Editing Godhorn Tech:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Chapter 3 Section 1===

Upon gaining new power by happenstance, someone was struck by disaster by happenstance.

A disaster that shatters people’s bonds.



There was no avoiding the fact that this was a snowy field in the middle of a blizzard.

Alicia Blueforest held her hands over her extra-pointy ears to warm them.

“It sure is cold out here.”

“K-kyoo…”

“Oh, Alma!! This can’t be easy for someone so young. Come here and I will warm you.”

“What about me!? You already have a mascot!! Don’t think you can take me back once I make my big break and the merchandise is selling like hotcakes!!”

Only the radio had any energy left at all. Was that the benefit of not being alive? And hadn’t Alma’s new Phoenix form provided protection against the cold?

Helen Clockgear breathed into her hands.

“Of course you’re going to freeze if you walk around in the snow dressed like that.”

“Helen, you aren’t much better.”

Miyabi Blackgarden’s thick leather jacket and pants did not provide much warmth, but Helen wore a short tight skirt. Not to mention the open chest and bared midriff.

“How are you even still moving around?” he asked.

“Because a woman’s cleavage and thighs are hot, hot, hot! Now, when are we getting to the mountain cabin where we must keep each other warm with lots of direct body contact!?”

The radio’s nonsense was silenced by Alicia and Helen’s fists.

Helen’s bag was small, but it was packed full of camping gear using the Compress Cargo magic.

However…

“Eh? No, that wouldn’t help. I never thought we would be visiting the Arsenal Kingdom, so the tent and sleeping bags aren’t made for the cold and the lamp’s fire wouldn’t provide much heat in this blizzard. Besides, lighting a fire inside a summer tent with no smoke exhaust will poison you!”

So much for that idea.

But this was not Helen’s fault, so he could not feel disappointed in her. He resisted the urge to give her the nickname “Miss Useless”.

“Koo…”

“Yeah, we need to find a village.”

They would die without some heat.

Warm gear, a blanket, a heater, a stove, hot soup, and hot food – they would accept any of it right now. They missed civilization.

Then something odd happened.

Something fell from the sky and landed near Miyabi. It was a small wooden box wrapped in cotton cushioning. He looked up to see the Lucifer Horn flying by overhead even though he had not stabbed the control sword into the ground and ordered it here.

“Oh? What’s this?”

“It has a signature on it,” noted Helen. “From Victia Magnumfist of Horn Fortress?”

He had nearly forgotten.

Horn Fortress was the hideout where they sent any party members found during their journey. None of them had used it though. Not after seeing how you were carried there by the Lucifer Horn snagging you with a dangling wire.

“Is she taking a support role?” asked Alicia. “You know, making stuff and sending it here?”

“How thoughtful,” said Miyabi. “Could it be a coat? Or some hot food?”

He opened the box and found a strange string. But what in the world was it?

The answer, it turned out, was some kind of clothing made entirely out of a V-shaped string.

“Eh? You’re supposed to wear this? What good is that!? I bet this is like that bunny costume from before, so I say we equip it on Miss Glasses. She is our lewd party member after all! And it might give you a sexy curse when you equip it!!”

“Do you want me to kill you, brat? Where is this Horn Fortress anyway? Is it on a tropical island or something?”

Helen’s icy white sigh was mostly one of exasperation.

The “present” came with a message card: “Victia here! I’m trapped alone on a mysterious island surrounded by cracks in the world or a magical barrier. Escape is impossible and I have to scavenge for food. I want someone to talk with so badly. Are you trying to kill me with loneliness?”

“…”

This was much worse than just a sexy curse. This was as curse of loneliness.

Miyabi neatly folded up the card and put it in his pocket. After seeing it in plays, he had always thought it would be neat to try living on a desert island, but that note was enough to tell him he would crack quickly if he tried it for real.

He swore to himself he would find and send her a friend.

But he could never do that if he collapsed out here in the snow.

“F-finding a town is the correct course of action,” said Celina Bodenburg while holding her shoulders and trembling. “When it’s this cold, we should be able to see the chimney smoke from a distance.”

They were still a long way from the Arsenal Kingdom, but there were small villages along the large road leading there. Those would be meant for travelers. They eventually arrived at a village that felt more like a rest area than anything. It was only a scattering of buildings that doubled as shops and homes.

Alicia hopped around to knock the snow from her hair and shoulders.

“Yay, we made it!”

“I’ve got a simple design,” said the radio. “I don’t need a heavy-duty cooling system like a supercomputer.”

“But…the locals don’t look exactly welcoming,” warned Celina.

“True,” agreed Helen. “All of the doors are shut tight. Even for the inn across the way. Th-they aren’t afraid because we crossed the border without permission, are they?”

For better or for worse, Miyabi was new to traveling, so he could only see one option:

“Let’s ask around.”

Once they took a look around, they found the village was not all that large. The wood and stone buildings had a makeshift look to them and a lot of the roofs were bowing below the weight of the snow.

The place must not have had many people, but they were around if you looked. Closing up too much may have allowed the falling snow to block up the doors and windows.

Miyabi first spoke to a knowledgeable-looking old man.

“On your way to the Arsenal Kingdom, are you? Well, good luck getting there with that blizzard raging. You might be able to make it if ''that thing'' were working, though. This year’s snow is enough to freeze the hot spring, so there really isn’t much you can do, I’m afraid.”

It was a strange sight to Miyabi since he had barely ever seen snow before, but some people were working on the roofs. He spoke to one of the snow-shoveling young men.

“We’re a work group that fled the Arsenal Kingdom. But we didn’t have it in us to reach the next country over, so we ended up building our own village here. It’s a nice place and we even have hot spring water piped in from outside the village. Except this winter…”

A girl was dealing with the snow in front of the pub.

The powerful dancer girl was waving a tool that looked more like a sled than a shovel.

“Damn, why is the greatest dancer in the Arsenal Kingdom out here shoveling snow? We wouldn’t even need to if ''that thing'' were working, you know? You don’t know what I mean? I’m talking about the snow-melt pipe. With the hot spring water, we could make short work of this snow!”

They asked around for a bit, but they could not last much longer out in the blizzard. They were forced to gather in the village square for a quick strategy meeting.

“I-I’m freezing my rear off out here!” complained Celina.

“Yes, let’s make this quick,” said Miyabi.

Alicia got straight to the point with her teeth chattering and Alma in her arms, hoping to get some heat from the red stuffed animal creature.

“The people here can’t help us because of the snow.”

“It sounds like the device used to draw in hot spring water and melt the snow is not functioning,” said Celina.

“Koo koo!”

“Yes, the snow-melt pipe,” said Miyabi. “What if we destroy whatever’s blocking up the hot spring water? Once the water is flowing, they won’t need to shovel the snow.

“Sigh. Sounds like it is up to us to get them back in business,” said Celina.

From what they had heard, the hot spring itself was located outside the village. Returning to that snowy world now was not a pleasant thought, but sitting around the village would do them no good when all the buildings were closed.

“D-driving us out of the village is a lot like an indirect execution, don’t you think?” asked Alicia.

“It doesn’t count as an exile if we have a plan,” said Helen. “Look, Miyabi. We can follow that.”

A pipe thicker than an arm ran along the ground, elevated by support structures.

He feared it would end up buried below the snow, but it worked surprisingly well as a guide. Trudging through the snow allowed the chill to work its way from their toes to the core of their bodies, but they forced themselves to keep going until they arrived at what looked like a frozen lake. Was that actually the hot spring?

It was not warm in the slightest.

There was no steam at all and Miyabi felt certain they were going to die now.

The hot spring was 50m across and the entire thing was covered in thick ice. They could probably walk across without breaking through.

“It’s frozen solid.”

“It is 10 below out here. Actually, do you even use Celsius here?” hastily added the radio.

Alicia sighed with that annoying thing hanging from her neck.

“Okay, now we need to find some way of breaking through the thick ice.”

“That sounds like a job for Miyabi,” said Helen.

He blasted it with the Godhorn Tech.

An ultra-heavy mass dropped from the sky.

The attack harnessed height and weight to break through the thick ice and trigger an explosion at the bottom of the frozen lake. The white lid looked thick enough to ride a wagon over, but it was fully obliterated.

“Wh-what?”

The blast had knocked Celina over, but her eyes widened and she did not bother brushing the snow from her hair.

Yes, that attack had actual mass. It was not like the previous beam attacks.

“A…shell? Are you copying my Schwarz Schütze!?”

“I’m not that good.” Miyabi yanked the control sword from the ground. “I’m no magic specialist, so I can’t make the Godhorn Tech do exactly what I want. I tried using the Lucifer Horn the way you used Schwarz Schütze’s horn, but I had no idea what it would actually do.”

“…”

“Based on this, I don’t think I can fire on distant targets and blow them away. Ha ha. I think it’s just a bomb I can drop from above.”

He thought this was similar to the Wicked God horn resonance. At the very least, the Lucifer Horn had some way of sensing great powers like the sorcery bomb. It may have figured something out from what it sensed when it destroyed the sealed container and broke the horn within.

In Miyabi’s village, they would cut away a tree’s unneeded branches and check the moisture at the cut to see how healthy the tree was. The Lucifer Horn may have done something similar with the other Wicked God horn.

(I’m also a little curious about that error during the contract transfer. Celina and the Schwarz Schütze were nearby when Moebius gave me the Lucifer Horn, so if the horns can resonate, could something have gotten mixed in then?)

Every part of it sounded suspicious to him.

The Lucifer Horn had been trying to find that resonance between horns from their initial encounter to the moment it destroyed the other horn. It had failed to make a perfect copy of the Schwarz Schütze’s weapons, but had it also created a new form of attack that not even Celina could predict?

But regardless of how it worked, where had this bomb come from? Was it made from repair parts inside the bomber, or had the Lucifer Horn dropped down a wire to snag wreckage from the Schwarz Schütze? It always showed up when he stuck the sword into the ground and summoned it, but he honestly didn’t know what it did when it was away from him.

(Hopefully we’ll figure out how to build and maintain all of this stuff at Horn Fortress. Not much point in having a secret base otherwise. Speaking of, I wonder how things are going there.)

Anyway, the new attack was like a mixture of their magical knowledge.

Almost like a child born from the traits of the two parents.

“Ha ha…”

He heard some quiet laughter.

A moment later, a soft sensation filled his mind. Laughing and overcome by emotion, Celina Bodenburg had hugged him.

She even had tears in her eyes.

“That’s right. The Schwarz Schütze is still alive! It’s taken on a different form, but it’s still there inside you!!”

“A-anyway, Celina. The hot spring is what matters. Let’s take a look at the snow-melt pipe!!”

He blushed and shouted a rushed instruction.

He did not mind it. In fact, he liked it a little too much and was unsure how to respond. He felt like a coward for using the task at hand to avoid having to find a response.

And when they checked on the shattered ice lake…

“Oh, there’s steam rising now.”

“Koo!”

“Wait,” said Alicia. “Aren’t hot springs extremely hot?”

“Usually 90 degrees. About right for making some delicious tea.”

When Helen heard the radio’s response, she very elegantly spat out the contents of her mouth.

“R-run away!!”

Just as they all dove out of the way, a massive pillar of hot water burst up from the icy lake. That was known as a geyser, but the name was fairly irrelevant when it was threatening to kill you.

The pillar rose more than 20m.

That was impressive enough to stare up at it in awe, but then the hot water crashed back down onto the snow and ice before splattering out in every direction. Simply rolling out of the way was risky business. They threw themselves along the snow, forgetting all about how cold they had felt just a bit before.

“Pant, pant! D-did we survive?” groaned Celina while lying on her stomach.

She did not seem aware that her fancy dress’s skirt had worked its way up, revealing that even her underwear was covered in jewels. Miyabi had heard that fancy dresses and accessories were a form of liquid asset you could carry around with you, but where was she planning to sell that particular article of clothing?

The layer of ice was gone and white steam rose from the giant hot spring, but if a human so much as soaked their feet in it, their feet would soon look like boiled chickens.

Miyabi touched the metal pipe and then flinched back.

It was pretty hot already. Painfully so.

“The hot water is running through the pipe. Let’s get back to the village.”



The village felt like an entirely different place.

The snow on the roofs and streets had melted and the people were freed from their unending labor.

Alicia’s long ears twitched as they picked up the hustle and bustle.

“Oh, the place has come alive.”

“L-l-let’s get to the inn,” said Celina. “Before we freeze!!”

The village was still pretty rundown, but it looked like an enjoyable place now that it had livened up.

Celina was holding herself and shivering while her lips turned blue.

A cheerful dancer girl was twirling in front of the pub.

“I’m free! Free from that awful snow shoveling!! Eh? You were the ones who fixed ''that thing''? Then I’ll have to give you a special reward. Stop by when you have some time☆”

Based on what the snow shoveling young man, the overly-friendly maid, and some others said, everyone here had fled from the Arsenal Kingdom. Miyabi was curious about that, but they really would die if they did not warm up soon.

They entered the village’s only inn.

It was small enough that their party just about took up all the vacant rooms themselves. But not because it was all that much warmer inside; the building was sloppily made. The boards on the walls and floor had gaps between them, the nails were crooked, and the connections between stone and wood were poorly done, so the place was practically made out of drafts. Thanks to his woodworking background, just seeing the place filled Miyabi with anxiety.

But someone else was even more concerned: the daughter of the Bodenburg Company.

“W-we’re staying here? We have to share the bath with the other guests!? The entire building is more cramped than the Schwarz Schütze’s walk-in closet! To say nothing of the rooms!”

“Miyabi, if the selfish girl doesn’t like it here, kindly kick her out for me,” said Helen with a smile.

She was the one paying for their journey and the presence of another travel companion was enough to place pressure on their living expenses, so the look on her face said she would leap at an opportunity to not have to pay for the girl.

Miyabi parted with the others to check on his dreary wood-floored room.

“I really want to get to sleep right away, but I might not wake up again if I don’t warm up in the bath first. Alma, what are you gonna do?”

“Kyoo!” cried Alma while nestling between the bed and pillow where it stirred restlessly despite being so tired. With the inner warmth of the Phoenix form, the beast did not need to take a bath.

The rooms did not have their own baths. There was one shared bath, so he left his room again.

He checked Alicia and Helen’s rooms on the way and saw light escaping from below the door. They were in their rooms. The building’s poor craftsmanship worked in his favor here. He would not have to worry about opening the door to the bath and running into the elf or busty glasses woman in the middle of changing. His stamina was at its limit, so if they attacked, he might just end up the victim of a murder.

But this way, he felt comfortable opening the door to the dressing room.

Inside, he found a complete stranger. She was naked.

He was so confused time seemed to freeze.

The girl turned toward him with her removed clothing held in front of her to cover up the best she could. The white cloak and dark reddish-purple habit suggested she was some kind of priest. But she had an ephemeral look to her and four will-o’-the-wisps colored red, blue, yellow, and green floated around her.

He gulped.

And when the scream came, it came from him.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!? A-a real ghost!? This bath here is haunted!?”

“No, wait!” she shouted. “It…it isn’t what it looks like!!”

Time unfroze and the girl with long pink hair started waving her hands wildly, but Miyabi was too freaked out to notice.

He hung his head, his eyes rolled in his head, and he addressed the crux of the issue.

“Wait, hold on. Why do I feel so lucky for stumbling onto this? I mean, she’s dead. Am I so exhausted that I’ve gone insane and developed a thing for dead girls? Nooo, say ain’t so! What did I do to deserve becoming a necrophile!? Whyyyyyy!!!???”

“C-c-c-calm down and look at me! Um, uh, don’t look too hard, but still look at me!!”

A soft hand covered his mouth.

But wait. The stooped ghost was working so hard to cover her nudity, but her hand was awfully soft and warm for a ghost. She also gave off a faintly sweet aroma.

She was warm and had a physical body.

Did that mean she wasn’t a ghost? Was this a teenage (and very naked) girl leaning against him and pressing her soft skin against his lips? Was this a perfectly normal thing to be turned on by?

“Mghfgh.”

“My name is Sophia. Sophia Calamity-Jinx. I am a well-known Curse Cleaner who travels the continent performing exorcisms.”

“Pwah. Exorcisms?”

“I defeat ghosts for a living.”

''Oh, that explains it,'' thought Miyabi. The colorful will-o’-the-wisps were not because she was a ghost. She was an expert ghost buster and she was in the midst of defeating the baddies. Learning that ghosts were real should have scared him, but it was comforting to know he was with an expert. And when that expert was a naked girl, he could find no reason to complain.

So was she just another traveler?

But wait.

“Um, is it just me or are the ghosts a lot livelier than you?”

“Eek. W-well, these ''people'' are not ghosts haunting the bath. They follow me around everywhere I go because of the embarrassing charm, so, well, um…”

“Eh? They follow you into the bath?”

“…”

She blushed and froze up.

This girl taught some dangerous lessons. Learning that he could still enjoy life after death was cratering the value he saw in his own life.

“Hm? Oh, right,” she said. “I was meaning to ask: Are you one of those ruffians they call a peeping tom?”

“Lucifer Horn!! We’ve got ourselves a new party member, so take this girl away!!!!!”

“Hyahhh!? P-please! At least let me get dressed first!”

The wire hanging from the sky entered through the dressing room window, wrapped around Sophia Calamity-Jinx’s belly, and swept her away to Horn Fortress.

Coverup complete!!

Miyabi had a feeling that girl was pushed around by the ghosts a lot too. She was the kind of person who made him want to poke her here and there to see how she reacted.

You’re in luck, Victia.

You have a friend now.



Once night fell, they all gathered in Miyabi’s room, which was filled with the distinctive smell of a tallow lamp and a wood-burning stove. Alma, Alicia, and Celina were all visiting him tonight, but not because he had grown inexplicably popular.

“Ugh, what is keeping her?” complained the elf.

The others concurred.

The cheap wooden flooring was abysmal. In a snowy place like this, they would have loved a proper fireplace. The small stove was terribly insufficient and sipping at mugs of hot milk or tea was not enough to forget about the chill seeping in from the walls and floor.

Helen (who was still wearing her tight skirt in the cold) finally knocked at the door and entered the dimly-lit room.

“S-sorry about the wait.”

“Ah! You were out gathering information without telling us, weren’t you!?” accused Alicia with her butt seated on the side table.

“And I was so hoping I could see Venus at work,” lamented the philosopher’s stone.

“Why do you think I didn’t tell anyone I was going where all the action is!? C’mon, Miyabi, talk some sense into them!!”

“Ehh? What was that, mom?”

“Miyabi, I can tell you’re so tired you’re barely aware of your surroundings, but I must have misheard what you called me there.”

“Oh, shut up. What are those boobs if not motherly? Those things are too big to just be ‘womanly’, mama.”

“You’re not thinking straight, Miyabi. Are you freezing to death in this cold!? Don’t die on us!!”

The older girl next door was trembling from something other than the cold, but the boy failed to notice.

“Ugh.” He held his own body to fight the cold. “When the instructor teaching you to use the hammer or saw is a woman, you end up calling them that sometimes, right?”

“Hold on. If I’m the mother of the party, then why are you forcing me to dress up as the bunny!? Not that I’m accepting that role, mind you!!”

Helen blushed and made a rebuttal, but then she took a deep breath to fill her (large) chest with oxygen and regain her adult confidence.

She did not see anywhere to sit, so she leaned against the wall and cleared her throat.

“Ahem. Anyway, I managed to gather some information on the Arsenal Kingdom.”

While restlessly sitting on the bed with Miyabi, Celina tugged at his jacket and asked a question while giving him the puppy dog eyes.

“I-is her ‘Venus’ form really that entertaining?”

“Do you want me to tell you what I found or not!? Hmph!!”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed the radio. “It’s always bad news when an adult starts to sulk! It can last for ages! When a cosplayer starts getting up there in years, the grow more and more reliant on their position as the circle’s princess!!”

“Whoever said I’m ‘getting up there in years’, step forward.”

The radio was very nearly dismantled. By Helen’s bare hands.

Celina jumped and hid behind Miyabi’s back (without noticing she was pressing her growing chest against him).

“Why would you provoke her further!?” she asked.

“Ksshhh, she must be cold after walking through the snow at night. Someone serve her some tea!”

Static ran through the radio’s voice as its destruction neared and Miyabi reached for the tea set on the side table. They could not afford to have her sulk. As cute as it was.

“U-um, would you like some nice hot tea?”

He forced an ugly polite smile and she sighed mostly in exasperation.

“That just reminds me of what I went through out there. Ugh.”

“So what did you find out?”

Celina winked and patted on the bed next to her, so the redheaded boy sat back down and asked that fundamental question.

“That the Arsenal Kingdom may have been behind the destruction of Celina’s armored train.”

“…”

The Bodenburg girl gasped and Alicia grinned from the side table.

“Oh, you picked up on that, did you? Excellent.”

“I get the feeling the Arsenal Kingdom is in a state of political instability. We can head there now, but we need to assume there will be trouble,” warned Helen.

“We’re already caught up in their trouble,” added Alicia, half joking.

There was the sorcery bomb, but it was also worrying how the villagers here said they had “fled” that kingdom. The kingdom past the blizzard sounded dangerous, so Miyabi tried to mentally work through what they knew.

“The Arsenal Kingdom has that Godhorn Tech. The, um…”

“The Icicle Bullet,” supplied Celina.

He stole a glance over at her in the tallow lamp’s light, but he still could not tell what emotion her voice carried.

“That ice weapon is controlled by Eliza Silverstorm of the kingdom’s White Seidr Chosen Knights.”

“I want to hear what she has to say,” said Miyabi. “It was true the train had a sorcery bomb in it.”

“That anonymous letter is something of a mystery,” added the philosopher’s stone swaying from Alicia’s neck. “Including if it even exists.”

“You mean Eliza might be friends with the 11th? Or she could have some secret connection with them. Hell, she might be the 11th herself.”

“Koo.”

Whether Alma understood the situation or not, the red creature gave a worried cry with its small hands around the pillow. Helen beckoned toward it while stating her conclusion on the matter.

“We can reach the Arsenal Kingdom by traveling west from here. But like I said, make sure you’re ready for trouble.”