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Side Story 3: Genia and Merula’s “Let’s Test it!”
“It’s time for Genia...”
“...a-and Merula’s...”
““...Let’s Test It!””
The two who shouted this and pumped their fists into the air were overscientist Genia, who had just gotten engaged to Ludwin Arcs, the Captain of the Royal Guard, the other day; and Merula Merlin, from the Spirit Kingdom of Garlan, the high elf whose too-strong curiosity had gotten her accused as a witch, and put her on the run from the Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria.
The two of them were now in the ruined dungeon workshop owned by the House of Maxwell.
“...Um, was there some meaning behind that call?” Merula asked Genia, her pale face having turned red.
“Huh? It was obviously just a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Spur-of-the-moment...? Now, listen, Genia...”
“C’mon, Merumeru. Time’s finite. Let’s get to testing!”
“Please, don’t call me Merumeru!”
Ignoring Merula’s protests, Genia pulled something out from behind her. It was a squalid bag, about the size of a sandbag used in boxing practice.
“This here is the item up for testing today,” Genia declared. “Dun-du-du-duuun: the Hero’s Sack.”
“The Hero’s Sack?”
“This sack was said to be used by the first King of Elfrieden, who, just like our king (Souma), was summoned from another world as a hero. It may not look like much, but it can hold a lot, and recently Sir Poncho’s been using it to store the ingredients he gathers all over the continent and brings them back.”
“The first king... Wait, isn’t this a real treasure?” Merula asked, poking at the sack.
If this was the first King of Elfrieden they were talking about, he was a great hero who united the many races to form this kingdom. His story was told of in legend, and he was still loved and respected by the people. If the first king had used this, it was probably an incredibly prized possession.
“It’s technically a national treasure, yeah,” Genia said like it was no big deal.
“N-National treasure?!” Merula jumped back in surprise. “Wait, is it okay to treat a national treasure so poorly?!”
“When I told the king ‘I want to study it,’ he said, ‘Don’t break it,’ and let me borrow it.”
“So easily?! Like you were asking to borrow a new pocket watch that he just bought?!”
“It sounds like the king wants to research overscience relics,” Genia shrugged. “You think something happened?”
“I-I wouldn’t know...”
Having learned there was a connection between his former world and this one after the incident in the Star Dragon Mountain Range, Souma directed his research organizations to do more specific research into the overscience relics that were no doubt key to learning what the connection was. He hadn’t gone so far as to explain that situation to them, though.
“Anyway, today I think we’ll run tests on the Hero’s Sack.” Genia picked up the relic. “Now first, let’s see about its weight and volume. As you can see, at present, even a delicate basement-dweller with thin arms like me can easily lift it up.”
“Was the self-deprecation necessary? But yes, it certainly does look light.”
“But, get this, there’s already a whole lot of stuff inside. Okay, my golems, bring it on out.”
With that, Genia had the dirt golems she made with her own ability bring over a large, rectangular water tank. It had to be as large as a sizable shed. The base was about four by five meters, and it was more than four meters tall. Genia had to put up a ladder just to stand on the edge of it.
Merula, who was left looking up at her, asked, “Um, Genia? What is this for?”
“The thing about this sack is, it’s already been left immersed in a river for half a day.”
“What are you doing to a national treasure?! Won’t you be punished?!”
Merula was confused, but Genia didn’t care.
“We can’t let little things get in the way of academic progress.”
“I... I always thought I was too obsessed with research, but... it’s a big world out there.”
“Haha! Please, don’t compliment me like that, Merumeru.”
“I’m not complimenting you!”
“Well, anyway, thanks to being immersed in the river for half a day, there’s a lot of river water inside here. We don’t know its volume, so it remains unknown whether it’s full or not. Regardless, I think if we open the sack into this water tank, we can find out how much water is inside. If it gets dangerous, we can just close the sack up, after all.” With that, Genia turned the sack toward the water tank. “Now, the grand opening.”
With that easygoing proclamation, Genia opened the sack and water started gushing out with incredible force. The kickback made Genia lean backward despite herself, but she managed to prevent it from becoming a problem by having her golem servants hold her in place.
The water kept building, and in no time, the tank was already half full. Because it had been filled with river water, it was muddy, and there was a lot of algae, chunks of driftwood, and garbage inside.
“Oh, fish...” Merula, who was looking up from below, noticed a number of fish swimming inside the tank. They must have gotten inside while it was immersed in the river.
Setting aside everything else, the fish in the bag were still alive. This is fascinating. I don’t know what the bag is like inside, but at a bare minimum, it has the conditions necessary to support living fish.
Merula tended to get dragged around by Genia, but she was every bit as curious. She quickly shifted her mind into research mode and began analyzing.
The water, which it seemed might come out infinitely, eventually came to a stop with the tank nine-tenths of the way full.
“Hmm,” said Genia. “It’s unthinkable that this was all that came in after it was immersed in the river for half a day. Therefore, this might be right around the capacity of the sack. More or less than one shed full? Normally, if there was this much water inside, I wouldn’t be able to lift it. Does that mean the weight of the things inside can be ignored?”
Having come down from the ladder, Genia speculated with her hand on her chin.
“It’s incredible to be able to ignore the weight of so much water...” Merula pondered. “Oh! Look, Genia. Can you see the fish swimming in the tank?”
“Hm? ...You’re right. They’re swimming around full of energy.”
“Are they so energetic because it was just half a day? But there’s no light inside, right? Even if there was water the whole time, they’d probably think it was night and be more sluggish.”
“The fish inside are energetic, huh... There’s something about that fact that catches my attention. If I recall, the king said food that gets put inside doesn’t rot easily. If that’s the case...”
The girls traded arguments that seemed to go nowhere.
While they did, there were two men watching them from the terrace of the log cabin built inside the ruined dungeon workshop. One of them was the Captain of the Royal Guard, Ludwin Arcs, who was Genia’s fiancĂ©. The other was Merula’s guardian (?), Souji Lester, the rotten bishop sent from the Orthodox Papal State of Lunaria.
The two were drinking beer on the terrace while watching the women engaged in their research. One wore a dumbfounded smile, and the other was holding his head.
“That Genia, being reckless again.” The one holding his head was Ludwin. Today, like every day, the serious Captain of the Royal Guard was being jerked around by his childhood friend Genia. “Did she say she left a national treasure in a river for half a day? What was she thinking?! If it got lost, they’d do more than just abolish the House of Maxwell!”
“Hahaha!” Souji laughed jollily as Ludwin clutched his head. “Oh, what’s the harm? Either way, during your generation, the Houses of Arcs and Maxwell will merge to become the House of Maxwell-Arcs, right?”
“Urgh, that’s not the problem! Besides, should you be letting Madam Merula run wild, Sir Souji? You’re her guardian, aren’t you?”
“Even if you call me her guardian, my job’s just to take it easy and avoid acting on the requests my country sends me,” Souji said. “I’ll protect her from the demands of my country to arrest her, but I don’t care enough to open my mouth about anything else. When it comes to anything other than research, she’s got her act together better than I do, anyway.”
While saying that, Souji knocked back his beer. Normally, a man of the cloth in the Lunarian Orthodox faith would be expected to refrain from such worldly desires, but he was as rotten as ever.
“Phew...” he added. “When it comes to one of us telling the other off, it’s Merula that’s the noisy one, you know? It’s always, ‘Clean up this room,’ or, ‘You’re acting like a slob. Get it together.’”
“No, I think Madam Merula is right... They’re both researchers, but the way she’s neat and tidy is like the polar opposite of Genia.”
“You might be surprised to find you’d be better off getting together with Merula instead, don’t you think?” Souji asked.
“By the same token, if we paired you up with Genia, I think the two of you would run even more wild than you do now.”
Imagining the pairings of Ludwin and Merrula, and Souji and Genia... The two of them smiled wryly. That was because though it resulted in couples with similar personalities, they just didn’t feel right.
“Well, it’s hard for things to work out when both partners are too similar, after all,” Souji said.
“...Is that how it works?”
While the two were having that sort of heart-to-heart talk, Genia waved Souji over. “Hey, you got a minute, Old Man Souji?”
“Hm? You mean me, Young Miss Genia?”
“Yeah. Sorry, but could you come over here for a moment?”
“Geez, I guess I’ll have to...”
With steps made slightly unsteady by alcohol, Souji headed over to where Genia and Merula were.
Being called out by name when Genia was experimenting...
Ludwin had a bad feeling about this. But if he stopped the man from going, he was bound to be the one to eat a stray bullet instead, so he shut up and watched Souji go.
—Slightly before Genia called Souji over—
“I suspect the reason why food that’s put in the sack doesn’t rot easily is because the time it takes the food to rot is being extended,” Genia said.
“By which you mean?” Merula asked.
“I think the flow of time inside the sack is different from the flow of time outside the sack. Perhaps the reason the fish that had been inside for half a day were still so energetic also stems from the flow of time being different. So, here’s the idea.”
Genia pulled out an hourglass. When turned upside down, the sand that was filling the top part began falling to the bottom. Genia put the hourglass into the sack in that state.
“This hourglass is designed so that it takes five minutes for all the sand to reach the bottom. We’ll wait five minutes with it like this.”
“...I see. So that’s how it is.”
—Five minutes later—
When Genia pulled out the hourglass, the sand still hadn’t fully fallen. More than that, there was little change in the amount of sand at the top at all.
Genia brought her hand to her chin and groaned. “Hrm... I expected the sand not to have fully fallen, but if the amount in the top hasn’t noticeably changed, does that mean time is practically stopped?”
“Time’s stopped inside this bag?! Is that possible?!”
“Our common sense doesn’t apply when it comes to the way overscience relics work, my dear Merumeru.”
“Don’t call me that... But how can we tell if time is stopped inside or not?”
“Hm... It seems we’re forced to use our last resort.”
“L-Last resort?”
Merula gulped as Genia flashed her an indomitable smile.
“Going inside to see.”
And that was why Souji was called over.
Merula turned a cold look on Genia. “So you’re not going to go inside.”
“I am an observer,” Genia said. “I have a duty to leave records of the experiment.”
“Honestly... This is really going to be okay, right?”
“You’re worried about the old man?” Genia smirked, and Merula turned to look away.
“Even if it was him, I’d have trouble sleeping at night if anything were to happen.”
“It’ll be fine,” said Genia. “You saw how energetically the fish were swimming around, didn’t you?”
“They may have looked that way on the surface, but there’s no way to tell if the fish are really fine when they don’t speak.”
Then Souji came over. “You called, Young Miss Genia?”
“Hee hee! I know this is sudden, but we’re going to have you help us out a little.”
“Help? ...Wait, whuh?!”
Without waiting for his response, Genia pulled the Hero’s Sack over the top of Souji.
Souji had an awfully muscular physique for a man of the cloth, and normally he never would have fit into a sack like that; but once it was over his head, he went in easily. He was completely inside in no time.
Merula was flabbergasted at what just suddenly happened. “Wait! Is this really okay?!”
“No worries, no worries... Probably.”
“What do you mean, probably...?”
“For now, let’s wait.”
Was it around ten minutes later?
Genia slowly took Souji’s body out of the bag.
When Souji flew out and landed flat on his butt, Merula rushed over to him.
“Souji! Are you okay?!”
“Ow, ow, ow... What? What in the world just happened?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, right?! Do you have two arms and two legs?! Do you have two eyes, noses, and ears?!”
“No, it’d be weird if a human had two noses. Wait, but, huh?”
When Souji looked restlessly around the area, Genia asked him a question.
“Old Man Souji, just now, I put you in a bag. About how much time do you feel has passed?”
“Time? I wasn’t counting, but... you pulled it off me right afterward, right?”
“Nope. You were actually inside the bag for about twenty seconds.”
“Don’t be stupid. There’s no way it was that long.”
“Hm... Ow!”
As Genia was trying to think—smack—a fist dropped down on her head.
When Genia turned around, Ludwin was standing there with a smile on his face and a pulsing vein on his temple. In response to that threatening look, Genia managed to force a smile, her face twitching.
“B-Big Brother Luu? I-I can’t say I approve of domestic violence.”
“You be quiet! What do you think you’re doing, suddenly using Sir Souji for your experiments?!”
“It was for the advancement of science...”
“There are things it’s okay to do, and things that aren’t! Now, listen here, you...”
While Ludwin was starting to thoroughly lecture Genia, Merula was staring at the Hero’s Sack which had been left lying on the ground.
Souji noticed her line of sight and spoke up. “H-Hey... Merula?”
Even after he called her name, Merula’s eyes were still fixed on the sack.
Souji remembered. Merula Merlin was a bundle of curiosity, and she would keep charging forward even after it killed the cat. For instance, she crept into a holy place, the main church of Lunarian Orthodoxy, to steal a glance at the Lunalith, a monolith which relayed prophesies from the moon god Lunaria, who was the object of worship in Lunarian Orthodoxy, were said to descend. That was how she was declared a witch by the Orthodox Church and ended up on the run.
As if she resolved herself to do it, Merula shouted and thrust her head into the sack.
“Merula?!” Souji shouted.
Then Ludwin and Genia noticed the situation, too.
“Madam Merula?!”
“Merumeru!”
Unlike Ludwin, who was genuinely concerned for her well-being, Genia moved next to Merula, who was shoulders-deep in the bag, then pulled out a pocket watch and called out to her.
“Merumeru, can you hear my voice?”
“Yes. I hear you,” the reply came from inside the bag. It looked like she was okay.
“Merumeru, what’s it like in there? Did you see anything?”
“I saw something black just past the entrance. I don’t know how to say it, but it was like darkness. I ended up thrusting my head inside it, but now I can’t see a thing.”
“Darkness, huh... Can you hear my voice without any time lag?”
“Yes. I can hear you. In my current situation, it looks like the flow of time isn’t any different from outside.”
“Hm... I wonder how far you have to go in for the flow of time to change. Will you move forward?”
“I’ll try. Could I get you to hold onto my ankles, just in case?”
“Gotcha. I’ll hold on tight.”
Genia gripped Merula by the ankles as she slowly crawled forward into the bag. Even when she was halfway in, Merula seemed to hear Genia properly, without any time lag.
“Merula, can I get you to sing something as you move forward from here on?” Genia called.
“Okay. ...La. La lu la.”
A clear, pretty singing voice came from inside the bag.
It was a melody no one here knew, but the song might have come from Merula’s homeland, the Spirit Kingdom of Garlan. While they could hear that singing, Merula’s body kept advancing into the bag. Then, when Merula’s feet and Genia’s hands were all the way inside the bag up to her wrists, it happened.
Merula’s singing stopped dead.
“Merula, can you hear me?” Genia called out to her, but there was no response.
However, Genia’s hands were definitely still gripping Merula’s ankles. From there, Genia got help from Ludwin and Souji to pull Merula out of the bag. When they did...
“La la la.”
The moment they started pulling, they heard Merula’s singing. She continued singing as if nothing had happened. When she was pulled out, Merula tilted her head to the side in confusion.
“The way it felt to me, not long after I started singing, you immediately pulled me out. I hadn’t even finished my first song yet.”
When she heard that report from Merula, Genia said, “Hm...” and thought deeply about it. “It would seem that when a ‘target’ is placed inside the bag, that target’s time is stopped when it is fully inside. That’s why, when Merula’s feet were sticking out, and when I had just my hands inside, we weren’t affected.”
Having said that, Genia clapped her hands.
“Well, for now, let’s summarize what we’ve learned in a report. Overscience relics are fascinating indeed. I think even just what we learned today will be enough to satisfy the king.”
“You’re right. It was a truly fascinating item.”
The women went about writing their report on the day, full of energy for some reason.
Looking at the two of them, the men sighed.
“Hahh... It looks like it ended without anything going too wrong,” said Ludwin.
“Hey, Ludwin, do you get put through this all the time?” Souji asked, sounding concerned, and Ludwin responded with a dry smile.
“Yes... But now we’ll have some quiet for a little while...”
“Come to think of it, Merumeru,” Genia commented, “I’ve had a request from the king to investigate the Summoning Room, you know?”
“Oh, that room they used for the summoning ritual that brought His Majesty here from another world? That sounds very interesting indeed.”
““...””
It seemed a second episode of “Let’s Test It!” had been confirmed.
Seeing the dazed look in Ludwin’s eyes, Souji patted him on the shoulder.