a pair of glasses is a blasphemous act even for a god!” the god of glasses wailed with tear-filled eyes. He really didn’t understand that I’d just saved his ass.

“Touya? What are you doing?”

“I think I heard something about them being enhanced with Transparent...”

Crap!

Behind me were Yumina and Linze, looking at me with frigid glares. I felt as though I could see their menacing auras radiating from them. Even the god of glasses could only gasp in fright when he saw their eyes, sweat beginning to pour down his face.

“N-No, you misheard! Not Transparent but, uhhh, Talent! Seems like the glasses couldn’t withstand my innate talent and broke! I thought Elze would like to try them on, but guess that isn’t happening now! What a shame! You don’t have any more of these, right?”

“R-Right. I generally only keep one of each type of enhanced glasses. I...have no more.”

“...I see.”

“...Is that so?”

The heavy pressure exuding from Yumina and Linze disappeared all at once. They seemed convinced for now, luckily. When the two returned to the kids, both me and Glassie let out the breaths we’d been unconsciously holding.

“That was close...” I breathed out. “If the girls had learned these glasses existed, you’d have been a goner...”

“You have some frightening wives, Master Touya... W-Well, let’s be thankful that it never turned into anything worse, shall we?”

“Don’t act like you’re innocent here. You’d have been the one getting hung out to dry, you know?”

“Me?!”

I mean, yeah, I wasn’t the one who made the glasses. If I’d acted overjoyed upon learning of their existence, though, it would’ve been a very different story... I was pretty sure the goddesses would’ve gotten involved as well. Glassie would’ve had no escape. I doubted the girls would wear the glasses to the party after something like that either. He should be thanking me, seriously.

“Don’t make glasses like these again, okay?” I warned him.

“I-I understand...”

Sweat still pouring down his pale face, the god of glasses nodded his head. Whether human or divine, women were not to be made enemies of. That was the truth of the world.

◇ ◇ ◇

The sales pitch for using the girls as walking advertisements for glasses at the wedding party was a surprising success. It turned out that even on the Western Continent, where technology was much more advanced, glasses were still seen as simple tools for sight correction. It appeared no country viewed glasses as a fashion accessory.

The grand duchesses of Brunhild, known across the world for having introduced new sweets, meals, fun toys, and useful gadgets to the world, were now all wearing glasses despite their sight being more than fine.

That meant this was the first time that glasses were perceived as a fashion item. In which case, there was no reason the royal family and nobility wouldn’t jump on it, especially the women. What was more, for the people who did wear glasses for their sight, it gave them the idea of having more than one pair that they could wear depending on their mood.

I chose that moment to lay out a selection of glasses on a table, and that immediately caused a glasses boom.

I first gifted a pair of glasses to each of the princesses of Allent, given this party was for them. The contrast with the usual appearances of their wives struck the two young kings of Dauburn and Zadonia right in the heart—I knew exactly how they felt.

After that, everyone tried to look for a pair of glasses that they liked, excitement spreading among the wives and young ladies in attendance. I decided to leave that part of it to the girls, while I recommended bifocal glasses to the elderly that were present. The lens of bifocal glasses contained near, far, and intermediate lenses combined in one. By shifting your sight up and down, you could see both further away and closer.

The emperor of Regulus was having difficulty focusing his vision in his old age and was thankful for the pair of glasses he was given. He’d had the issue for a while, but it had apparently been growing much worse recently.

Wait...it isn’t because I gave him a smartphone, right? There is a way to magnify the text...

Originally, I didn’t care all that much about whether or not glasses started trending—it had nothing to do with me. Or so I thought. But with this realization, I was starting to feel as if I were partly to blame. You couldn’t heal worsening eyesight with [Recovery], after all... Not unless it was the aftereffect of a disease like with Sue’s mother, anyway.

It wasn’t exactly intended as a way to make up for what I’d done, but I gave the rulers of the Western Continent instruction manuals from Glassie detailing how to grind lenses. The techniques had already been developing over this side of the world, but each factory generally kept its processes secret, so to have me so casually hand over the instructions surprised all of them. In return, I asked that they introduce me to any lens craftsmen who would be willing to move to Brunhild—if we didn’t become proficient at creating glasses without divine assistance, it would never spread to the common people.

“So wait, where’d the god of glasses go?”

“He went to Allent. The nobles over there have already started wearing glasses more, so he wants to spread the gospel of glasses over there for now, he said.”

I explained everything that had happened to Karen and Suika when they very conveniently appeared after the god of glasses was already gone.

“Anyway, where did you two get off to, forcing the god of glasses on me like that?”

“He’s so long-winded, y’know... It’s such a pain. He always tries to recommend these weird glasses whenever he sees us too,” Karen complained as she pulled out a pink pair of heart-shaped sunglasses from her pocket dimension. I’d seen sunglasses like those in manga, but apparently they existed in real life too. Honestly, it kind of fit the goddess of love perfectly.

“Hey, they don’t look so bad. I think they’d suit you, actually! Pfft—”

I couldn’t hold back the laughter when Karen slipped the glasses on. She looked so shady! The goddess immediately slammed her fist into my solar plexus as I tried to hold the laughs back.

“Guh?!”

“You’re laughing way too hard, y’know.”

Ugh... At least it stopped my laughing.

“Karen’s are fine, but he left me with these...”

This time it was Suika slipping a pair of glasses on. They had thick eyebrows, a red nose, and a little mustache; it was a pair of nose glasses.

“AHA HA HA HA! THIS IS AMAZING!”

I couldn’t help but start rolling on the floor in laughter. It was the perfect pair of glasses for a drunkard like her!

“Gwuh?!”

“You’re laughing way too hard.”

Ugh... Don’t punch me in the same place!

“Well, I’m relieved he’s gone. If he’d ended up settling down here, Brunhild would’ve become known as the kingdom of glasses, y’know.”

“The thought of that’s gonna give me nightmares tonight...”

I supported the idea of ensuring that all citizens had access to glasses, but not the idea that everyone should wear them. Even the girls took off the glasses once they returned from the party, though they said they’d wear them for a change of pace here and there.

Elze and Yae said they’d wear Appraisal glasses in future, since they were pretty bad at remembering names and faces. That definitely was one of the ways they could find use.

We’d handed out glasses to the children, but they didn’t care about them so much that they’d go so far as using them as a fashion item. The only kids that still wore them sometimes were Quun and Yoshino. They were the two that really cared about their fashion. Yoshino had also been using some glasses with a scope function to help aim with her harpbow. Those were the kind of enhanced glasses I was thankful for.

“By the way, about the Spatial Translocation usage you asked about the other day...”

I felt myself lean forward expectantly at the topic Karen suddenly brought up. Thinking it would be nice to let the kids visit Earth once everything was over, I’d asked her about using Translocation to teleport everyone there. It was already possible for me to do it myself, but there were all kinds of minor restrictions like not being allowed to go in my current form or not being able to use most of my powers while over there—if I used my powers as I pleased while on Earth, then I’d be as bad as the god of erosion.

“The brief answer is yes, there’s no problem for you to do that. But with your abilities, you may end up missing the mark a little, y’know.”

“Missing the mark?”

“Spatial Translocation is a divine skill that allows its user to cross worlds, but it also lets you cross time, y’know. Not as freely as the space-time goddess...as Grandma Tokie, but it’s possible. It isn’t such a big deal if you’re only moving around this world, but if you’re going to a different world entirely like Earth, you have to make sure you focus enough as you make the jump, or you could end up going off course on the time axis, y’know. You could end up in some time like the Edo Period by accident.”

Ending up in a completely different time would definitely be bad... Maybe I’d be better off putting in a request to God Almighty like I did for our honeymoon trip. I’d rather make it there with my own strength, but I didn’t want to risk our lives just to do it. Or well, maybe Grandma Tokie could give me some special training.

“And about using Spatial Translocation to infiltrate the wicked devout’s ship...”

This was the important one. If this one didn’t work and we couldn’t solve the problem of the wicked devout, then we couldn’t even go to Earth in the first place. I’d asked Karen if using Spatial Translocation to cross the barrier and enter the Ark was considered breaking the divine rules. I wouldn’t be directly influencing the surface realm with my abilities, so I’d think it would just barely count. I needed to get a clear answer, though, or we couldn’t start formulating a final battle plan.

“They’ve said it’s fine for you to use it so long as you don’t have Spatial Translocation affect the wicked devout themselves directly, or use it as a form of surprise attack for either yourself or your wards.”

In other words, it was fine so long as I didn’t use it to directly teleport the wicked devout or use it to teleport us to launch a surprise attack.

Basically, any attacks using divinity were forbidden. It was most likely meant in the sense that divine powers shouldn’t be used in a fight on the surface realm, and that apparently seemed to include using Translocation to suddenly appear behind the wicked devout and deal the killing blow. The ability wasn’t being used on them directly, but it was still viewed as a battle tactic using divinity.

However, if we only used it to infiltrate the Ark, they were willing to turn a blind eye.

“You’ve got it right, y’know. But you really shouldn’t use your divinity to take down the wicked devout, okay? I’m being serious. Even God Almighty won’t be able to vouch for you if you do that. Worst case, you could be sealed away for thousands of years, y’know?”

Yeah, no thanks. I’d rather not be sealed up for that long. All I had to do was avoid using divinity during the fight, right? Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be fighting on the front lines to begin with...

Okay, I’ll take up a support role this time, then.

“But will you reeeeeaaaally be okay? There are times when you get really mad...”

“Right? You’re usually so goofily happy, but the moment anything happens to the girls, you enter search and destroy mode, so I’m worried, y’know?”

“Hey, who are you calling goofy?!”

Karen and Suika were right, though. The moment anything happened to my wives or kids, I was pretty sure I’d beat the offender to a pulp. Except I wasn’t allowed to do that this time, unfortunately.

“This is why gods don’t tend to go to the surface themselves, but instead grant a sacred treasure to a hero, y’know. If you let your anger get the better of you, you could end up destroying a whole world. There are plenty of examples of people inciting a god’s wrath that’s resulted in some pretty bad outcomes, like a whole continent being sunk under the ocean, or a city burned to a crisp in one quick moment, y’know.”

Pretty bad was an understatement... I really didn’t think I would ever go that far, though.

“Reallyyy? Your kids are the ones using the sacred treasure, right? If they end up in trouble, you seem like you’d go out there and go boom the enemies!”

She isn’t wrong...

“A parent shouldn’t get involved in their children’s fights, y’know? I’m not saying you shouldn’t help, but at least believe in them. Overprotectiveness can stunt a child’s growth, after all.”

Karen likely wasn’t talking about just my own children this time, but everyone in this world. She was probably trying to say that I shouldn’t help with absolutely everything that went wrong, but...that wasn’t always something so easy to do.