Editing Godhorn Tech:Volume1 Chapter1 (section)

===Between the Lines 1===

This is a story about Celina Bodenburg.

It takes place a few days before she arrived at the Blueforest forest.



Every age of every world has its villains.

A free and open world still gives power to villains.

It gives them as much power as it gives anyone else.

“Man, talk about easy money,” said Dake Grassland, the large bearded man who led the group.

The stone-paved roads between large cities were crucial infrastructure for bandits as well. Especially in the endless expanses of plains where the knights’ attention was lax and the patrolmen could be bought off. That “prime real estate” would naturally be caught up in turf wars between bandits, but that was not a problem for this group.

There was a reason why they could so easily monopolize this artery of trade.

“Hey, ''Professor''. You sure this is all you want for your share?”

“I am.”

“I’m not complaining about paying out less since our expenses have gone way up as our group’s gotten so big, but you could really stand to ask for more. It’s honestly weirding us out that you’re not.”

Dake kept a jocular tone, but he noticed the other person did not do the same.

A gloomy girl looked back at the bandit leader. Her name was Airi Downerzone. She wore a thick cloak pulled up over her head, but below that she only wore a negligee so thin the color of her skin showed through. The outfit was unusual for travel or for sleeping. She almost looked like a grim reaper wearing nothing but a cloak.

The teenage girl known as the Professor said little.

She lived in her own world. Time seemed to move at a different speed for her.

“I only need enough to survive off of.”

“Really?”

“But you did say I could take the ‘trash’ you have no use for yourself, didn’t you?”

She made it sound like she was doing them a favor by disposing of some defective items and trash, but the pressure behind her words would not take no for an answer. The pressure was all the more powerful because she herself was not aware of it.

There was something else she wanted far more than the obvious treasure.

Something the bandits could never imagine a use for.

Dake Grassland was honestly curious, but in an unusually perceptive moment for a bandit, he could tell that getting greedy here would end badly.

That girl had singlehandedly given them complete control in this area.

In this world of swords and sorcery, the sorcery side of the equation was incredibly powerful. The bandits had failed to master the sword but also lacked the guts to go for something as new as a gun, so they had been left with axes and hammers that relied on simple weight. Even as a group, they could not hope to face someone like that.

Airi had annihilated anyone who attempted to ''intrude''.

But it was no more than coincidence that the gloomy grim reaper girl had joined this group in particular. If another organization would have helped her gather “trash” more efficiently, it was this group that would have been blown away while her magic tore into the ground.

“So what kind of ‘trash’ was there this time?”

“You mean the Beast Nova, right?”

Dake Grassland jerked his bearded chin toward the toppled wagon.

The grim reaper girl walked over with her thick cloak dragging behind her. Yes, she was clearly dragging the cloak, yet she moved in complete silence. That was enough for the bandit leader to shudder since he had failed to make it sneaking into mansions as an urban thief, so he had been forced to accept the outdoor life of a bandit where they only had rum to drink and dried meat to eat and never got to take a proper bath.

A change came over Airi when she peeked behind the wagon.

She smiled.

She had not batted an eye while blasting other bandit groups with powerful magic and converting them into fertilizer, so this smile was even more chilling than when she had calmly crushed and killed.

“Excellent.”

“Really?”

“That is a harpy. Flying Beast Novae are ideal because you can easily restrain them by breaking their wings.”

The figure seated on the ground trembled.

She could apparently understand human language.

“Couldn’t you just catch one of the wild monsters out there?”

“Capturing them alive is the hard part. My magic is so powerful I end crushing them instead.”

They were talking about a girl with giant falcon wings instead of arms. She was probably meant to keep away other monsters instead of as a product to be sold. Just like how people would wear a tuft of wolf fur on a necklace to ward off animal attacks. By taming a powerless Beast Nova and living with it, the hope was its smell would rub off on you and others of its kind would choose not to attack. Merchants who made long journeys by wagon often used that trick.

Then again, that was why they were often targeted by humans instead of monsters. Only wealthy merchants had the money to spare to tame a Beast Nova, so they might as well have been walking around with a sign saying “attack me, I’m rich”.

“There are several cracks in this continent,” said Airi Downerzone with her sticky smile intact. “A dark mist known as miasma rises from deep below the surface. Humans cannot fly over it or descend into the cracks to investigate, so these create what are known as World Barriers.”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“I am researching them. If a Beast Nova falls into the depths of those cracks and manages to crawl back out alive, they break past the limits of their own species, becoming a Wicked God. …Now, that is only an old legend without any real reason to believe it, but I want to see it happen.”

The harpy started shaking her head.

Was she calling that story a lie, or was she protesting the idea of having the experiment run on her?

''If it manages to crawl back out alive.

''I want to see it happen.

Airi had no guarantee of the subject’s survival, nor had she ever seen it work. Even though she had tested it several times. In plays, throwing someone alive into the miasma-filled cracks in the continent was a standard way for gangs to execute traitors.

Just then, a subordinate interrupted.

“Dake, there was a kid hiding in the wagon. What do we do with him?”

The bandit leader glared at his subordinate more than necessary because he was worried the youth had overseen the pathetic look on his face a moment earlier.

“Tch. A young boy?” he growled at the terrified youth. “What do you even do with that? We can’t sell him to a brothel or to the mines.”

“If you have some ‘trash’ needing disposal, then give it to me. I can toss it into the crack along with the harpy.” The cloaked girl smiled thinly. The smile seemed to split across her face. “Hee hee. Ee hee hee. I’ve thrown a few Beast Novae into the cracks, but never a human. Who knows, maybe the legend grew distorted over the ages. Maybe it really needs to be a hum-”

Before she even finished her sentence, a massive shape plowed into Airi Downerzone from the side.



“Hm? Hmm?”

Celina Bodenburg made some puzzled noises inside the Schwarz Schütze.

That mass of alchemy was 500m long, yet it broke the rules of trains by not needing a fixed track. The armored train constantly created new metal rails and constantly laid them out on the ground using the two rollers lined up on the front car, allowing it to travel across sand, snow, or whatever other terrain the continent threw at it. Now, the metal rails were so solid not even the average illegal diggers could remove them. That left ugly marks on the land, so she had a personal rule of avoiding roads, campgrounds, and other areas where people would see the result.

(What a pain. These small negatives really add up, so you can’t ignore them. Maybe I should invest a bit more in environmental protection before it influences our brand image.)

She was the queen of land travel.

The bandits had been out of luck the moment she encountered them. But the tragedy was only going to get worse for three primary reasons.

First, the Schwarz Schütze was a Godhorn Tech, a sorcery weapon so massive it towered over people, but it was by no means slow. The sensors installed all over the train searched its surroundings and accurately picked up even the smallest oddity.

Second, Celina Bodenburg was obsessed with money, but she was also a young girl with a lot to learn about business. That meant she would still get involved in issues with no chance of profit, calling it philanthropy or advertisement.

“Oh?”

And third, she had noticed the emblem on the side of the toppled wagon.

“Now that is a problem. They might be a tiny regional company, but we do business with them.”

With a dull roar, an unseen power grabbed at the girl and tugged her to the right.

The massive armored train had taken a wide curve to make a U-turn while the many alchemy cannons on its roof accurately rotated. That weapon could fire over a mountain range dividing two countries and crush the battlefield on the other side, so it was extreme overkill for protecting a trade route.

Instead of horses, the bandits were riding on the backs of giant six-legged ants made of metal. They had likely stolen those Slaughter Ants. They were 5m long and they might have been nigh untouchable with 1000 of them at their disposal, but their opponent this time proved why the “nigh” was necessary.

In this world of swords and sorcery, the sorcery side of the equation was incredibly powerful.

Especially when that sorcery was a 500m mass of alchemy equipped with a legendary Wicked God’s horn as a direct power source.

(Fools. Those are the parliament defense troops we sold to the Republic. They’re our products. Some official must be selling near-new malfunctioning ones in the name of research.)

“From iron to copper, from copper to lead, from lead to tin, from tin to mercury, from mercury to silver, from silver to gold, and from gold back to iron. Metals grow through the cycle of combination, death, and resurrection. Oh, great serpent, create a closed spiral and construct eternal stability. Here I choose seven-groove rifling with a right-hand twist.”

Of course, the Slaughter Ants coming her way had to be disposable decoys.

Schwarz Schütze’s crystal sensors danced gently along the river surface to accurately detect the other group trying to sneak from the field. That group was using the fancier winged model of Slaughter Ants.

After attacking one of the glorious Bodenburg Company’s business partners, they had realized they stood no chance, abandoned their weaker subordinates, and made a run for safety to ensure they did not lose everything.

“Set the Knight of Wands warhead – that is, fire in fire.”

She knew exactly what they deserved: death.

“Swiftly eliminate all worldly obstacles to our expert work, Schwarz Schütze.”

With a deafening boom, the world was compressed.

But it was not the swarm of gray-shining Slaughter Ants that was blown away. The green ground covered in weeds was torn up and the dirt blasted into the air became a storm that shredded the air and the bandits like a shotgun blast. A single attack changed the course of the river and created a new lake.

A second and third attack followed.

This would continue until the girl was satisfied.

This army of bandits was using illicitly-obtained military weaponry to arm themselves like a national cavalry, but ''such a minor threat'' was shredded like wet paper.

A criminal organization’s value came from their ability to remain hidden.

The more legendary the criminal, the less was known about them. For example, not even the national intelligence agencies knew if the top-class assassin known as Shadow Crack was a man or a woman.

So it should have been plain as day what would happen to bandits who carelessly revealed their presence like this.

“Calcination, coagulation, fixation, dissolution, digestion, distillation, sublimation, separation, incineration, fermentation, multiplication, and projection. From the 12 operations found in the 12 constellations, I choose the 1st – the Ram’s calcination.”

Trains were meant to move.

The Schwarz Schütze’s greatest selling point was the combination of its simple mass with its ability to act as the continent’s greatest ceremonial ground for alchemy. When combined with a technique capable of breaking all matter down at the smallest level, it became a deadly weapon that would crush any obstacle in its path, no matter the strength or size.

“I offer one final tribute. Those lives would normally be worth no more than the ashes you leave behind, but today is special. I will have our research division reveal your identities and send a small monetary gift to your families. Although I imagine they disinherited you long ago if you are out here working as bandits.”

No one ever heard their filthy pleas for their lives, but they only had themselves to blame. They were out here in the middle of nowhere to ambush and kill their targets.

Unlike the first pass, the train did not even shake when it hit them.

The alchemic operation of calcination referred to exposing a specimen to such intense heat that the solid was ''reduced to a powder''.

“Hm, that should about do it.”

The countless sensors on the exterior of the armored train picked up footage of a harpy and small child staring in a daze. The ground had been torn up, the path of a river changed, a new lake created, and the entire map rewritten just to save those two. They may have felt their lives were not worth all that.

(And that is the correct conclusion as a businessperson. Advertisement and marketing are only given such large budgets by the companies large enough to have begun the cycle of money making money. If you want to avoid driving yourself into bankruptcy with unprofitable philanthropy, then don’t try this at home.)

“Now, then.”

After plowing that land without batting an eye, Celina Bodenburg threw out her cold tea and made some more.

If she wanted to call this the strongest power, she needed to create enough legends that everyone already knew what she could accomplish.

That also meant she could not allow anyone else to reduce the quality of her efforts.

She already had a target in mind.

“I will destroy you next, Moebius Entrance.”

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Back to [[Godhorn_Tech:Volume1_Prologue|Prologue]]
| Return to [[Godhorn_Tech|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Godhorn_Tech:Volume1_Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>