On a Godless Planet:Volume3B Chapter 34
Chapter 34: Power Monger[edit]
–A shockingly great mother (physically).
●
Everything was black and red outside.
Athena checked her Revelation Board to find it the temperature was over 100 degrees.
“…I really want to summon my god of war.”
“Is it heat resistant?”
She wasn’t sure if she should answer, but she decided it would be alright. If she was going to be involved in the terraforming from now on, providing them with some information could inspire some back-and-forth exchange.
“If I apply its heat resistance, it can run in Mount Etna’s crater.”
“This is a tableland, shielding us from the heat and light below, so it isn’t all that hot here.”
“But the oven effect is still at work. And to make matters worse, the moisture makes it a steam oven.”
This was an extreme environment. The oxygen was thin, so Athena could understand why the human had died so quickly without any protections.
This just shows how toughly made we are, she thought as she took a look around.
She saw the stone hut next to what looked like an experimental space dug out of the rock. And past the 300m square of tableland…
“There they are.”
The flame dragons. And this wasn’t just two or three.
“They are innumerable. Like the rolling sea.”
●
Seito could tell she had been mildly mistaken.
…Wow…
All around her, the sky and…the ground? Well, if you could call a lava sea “the ground”. Anyway, in that world of dark clouds and scorching heat, the sea all around the tableland was moving.
What looked like waves were in fact all flame dragons.
How many were there? She considered counting them by determining the number per unit of area, but she gave up.
There wasn’t anything she could do with the answer.
She and Beisu were home protection gods.
…We don’t have a special attack authority like the terraforming lead does.
And Athena, who she had thought was a lot like her, was apparently a fairly good fighter too.
So they were similar but a difference emerged here. Also…
…Funto…
Her husband had lost his power, so he had to be feeling useless again. So she gave him a worried look.
“Wowwww! You actually fought those flame dragons!?”
Why are you geeking out over those war gods?
●
“Heh heh heh. Beisu-chan, we are war gods if you can believe it.”
“Indeed. The effectiveness of our artifacts is important to keep in mind.”
“Eh? What kind of artifacts do you use? Can I see them?”
“They’re a little too far away right now.”
“Yeah, I don’t think my spells can reach that far.”
“Could your bow and arrow reach them, Kido-san?”
“Douhai-san? Power should not be wielded so frivolously.”
“Kido-senpai! Can you shoot one as an example for me! I want to see how cool you are!”
“Really, it isn’t anything that impressive. Look.”
●
Kido instantly activated her Auth Spell. Among the Scythians, this bow technique would have been done on horseback, but she had her feet on solid ground.
“That will boost my accuracy.”
“Like a +3 protection!”
She wasn’t sure what Izumi meant, but she was glad he liked it.
With a roar, the compressed water arrow took flight and the flame dragons in its path hurriedly moved out of the way.
“It got through.”
A few seconds later, a prodigious amount of steam burst up from the landing point, followed by a rumble like distant lightning.
<The atmosphere is in a stable stormy state. The minerals and other things found in the lava have scattered through the atmosphere, so any kind of blast will produce a violent reaction.>
“Where it hit, the lava cooled into rock, didn’t it?”
“But the flame dragons and the heat of the surrounding lava will melt it again soon enough. But can you tell this did actually affect the phase?”
“So if you cooled the entire surface, it would turn into a bedrock tableland?”
“Right. But the flame dragons are trying to keep that from happening.”
“Couldn’t you just…keep it raining indefinitely?”
“The flame dragons would remain active below the layer of land hardened by the rain.”
“Also, producing rain over a wide area is costly, so we decided it’s better to settle things with the flame dragons before we try anything.”
The newcomers nodded in understanding, but one of them looked uncertain what to do.
Beisu was giving them looks of eager expectation, but next to him…
“Hm? Is something wrong, Seito-san?”
“Not really… I was just impressed by that.”
She complimented Kido, but Kido sensed this wasn’t so straightforward. So she worked to pick up what Seito really meant.
“I understand, Seito-san.”
“Kido-senpai…”
“Yes,” she replied.
“You want to launch an arrow yourself, don’t you?”
●
“No, no, no, no, no! That’s not it at all!”
“It’s not? Then do you want to see me demonstrate the Yamanashi?”
“Are we sticking with that name even with no Yamanashi here?”
“I like how polite the Scythian representative is about her violence.”
“Are you sure it isn’t the politeness barely holding back her barbarian spirit?”
“It’s called freedom of expression!”
“Anyway, what’s the deal, Ponyko!? Do you want to see something exciting!? Then, Senpai! Rock those flame dragons’ world again!”
“You know I can’t say no to your requests, Sumeragi-kun. Give me a second to prepare.”
The flame dragons made themselves scarce at incredible speed.
●
“It gets darker without the flame dragons so close by.”
“They are terrified of her…”
“And they clearly don’t understand the real threat since her effective range is the range of her vision.”
“I’m trying to decide if that’s a good thing or not…”
“But they will attack here eventually, won’t they?”
“Yes. When I was here before, a particularly belligerent one came at us.”
“Excuse me.”
“What is it?”
“Well, to be blunt, I don’t think we could handle even one of those flame dragons, so is there any reason for us to be here?”
●
I tried to understand what Seito-san was saying.
…Um, there might not be a reason for them to be here because…
They were weak. Which could also mean…
“Everyone! Just to make sure, this isn’t about deciding who’s the weakest god, is it?”
“Oh, that’s where you’re taking this, Senpai-chan?”
“It is true this will be a pain if each mythology doesn’t provide a war god authority or another authority capable of opposing them.”
“Their sheer size is enough to test your ability to deal with them.”
I agreed. But in that case…
“Shouldn’t those two remain in the divine world?”
“I don’t agree.”
“You don’t?”
TJ nodded in response and looked to the divine couple from her hometown.
“Don’t rush this. We work as a group.”
●
“It comes down to a simple word,” said TJ.
“A base.”
“A base?”
“Right. We just have to all be in the base.”
“But then what? We wouldn’t be any help against those flame dragons.”
“Are you sure? The base we’re talking about won’t be an invincible automatic facility. I’m saying that someone has to run the place and take care of whatever smaller issues crop up.”
“That’s right,” replied a voice. Raidou’s voice.
“We’ve already done our own terraforming, but the bases aren’t sites of constant fighting. More than 90% of the work is being a lookout and preserving the place. And if you detect a nearby enemy or anything out of the ordinary, you report it. Also…”
“If you can find some resources and work to improve the environment in the base, all the better.”
One kind of god would be perfect for that.
“Household protectors would be great at that, don’t you think? We can’t run the place without someone like you two.”
●
“That is correct,” replied Bilgamesh.
“Combat and defense are important, but more than simple logistics goes into supporting those things. Lookouts, repairs, management, and any of the myriad things that can improve the environment. All of that requires a much greater quantity of supplies and personnel.”
“It would be so much easier if all you needed was fighters.”
“Yes. There was a country that tried that early on.”
“They were such a pain!”
“They even sent women and children into battle…”
“Why is that later generation more barbaric than us?”
“We mostly weren’t. It’s just that group and the Scythians were outliers.”
“What’s wrong with the Scythians and their love of full-body tights!?”
“U-um, is that why you dress that way, Kido-senpai?”
“It is meant to resemble Scythian tattoos, but it also protects me from the sun.”
“If everyone was a warrior, that would be more like a war game than a full simulation game.”
“Then you have Daisenryaku, which tries to look like a war game but is really all about securing production power. And the more recent trends show base management is important.”
“Oh! The 68 version’s art was so good.”
“If you mean Daisenryaku, the 98 version has more text, which helps when playing.”
“What are they talking about?”
<They are discussing the different screen modes between versions. They are asserting whether superior resolution or displayable colors makes the superior version.>
After hearing everyone’s opinions, Bilgamesh began to think.
“Perhaps it would be valuable to learn about these games you are always referencing.”
“Oh? Developing a new interest?”
“We’ll be having a game tournament in the clubroom tonight, so try out whatever catches your fancy. Knowing you, you’ll try to read books and stuff to study up on it first, but there are a lot of things in this divine world you can’t really understand without trying it out for yourself.”
He thought she was probably right. So after deciding to get started once they returned to the divine world, he stated his opinion.
“Does everyone know what they want for the base?”
●
Kido viewed everyone’s faces.
And she decided she should go first, so she spoke up.
“The Scythians had mobile bases, but they also built something like fortresses across the land. I think that was fairly unusual.”
“??? What’s unusual about that?”
“In Europe, especially around Greece, most regions were structured around city-states. So they would generally surround the city with a wall or moat and let their people live inside there.”
“But a fortress only contains soldiers.”
“Yes. There were also nearby logistical towns, but the high mobility of an equestrian people prevented them from using a city-state as a central location. Instead, they built fortresses on the front lines to secure their territory.”
“So if you think of the city-states as guarding an ‘area’ covering the entire city, the Scythians were defending the most important ‘points’ located along the roads?”
“Yes. The necessary fighting force was supplemented by the mobile bases. That allowed them to defend with concentrated strikes and their attacks were sent out from the bases, allowing them to rapidly expand their territory.”
“If they were also using women and children as warriors, a small city-state wouldn’t be able to stand up to them.”
“Right,” Kido confirmed.
“The Greek idea for ruling a large territory was to build satellite cities out from the city-states. But the Scythians knew what they needed were supplies and warriors, so they preserved their mobility by attacking and ruling with front-line fortresses and mobile bases.”
<Rome used a similar method later on. It is said ‘all roads lead to Rome’. Expanding and preserving the front line requires ‘maintained paths’ that allow high-speed travel, so where the Scythians used horses, the Romans built roads.>
“That’s right. The construction of the Roman roads began in 312 BCE. It began with a road connecting the major cities of the Italian peninsula, but their purpose was military from the start.”
“We could travel quickly on horseback, but Rome primarily used foot soldiers. So when sending soldiers out or moving them around, you built a more adaptable defensive system.”
“But that method hit a limit in one area.”
Kido knew what Tenma-san was getting at. Yes, one limit was a constant problem in ancient times.
“Communications.”
●
I opened a Revelation Board by my hands.
That was a technology we couldn’t have even imagined back then.
“There was no form of instant communication technology. No matter how quickly a fighting force could be moved and deployed, you still needed information if you were going to invade other lands. The fastest methods were horseback or communicating by smoke signal or lighthouse, but communication speed was still slow and of limited range. So as your territory expanded, it would eventually collapse starting from where communication was difficult.”
“Yes. Rome built post offices and inns with horses available at set distances along the roads, but messages could still only travel about 70km a day.”
“So they could travel 2.3 Yamanashis.”
“We are not turning that into a unit.”
“But that means if a Roman messenger was trying to escape from Kido-san, he would have to stay hidden for half a day.”
But…”
“That sounds like a pretty long distance to me. Was it still too slow?”
“The distance from Rome to Constantinople – now known as Istanbul – south of the Black Sea is around 1370km. That direct route would mean crossing the Adriatic Sea, but looking just at the land portions, you would need to travel 200km along the Italian peninsula and 750km along the mainland. Records from the time say the journey took around 25 days. The 70km figure is at the fastest and a messenger could not keep that pace up every single day.”
“The northern coast of the Black Sea, where the Scythians caused all sorts of trouble, is more than 1500km from Rome, so that would take more than 30 days.”
“That means a round trip would take 60 days. If you count the time needed to get things ready, then it could even take a year or two to react to something.”
“Yes. That is why Rome could not react when the Germanic tribes and others began their pillaging from the east. And when Rome did start to defend itself, they failed to prevent the revolts of various regional leaders, so they ceased to function as a state and collapsed.”
“Even the greatest ruler is helpless if no information can reach them.”
“I guess that means the Roman roads didn’t give them the speed they needed to rule so much land.”
●
After that discussion, I noticed someone had remained quiet this whole time.
<…>
“What is it, Balancer?”
<Oh, I was just noticing how you were hiding a certain fact about the Roman roads.>
“Eh!? Kido-san, do you know something important!?”
“No, it really isn’t something to be so open about.”
“Eh!? Kido-senpai! You still have a mystery to share with us!?”
“Well, if Douhai-san and Izumi insist.”
“I see a routine forming.”
After Douhai-san and Izumi high-fived, they waved my way, so I waved back. Then I displayed a map of the Roman roads on a Revelation Board.
“The Roman roads mostly extended west from Rome, reaching the entire Iberian peninsula and even most of England and Wales.”
The roads covered those areas like veins. And…
“In Africa, the Roman roads stretched from the Strait of Gibraltar in the west, across Carthage, and all the way to the eastern coast.”
The roads did not end there.
“They circled the Mediterranean Sea, didn’t they?”
“Yes. They followed the east coast of the Mediterranean and stretched out across Anatolia too. From there, they followed the other coast across Greece and back to Rome.”
A few of them frowned while viewing the map of the Roman Roads.
But I ignored them and spoke to Douhai-san.
“Now…the Roman roads covered a very large area and even reached the Persian region. They did actually manage to rule over those easily-accessible areas and, while they did abandon Britain toward the end, the roads did get a lot of use. But then there was the migration of Germanic tribes which some say was the primary cause of Rome’s collapse. You can see a factor leading to this in the regions covered by the Roman roads, can’t you? …Douhai-san? What part of this map grabs your attention?”
“U-um…this is just my first impression, but the Roman roads run through Africa, Egypt, Persia, Anatolia, and Greece, so they cover a lot of different places, right? But, well…”
She said it.
“They don’t reach the north coast of the Black Sea where the Scythians were.’
●
Yes. I knew what I had to say.
“It isn’t my fault.”
●
“I can think of several reasons to doubt that, but to avoid being Yamanashi’d, I will simply ask what the actual reason is.”
<It is not just the Black Sea’s north coast the Roman roads don’t reach. They also do not present-day Germany. The Germanic tribes – who you could call various tribes with Celtic cultures – had covered that region and resisted the Romans. Also, the mountains, valleys, forests, and other geographical features of Europe created some limiting points. So due to their migration west due to cooling, due to an influx of equestrian people from the east, and due to other reasons, they were permeated starting from the regions with poor communications.>
“I guess increasing the autonomy of the border regions and telling them to win over the local cultures and civilizations was being too idealistic.”
“In some cases, the increased autonomy led to gathering wealth and siding with the Celtics to rebel.”
“Communications and information also function as supervision. Without that ability, rights become a weapon used to spread wealth.”
“But, um, if I may ask a question as a novice when it comes to ancient Europe.”
Tenma went ahead and asked her question.
“Those Celtics in modern-day Germany were mostly small tribes that didn’t leave behind many records…meaning they were residents of undeveloped land, right? But the Black Sea region had major countries like the Greeks and the Macedonians as well as the Scythians and their neighbors who also didn’t leave behind many records.”
And yet…
“How bad were they to keep the Roman roads out?”
●
<Well, it was a volatile area full of legendary barbarians. They had far more experience and gravity than the other undeveloped lands.>
“If the Romans had tried to extend their military roads, they would have been ganged up on.”
“Since the Roman roads weren’t built there even after the Scythians and others declined, their legend must have remained and no one wanted to get close.”
“So it was a cursed land?”
“Again, it isn’t my fault.”
●
<There is a somewhat fascinating piece of history related to the threat posed by the Scythians and other barbarians on the Black Sea’s coast. This involves Kido.>
“You mean about Artimpasa?”
“If so, I know a fair amount about that too. But there is a…contradiction, I guess you would call it? Anyway, there is something about it I found odd.”
What was her question?
“The Scythian goddess Artimpasa was depicted as a human-faced fish god on a medallion made when the Scythians were trading with the Greeks. But by the time she reached us…she had become a woman treading on a dragon or a woman with the lower half of a snake. And she had become the origin of the Scythian people.”
“Isn’t that Kido-san?”
“Maybe they got combined? But this Arim-whatever is a Scythian god, right?”
A hand went up.
“I’m hesitant to answer with Kido-senpai here, but I have some knowledge of this. If you don’t mind a third party opinion?”
●
Kuwajiri knew this would require a lot of knowledge.
…There was a lot I couldn’t answer during the camping trip.
Thanks to the human, she was dealing with a lot more mythologies now. And this was more than just a passing acquaintance or cooperating at some task. This had the depth of family or colleagues.
So she had done her research into Kido, but she had learned something there.
“I will be giving a few different theories.”
“Yes, that would be best. It’s the Scythian way to do it.”
Kuwajiri nodded and got to talking.
“The Scythians originally had several gods and one of those was the mother and water goddess Api. That is Kido-senpai. She is depicted as treading on a dragon. But she was primarily worshiped by the pure Scythians and the other Scythians – especially the ordinary people – seemed to instead worship Artimpasa as a water god.”
“Hm? Why? Why would they be split like that?”
“Same as us. Api was the Scythian’s original mother and a water god, but the ordinary people didn’t feel worthy to worship their original mother.”
“I think it was something like that. Herodotus wrote of this time period in his Histories. And as time passed, the Scythians reached their golden age. That was in the 4th century BCE.”
“So about 100 years after Herodotus’s time.”
“Right. By then, the Scythian culture had spread across the land and created a lot of sculptures and things, especially in Greece. At the time, they created a lot of decorations depicting a woman with the lower half of a dragon or a snake.”
A breath.
“That would originally have been an image of Api, but it ended up spreading as an image of Artimpasa, so in Greece and Rome, the serpentine goddesses became known as the Anguipede Goddess.”
●
“The exact reasons aren’t known. This mostly happened after my time.”
But the sequence of events was clear.
“The dragon-treading image that represented power in my day became mixed with the images of Artimpasa that were spreading among the people as a water god, but once this began to spread into Europe, it would have been influenced by Greek mythology.”
“Yes. The Greek Typhon was depicted as a mixture of a dragon and a giant starting at around 380 BCE. Before that, he was primarily a giant.”
“Similarly, Lamia was originally a queen who had been reduce to ‘something like a beast’, but at some point she ended up being part serpent.”
<Homer was born three centuries before Herodotus and when the Scylla appears in his Odyssey, her lower body is a fish and dogs. Overwriting that chimera-ish image with another serpentine one shows just how terrifyingly influential the Scythian culture could be.>
“From what I’ve heard, it looks like it went like this.”
- A half-human half-beast culture existed.
- In the 5th century BCE, Herodotus told of Api as the Echidna.
- Later in Scythia, the image of Api became mixed with the people’s goddess Artimpasa.
- Starting in the 4th century BCE, the influence of Scythian culture caused Artimpasa to spread across Greece as a half-woman half-serpent.
- From there, the half-woman half-serpent boom began.
“I-I think you’re making too many assumptions there.”
●
“How long are we going to get sidetracked on this?”
“The power of your influence helps me understand how strongly you understand the idea of a base! It was because the Scythians were such a threat with their bases at strategic points that all those snake lady goddesses were born! You’re hired! Or something like that!”
“Being an impenetrable culture even at your height is such a Scythian thing.”
“But looking at it the other way around, we don’t have many people, but we do have excellent mobility in an emergency. Because Balancer can teleport us anywhere on this planet.”
<I cannot approve sending you anywhere controlled by the flame dragons as that would be too dangerous, but as long as you are prepared in the divine world, I can send you anywhere that functions as a base or to safe ground.>
“So instead of the Roman method of using roads to bring the entire area around a base under control, it would be more effective to use the Scythian method of controlling bases as linked points.”
“Wait a second. We’re surrounded by a sea of lava. What good is controlling some random point out there? Won’t the flame dragons just ignore it and attack here?”
“No, we can make it matter.”
“Right. That sea of lava is what lets us make a base those flame dragons can’t ignore, Demeter.”
●
…What now? Those little knowledge gods are prattling on again.
Am I popular with children or something?
“Aunt! That silence means you’re mentally twisting this in your favor again, doesn’t it!?”
Shut up. Anyway, she wanted to hear what they had to say.
“Do you know where we should place a base in that lava sea?”
“Yes. It will require Balancer’s processing power, but we can do it. I will leave that task with Temanko-kouhai, so go to her for an answer.”
“Because we’ll be influenced by what worked in our own terraforming. So if Tenma-chan says something will work, we’ll focus on that.”
“In that case,” said a voice. It belonged to the Shinto knowledge god. She gestured toward the lava sea stretching out into the distance.
“I have two ideas for building bases. One that gathers the smaller flame dragons and one that catches the big ones. Of those, we will first need one that catches the smaller ones.”
A breath.
“But that means checking the currents.”
●
Tenma spoke.
“The planet already has its axis and rotation set. What does that cause? The flame dragons are heating the planet, but in addition to that, the star is sending heat to the planet. And there are places the star’s heat can reach more easily and less easily. What do you think that difference causes?”
“It creates atmospheric circulation and regions where the lava is split between softer and harder areas. Combine that with the planet’s rotation and you get magma currents, right?”
“There are other factors too. And the lack of a moon works against it a fair bit. But because the flame dragons aren’t motionless, they will create currents. So if we place bases that block up the bending, diverging, and junctioning of the magma currents, the flame dragons will be unable to ignore them.”
“Like fish, right!?”
“Exactly. By including a deviation when stopping up a current, we can intercept the flame dragons approaching on that current, or we can let them pass.”
“Why would you let them go?”
“If they have nowhere to escape, they’ll get desperate and we’ll have to fight until one side or the other is gone. That’s only useful for a final showdown, but we only want to whittle down their numbers for now.”
“Correct. And as we let the flame dragons escape behind the base, we will create a safe zone we have protected. The terraforming will be possible there.”
“So the base creates a deviation in the current, which makes part of the current faster and part slower?”
Yes. It was the same idea seen during the Irish representative and Poseidon’s battle.
“This isn’t a river or ocean, but we do have gods who excel at analyzing currents.”
“That would be me, Dan-san, Poseidon, and…”
“Mr. V, can you analyze currents? But you couldn’t slow the water monster’s water beam at all when it hit you and that’s what made you vomit.”
“Those are two different things! I can analyze the currents of rivers and the tides. For the stormy sea, you will need Salacia, though.”
“So maybe we should just go to Salacia for help instead?”
“That would give us more gods to work with.”
From a Shinto perspective, this looked safe.
…The Irish representative and Poseidon are not assisting the Shinto terraforming in an official capacity.
They were acting based on identical interests.
Similarly, Mr. V and Salacia owed a debt to Shinto.
It was nice having people they could rely on if they needed it. And…
“I get how you plan to catch the small ones, but what about the big ones?”
“Well,” replied Tenma.
Building a base to catch the large flame dragons would require a trick.
“That’s where the terraforming comes in. I suggest we use the results of Human-senpai and the terraforming lead’s terraforming.”
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