Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter5

Chapter 5: Returning and Taking Over

Part 1

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For the moment, the elves needed to rebuild their strength even if it meant eating rolls and corn soup.

?

???

It happened so suddenly.

Misaka Mikoto and Shokuhou Misaki opened their eyes to find themselves in a small village redolent of vegetation. It couldn’t have been more different from the sterile spaceship.

The unkempt elves with big collars and thick chains between their ankles were gathered there. The small girl among them was Patissiet.

They were back.

They had returned to the world of Celesaqphere.

Now they could fight to the end without having to abandon the elves!!

“Um, what’s wrong, Ladies Misaka and Shokuhou? Kyah!?”

The both hugged her on reflex.

Tightly.

Lives were taken without a second thought in this world, but nothing dangerous had happened while Mikoto and Shokuhou were away. They were thankful for that miracle.

The solid sensation at her chest told Mikoto her Tokiwadai summer uniform had become bikini armor again. Shokuhou was again in her frilly dancer’s outfit with her handbag worn diagonally across it.

Patissiet and the other elves didn’t seem aware that Mikoto and Shokuhou had even disappeared.

They hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

Mikoto and Shokuhou no longer had the electrification device and controller. They had given up their one surefire way of returning to Earth, but Mikoto didn’t regret it. She knew she wasn’t willing to give up on this before she was finished.

The hug continued for a bit as she confirmed her and this neighbor’s presence in this world and felt the solid ground below her feet…but then Shokuhou ruined the mood.

She must have noticed the elves’ food.

That health nut chose this moment to glare over at them.

“Carbs with carbs?”

“How do you enjoy life when you’re so picky about your food?”

Thinking back, they had been snatched away by Reincarnation Goddess Salinagaritina after they had freed the elves from the village and begun preparing the bone-weary elves some food.

The elves were eating rolls and corn soup.

That should have been about right since they needed to rebuild their strength as quickly as possible.

The lady who was apparently the elf elder bowed her head.

The way she refused to let go of her bowl as she did made her look rather cute.

“Patissiet told me everything. As I told you before, I am the elder. My name is Bakerian.”

“So from baker? Another dessert maker name.”

“?”

The head tilt suggested she wasn’t aware where her name came from.

Elder Bakerian, who had a strong girl-next-door vibe, cleared her throat before continuing.

“You are interested in the three treasures ceremony, correct? And so you wish to know about the three Demon Lords who guard them?”

“Yes!!”

This was exactly what they needed to know.

Mikoto and Shokuhou needed to do things the Celesaqphere way now. After rescuing the elves, they needed some clues to that ceremony that could return them to Earth.

But Elder Bakerian’s face clouded over.

“I apologize for getting your hopes up, but I do not have the answers you seek. I did have a grimoire that collected such myths and legends, but the cursed humans- oh, sorry. That is, the humans took it from me when they captured me. I imagine it is buried in the local king or lord’s collection now.”

“So we’d have to go there?”

“Yes.”

That meant they needed to visit the lord of this region. That lord would hold the key to returning home.

The elder nodded once and…

“But the scope of your fight changes drastically with a lord. A single territory includes over a hundred towns and villages and the lord manages and controls them all. Your brute force tactics will not work forever.”

“You don’t need to worry about that.”

Bikini armor Mikoto sighed softly and dancer Shokuhou winked.

They already knew where this was going.

So they wanted to make it work, even if that meant deceiving both sides of a great space war fought across the entire Solar System.

Even if it meant giving up their one ticket home.

“Besides, even if we stopped here, this lord wouldn’t leave us alone, would they?”

Part 2

The change in the mood was obvious.

The travelers and merchants moving between the eggshell shards of floating islands were nowhere to be found. They wouldn’t be protected by the village, so they were sensitive to danger. And they had started to see more of the adventurers who could sniff out that kind of danger and the bandits who saw it as an opportunity.

Mikoto sighed.

They were holding a strategy meeting in the inn’s kitchen.

But she hadn’t wanted to just sit around, so until anything actually happened, she was making a variety of desserts (in the strange outfit of an apron worn over bikini armor). This world didn’t allow any enjoyment in its food – it was all about nutrition. She wished she could leave some recipes for them, but while they could understand each other’s speech, could the people here read Japanese text?

“Liberating the one village was a good thing,” said Mikoto. “It’s obviously good for the enslaved elves, but there also had to be some humans who only went along with it for fear of being ostracized from the community they need to survive.”

“But the lord isn’t just going to let this stand,” said Shokuhou. “An entire village in their territory has fallen. They are going to move to suppress this rebellion or uprising.”

The unfamiliar system of technology known as magic was frightening, but Mikoto and Shokuhou had proven their ability to easily take on an entire small village.

But they had no answer to a more fundamental question.

How many people were in this kingdom? A war against a kingdom of ten thousand was nothing at all compared to a war against a kingdom of a billion. They were facing the troublesome fact that Celesaqphere had an entirely different social structure to Earth. It was entirely possible that kingdoms here were superpowers with a population of ten billion.

“This is so good,” said a smiling Patissiet while trying a small cubical dessert a little more solid than gelatin. It was commonly known as nata de coco.

Mikoto had made them, but even she was a little surprised.

Why?

“P-Patissiet? N-nata de coco is, well, a really old-fashioned kind of thing, so you really don’t have to eat it.”

“Eh? But it’s the best thing you made.”

“S-surely you’d prefer these colorful donuts or this sumptuous cheesecake.”

“Look, the elder and the others are all eating it too. That proves it’s the best one.”

Mikoto had made the nata de coco more as a joke and something simple she could eat herself without depriving the elves of anything good, but you could never predict what would explode in popularity among people with no preconceptions. Like how the axe murderer under the bed or the woman from hell became trendy in Japan long after they had become tired clichés overseas.

But anyway…

“Starting a strategy game before you know the map or the balance of power is a mistake,” said Shokuhou.

“But if you win anyway, you can get really hooked,” said Mikoto.

“Still, we can’t just let that slaver freak of a lord attack us.”

“Dammit, then let’s prepare for battle! The first wave of this endless battle is about to begin!!”

Their prediction was correct.

Unfortunately, this was the kind of prediction they really wanted to be wrong.

Part 3

The change came without warning.

The rolling green field outside the village continued all the way to the horizon, but that horizon was suddenly annihilated.

Yes, annihilated.

An area of the horizon several kilometers across exploded. But this wasn’t just one explosion. Countless bombs – more than just 100 or even 200 – exploded simultaneously, creating a wall of explosions stretching left to right. It was like an approaching printer of death.

“Eek!”

The elf shrieked in terror.

It was like going over the area with a fine-tooth comb, except with bombs. The long row of explosions slowly approached them. The entire land would be obliterated and it was obvious what would happen once it arrived at the village.

It was important to remember that Celesaqphere was made up of floating land.

These bombs were not being launched from a distance. They were being dropped from above. A floating land was passing by a layer above the one Mikoto and Shokuhou were on. Soldiers were lined up on the edge of that higher land and dropping bombs.

That was enough to set up a carpet bombing.

“I-it’s like they’re plowing the entire floating land from one end to the other,” said Patissiet. “If they continue this from the west end to the east end, the entire floating land will be blown away – and this village along with it!!”

“Misaka-san, what do you think?”

“Hm. They’re not very smart, are they?”

Those two didn’t sound concerned.

They sounded more like they were looking at the shape of the clouds and discussing whether it would rain overnight.

Maybe it was an improvement that the elf could actually pale at the thought of her impending doom. At the very least, that was more than those clone girls had been able to do. Her mouth flapped wordlessly, so Mikoto rubbed her head to comfort her while making a few observations.

“If they can drop bombs on any part of this land, they could have dropped their first bomb right in the middle of the village. The only reason to bomb the entire land from one end to the other is to inspire terror. Telling us the village will be bombed if we wait around is the same as telling us we have some time before the village is at risk.”

“And a carpet bombing also tells us they can’t send in any of their human troops until they’ve finished flattening everything. How many soldiers do they have up there? 500? Maybe 1000? Bringing all their armed troops to the front line and then having them sit around is like asking us to demonstrate our preemptive strike ability☆”

The enemy was on a higher layer.

An ordinary human would have no way of reaching another land 30m above them. Having the high ground was a decent advantage. Dropping things down was easy, but sending things up was a lot more difficult.

But those rules did not apply to the #3 Level 5.

“Don’t worry, Patissiet.”

“Why not?”

“1000 troops is nothing. We’re used to fighting against a city of 2.3 million.”

Part 4

Bam!!

The sound of incoming destruction was awfully dull.

It came from Misaka Mikoto’s feet landing on the upper floating island after using magnetism to leap straight up 30m with Shokuhou Misaki clinging to her hips.

The armored soldiers turned around in surprise while rolling heavy bombs measuring more than a meter across into position on the edge of the cliff.

“Wha-?”

“Oh, don’t mind us.”

Before they could recover from their shock, bikini armor Mikoto shoved one soldier over the edge with an arm and sent out a lightning spear to pierce through a large ball packed with gunpowder sitting a short distance away.

The one explosion triggered a chain reaction that blasted the soldiers into the air.

“This world’s magic is honestly kind of impressive since I can do all this without worrying about killing them.”

Little Patissiet and Elf Elder Bakerian had already explained that the soldiers wore armor designed to protect against the fire and impact elements to shield them against accidental explosions. The soldiers wouldn’t be killed by the 30m fall either because that would count as the impact element. They would probably be incapacitated for a while, though.

Mikoto didn’t expect this skirmish to settle anything.

The explosions were only a distraction.

This was only laying the groundwork to attack the enemy’s main force while they were still confused.

Mikoto lowered Shokuhou to the ground.

They stood side by side.

Yes.

Celesaqphere’s defense magic did not have an element to protect against lightning or brainwashing.

Bikini armor Mikoto sent lightning spears shooting from her bangs and dancer Shokuhou aimed her TV remote. At this point, the knights and soldiers’ thick armor was only a hindrance to their movement. Some had high-voltage currents pierce their steel armor and others were brainwashed into grabbing at their allies.

When Shokuhou saw the especially strong and muscular armored soldiers, she actually licked her lips alluringly. She could brainwash anyone into being her pawn, so a formidable foe wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for her.

“So many to choose from☆”

Although the way the scantily-clad dancer viewed the group of sweaty, muscular men with such eager delight could easily lead someone to misconstrue her intentions.

A great storm of chaos followed.

“Vanguard, escape to the sides!! We’ll blow them away with our artillery!!”

One soldier raised his unsheathed sword vertically.

That might seem like a cool ritual, but he was in fact taking an estimated measurement of the distance and angle to the enemy for aiming purposes. Behind him were siege weapons that looked like crossbows of more than 2m mounted on wheeled pedestals larger than a light car.

They were ballistae.

The stationary weapons used the elasticity of wood or animal tendons and the torsion of twisted rope to launch giant bolts. The bolts were more than 2m long and some of the ballistae were loaded with thick, wrapped chains measuring several meters long. When launched while spinning, that would be like shooting a giant version of that thing at the end of a weed cutter. A direct hit could probably slice right through a human torso. If their rotation could also stabilize their trajectory, they might also be able to fly like a frisbee.

(The projectiles are made of bronze. I can’t stop them with magnetism!!)

But…

“Shokuhou, charge ahead!!”

“Huh?”

“We’ll be killed if we fall back. I can’t stop the first shot, so the best plan is to not give them enough time to load the second shot!!”

The air was compressed.

Mikoto ran in with an iron sand sword in hand and Shokuhou stepped on one of her dancer outfit’s frills and tripped as something sharply scorched the air between the two of them. It was close, but it wasn’t too fast for Mikoto to dodge with her microwave radar.

“Hey!! Does that mean it was just dumb luck that I survived that!?” protested Shokuhou.

“(Tch. I’d really rather not accept that luck is an aspect of skill.)”

The ballistae were extremely powerful weapons, but it took multiple muscular soldiers to load a bolt, making this a battle of physical strength.

(They have plenty of ballistae, so why aren’t they splitting the work into phases so they can keep a constant stream of shots flying? Are they just stupid?)

Now that the enemy had screwed up, it was Mikoto’s turn.

“Ahhhh!!” she shouted, swinging her iron sand sword horizontally.

She sliced through the base of the targeting soldier’s sword. When he froze up in surprise, she kicked the him in the gut, sending him tumbling backwards. The armor must have shifted his center of gravity unusually high. And before he could get back up, Mikoto aimed her palm down and sent a few high-voltage jolts into him to silence him.

A griffin larger than an elephant puffed out its wings and glared at her. The soldiers must have released the reins of the monster they had used to drag in the ballista carts that rivalled two-story buildings in size. Bikini Mikoto used the bright light and loud noise of the high-voltage electricity to keep the griffin away while she shouted.

“Get up, Shokuhou! I’ll deal with the monster, so you hurry up and brainwash the ballista soldiers!!”

“Argh. Misaka-san, why don’t you – pant – take care of it all – gasp – on your own? Ugh…”

“Don’t just give up and wilt there, you weakling Queen!! None of this is over yet!!”

That was when Mikoto and Shokuhou heard a dull thud.

The sun was hidden overhead. By something around 200m above them.

Another floating island had joined the battle.

But the Railgun’s range was only 50m and lightning spears and iron sand swords would have a hard time attacking and destroying the underside of a floating island that had to be measured in kilometers.

At this rate, the enemy commander would escape.

In fact, they would be killed by falling bombs with no way of fighting back!!

Part 5

Before the fighting actually began, Mikoto and Shokuhou of course held a strategy meeting.

They sat around a table in the dining hall on the 1st floor of the village’s inn with snacks in hand. Patissiet and Elder Bakerian joined them.

Something had been low-key bothering bikini armor Mikoto for a while now.

(How many layers of floating lands overlap each other? How do we even hold a briefing for a battle fought in three dimensions?)

“Um, this is a map of the Poseidon Lakes where we are now.”

Little Patissiet spread something out on the table.

And she continued, “And this is the floating land above us.”

The maps were not on parchment. They were on some kind of transparently-thin paper and they were placed on top of each other. If this village was on the bottom layer, then you could apparently place the maps for the middle layer, top layer, and whatever other layers were needed on top of it.

“Hm. That’s hard to read. I get why it has to work this way, though.”

“We aren’t done yet. This finishes it up.”

Bakerian held out her hands and muttered something under her breath, causing a buzzing sound. A 3D image of the terrain shown on the thin maps appeared above the table.

“Oh, that’s neat,” said Shokuhou. “Now this is really feeling like a fantasy world☆”

“?”

The ordinary elf tilted her head at that one.

“We are in the Poseidon Lakes, but there are two floating lands approaching above us from the west. The middle layer is the Hades Plains, famous as a necropolis. The top layer is the Zeus Mountains. The Zeus Mountains are so high up they often collide with the clouds, altering the weather and sending frequent lightning down toward the Poseidon Lakes.”

“…” “…”

“Um?” said Patissiet giving them questioning looks.

Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus. Even residents of science-obsessed Academy City recognized those names. The names in Celesaqphere continued to be extremely lazy. Anyone with any experience with myth-based manga and anime would know these ones.

The worst part was that the Poseidon Lakes was apparently dotted with seawater springs, meaning the name actually kind of fit.

(Someone from Earth didn’t visit here long before we did, did they?)

“Most of the soldiers and bombs will be deployed to the Hades Plains in the middle. As that land travels from west to east, they can drop their bombs to achieve a complete carpet bombing of the Poseidon Lakes where we are.”

Needing to view multiple lands to understand the win conditions for this battle was annoying. If the floating lands were on a set course, the enemy could take a higher layer of land long before it arrived, wait until that floating land was on top of the target, and then send in all their soldiers.

“But the bottom layer and middle layer are only 30m apart. I can make a direct attack there,” said Mikoto.

“That is a wondrous thing to hear, but the real problem is the Zeus Mountains at the very top.” Elder Bakerian pointed up toward the ceiling. “The distance between the middle layer and top layer is 200m. Even your power will have a hard time taking you that far, won’t it?”

“Well, yeah…”

“And it goes without saying their top commander is going to be watching everything from up there,” said Shokuhou. “Is there any way we could take over the middle layer and ask for a truce?”

“The Zeus Mountains will be prepared for at least a bombing. But less for dropping on an attacking enemy and more for threatening disobedient troops into continuing the attack from the Hades Plains.”

So even if they took the middle layer, they would have bombs raining down on them from the top layer.

They could not win this battle without directly attacking the top layer.

Part 6

The Zeus Mountains’ Frontline Command Garrison was really just a name. It was more of a luxurious villa made to be dismantled and moved to the battlefield in pieces.

“I am detecting explosions on the Hades Plains instead of the bottom layer. This is highly unusual,” reported Mind, a young blond butler.

Lavender, a female knight in intricate silver armor, curled up on the sofa with her arms hugging her knees.

She hung her head and muttered to herself.

“No, no, no. Now we’re going to lose and I’ll be captured and they’ll definitely make me their slave. Please no. Wait. I’ll do anything. I’ll do any job, so just don’t use my body for fertilizer in your field after I die. If you’re going to kill me, at least give me a dignified and painless execution. Don’t make a public show out of it either. Please, my parents will be watching…”

“Milady, this is a minor problem. Viewing the big picture, our victory is still all but assured.”

Lavender’s head immediately shot up.

Her face shined bright.

“Yes, of course I will win this!! Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Those rebel fools deserve no rights. Why even bother counting them as they march to their own doom? We can just count the scorched heads blown from their bodies after the dust has settled. Hee hee hee hee ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

“Of course, even minor problems can lead to complete disaster in war.”

“No, no, no, no…”

Lavender was said to be the local lord’s right hand and was feared by the people, but she was usually like this. She could only hold her head high when she had an absolute advantage in battle. Even though the true mettle of a commander was seen in their ability to turn around a losing situation and even though the difference in power was so great here that even a bored old retiree could command a force to victory.

But that aside…

“Are you sure this was a good idea?” asked Mind. “I know it was necessary for victory, but the Poseidon Lakes contain a village known for its fulgurites. The carpet bombing will kill the villagers as well.”

“H-hmph! The rebels have taken the village for themselves, so its destruction is unavoidable. Those villagers only have themselves to blame for just handing their village over to those wretched rebels in the first place! Heh!!”

She really was a carefree knight when she was winning.

Mind sighed.

(But if any of the villagers survive, they could easily become true insurrectionists. To prevent that, we must slaughter every last one of them, including the old, the infirm, the women, and the children.)

His mistress likely had not thought through what her decision would mean and she would probably blanch if he did tell her.

So the butler kept those thoughts to himself.

Lavender was never outstanding in anything she did.

But that was no reason for her butler’s affection for her to waver. He accepted that she was in fact second-rate and then did whatever it took to prevent the great gears of society from tearing her apart.

The world of Celesaqphere was endlessly cruel.

Mind had sworn he would protect Lavender from that world no matter what. So he did not limit himself to elf slaves. He would use anyone he could as a card in his deck. If he made sure someone else always paid the price for his mistress’s second-rate decisions, Lavender could live the life of a first-rate leader.

He was prepared to deceive his mistress until she died of old age with a smile on her face.

He was willing to go to hell as long as she was bound for heaven.

(Ideally, I can blame this on a rival whose skill outmatches hers so I can get her promoted and defeat her enemies at the same time. What a pain.)

Just then, Mind heard a dull explosion rising from below.

Lavender hugged her knees up on the sofa, her shoulders shaking.

“Wh-what just happened? I’m still winning, aren’t I?”

“It would appear some insurgents have made it to the Hades Plains. The barracks there appear to have been destroyed. I do not know what kind of magic they are using, but a mere two insurgents are tearing the place apart.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Heh heh, eh heh heh. Why can’t we all just get along? Because we can’t, that’s why. Oh, I just know they’re going to strip me naked and march me around the public square with a collar around my neck…”

She was holding her head and wallowing in pessimism again.

This knight’s mood was influenced far too much by the changing situation.

“Didn’t you leave some weapons in the Zeus Mountains for just such an occurrence?”

“Oh, yeah! Which means I can win!! Hah, and the Zeus Mountains are 200m above the Hades Plains. Ah ha ha ha ha!! Sending troops down that distance is one thing, but sending an attack back up is another thing altogether. Now we just need to drop bombs from here to blow those insurgents to smithereens! I’m so smart!!”

(Of course, this will mean our bombs deliver the finishing blow to our own defeated soldiers down on the Hades Plains. If any of them survive, they will hold quite a grudge.)

But it was a butler’s duty to obey his mistress’s command.

The Zeus Mountains’ Frontline Command Garrison was in fact a luxurious villa, but there was no one there who could handle explosives other than the knight and her butler. The rest were chefs, sommeliers, and the like. So Lavender and Mind walked to the edge of the floating land, pounded a stake into the ground, and attached lifelines to their hips.

“Where are the insurgents!?”

“I seriously doubt they are staying in one place. With everything going on, anyone still on their feet and moving nimbly about will be the enemy.”

On that direction, Lavender looked down again.

A Warrior Woman was swiftly moving around (with a Dancer in tow) in search of cover. She left a brick wall still standing among the wreckage of the griffin stable and appeared to be rushing toward anotherlarge piece of cover.

There were a few crossbow-like ballistae left.

One of them changed direction. And for some reason, it was tilted as far up as it would go, aiming toward the upper layer.

The ever-calm butler shouted in a rare panic.

“That is not good. Get down, milady!!”

Part 7

The deafening explosion happened so far away it barely seemed connected to anything Mikoto had done.

It felt more like she was watching a fireworks show in the distant sky.

She had stuffed one of the massive straw-like bolts with strong drinks and explosives and then launched it from a ballista.

A height of 200m was too far for her Railgun’s 50m range. Her lightning spears couldn’t damage the upper floating land either. Magnetically leaping that far would also be a challenge.

But the large stationary weapons the enemy had brought were a different story.

There was some debate about the firing range of a ballista, but it was thought to be roughly 300-400m.

The explosion might seem too far away to matter to her, but it had to be a disaster indeed for the Zeus Mountains. Mikoto could even hear a bunch of secondary explosions going off.

Dancer Shokuhou leaned her back against side of the convenient toy called a ballista.

“Can we bring this back with us?”

“Whether we’ll use it or not, we need to take everything we can get. That’s a basic rule of adventuring.”

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.)

Part 9

In the middle of the night, the deep, pitch-black darkness was split by a straight line of orange light that blasted the giant eastern gate to smithereens. Splinters and wreckage scattered inwards, raining down on the city.

Misaka Mikoto’s Railgun was responsible.

And this time, Mikoto’s #3 Level 5 power was not her only weapon.

With a wave of her right hand, several figures passed by her from behind.

Fulgurites were glass stones made by lightning strikes.

In the world of Celesaqphere, they were considered gems even more precious than diamonds, but Mikoto’s control of high-voltage electric currents meant she could mass-produce them as long as she had sand to work with.

What did this mean?

She could gather as many swords-for-hire – aka adventurers – as she wanted.

Despite the adventurer title, they did not actually explore unknown dungeons and caverns. Instead, they were more like a dirty fighting force that would complete any “quest” as long as they were rewarded appropriately. So if you had the money, you could hire them by the dozen without going through the guild.

(It was bad enough that the weapon shops here let you buy swords and even projectile weapons like bows and that everyone can use magic as long as they use the right incantation, but these adventurers take the cake. If you pay them, they’ll turn their swords on anyone. This fantasy world really could stand to tighten up its laws.)

“Stick to what we hired you to do. Focus on the Anubis and Gargoyle autonomous guards made of black ceramic and stone. But you don’t actually have to defeat them – distracting them will be enough. And no pillaging! Don’t even take a quick peek inside a drawer or chest!!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it!! You’ve paid us plenty up front. We’re set for a while financially and a full wallet is the secret to happily swinging your sword while staying morally clean. But anyway, do you two ladies need a bodyguard?”

“No, thanks. We can take care of ourselves, so stick to the job we gave you. Focus on the elves, succubi, scyllas, harpies, and any other monsters being used as slaves! Get them safely out of the city. We paid you up front with fulgurites worth more than platinum or diamond, so you’d better do a professional job here!!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Something crawled along the surface of the adventurers. It was the rough fur of a wolf.

They were a pack of lycanthropes.

So they were monsters. That explained why they were so eager for a well-paying job that didn’t go through the human-run guild.

Their sheaths and hilts were badly worn, but the drawn blades glinted sharply with a practical light. If their weapons were obviously top-rate, it would put everyone around them on guard. So keeping the visual parts so rundown may have been a strategy to survive by making any possible enemies underestimate them. The logic made sense for werewolves who used their transformation to blend into a human city.

“We just got a hell of a payday, so don’t any of you die before we can throw it all away at the tavern!!”

Mikoto and Shokuhou had hired them to force their way into civilian homes.

“It’s scary what people will do for money,” said Mikoto.

“Sounds like a good lesson ability for Tokiwadai students,” said Shokuhou.

Being able to hire a bunch of sketchy adventurers to rampage through a city seemed like a bit too much freedom. Someone needed to tell Celesaqphere about laws against criminal conspiracy and assembling with dangerous weapons.

“Oh, no! We’re under attack!”

“But by who!? What kingdom are they from!?”

The city guard swiftly got to work, but their confusion was palpable. Having their gate blown apart was a first in the city’s 200-year history and the attacking force was decked out in expensive gear, but they were after the disposable enslaved monsters instead of any kind of valuable. It was clear on the guards’ faces that they couldn’t work out the attackers’ intent.

Bikini armor Mikoto fired another Railgun into the park fountain and destroyed the rainwater drainage ditches alongside the road.

As she continued this process a few times, she heard a dull roaring sound.

“The moat around the city is huge, but they only have small waterways inside he city and there’s no sign of the big river. My guess is they use culverts or underground waterways. So if I keep damaging the flood control infrastructure, the rest should happen for me.”

No matter how large the scale, water control was generally handled with pumps.

By using her Railgun to crush one end and applying enough pressure, the water would come rushing out of the other end. Or the pipe or waterway would fail to endure the pressure and rupture.

The ground split open and water rushed out, filling the roads and the homes’ underfloor space. She didn’t actually need to flood the entire city. She just needed to create enough confusion to prevent anyone from predicting what her true goal was.

The things you didn’t understand were the most frightening.

“Good, good, good. The solid non-rubber bottoms of their feet won’t have any grip ability, so a bit of flooding should make them slip. Now we don’t have to worry about those giant Anubises and Gargoyl- oh!!”

An Anubis wobbled and nearly crushed a nearby home, so Mikoto quickly blew it apart with a Railgun.

This world accepted slavery as normal, but Patissiet and the elves wouldn’t be happy if the ordinary people died.

Mikoto didn’t want to go the revenge route unless the elves truly wanted it.

“Pant, gasp.”

“Run, Shokuhou! A winged Gargoyle is flying toward you!!”

“Wh-what kind of fantasy world doesn’t let you adorably soar through the night sky on a broom!?”

“if they lock onto you from the air, you’ll have those Anubises rushing you from all sides. C’mon, hurry!”

Mikoto adjusted her grip on an iron sand sword and ran through the city night.

The place was flooded, so using electricity would shock Shokuhou unconscious and then she could easily drown in a puddle only 3cm deep.

The lord’s mansion had a noticeably light guard when viewed from outside.

(Hiring so many dirty adventurers was the right move. Their rampage hid that we’re actually after the lord!!)

Afraid of a surprise attack, Mikoto launched a few Railguns into the front entrance and outside walls just to be safe. She and Shokuhou stepped into the half-collapsed building while watching to see what the enemy would do.

People were curled up and trembling in the unlit front hall and corridor.

“?”

Dancer Shokuhou aimed her TV remote, looking puzzled. Mikoto revealed the trick.

“Bright lights and loud noises have a psychological effect on people. Like how a nearby lightning strike is enough to make you cower. Stun grenades do the same thing. Just hiding in a sturdy bomb shelter during a wartime air raid can supposedly cause enough stress for people to bleed from the heart.”

“Am I the only one who thinks the world must be coming to an end if a meathead like you is muscling in on my mental territory?”

Mikoto had gotten the idea from the thorough carpet bombing the lord’s army had launched. No one had been harmed there, but innocent Patissiet had still trembled in fear. So this was payback.

A great feast of payback.

That lord could gorge himself on his just deserts.

“Anyway, it looks like there are still a fair number of people here. Do you know what the lord looks like?” asked Mikoto.

“No, but there are portraits all over the place.”

Shokuhou was right about that.

Maybe he was a hell of a narcissist or maybe this was the norm in Celesaqphere, but giant portraits hung all over the mansion. A large redheaded man wore thick armor with lion-like fur attached. He was like a picture-perfect example of strength, masculinity, and ferocity.

To be blunt, he looked powerful.

“Perfect.”

“You can’t brainwash people into your pawns like I can, so why are you so happy about having a strong enemy?”

As they moved room from room, they checked each of the people trembling where they had fallen to the floor. None of them were the man in the portraits.

At the far back of the third floor, they found an especially large bedroom door

That had to lead to the master bedroom.

Mikoto and Shokuhou pressed against the dark hallway wall on either side of the door.

“(Okay, I’m going to burn through the lock and then launch a blast to dazzle whoever’s inside.)”

“(And I’m supposed to brainwash the lord before he recovers?)”

Mikoto did it all in a single, flowing motion.

She melted the lock with a high-voltage current, kicked the door down, and sent a welding-bright flash of electricity from her fingertip and through the vast room.

“Gyah!?”

She heard a voice from within.

But Shokuhou froze after stepping inside. She fiddled with her remote, unsure what to do.

“What’s the holdup, Shokuhou!? Finish this off, you idiot!”

“You say that, but look.”

Mikoto’s gaze followed Shokuhou’s pointing finger to see someone trembling below a massive portrait. He was a middle-aged man, but he was even shorter than Mikoto. He had sunken eyes, pale skin, and a scrawny build. He looked more like a sneakthief than anything.

(The lord isn’t here? Is this a servant or a guar-?)

“Wh-wh-wh-wh-who are you people!? Y-you dare oppose me – the baron!?”

At first, she assumed this was some servant trying his best to pretend to be his lord. By pretending to be someone important, maybe he could escape an encounter with robbers, so he was putting on the greatest act of his life.

But then Mikoto and Shokuhou both looked up at the giant portrait directly behind the little man.

The portrait showed a large redheaded man with the picture perfect strength, masculinity, and ferocity of a lion.

Picture perfect?

Wait a second…

“So that painting is supposed to be you?”

Mikoto looked back and forth between the sneakthief and the lion.

She had a hard time imagining just how difficult that had been for the artist. She guessed it had been easier to ignore the model altogether and paint based on imagination alone.

“Forget it, then. Shokuhou, silence this sneakthief.”

“Sure. Sigh, but this weakling is a real letdown.”

They heard a weird straining noise.

It came from the sneakthief’s throat as he hung his head.

Then the lord exploded.

“How dare youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!”

That was not a figure of speech.

The lord’s armor exploded with bright light.

And six glowing wings grew from the back of his armor.

All sound vanished.

The deafening boom seemed to come after a delay. The shockwave crashed into their entire bodies and rattled their bones more than their eardrums. The stone wall behind him was blown away, letting the chilly night wind in.

Shokuhou grimaced at the prickling pain she felt across her skin.

All of this was only from the uncontrolled excess energy.

How deadly would this be if he gathered it all together and directed it at a single target?

The sneakthief had evolved into an angelic sneakthief.

“As this region’s lord and as a baron, I am Level 9999. I have long since reached the level cap!! I can equip even the most legendary of weapons and draw out its full power! I will now show you the power of the end! I will demonstrate the violence of the greatest possible spiritual awakening!!!”

“…”

“I haven’t even begun. The despair you feel now is nothing compared to what is to come!!”

He formed a megaphone with his hands and shouted.

“T-t-t-take their weapons from them!! Send a carrier pigeon to the guild and have their levels revoked!!”

His lips twisted into a smile.

His face was drenched with an unpleasant sweat.

The deadly force he wielded and his nervous excitement were a complete mismatch. But the sense that he couldn’t properly control his violence made it all the more horrifying. He was the kind of person who would kill in a flash of anger and then look back on it and desperately search out justifications for his actions.

The sweaty little man smiled with no understanding of what his violence would really do.

A brutal light shined deep in his eyes.

“Hee, hee hee. I can wield the ultimate power with all the Level 9999 magic equipment I want. Meanwhile, you have had your levels revoked, leaving you at Level 1!! The strongest will now trample the weakest underfoot. You will die powerless to stop meeeeeeee!!!”

In all honesty, this was Mikoto’s first thought.

“Oh, crap. I completely forgot about that equipment rule.”

“~ ~ ~!!!???”

The lord’s eyes opened wider than seemed possible.

Bikini armor Mikoto scratched her head apologetically.

“Patissiet did explain all that for us, didn’t she? Let’s see, how did that work? You register with the guild, work and fight for them to gain experience, and then you report to the guild to level up?”

“Oh, yeah. She did say that, didn’t she? And the weapons and armor you can equip is restricted by job and level, so you ordinarily need to level up if you want to use a powerful weapon, right?”

Mikoto and Shokuhou exchanged a glance.

“Shokuhou, are you using any kind of weapon?”

“You mean like my remote? You, on the other hand, are proving your cavewoman ability by doing it barehanded.”

Tears filled the lord’s eyes.

If those two weren’t using weapons, he couldn’t revoke their right to use them. He couldn’t weaken them.

Also…

“Level down.”

“Hweh?” said the sneakthief-faced lord.

Bikini armor Mikoto pointed down and mimed pressing an invisible button.

Over and over.

“Level down, level down, level down, down, down, down.”

“Wait, what are you doing ? What do you think you’re doiiiiing!?”

Experience was a special type of bioelectricity.

However it worked in other worlds, in this world Misaka Mikoto could manipulate experience and thus take complete control of the level system.

He was at the level cap of 9999?

If he got in her way, she could bring him all the way down to Level 1.

“Stop, please stop, you’ve seen my looks and my physique, this ultimate equipment is the only thing to prove my dignity and my power! No, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!”

After controlling the exploitative guild, working the enslaved elves until they collapsed, and growing fat taking all of their experience for himself, the sneakthief lord had the nerve to protest.

The light in Mikoto’s eyes said it was his turn to have everything taken from him.

The time for payback had arrived.

There was a disconcerting “zap!!”

The rapid level drop must have brought him below the level requirement because his glowing armor burst from within and fell away in pieces.

All that remained was a sneakthief in his underwear.

Tokiwadai’s Queen, who looked unusually at home in the dancer’s outfit, grimaced and gave him an icy look.

“What a disgrace…”

“H-hwuh?”

The sneakthief fell to all fours but not so he could use his scrawny arms to cover himself up.

He was trying to cover up the scattered ultimate equipment with his own body.

This was what happened when someone never had to work.

He was still trying to rely on his rare tools more than his own abilities.

That was why the #5 had rejected him with a single word: disgrace.

In a society that required participation in the guild system to survive, the elves were forced to choose from a list of awful jobs each day. And even if they completed the work they would much rather not do, they were cheated with unfair scales and had their pay and their experience stolen away in the form of a “fee”.

They diligently did their work but were still worn down to the point they had trouble eating.

Meanwhile, this man grinned smugly in his throne, leveling up endlessly.

He was the symbol of that system.

He was a visualization of that blackhole of exploitation.

“Wait, stop. Don’t destroy it, I beg you! This ultra-rare equipment is the symbol of my powerrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!”

A Railgun reduced them to fragments.

With a single arcade coin, the legend didn’t even last a full second.

The lord screamed.

The bizarre roar continued for more than ten seconds before he collapsed, lighter than a scrap of paper. His limbs were sprawled out around him and his empty eyes stared off in a random direction.

“A legend bought with money is worth less than the dust on the ground,” spat Mikoto.

Part 10

A wildfire took everything from him.

Including his wife and his young son.

But the wall of fire that approached with terrifying speed wasn’t the only thing that took lives that day.

Humans killed elves, elves killed humans, and so many of the corpses were too disfigured to say which side was responsible. It had been a maelstrom and storm of violence. Valhalla was protected by its thick wall, so even with the forest blazing outside, no one should have died as long as everyone inside the city worked together to evacuate.

But one young man screamed that they would be cooked alive inside the city, threw open the thick gate, and ran out into the crimson conflagration.

The fire had entered through the open gate like it was alive and the panic had inspired further panic.

At that point, there was no stopping it.

Some tried to stockpile food and water so they could survive, some used the chaos as a chance to loot, some ran around searching for the ‘culprits’ despite no evidence the wildfire was a case of arson, leading to hatred, grudges, and so much meaningless death.

While the fire burned for three days and three nights, the shabby little man realized something.

When disaster struck, it was already too late to start determining the priority of lives. A hierarchy had to be worked out in advance to ensure a swift recovery.

He refused to let the harm grow uncontrollably like this.

As the lord left in charge of all these people, it was up to him to come up with that hierarchy.

Even if it felt heartless.

To save as many lives as possible, he needed to be familiarize himself with the pain of letting some die.

But who had he prioritized in his hierarchy?

Oh, thought the lord.

If only he had been able to see what truly mattered and prioritized that. At the time, the all-encompassing sense of loss and emptiness he felt after losing his wife and son had left him unable to feel a connection to anyone – human, elf, or other monster – but what if he had found the courage to cautiously take someone else’s hand again?

He realized now that was when he had taken a wrong turn.

“Why…?” he muttered, staring down at the shattered remains of his ultimate equipment.

Why did he even want all that power?

What good was it when he couldn’t overcome the sorrow of his loss or find the courage to protect the weak?

“Why was I so fixated on this?”

Part 11

Mikoto and Shokuhou had defeated the lord.

But what they really wanted was the grimoire that shitty lord had stolen from Elf Elder Bakerian. Without that, they had no way of searching out the three Demon Lords they needed to defeat and could not prepare the three treasures ceremony necessary to send them back to Earth.

“Oh, this looks like the library.”

Once they found the correct room, Patissiet suddenly climbed up onto a bookcase and searched the shelves while hopping from bookcase to bookcase like they were stones in a pond. While elves probably liked high places since they lived in the trees, Mikoto really wished she wouldn’t do that when wearing a short skirt. It was inappropriate!

“Hm.”

Mikoto also searched the shelves (from the floor of course), but the books were not written in Japanese or English. It could be easy to forget since they used decimal numbers and they could understand each other’s spoken language, but this really was another world. She thought maybe she just had to give up, but then she noticed something.

(Huh? I feel like there’s a pattern to the titles on the spines.)

The titles were written with an angular otherworld language that wasn’t quite the English alphabet or the Cyrillic alphabet. Mikoto couldn’t even guess whether this was an alphabet where each symbol was a meaningless sound or if it was like kanji and each symbol was a word with multiple possible meanings. Still, she could swear there was a system to the overall arrangement of symbols and spaces. It reminded her of old Morse code or the braille seen on train station ticket machines.

“Hey, Patissiet. What does this say? Something like ‘The Relationship Between the Four Types of Magic’?”

“Hm? Um, it more accurately says ‘Illustrated Comparison Chart of the Four Great Elements’,” answered Patissiet, seated atop the bookcase with her legs dangling down.

That was more or less what Mikoto had guessed.

So she could grasp the general idea, but it would be safer to get the elf to provide the details. But if all of this world’s language worked this way, why had they gone to so much effort for no apparent reason? Of course, Mikoto knew Patissiet, who could read it like normal, would only be confused by the question.

To practice this world’s writing, Mikoto carefully ran her finger along the spines of the titles as she searched, but she couldn’t find any that seemed like a grimoire with details about the three Demon Lords.

“Wouldn’t it be faster for you to search that lord’s mind with Mental Out?”

“I have already brainwashed him, but we have to wait until he comes to before we can question him☆ You don’t want to put such a great burden ability on him that it breaks his brain before we can get the information out of him, do you?”

…Break his brain, she said. And if his brain was physically damaged, was even the #5 powerless to fix it?

Mikoto spread her arms impatiently.

“Then how about we carry all these books out and ask Elder Bakerian which one it is!?”

“I’d estimate around 2000 books in this small room.”

“Use Mental Out to learn how to operate those giant Anubis and Gargoyle things and have them do the work.”

“(Wait, could I get one of those to carry me around instead of doing all this walking? Finally, I’ve found a replacement for Hokaze-san in this world!)”

“She would cry if she heard that, you scheming queen.”

While they were discussing this, something happened without warning.

After a weird “zap!!” sound, Mikoto’s bikini armor and Shokuhou’s dancer outfit both burst off of their bodies.

Time froze for a moment.

It took them a few seconds to think back and realize what had happened.

Since they didn’t use any weapons, leveling them down couldn’t strip them of the ability to fight, but this would still happen to their armor since it required a certain level to equip.

The sneakthief lord’s request had finally gone through.

(I see, I see, I see. That makes sense.)

“What did we do to deserve this!?”

Part 12

Misaka Mikoto had been pushed to her mental limit.

With a bedsheet wrapped around her slender body like a towel, she returned to the room with the sneakthief-faced lord.

She magnetically crush his (new and quite cheap) armor.

“What did you do with the grimoire!? The one you stole from the elf elder named Bakerian!!”

“I-I do not know what you are talking about. I do not steal from my slaves. I have my pride!!”

Did he actually think that was a defense?

He was already stealing everything they had, including their lives.

Besides, this world’s entire society was supported by the labor of those slaves. If he didn’t want to use anything that rightfully belonged to them, he needed to strip naked and go live out in the woods or fields.

Shokuhou (who had also turned herself into a bedsheet spring roll) winked while leisurely leaning against the wall.

“I don’t think he has it.”

“How can you be so sure!?”

“Lying would be easy enough for him, but he knows what kind of retaliation ability awaits him if we find out☆”

“…”

“Either way, he can’t lie to Mental Out. I’ll do the rest.”

“Tch!!” Mikoto clicked her tongue and let go of his collar. His new armor was made of steel, but she had used her bare hands because her power would have crushed it like an aluminum can.

She left the room.

Like a storm blowing away.

“Feeling relieved?”

Sheet-wrapped Shokuhou stood in front of the lord as he slumped limply to the floor.

And she spun a TV remote which no one in this world should recognize.

“Why do you think she didn’t kill you when you’re irredeemable scum?”

“Eh? Huh?”

She pressed it between his eyes.

The wicked queen, who was neither kind nor direct, split her mouth into a smile.

“It wasn’t mercy ability☆”

Part 13

“As the lord of the Valhalla region, I command the immediate release of all slaves within my power’s reach!! Attention all elf slaves and other slaves: we will now treat you as equal people. If you question your collars and fetters, then run to Valhalla the first chance you have! And if any nobles or commoners have questioned the system of slavery but feared oppression for voicing these questions, then I have a proposal for you: join with us to forge strong bonds with which to protect your ability to do what is right and free the slaves!!!”

An emancipation proclamation had been issued.

Mikoto and Shokuhou held the newspaper in the office of the lord’s mansion.

Newspapers were the forefront of information and entertainment in this world without TV or internet.

Discrimination was all about fitting in.

Humans did not discriminate because of fear, disgust, or a lack of understanding. Only a small minority saw the target of discrimination as a real threat and felt direct fear. The majority went along with it because “what would the neighbors think” if they didn’t do what was expected of them. Protesting the discrimination would earn the ire of the minority of extremists, so they failed to determine if that would actually be a proper solution. And as they suppressed their thoughts like that, they would begin to resent any others who were not going through the same ordeal. In the end, they would be attacking the target of discrimination and not even know why. So only the action itself remained.

There were two ways to end discrimination. The first was to throw out your own power to fight and slowly work up from the bottom with a grassroots movement. The second was for someone at the top with an overwhelming power to fight to announce a decisive policy change. Either way, wordless violence would never work. No matter how great the power at work, it could not change the world if it never spoke to explain the purpose behind its actions. …Mikoto knew that all too well after the incident with the mass-produced military clones.

In that sense, this was a very valuable first step.

Even if the #5’s power had made it happen.

“See, even he can sound cool when he tries. If only he hadn’t been forced to play the part by Mental Out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He only managed to sound so cool because I gave him so much assistance,” said the #5, winking and putting her TV remote back in her expensive handbag.

(And being brainwashed into saying it gives the lord himself an excuse if he needs it.)

Shokuhou used Academy City’s #5 power – Mental Out.

She hadn’t just forced him to read a script – she had searched deep inside his mind.

She knew about the wildfire and his hierarchy of lives.

She even knew about the hatred and regret he had never voiced even after losing here.

But she wasn’t crass enough to blab it all to Mikoto.

Mikoto and Shokuhou were back in a bikini armor and dancer outfit.

The guild had forcibly stripped them of their levels, but experience here was bioelectricity. Mikoto had complete control over the level system, so after levelling the two of them up in mere seconds, they had rushed to the city’s armor ship (while sneaking through back alleys so no one would see them). It wasn’t a specialty shop with made-to-order products, so they had searched the inventory, found something their jobs could wear, and paid with fulgurites.

And while they were there…

“Um, do we just leave the money here?”

“You’re paying the listed price in a world where haggling is expected? How about I use this remote to give ourselves a 90% discount ability?”

“I get that I’m the only one your power doesn’t work on, but why do I have to act as your conscience?”

(Ugh, I hate that I can manipulate our experience at will but we still can’t change jobs. I’m stuck as a Warrior Woman forever.)

That lord had been the worst of the worst, but his proclamation had sent waves across Celesaqphere.

Little by little, questions about slavery were rising among the nobles and core cities of different regions.

It may have been more accurate to say there had already been cities friendly to elves, but word of them had been unable to spread.

After all, this was a fantasy world without the internet or smartphones. The nobles had patrols traveling the red brick roads between cities and any letters, newspapers and rumor-loving travelers would receive surprise inspections where information would be confiscated or rewritten. And if anyone was found to be spreading information the upper classes disliked, they would be beaten up, stripped of their gear, and forced to turn back the way they had come. That alone would stop the spread of information, but if the victim failed to reach the next closest city, they would die out there.

Flying carrier pigeons could be lured in and captured with food and nets to inspect whatever letters they were carrying.

Defeating the local lord had loosened the control over the roads, allowing information to flow freely once more.

Long story short, there had already been quite a few people sympathetic or friendly to the elves.

“Don’t let this shock you too much,” cautioned Shokuhou at the work desk.

She held a piece of paper. It was apparently a newspaper extra edition scattered from a kingdom airship.

It said: “On the king’s command, an uprising in the core city of Elysium has been suppressed. Many lives were lost. None of this would have happened if not for the wicked and confused hearts of those who have questioned our proper and traditional system of slavery. As protector of peace and order, our great king will never recognize the despicable rumors of a so-called emancipation proclamation”

Elysium was not this city.

This was Valhalla.

Elysium was a distant city with no connection to any of this.

The situation had far surpassed anything Mikoto had imagined.

“What…the hell? So just because we won here and took over a single lord’s territory, they attacked an entirely different city in retaliation!?”

“Like I said, don’t let it shock you too much.” Dancer Shokuhou sighed in exasperation. “The last thing the kingdom wants is for people to question slavery – and thus their king’s rule – and foment rebellion. If anti-slavery sentiment spreads while they work to defeat us, the situation will be entirely out of hand for them. And since they don’t know how powerful we are and can’t predict how long it will take to suppress us, they have decided to put out the fire in another region where they know they have more control over the timing.”

“…”

“They will attack entirely unrelated cities. It may have less to do with how many abolitionists exist in that city and more to do with not wanting critique of the king’s decision to gather from too many different viewpoints at once.”

“I don’t care about that. The problem is a bunch of complete strangers were killed because of what we did!!”

“That’s the thing.” Shokuhou winked and waggled her finger to tsk-tsk Mikoto. “What proof do we have that Elysium was actually destroyed?”

“…What?”

“This is a fantasy world with no TV or internet, remember? That means no live footage. The king only wants to extinguish the rebellious mood, so he doesn’t actually have to attack Elysium☆”

For that matter, this newspaper extra edition had been scattered from a kingdom airship.

The dancer placed another newspaper on the table.

This was an unauthorized privately published paper called an underground newspaper. It was smuggled past the surprise checks by the nobles’ soldiers on the roads. While they did have some printing technology here, their poor transportation technology meant they could only put out one paper a week and maybe an extra edition, but it still had a fair amount of influence in this world without TV or internet.

“This underground newspaper has an article about people starting to question slavery among the regional lords and the central cities, but it doesn’t say a thing about the kingdom’s troops destroying Elysium.”

“Underground newspapers have no rules about transparency, so we can’t exactly rely on them, can we? They only care about popularity and what people will want to read, so they have a tendency to report unconfirmed rumors or even outright lies!”

“The veracity of the articles doesn’t matter. This newspaper went through a lot of hands to reach us, so it’s soaked with various residual thoughts. Reading those with Mental Out provides a lot more information we can be a lot more certain of. I can get information from other places even easier than by sending out a bunch of spies.”

“…”

If you knew about psychometry, there were measures to take against it.

But that was a completely unknown phenomenon here in Celesaqphere. That may have made things a lot easier for Shokuhou. Of course, since no one here understood how her power worked, she could end up in a situation where she knew the true culprit but no one believed her.

“Wars are won with intelligence, not power. Hee hee. Not that I expect you to understand that when you always charge in without a second thought.”

“Then what’s your read of the situation?”

“50-50.”

Mikoto slammed her hands against the desk.

Shokuhou’s lazy expression didn’t change.

“That’s not good enough!! And even if it is fake news, if their story about the fall of Elysium doesn’t have the desired effect, they might go ahead and actually destroy it!”

“I would really rather not know, but what do you say we do about this, Misaka-san?”

Mikoto knew exactly what had to be done.

People’s lives were on the line. All the lives in a city just as big as Valhalla.

“I’ll go see for myself.”

“I knew you were going to say that. You do know you’re playing right into their hand ability, don’t you?”

“You said there were some cities and territories questioning slavery, right? Then Elysium might not be the only place the kingdom targets. I need to visit all the at-risk cities and help them if necessary!!”

Dancer Shokuhou breathed a heavy sigh.

She had known this would happen based on the trouble Mikoto had caused in Academy City to rescue the 20 thousand Sisters.

Shokuhou rested her head in a hand and winked in a sulky way.

“I’m not helping you.”

“Of course you aren’t. The capital is in reach. I have to rescue the people being threatened right now, but the kingdom can’t deploy troops if we stop them at the source. You’re good at scheming, so you work out a plan. Focus on figuring out how we can take over the capital.”

“Hm. Well, as long as you won’t hold up our overall schedule ability, go do whatever it is you want.’

“I swear I’ll be back in time for the attack!!”

Part 14

Bikini armor Misaka Mikoto did not leave through the door.

She instead opened the elevated window and jumped out.

Based on that, she probably really would do it.

Even if she began an extremely reckless action based on a momentary whim, the #3 would see it through to the end.

The #5 preferred to thoroughly set the stage and double and triple check everything was ready before she took action, so this was something she could never do.

“It pisses me off.”

Shokuhou heard a panicked voice.

The door was cracked open and Patissiet was peeking in through the gap. Was she that worried about Mikoto?

Shokuhou beckoned her in.

“Come on in.”

“Yikes!? U-um, sorry, am I to be punished? Yes, of course I am. A filthy slave who eavesdrops on a human conversation will naturally have an ear taken.”

“That will not be necessary.”

Shokuhou fairly strongly rejected the idea because it almost sounded like Patissiet would carry out the punishment herself.

Patissiet was pale as she nervously entered the room.

She was not the kind of person to look so concerned for her own wellbeing.

She would set herself aside and worry about those she cared for instead.

“W-w-w-will Lady Misaka be alright? I mean, um, she went out on her own… The kingdom is a big place. How can she protect everyone in the targeted areas when she doesn’t know what territories and what cities will be attacked?”

“Hee hee. She really is stupid, isn’t she? It does seem that she has rushed headlong into a trap meant to divide our forces and wear us down.”

“Um!?”

“But there’s nothing to worry about☆” insisted Shokuhou with a casual smile.

This was a repeat of that experiment. In order to stop the plan killing the 20 thousand Sisters, Mikoto had gone around destroying the different labs to try and eliminate the source of the experiment.

She knew this was a trap, but she had still chosen to go in and attack.

She had to be well aware she would only wear herself out with this foolish grand plan to protect every single life before her.

But…

“This is Misaka Mikoto we’re talking about.”

“?”

The elf tilted her head.

But for some things, that was a sufficient explanation.

The #3 could pull it off.

“Dozens of corporations and labs are scattered across Academy City, a place built from cold logic. They are all filled with secrets and so strictly guarded that simply setting foot inside could get you killed. One was even guarded by another Level 5. …But she still manages to pull these things off. She will save everyone without exception. Something awakens inside her at times like this. The animal ability sleeping within her will awaken, turning her into the guerilla expert who once spread chaos across Academy City.”

Part 15

Boom, crash, zap, kaboom, zap, thoom, zappity zap, booooom!!!

Part 16

Now.

Misaka Mikoto had left for her “inspection” of other regions.

While the foolish #3 went off to fight a war on her own, the very clever and beautiful Shokuhou Misaki worked on her plan to attack the capital.

She walked through the grass in her frilly dancer outfit below the strange blue sky with multiple layers of floating lands moving through it like pieces of eggshell. The fact that she could walk around in such a conspicuous outfit without the powers-that-be noticing proved how wonderful a world without security cameras could be.

“Let’s see, we need to defeat the three Demon Lords to complete the three treasures ceremony and return to Earth, but we don’t know anything about them. The royals or nobles have the grimoire that provides more information, so we need to threaten or brainwash the king at the top into ordering that all the grimoires owned by the various lords be submitted to him☆”

After muttering her thoughts aloud, Shokuhou shifted her focus to the outside world.

She faced the more immediate problem.

“Without Misaka-san’s brute force ability, we will have a harder time fighting. My Mental Out does not work against the wild animals that might attack without warning.”

“I did bring this, so I can protect you.”

Patissiet held a bow made of ash wood. It was a decently impressive longbow, which made it taller than short Patissiet was herself. Needless to say, it had been acquired in Valhalla, a city of commerce where you could buy just about anything.

A slave carrying a projectile weapon apparently warranted a summary execution for rebellion, so was Patissiet finally getting over those issues? If so, it was a good sign.

Shokuhou fondly viewed the little elf awkwardly wielding the big weapon.

But more importantly…

“It’s floating.”

“Yes, because it is a floating land.”

Patissiet’s dutiful response was cute and all, but that wasn’t Shokuhou’s point.

“Ahhhh! Is this all it takes to stop us without Misaka-san around!? We don’t have any way of reaching another land floating so close by! But if I turn back here, I just know Misaka-san will mock me ruthlessly later ooooooooooooon!!”

“Y-you have nothing to worry about! She is the weird one for flying around with that magnetism stuff. So without her, you just need to find a wild dragon and ride it to the next floating land!!”

“Again, my Mental Out only works on people!!”

Shokuhou was wandering the edge of the floating land trying to figure out what to do when she spotted an artificial glint that looked out of place in nature.

What she found was a lot like a giant propeller combined with a parachute.

It had apparently been attacked by a flying monster while crossing between floating lands.

(Why was it abandoned? I don’t like the idea that someone was attacked while using it.)

It looked like a type of paraglider, but it was powered by twisting animal fur with a hand crank instead of a gasoline engine.

With no other options left, Shokuhou held Patissiet in her arms and took off. However, she was too scared to jump off the edge of the cliff right away, so she tested it out in an empty field first. She had to run for a bit first to fill the parachute with air, but that went smoothly thanks to the propeller.

She began to float.

The wonder of it overpowered the fear as she felt gravity disappear from her feet. The cables didn’t get tangled up or anything.

“Oh? Oh, oh, oh…ohhh☆”

It was fun.

After she began to float, she rested her hips on something like a thick belt. It was an elegant thing, like a giant swing, and it would prevent Patissiet from slipping down too.

Unlike with a certain idiot she could mention who zoomed around with magnetism, this didn’t cause her stomach to rise into her throat like on a thrill ride, so she didn’t feel any fear. It was all so gentle and floaty. She was pretty sure she could safely leave the cliff like this.

Patissiet rejoiced in the back seat.

“This is incredible, Lady Shokuhou.”

“Hwa ha ha! We were fools to ever grow so reliant on Misaka-san!! Now, Patissiet, how do you steer this thing?”

“I have no idea.”

The elf’s head tilt caused Shokuhou’s stomach to rise into her throat.

There was already nothing below her feet.

Unable to play the comforting big sister any longer, Shokuhou screamed while somehow managing to adjust their height with the cords in her hands, achieving a soft landing on the new floating land about 100m from the previous one. If her angle had been off even a little, she would have found herself in a hell of flying into empty air forever.

“Pant, pant. I-I am never trying that again.”

“Hm? But don’t we need to use it to get back?”

“Vwahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

But now was no time to be holding her head and screaming.

The propeller-equipped hang glider’s presence meant there were giant monsters that attacked the people traveling between floating lands. There was no time to fold the vehicle up and cover it with grass and branches to hide it from view.

“Oh, no. Something’s coming. Th-that’s a Hraesvelgr!!”

The giant bird’s wingspan blotted out the blue sky above. At that size, a flap of its wings would cause a windstorm. Its giant talons were like a crane’s hook, so they could likely grab and tear apart a house.

This was no pigeon or crow – it was a true bird of prey.

And to reiterate, Shokuhou’s Mental Out did not work on nonhumanoid monsters.

“Eek!”

For once, it was the queen who cried out in fear.

Sensing that true fear, something changed inside little Patissiet with her ash longbow in hand. She took a step forward.

And spoke a single word.

“Blaze.”

The instant the arrow struck, the Hraesvelgr’s stomach ruptured from within.

“Bwuh!?”

Frightened by the sudden burst of red, Shokuhou fell not just onto her rear but tumbled onto her back too.

When Patissiet had a reason, she would kill. Lives really were taken unusually lightly in this world.

And she had previously explained how Celesaqphere’s magic worked.

But that had not been the basic fire attack magic!!

“Elfshot.” Little Patissiet sighed softly as she gently lowered her bow. “The attack is meant to imbue magic into a flint arrowhead and paralyze the target, but…ugh, when I do it, it always explodes inside the target’s body.”

“…”

So if she even scratched her target with her arrow, they were dead?

It didn’t matter that she was Level 11 and only had access to the most basic magic. Not when she could simply shove it inside her target’s body and detonate it there. This could possibly be even more deadly than the Railgun which strictly sent its power in from the outside.

Shokuhou’s eyes widened while she lay on her back in her frilly outfit.

“Wait, um, Patiss- what in the world was that?”

“I know. This destroys the target’s blood vessels and organs, so the meat doesn’t taste any good. It’s completely useless in real life. I really need to figure out how to do a proper Elfshot that paralyzes them so I can capture them alive.”

The elf tilted her head in disappointment with her ash bow in hand.

She apparently didn’t realize this ability made her a real candidate for being the strongest.

Celesaqphere was demonstrating yet another flaw by burying her talent without ever letting her know its true value.

“The meat kind of splattered everywhere, but it would be a waste to not gather it up and eat it. It should still taste okay once we cook it.”

Part 17

The two of them spent two days approaching their destination.

In that time, Shokuhou noticed something.

“Patissiet☆”

“Eek!?”

The little elf jumped.

It had bothered Shokuhou how the elf’s long ears would twitch up and down while she was talking, so after plenty of observation, she reached out and grabbed the ears between her fingers.

“These movements mean something, don’t they?”

“U-um, Lady Shokuhou, not my ears.”

“You can talk with your voice, your eyes, hand signals…and even your long ears, can’t you? That gives you a lot more information ability you can communicate while in the trees or the dark night, so you elves are probably unstoppable when hiding in the forest with bows.”

It was unclear if the humans of this world had noticed these secret conversations among the elves, but there was no fooling Shokuhou whose power made her unbeatable in the field of communication.

(Well, given how they’ve been treated, it’s only natural the elves will want to secretly badmouth their so-called masters right in front of them.)

At any rate, that wasn’t the most important issue at the moment.

“That’s the capital city of Tuonela. Wow, it really is big.”

“?”

Shokuhou was confused.

She couldn’t identify where that name came from.

(Is this like if they decided to name everything after stuff from Records of Three Kingdoms, but they ended up using all the big kingdom and warlord names already and are stuck using minor village and temple names?)

Whatever the case, Patissiet’s reaction led Shokuhou to also observe the city from a distance.

It was definitely big.

There were some minor differences in construction style. Most likely, the original city had started out in the center and, as the population grew, new parts of the city were added onto the outer edges. The city’s history could be seen there. Some areas had gable type buildings and others had dormer type buildings. Viewed from above, it may have looked like the rings of a tree.

The houses were all made of stone.

They weren’t even made from wood or brick.

In Valhalla, stone had been a privilege reserved for the lord’s mansion, so did that mean the capital just had that many wealthy residents?

“Is it like how everyone uses dryers in blazing-hot Los Angeles?”

“?”

That was apparently too much for an elf from this world to understand.

There were also a lot of enslaved monster girls in the capital. Apparently they didn’t kill their slaves when tax season came around here.

“Tuonela doesn’t have taxes.”

“None at all?”

“They say that’s why all the rich merchants come here! It must be a relief to have a collector of a master who tries to keep their slaves alive as long as possible.”

She was talking about being exploited, but Patissiet sounded almost jealous.

…Of course, no municipality like a city could function without any tax revenue.

(So do they force anyone with enough wealth to make “charitable donations”? Ew, I do not like the idea of a society that makes charity part of the routine. It might be efficient, but there’s no heart ability in it.)

There were more standalone mansions than boxy buildings here because, unlike Valhalla protected by its moat and thick wall, Tuonela had a much more open layout. With a wall around a city, it couldn’t expand outwards and was forced to develop upwards instead.

When people gathered somewhere, money came with them and then more people arrived to get at that money.

That was evidence of a positive cycle, but…

(No moat and no wall. There is a gate at the entrance, but it’s more like a Shinto shrine’s torii and won’t do much to keep attackers out. This place seems a lot less defended than Valhalla, so I wonder how it works.)

A 3km square piece of land hovered about 50m directly above this city of a million.

A fairy tale castle with spires and protective walls stood on that land.

But instead of that being the floating land, there was an even bigger rectangular floating land above it with hundreds of thick wires stretching down to support the king’s castle.

As they had seen in the attack on the village, the biggest threat in this world was a carpet bombing from a higher layer, so dangling the castle down like that was probably meant to act as a giant umbrella. The giant floating land above it would be one made of solid bedrock to prevent anyone from breaking or digging through it too easily and the umbrella was far larger than the castle itself, to prevent assassins or an enemy army from dropping straight down from it.

However…

“That isn’t enough wires to actually support a 3km piece of land. They wouldn’t be able to distribute the weight enough and it would just fall.”

“?”

Patissiet didn’t understand what Shokuhou meant.

Her point was that the castle was in fact on floating land after all. The wires were camouflage so that anyone plotting a rebellion would be wasting their time trying to cut the wires. In fact, they were bait to identify any dangerous elements among the masses.

But given the size of the umbrella, the castle didn’t actually intend to protect the entire city from a bombing. The king probably intended to continue his luxurious lifestyle as long as his castle was safe. About as shallow an idea as someone assuming they only needed a convenience store to have an endless supply of food and drink without considering the product planning, production factories, delivery drivers, and other behind-the-scenes work that went into getting those things on the shelves. If he enjoyed that life so much, Shokuhou hoped he kept eating his snacks until he keeled over and died.

Because this way she had to deal with him.

(Oh, whoops. It really is easy to take lives too lightly in this world.)

“I see…”

“?”

After all, this was a world where airships and other vehicles were used to travel between floating lands. Did they think a wall or moat around the capital would be meaningless? Since there were no other floating lands passing directly above the capital, they may have placed more emphasis on protecting the sky. Such as preemptively destroying any floating lands that would arrive too close for comfort.

They could observe the vast land from that elevated location and, if an enemy force was approaching, actively set up their defenses in front of the capital.

In addition to the knights, the capital had adventurers, wealthy merchants, and even bandits. Every last one of those would want to leave the safe capital and make money on the front line once a lucrative war had begun. People’s desires could create unexpected strength. If an enemy had to deal with them all, they could suffer unexpected losses after receiving attacks from multiple fronts at once.

Was that how it was set up?

“That won’t accomplish much.”

“Um?”

(For one, Misaka-san’s special ability can render all the capital’s defenses meaningless. I just hope she actually returns in time.)

The collars and chains looked out of place in the gorgeous city.

Elves were not the only enslaved people. There were plantlike dryads, slender but strong dark elves, and nymphs who were hard to tell apart from humans. It looked like all the monsters capable of speech had been abducted and turned into a labor force. And they may have thought they were fortunate because the capital did not kill them when tax season came around.

What a strange world this was.

It was different from anything Shokuhou was used to.

She didn’t know what it was like in areas with less influence from the king, but in the capital where everyone greatly benefited from the king’s reign, it didn’t look like anyone was thinking about removing those collars. A parent with a small, innocent child was walking right past a chained slave.

(What a pain.)

Dancer Shokuhou turned her binoculars in a different direction.

It seemed likely the king’s forces were kept in the castle above, not in the city below. The quantity was much greater here, but the quality wouldn’t be all that different from the Valhalla lord’s forces. Mysterious elite special forces were only found in fiction. After all, different soldiers in the same kingdom would be trained and equipped more or less the same. The kingdom gained nothing by restricting how many of their troops had the best equipment.

Shokuhou directed her binoculars toward the castle grounds and checked the size of the barracks and counted the windows.

“Ugh…there’s so many. It’s like one of those mammoth housing complexes that are falling out of favor.”

“Mammoth? I have heard the capital army has 100 thousand soldiers.”

No kingdom was going to honestly report the size of its army to outsiders. That number was probably increased by around 20% to intimidate any potential enemies. But even accounting for that, it was 80 thousand. That meant they supported that many people who would only have to work when there was a war or a parade. That was the entire population of a small city eating food paid for by the capital’s budget (which came from charitable donations, not taxes) and the taxes collected from elsewhere.

While the elves and other enslaved monsters worked and worked with only more exploitation as a reward, that collection of murderers in the castle was well fed.

(Hm. When you spell it out like that, it really pisses me off.)

“H-have you figured anything out?”

“Lots☆”