Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter5 (section)

===Part 8===

“You aren’t making the people you captured your slaves?”

“No.” “No.”

Mikoto and Shokuhou answered the elf’s honest question in almost exact unison.

They had routed the lord’s army, but that was only the first wave.

A second and third would be along eventually. The enemy had plenty of people and weapons, so waiting for them to arrive would only wear Mikoto and Shokuhou out. So they had a single plan.

“There’s no good reason to wait for them to prepare a larger force, so let’s head out and attack the lord’s headquarters right away.”

They readily abandoned the village that had to be a marked target anyway.

The key to guerilla warfare was light footwork, not a sturdy base. Their previous battle had been to secure the time needed to escape safely.

The elves had apparently lived out in nature before they were captured, so Mikoto and Shokuhou brought them to another floating land and had them wait deep in the forest there. Living in nature was normal for the elves, so they could apparently build temporary tent-like shelters by arranging long tree branches in a cone shape and holding them in place with mud. Nothing prevented them from rotting, so the shelters would apparently return to nature not long after creation.

Mikoto and Shokuhou’s next destination was the residence of the lord who was calling the shots.

Patissiet volunteered as their guide.

“The two of you came from another world – whatever that means – so won’t you get lost on your own?” she said with a smile.

But this fantasy world was not kind enough to let them arrive after a single day of walking.

That meant they needed to set up camp for the night.

They needed water, food, and a bed, but they also had more feminine needs.

Mikoto had three sets of bikini armor she would wear in a rotation, but she didn’t want to wear them out. That meant washing their removed clothing in a nearby water source.

And washing their current clothing meant removing them as well.

After removing her dancer’s outfit, Shokuhou put her hands on her hips and grumbled to herself.

“We’ve gotten much too used to changing clothes outside.”

“ ‘We’ nothing, you vulgar fanservice provider.”

They ended up grappling (by grabbing at each other’s hair in the nude), but their childishness vanished the instant tears formed in Patissiet’s eyes.

For now, they needed to wash their clothes.

“Are we just going to wash them in water? What about detergent!?” asked Shokuhou.

“You can at least find soap in nature.”

“Ehh? Do you mean from beef tallow, fish oil, nuts, or palm trees?”

“Do you have any idea how much work it is to chemically process the oils once you have them!? This is a fantasy world without petroleum or factories! It would be easier to find a plant with saponin in it and directly get the soap from there. Like soapbark or soapberry.”

“Huh. Then we’d better hope this entirely different world has the exact same plants as Earth, Misaka-san.”

“Just get looking!!”

Mikoto mildly regretted not doing this before removing her clothes.

They managed to find a few plants that looked promising. This really was an easy-mode world since outdoors novices could survive just fine.

It also bears mentioning that saponin has a hemolysis effect, so it must be handled with care.

“Ugh, my upper arms are killing me. I miss only having to press a button to get the laundry started and for the drying ability to happen automatically.”

“Hm, I think you deserve credit for not saying it’s something a maid does for you.”

Once the laundry was done, they moved on to food.

Patissiet crouched and pointed into the distance.

“Sh. Look at that. We can have a feast tonight.”

“Um, Patissiet? Those look like adorable bunny rabbits to me.”

“Because they are. They don’t have as strong a flavor as sheep or goats and you don’t need to remove the blood and guts and dry them for several days before you can eat them like with big deer or boars. The meager amount of meat on each one is a problem, but any land animal or bird you can prepare and eat right away is valuable.”

“Ugh.”

''Couldn’t it at least be fish,'' thought Mikoto, but that distinction may have been her human arrogance speaking.

When living outdoors, it was kill or be killed.

Her Railgun would obliterate the rabbits along with the terrain around them, so she opted for a high-voltage lightning spear instead.

“Would now be good?”

“Aim a bit more to the right and wait until it turns its head. Now!”

“Kh.”

With a sound of bursting air, the distant wild rabbit hopped straight up.

Direct hit.

Also, Patissiet was surprisingly good at giving instructions. Was her skill at calculating the margin of error based on physics or psychology? She had what it took to be a good spotter. Unlike a certain idiot queen who just ate and slept all day long.

Patissiet had seemed powerless when she broke a branch and threw the pieces at the Hydra, but those makeshift darts had hit their target. With perfect accuracy.

With that in mind…

“Patissiet, would you be able to help out a lot more if we gave you a bow?”

“Ah ha ha. You can’t do that. If a slave so much as touches a projectile weapon, they will be executed for attempted rebellion.”

Well, there was another unpleasant local law.

After that, they secured a few more rabbits.

Mikoto had learned plenty of classy skills at Tokiwadai, but how to butcher a rabbit was not one of them. She was reliant on Patissiet’s directions as she used an iron sand sword to remove the skin and organs. She found it horrific at first, but once it no longer looked like a fluffy stuffed animal, she found it weirdly easy to see it as a kitchen ingredient instead.

Once you cooked it, meat was meat.

If she had eaten it without knowing what it was, she might have thought it was lean chicken. She had chopped it up into small pieces to make sure it cooked through, so it even looked a lot like salted yakitori removed from the skewer.

“Just meat doesn’t really feel like a meal,” complained Shokuhou. “Even some bread or pasta would help.”

“Can’t you just think of this as fried chicken night?”

They had brought a bottle of salt with them when they left the village, which really helped this taste better than the grilled squid.

And aside from that, Patissiet eagerly picked something she found in the bushes. She said it was a type of berry.

But instead of acting as a vitamin supplement…

“I love these. Eating them really wakes you up.”

Apparently it was more like a dessert. Mikoto tried a few, but they were quite tart. Instead of something sweet to soothe your weariness, they were apparently meant to shock the drowsiness away with their sour flavor. How hard-working was that elf?

Their journey continued like this for three days.

On the way, they changed clothes, washed their clothes, ate whatever food they could find, blasted bandits with a Railgun, and created beds to sleep on before finally arriving at their destination.

“So this is the place?” asked Mikoto like she could hardly believe it.

They had spent several days crossing multiple floating lands, but a large city was finally coming into view. There were a lot of conifer forests on this floating land, so approaching unseen wouldn’t be a challenge.

They didn’t get too close since the trees ended a bit before the city, but there was a large river nearby. An equine kelpie and a scylla with the upper body of a girl combined with a fusion of different animals were swimming cheerfully in the river.

“Pant, gasp. Th-there’s an area without any trees over there.”

“They’ll see us from a distance if we head into that clearing, so stay away from it, you unathletic ball of sweat.”

This region’s lord directly ruled this city.

It had a very different feel to the previous village and fields. The well-organized city was surrounded by a deep moat and stone walls standing more than 5m tall and the limited gates into the city were strictly guarded. For safety? The city looked more like a giant prison to Mikoto.

The large river joined with the moat and a portion of it was taken in through the city wall.

There was a thick grate on the wall there, so no boats could get in or out.

(Ugh, this design reminds me too much of Academy City.)

“A walled city, huh? It looks strictly guarded at first, but there isn’t much it could do to stop an airship attack from above,” said Mikoto.

“Yeah, well, we don’t have one of those,” pointed out Shokuhou.

“Or we could tunnel in from the bottom of this floating land.”

“That’s even less likely to happen.”

Then they had to think about what they ''could'' do.

The city had maybe 200 thousand people inside.

Patissiet pointed into the walls from a distant hill.

“Isn’t that incredible? Valhalla is the city of commerce where the baron lives.”

“Have some consistency, people. That’s not even Greek.”

“?”

The elf gave a bewildered head tilt.

(But still…)

This was their first look at a “big city” in this world.

From a distance, they could see it was packed full of buildings 3-5 floors tall with stone-paved streets and public squares. The structures all looked more like businesses than homes.

The village hadn’t known much about preservatives, so they had avoided wooden structures.

But here, building a wooden house and then reinforcing its exterior with brick appeared to be the mainstream. According to Patissiet, wooden frames brought nothing but risks. That meant these residences had room for decoration and playfulness instead of pure practicality and functionality. It was more refined and showed the unique luxury of a big city. The bricks were not just red. They had been baked with a variety of impurities mixed in to create a wide variety of colors.

Did they use wood here because preservatives were easier to come by in the big city, because the white smoke leaving the chimneys had unintentionally coated the exteriors, or because the city inside the wall was kept clean, preempting wood-eating bugs and mold? Mikoto had no way of knowing.

“Hm. The houses I can see are the dormer type,” said Shokuhou.

“That increases the number of first-floor entrances facing the road, so it makes sense. Everyone must actually live on the 2nd story and above. Patissiet did say this is city of commerce.”

“Dormer?” asked Patissiet, tilting her head cutely.

When rectangular buildings were lined up, having the short side facing the road was called the gable type and having the long side facing the road was called the dormer type.

The church steeples and such looked Medieval European, but none of it meshed with Mikoto and Shokuhou’s knowledge of world history. For one, the way each home had its own well instead of having a communal one and the rainwater drainage ditches on the sides of the roads felt a lot more like modern Japanese infrastructure just made with older parts. There weren’t tragic toilet spaces jutting out from the 2nd-floor walls, so they may have had full flush toilets. Probably powered by their magic, though.

“With public infrastructure that nice, they must have a tax system to match.”

“They’re probably charged endless usage fees like with highways. Because as long as you live, you still need water, so it’s not like anyone can refuse if they say the tax ability is for constructing waterways.”

Their target had to be the biggest building in the city.

That was the lord’s residence.

However, it was not a castle.

That one building was a sturdily-built stone mansion. Instead of brick made of baked dirt, they had actually cut big, heavy stones. A sign of the resident’s wealth.

“The lord’s mansion, huh?” muttered Mikoto as she observed it from a distance.

“Yes, lords are only allowed mansions or fortresses. Only kings may live in a castle.”

That custom had not existed in Medieval Europe, so was the rule limited to this fantasy world?

“It looks strictly guarded to me,” said Shokuhou.

“”Can’t you just brainwash all the soldiers with Mental Out?”

“That won’t be enough. It has those Anubis and Gargoyle things patrolling the place. Y’know, those autonomous gatekeepers made of ceramic or stone. I imagine they are the main defense ability. Maybe it’s like the difference between infantry and tanks. I can brainwash all the foot soldiers, but they’ll only be defeated by those magic unmanned weapons.”

There were giant dogs made of smooth black ceramic. But when they were the size of a work van, their weight and size alone were enough of a weapon. Instead of attacking with swords or spears, they could crush you below them or smash your bones with their sturdy jaws. It was an extremely primitive and painful form of violence, but it was also similar to being crushed by heavy machinery.

Mikoto frowned.

“Isn’t Anubis a name you see in museums about the Egyptian pyramids? What’s it doing in this Western fantasy world?”

“For that matter, Gargoyles were originally decorative drain spouts. Just like you aren’t going to find Aegis ships mentioned in Greek mythology, shouldn’t we assume the role ability given to a name is different in this world?”

Dancer Shokuhou sounded annoyed as she rubbed her palm against her handbag.

Those giant black ceramic dogs sounded like very dangerous foes. And while it looked like the Gargoyles were human-sized, the Anubises were the size of a work van. A bite from one of those could easily tear right through your torso.

Perhaps the winged Gargoyles used their swift flight to chase their targets into a dead end on the surface where the grounded Anubises could deliver the finishing blow.

They were inorganic, but they couldn’t be hijacked with electronic hacking. The #3 and the #5 had no way of controlling them, making them a decent nuisance.

But that didn’t mean the Level 5s didn’t have a trump card.

“Eh? Me?”

The elf looked puzzled when they turned her way.

Mikoto nodded.

“The building is locked up tight, but I’m sure all the hard work is done by slaves, not the humans. That means elves built that mansion. So if we ask around among the elves outside the city and find the ones involved in constructing and repairing it, we might get our hands on detailed plans or even learn about a weak point.”

Preventing that would provide the kings and lords with another excuse to “eliminate” the elves they had worn out, but if that risk hadn’t occurred to those idiots, so much the better. They could be ruined before they had time to fix that bad habit.

And eventually…

After receiving descriptions from several elves, Patissiet used a stick to draw out a picture on the ground while relaying the information to Mikoto and Shokuhou.

“How exactly do you plan to defeat the lord here? As you can see, Valhalla is a well-protected city, so people call it a ‘living legend’ as a city that has never been conquered in its 200 year history.”

Mikoto responded by looking in an entirely different direction: up.

“Doesn’t look like we can travel vertically today.”

“This floating land appears to be dozens of kilometers across,” said Shokuhou. “Don’t you think this will be a flat, two-dimensional battle?”

“Sounds good to me,” said bikini armor Mikoto. “I’ve seen some others in the city dressed like you, Patissiet, but they don’t appear to be elves.”

“Eh? Hm…that one there is a succubus I think, the one carrying boxes is a scylla, and that’s a harpy up on that roof.”

“A full line-up of monster girls, huh?” said Shokuhou.

“Are you sure you don’t read manga on your phone?” asked Mikoto.

Those monsters wore steel collars and thick chains.

And the people of this world walked right past them like they weren’t even there.

“I’ve been wondering, why do they work so hard when they aren’t being paid? They could at least half-ass it when no one’s looking.”

“Hm? But it feels bad when you don’t finish a job you started,” said the elf, looking bewildered.

That weird diligence may have been another reason the humans had taken advantage of them. No one in power was going to overlook a workforce that did good work for next to nothing.

“The biggest mansion a bit east of the center is the lord’s place☆ The gate on this side is the closest one to it, so do we just about have plan ability ready?”

“More or less…”

With that, Mikoto pointed toward Valhalla while peering inside the thick city walls from the hill. She gestured as if jabbing her index finger into a few points in space and then swished her finger as if connecting those dots into a constellation.

“?”

The elf tilted her head at first, but she finally figured it out.

Maybe she was getting used to those two.

(Oh, she’s deciding what places to destroy and in what order.)