On a Godless Planet:Volume2A Chapter 21
Chapter 21: Tempo 02=[edit]
–Hey, mister! Just have fun with it, okay!?
●
“Kubiko-kun, they should be on the bus to Okutama by now. I bet they’re having fun already. It sounds like Kido-douhai has joined them as a water god and, honestly, I’m already having fun here in the library.”
“Is that so?” said Scarecrow while completing her morning tasks. She switched the air conditioning to its midday setting, rechecked the inventory of library cards, and then…
“What’s this? Ignoring me?”
“I would like to focus on my midday preparations, but then my motormouth of a boss decided to show up.”
“What an awful thing to say. I’ll have you know I’m only here to keep you company now that Sugawara-kouhai has gone to Okutama.”
Scarecrow continued to ignore her.
But another voice came from the supply room.
“I was about to joke that all this noise made it sound like Omokane was here, but it really was her.”
“I am glad I could live up to your expectations. Since you were in the supply room, should I assume you have finally started working here?”
“No, I was going to eat my lunch here, but she shoved me in there so I wouldn’t ‘defile the library’s air’. It’s been so long since I ate lunch alone.”
“Try to be more sociable, Kubiko-kun.”
“What kind of idiot orders Domino’s pizza to the school!?”
“Okay, this one was on you, Shamhat-kun.”
“But I suddenly got a craving for it.”
“Oh, I’ve been there. Cravings for greasy foods like pizza, gyoza, or chicken ramen are a bad habit you pick up in this divine world.”
“Why would Bilgamesh and the others want to camp out when they live in such a convenient world of plenty?”
“They’re camping out?”
“Shamhat-kun, when they have all their needs fulfilled, people sometimes want to cut loose.”
“I do get that you want to get out of your usual routine when something is wearing you out physically or mentally.”
“But,” said Shamhat.
“Does the human and his group realize Okutama is currently a hotspot that could affect the future of the Terraforming or even the DC’s internal ranking?”
●
“Shamhat-kun,” said Omokane. “What if I told you I already had that information?”
●
Scarecrow went ahead and brewed some coffee.
Drip coffee.
…I kind of want to try espresso now.
As a knowledge god, she more or less had all the knowledge regarding its flavor and how it was made.
But acquiring an espresso machine would mean ordering one from overseas. That really meant asking Balancer for it, but that could also mean getting the gods of other countries involved.
She wanted to avoid that, but she was still curious.
She could work at acquiring one safely, but she had been too busy to get started on that.
While she tried to figure out what to do about that, she saw the drip brewing had begun and turned around to see Shamhat and Omokane looking her way.
“Do you two need something?”
“We were thinking of having a debate once the coffee was ready.”
“And it would help to have you on my side.”
“Oh? Omokane, you said you would debate me on your own, didn’t you? That means Scarecrow would have to join me in defeating you.”
“What’s this? Instigating treason? …Kubiko-kun, tell her how the Shinto gods always work as a united front to bring prosperity and restoration to Shinto.”
“Omokane, do you follow that principle?”
“Oh?” Omokane tilted her head. “I demand the gods working beneath me follow it, which means I exist above it. Simply put, I am free.”
“Scarecrow, you set her straight.”
Scarecrow sighed and responded to the two requests.
“I will not support either side.”
What a pain, she thought while the other two exchanged a glance.
“It would seem we have a three-party debate on our hands.”
“How screwed are we if we make an enemy out of her?”
“You’ll definitely have to eat your delivery pizza out in the hallway.”
“And I doubt we’ll ever be served coffee again.”
Eventually the two shook hands. And Omokane turned toward Scarecrow with a smile.
“We have formed an alliance, Kubiko-kun!”
“Yes, a most solid alliance!”
“Just tell us what you know!!”
●
“Very well,” said Omokane, raising her right hand with her left on the counter.
She looked to Shamhat.
“How about we both play our information card at the same time.”
The information god responded to the suggestion with a hand on her chin. Her nose twitched as if sniffing the wafting coffee scent as she did so.
“Okay.”
Omokane nodded and Shamhat returned it. Then they both spoke at the same time.
“A failure.”
“Kido Abinae.”
●
That was enough for Scarecrow to peel her eyes away from the coffeemaker and turn around.
…Huh?
One bad habit of a knowledge god was to give only the bare minimum of information to feel superior to the other person. So Scarecrow assumed this exchange was the two of them giving a bizarre answer to test if the other knew what it meant. However…
“What does this have to do with Kido-san?”
“Oh, have you met her?”
“Only as a librarian when she used the library.”
“I see,” said Omokane before turning to Shamhat. “I assume you haven’t made it this far.”
“I checked around after her name came up before, but no one would tell me what kind of god she is or what mythology she’s from.”
“Not many know that information and those that do are likely involved in the terraforming. At the very least, I doubt anyone in this divine world would provide it so easily.”
“Didn’t you just bring it up here pretty easily?”
“Only because that is the only way to show Shamhat-kun that I am superior.”
“Then,” asked Scarecrow. “What does any of this mean?”
“It’s simple really. First, we need to discuss that water monster.”
Scarecrow knew about that. That monster had attacked Sumeragi around here. The first time, Inspector Eshtar had repelled it. Then it had appeared against last night.
“It has attacked twice now, but there still hasn’t been an official announcement about it.”
“The inspectors are covering it up. The Olympus inspectors, I mean. They didn’t even bother greeting us before using their authority as inspectors to keep it all hush-hush.”
“I could get information out, but Eshtar isn’t the type to do that.”
“What could this mean?”
Scarecrow was confused.
The human had been attacked by a monster of mysterious origin. A threat to the human was a threat to the terraforming. The DC should have responded, but…
“I would have thought we needed to watch out for the DC rushing in and hijacking the investigation, so why would members of the DC work to cover it all up?”
No, that was a silly question. She could think of a few different answers.
There were a few possibilities here. And the most likely one was…
“Did the Olympus gods intentionally release the water monster to give them an excuse to come here and take control of the terraforming?”
●
“You’re a smart one, Kubiko-kun.”
Scarecrow relaxed her tensed shoulders when she heard Omokane’s response.
She understood what it meant when her boss spoke like that.
“Am I overthinking this?”
“Sometimes the world is a lot simpler and stupider than we would like. And in this case,” she said. “It seems to me the world is a lot more complex and stupider than we would like.”
“I agree,” said Shamhat. Her next words came with a terribly happy smile. “This is such a stupid thing that I bet, once it’s all over, I’ll have someone by my side lamenting that it didn’t turn out how they had hoped.”
“Is this about the ‘failure’ you mentioned before?”
“It is,” confirmed Shamhat. “But I only know that this is about a failure. Do you know what that failure is?”
That was obvious enough. Based on the course of this conversation, there was only one possible answer.
“The water monster.”
But that was the extent of what Shamhat knew.
The water monster was some kind of failure. That was Shamhat’s limit. But Scarecrow knew something else. Omokane had called her “a smart one”. Based on what that was in response to…
“Was that water monster created when the Olympus gods made some kind of failure?”
“Probably. The Olympus inspectors wanted to capture her, but they didn’t manage it.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Don’t you think they would want to retrieve their failure?”
That was a leading question, meant to guide Scarecrow toward Shamhat’s opinion. So Scarecrow gave a different answer of hers instead.
“Another group could capture her instead. Maybe they only want to prevent that from happening.”
“Oh? Then answer me this: why wouldn’t they want another group capturing her?”
“Shamhat. Remember what you said before?”
She refreshed Shamhat’s memory.
“That water monster contains a secret that could affect the DC’s internal ranking.”
●
“Well, it all really depends on how much of this is true.”
Shamhat sensed she needed to decide whether or not she would continue pursuing this.
Should she delve deeper or not?
Continuing would be fun and she would gain a lot of material for future negotiations, but that would in turn create new relationships and could make it look like she had joined a certain faction or another.
She was currently a Mesopotamian information god. She had established a connection with the Shinto gods, but they weren’t allies. She made sure to make that clear when interacting with anyone else.
…That helps me get information from the mythologies who are wary of Shinto.
And from that point of view…
“Very well. This might make an enemy of Olympus, but I don’t see it as taking your side.”
“You don’t have to spell it out so clearly, Shamhat-kun. This is an unusually risky topic to chat with me about.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I know what I’m doing. Let me make that clear.”
Shamhat turned to look at Scarecrow.
“I already know the answer here. You were right, Scarecrow. And Omokane too. This is about Kido Abinae.”
“Huh?” said the scarecrow goddess, wrinkling her brow, so Shamhat said more.
“Who was it that mentioned her name before?”
●
“Huh!? What’re you doing at Okutama Station, Mr. Vomit!?”
“Eh? Ehhhhhh!? What!? Why!?”
●
This was Raidou’s first time meeting him.
“Mr. Vomit?”
They had just left Okutama Station. The wooden station building had a somewhat old-fashioned Western style and there was a bus terminal sitting in the open out front.
The path to the road was on the left, but since the quarry was to the right, the quarry dump trucks had the right of way in front of the station.
As a tourist, the dump trucks driving by seemed out of place and the buses had to wait for them to pass before arriving at the station.
“This place is weirdly busy.”
A skinny middle-aged man in glasses, probably a bit over 170cm tall, stood in front of the station building.
“Mr. Vomit?”
“Indeed. He is Mr. Vomit.”
Apparently Bilgamesh knew the man. Which confirmed it.
“Mr. Vomit, huh?”
“No, I seriously doubt that is his name.”
“My name is Neptune.”
“I know what you want to say. Then again, I’ll probably just refer to you as ‘you’.”
“Th-thank you for that.”
Was that really worth thanking him for? Raidou turned to Sumeragi and Bilgamesh.
“What did you two do last night?”
“I already provided a report.”
Yeah, you did, thought Raidou. When he had cracked open a beer waiting for Shifu back at their apartment, a divine transmission had arrived under the “game club” category. It had said…
“The human and the water monster appeared again, so I had to fight. The Olympus inspectors are here too.”
●
Since it was a divine transmission, they had all exchanged information.
“That makes it sound like you fought Sumeragi-chan too.”
“Bil, did you win?”
“I was about to, but Olympus interfered and then Eshtar further confused matters.”
“Say no more.”
“That was enough for you?”
“You get used to it.”
“Eh? Eh? Is Sumeragi-kun alright!?”
<That idiot has never been ‘alright’, so that question seems unnecessary.>
“As much as I agree with that, he didn’t rollback, did he?”
“Please no! If he rolled back now, what do we do about the camping trip tomorrow!? I can run into him when he leaves his room in the morning like I usually do, but if I start off by asking him to come on a camping trip, won’t I sound like a I’m inviting him to join a cult!?”
“Knowing Sumeragi-chan, he’d go with you in a heartbeat, so does it really matter?”
“Would that impression even be wrong? I mean, in a way, the camping trip would be to get him to join your religion.”
“You’re right! There’s nothing to worry about then!”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait! Don’t you still need to find out if Izumi is okay?”
“Hey, it’s me! The one and only! I just got home after buying Mega Drive Fan and I’m about to do my nightly prostration toward the wall bordering Senpai’s room!”
“Oh, is that the loud thumping I’ve been hearing in the evenings!? I thought you were roughly kneading some udon, so I was confused when I leveled up from it.”
“So does a believer’s worship count even if the god doesn’t understand it?”
“Yup! As long as it works, the rest doesn’t matter! Oh, you gave me a great idea, Senpai! Whenever I knead udon from now on, I’ll make sure it has as much body and firmness as your boobs!”
“Welp, I’m not eating udon for a while…”
“Anyway, what was that about Olympus inspectors? Who was it?”
“They showed up when I was guarding Mr. Vomit and the human.”
“Excuse me, but what was that power word you just used?”
“Oh, Mr. Vomit is Mr. Vomit! Because that was my first impression of him!”
That didn’t explain anything.
“And the inspectors are De-something and Athen-something.”
“That first one is pretty bad, but you nearly had the second one.”
“Fighter types, huh? We can let Bil-chan handle it if anything happens, right? You didn’t get all the fighting out of your system, did you?”
“Um, I’ll report this to Omokane-san.”
A response came from Omokane later that night.
“The Olympus inspectors probably don’t know you are going to Okutama, so go have your fun. I couldn’t think of a better way of harassing them.”
“I wholeheartedly agree, but are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“It’s a great idea! Show them you want nothing to do with inspectors who aren’t as cute as me! Ah ha ha!”
“I am so sorry.”
And like that, everyone was weirdly onboard with going to Okutama.
●
But, began Raidou in his head.
Looking back on everything that had been happening, he did have one concern.
“Neptune, will it cause trouble with the Olympus inspectors if you’re here?”
“Well, I can’t guarantee it won’t. As much as I wish to avoid trouble with them.”
“That settles it.”
With that “settled”, Raidou turned toward the others.
“Mr. Vomit will be coming with us for now. Is that a problem?”
“Eh!? Wh-what are you talking about!?”
“If we know where trouuuuble could happen, it’s saaaafest to keep an eye on it.”
“You have my approval as an inspector. It’s the standard play in a dicey situation.”
“I have no objection either. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“Yeah. We’re going camping. You’re packed for that too, aren’t you?”
Raidou looked to Netpune’s equipment. The man had clearly bought some used camping gear. He had a tent and he had a paper bag that was likely full of food.
He had the look of a fairly experienced camper.
Even if the game club was using borrowed gear, camping out was a Norse specialty. So…
“You weren’t going to rent out a spot at a campsite, were you?”
●
“Eh? You don’t have to camp out at a campsite? I thought it was, like, illegal if you didn’t.”
<This knowledge is likely wasted on an ape like you, but Japan has a law called the River Act, which says riverside land is public land and anyone is free to use it.>
“Eh!? You mean I can live on the riverside!?”
<That is not what it means, Idiot #2.>
“N-now, hold on! Why am I #2!?”
“Yesssssss! Take that! I’m #1!”
“This is an outrage! Balancer! If you’re going to list us that way, you need to make me #1!”
“I am so sorry.”
“And there’s Apology Man’s apology! So anyway, are you saying the riversides belong to everyone!? So when I found that porn magazine by the river in middle school, that was public property!? When I got home, I found it was the kind that publishes reader submitted stories, but I didn’t like its more extreme content and threw it away, but the trash bag was translucent and the cover showed through. I only noticed that on my way to school the next day and wanted to shout and let everyone know I’m not into that stuff, but to make a long story short, I think that was a real turning point in my tastes.”
“Did you travel all the way to Okutama just to waste its precious oxygen?”
“Hwuhhh!? You hadn’t heard, Kuwajiri!? Forest bathing is huge right now, so no one’s traveling to Okutama without sucking down a ton of that oxygen! Huffffff!! Yeah, that’s some good oxy! Soy sauce flavored, I think! It’s real fragrant!”
“I think that’s the exhaust fumes. There’s a bunch of quarry dump trucks idling over there, so I wouldn’t breathe too deep if I were you.”
“S-stop ruining my dreams with a dose of reality!”
“What were we talking about again?”
“We were talking about Sumeragi-kun’s magazine …Sumeragi-kun? You shouldn’t put magazines in the trash bag. You need to bundle them up and put them out on paper day.”
“Okay! And if I do that, I can hide any porn magazines that aren’t to my taste between other magazines!”
“That was not what we were talking about. Kuwajiri-chan, don’t you have something to say?”
“Only that I sometimes buy magazines for teenage girls to add to my knowledge and, when one doesn’t remotely match my tastes, I use that same method to throw it out.”
“So we were talking about how to separate our trash?”
“N-no, we were talking about not using a campground.”
●
“That’s right,” began Raidou.
….There are a few conditions we have to consider here.
“For now, let’s say you’re searching for that water monster.”
Raidou hadn’t seen it himself. Yesterday’s flame monster seemed to be connected in some way, but they weren’t certain of that. They only had what the river spirits had told them.
But that was enough to know some things.
“The river spirits said the water monster appeared and messed with the phase upstream of the Tama River flowing through Okutama. But we haven’t heard any news of the monster appearing in Lake Okutama further upstream. If she had appeared there, it would have been reported to the Shinto gods, but there haven’t been any such reports. So…”
So…
“If the water monster sticks to areas people rarely go, her home is probably in between here at Okutama Station and Lake Okutama upstream.”
“If that is the condition, we can probably narrow it down further.”
Kuwajiri raised her hand and Raidou nodded to tell her to proceed. He could guess what she meant, but he wanted to hear it from her. And…
“There is a single campsite between Okutama Station and Lake Okutama. It is called Sakai Canyon Campsite.”
“So is the water monster’s home in between that and the lake?”
“Probably. The campsite draws water from the river since it doubles as a trout fishing spot, so the river narrows past it. It is also a bungalow campsite instead of a tent site. It draws a lot of families and groups, which means its lights out time is set fairly late at 11 PM. It seems like a place the monster would want to avoid.”
“I thought the trout fishing spot was a separate business. So they’re actually the same place?”
Kuwajiri nodded in obvious satisfaction. The grin on Shifu’s face told Raidou he had done the right thing there.
And to continue the conversation…
“The campsite we’re going to is Hikawa Campsite, which we can reach by walking down to the river from here. It’s a large tent site, it has a decent riverside area, and the river is wide there. If no one’s on the lookout, it’s a good place for the monster to ‘slip past’ everyone and escape upstream.”
And so Raidou turned to Neptune.
“You were planning to go to the area upstream between Hikawa Campsite and Sakai Canyon Campsite where the river narrows, weren’t you? The monster probably escaped there or into a tributary.”
Neptune’s silence was as good as confirmation.
“––––––”
“Bingo, huh?”
Then Raidou realized Neptune was staring in a certain direction.
No, at a certain someone. Raidou turned that way to see a raised hand.
“There is no point in hiding it now, so I will explain what I can.”
●
It wasn’t as bad as resigning herself to her fate, but Kido was prepared for what was to come.
This would drag everyone here – including Izumi – into it all.
…I have no choice.
This could become an unpleasant experience for Izumi. She wanted to avoid that if possible, but she could take responsibility if it did come to that and he had Douhai-san with him now.
“That said, I don’t want to discuss something so private here at the station. We can talk once we reach the campground.”
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