Like an arrow being released from a bow, the spear of light flew in a straight line towards its target.
The stone King Ape statue that was set as the target was hit, and brilliantly shattered into pieces.
And just like that, probably due to connecting the magic formations with magic power, [Shining Javelin] was released successively without chanting and the King Ape statues kept being destroyed.
It didnât take that much time for all ten of the prepared statues to be destroyed.
âHowâs that-ja. Pretty good-jaro?â
âYep, pretty good. You did well, Suu.â
I patted Suu, whoâs throwing her chest out with an *ehem*, on the head. To do this much at 11 years-old is quite the achievement.
Suu holds the aptitude for light magic. Light-attribute magics, as befitting its second name of holy magic, excel in the areas of healing and purification, as well as defensive magics.
Still, itâs not as if thereâs no offensive magics in the attribute. Like the [Shining Javelin] earlier, and others such as [Light Arrow] and [Star Bright], there are light-attribute magics designed to defeat enemies. (Note: donât ask me what [Star Bright] is, the katakana literally says that.
'sutaaburaitoâ.)
Suu had been learning light magic from Linze and Rin, and before I knew it, had progressed this far already.
Furthermore, she had also been learning close-combat techniques from Yae and our head maid Lapis-san, and things like knife-throwing techniques from the other maid Cecil-san, and had been absorbing all of that like a sponge and making them her own.
Isnât she already way stronger compared to your average adventurerâŠ?
It might be due to becoming my dependant, but I think she had the talent to begin with.
âStill, this is not enough-ja. I must not bring shame to Touya as one of his wives. I will get even stronger and protect this country-no ja!â
She sure does say nice things. I matched my eyes to Suuâs and took her small hands within my own.
âThank you. But itâs not good to force yourself, ok? It doesnât matter whether youâre strong or weak; Suu is important to me precisely because youâre the way you are.â
âIâm not forcing myself. Touya is important to me as well-ja. Thatâs why I can work hard. Touya too, feel free to spoil me more.â
Suu wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me while saying that. Even if you say to spoil you⊠I canât do anything too hard, ok?
âIs it true that youâve increased the number of women around you?â
âBfuâ!?â
Waiâ, what exactly are you talking about, Suu-san!?
âIsnât there a new woman in Babylon-no jaro? I heard from Cesca. A woman wearing glasses who also has a dog with her.â
âYouâre wrong! Sheâs not like that! Sheâs just a technical staff addition, okay!?â
That ero-idiot-maid, what kind of things are she telling Suu!?
Suu released her hug, and made a small sigh while folding her arms. What is it, that tired- looking pose⊠Where did you even learn that?
âFather said that Touya had the face of someone who will have lots of trouble with women. He also told me to be careful in case he gets pulled in by some weird woman somewhere.â
âLike I said, thatâs not the case here!!â
Damn Duke, stop teaching your daughter weird things! What does he mean by someone who will have⊠Lots of trouble with women⊠Thatâs, thatâs not the case, r-right?
If I think back on it, itâs not entirely⊠Nonono, thatâs not the case. That canât be. Iâd like to think thatâs not the case. Letâs think of it as not being the case. (Note: give it up. Itâs already written in your destiny.)
For a while, Suu kept on lecturing me while I kept on offering explanations, but in the end I think I managed to convince her.
âAs expected Touya is no-good without us-ja na.â
âAye ayeâŠâ
I held the hands of Suu who had become happy again, and returned to the castle. The sky is clear all around, as if the storm blowing in the past few days had been a lie.
I can ask the spirits to keep things like tornados or storms away from this country, but itâs better to leave things to nature itself unless something serious happens.
âThat reminds me, is Elen-san doing well?â
âUmu. Her stomach has gotten quite big. I really do think a little brother would be best.â
Suuâs mother, Elen-san, is currently pregnant. That may be part of the reason why Suuâs working so hard at her magic training.
The Ortlinde ducal houseâs butler, Leim-san, had been telling me proudly that Suu had been visiting the clinic in the Belfast castle-town and healing people there from time to time. Sheâs a kind kid.
Sheâs still ignorant of the world and pretty selfish sometimes, though.
â⊠Touya, I can see something weird there.â
âEh?â
Suu stopped and pointed towards the sky in the direction of the castle.
Something is flying this way from the skies. Itâs still too far away, so I canât see clearly butâŠ
âA bird?â
â[Long Sense].â (Note: really feels to me like thereâs a lot of old magics coming back in the recent chapters, eh?)
I sent my sight towards that direction using the non-attribute magic [Long Sense].
Itâs indeed a bird that is flying towards here. But, itâs not a normal bird. Surprisingly, there are people riding on it.
Thatâs a big bird though. Giant. Or more like, isnât that already a behemoth? And whatâs more, thereâs three of them.
I thought maybe theyâre coming to attack the town, but the birds diverted their courses, and landed at the plains to the north.
âThat was quite a big bird.â
âLetâs go take a look.â
I used [Teleport] and transferred to the plains north of the castle. On top of a hill on the plains, the three birds from before as well as three people are standing in wait.
There are two men and one woman. Theyâre wearing something like indigenous clothing. They look similar to the people living in the Great Sea of Trees, but thereâs also something different.
They had feathers decorating their shoulders and heads, and looks very similar to Aztec clothing from Earth. Is there a bit of Native American mixed in too?
Their skins show a reddish-brown hue⊠I wonder which country did they come from? Donât tell me itâs another slip-in from the Reverse World?
âYour Majesty!â
While I was keeping my distance and seeing how the other side will move, our knight orderâs vice captain Nicola-san and several other knights rushed over here from the direction of the castle. They probably came after seeing the giant birds, I suppose.
I waited for Nicola-san and the rest to arrive behind me before talking to the three people.
âNow then. Who are you guys, and what is your purpose in coming to this country?â
âWe are messengers dispatched by the Egret Kingdom to the south! We have come to deliver a letter from our king to yours!â
Of the three, the tallest man who had a white feather decorating his head spoke up in a loud voice.
The Egret Kingdom is a country to the southwest of Brunhild, on an island floating in the seas beyond Belfast and Mismede.
The people of Egret were said to have originated from a tribe of the Great Sea of Trees who migrated to the island a long time ago. They do share some similaritiesâŠ
Iâve been there once before, as well. It was the time when we found the Babylon [Laboratory]. Well, I only touched land at the place where the sea dragon that had guided us was living.
The easy-to-live-in southern paradise, Egret. I wonder what made them come all the way here to see meâŠ
I stepped towards the three people who had walked out from under the three giant birds.
âI understand the story. You can leave the letter with me. Iâm the sovereign of this Brunhild Dukedom, Mochizuki Touya.â
When I named myself like that, the three of them looked at each other with shocked faces before immediately kneeling down and holding up a scroll holder for me.
Hmm, I guess I still donât have a kingly feel to me? Is it something like âThis kid canât possibly be the kingâ, maybe? Paluf Kingdom has a 10 year-old king, you know. Even I should be better compared to him⊠Should I grow a beard? Nah, probably wonât fit me.
I opened the metallic scroll holder that looks like the type you put a graduation certificate in with a pop, and took out the rolled-up letter which had been sealed with a wax seal.
Well, letâs see⊠Fumu fumu⊠Mu. This isâŠ
âWhatâs written on it-ja?â
âWell, to put it simply, a rescue request.â
Seems that due to the storm the last few days, Egret Kingdom had suffered serious damage. Their crops were washed away by floods, their large ships were all destroyed, and apparently their back-up food storage also went poof; so far there hasnât been a lot of deaths yet, but there are a huge number of injured people.
The food shortage problem is especially severe. They canât send help requests to the countries they had contact with like Belfast and Mismede, as well as Refreese due to their lack of ships, and in the first place the transport of foodstuffs would take time.
As such, they had used the giant birds to come to me for help.
To be honest, we Brunhild canât give out a lot of supplies to support them. Our country is a small one to begin with, and although it may sound selfish, we treat our own food supply very importantly.
However, I can do things like asking the members of the World Alliance to each offer a small amount of supplies, gather them together, and send them in one go via transfer magic.
Well, other countries have various things theyâre busy with as well, so it probably wonât happen immediately.
âFor now, can one of you come to the castle? I will contact the other countries. The matter regarding the supplies might take a while⊠Ah, please leave the birds here.â
âUnderstood.â
The young man with the white feather decoration, together with the woman with a red feather decoration, came forward. Seems like the last young man with the tea-colored decoration would be staying here with the birds.
Those birds are called Louf birds, and as expected, they are magic beasts that had undergone selective breeding to become behemoths. They, the Louf Tribe, had been raising and taming these birds since a long time ago, apparently.
Having said that, it seems that the tribe only has a total of five of them right now.
Of the three, the leaderâthe young man with the white feather decorationâis called Totora Louf. The woman with the red feather decoration is Lilicana Louf, and the two of them are siblings. The last one, the young man with the brown feather decoration, is called Rocha Louf. Although they share the same surname, it seems that Rocha is actually not a sibling, but a cousin of the other two.
Suu wanted to try riding the Louf birds, but since this isnât the right time, I stopped her. Not to mention it could be dangerous.
I made contact with the leaders of the other countries, and secured a decent amount of food supplies for Egret, but just this is not enough.
Egret needs to become capable of getting enough food to survive by themselves or the help wouldnât matter much. Their primary industry seems to be fishing, which is going to be tough given they had just lost all of their large vessels.
Well, I guess I can mass-produce ships using Babylonâs [Workshop]. Of course, Iâll be properly charging for them.
However, it seems that that particular problem has a continuation to it.
âEven if we have ships, we canât go out to sea right now. There is a Tentakra waiting in the ocean.â
âTentakra? Oh, that giant squid-like oceanic magic beast, huh.â
The Atlantic giant squid was said to be the largest invertebrate on Earth, and claims of individual specimens with a body length of up to 18m have been recorded, but the Tentakra are squid-shaped magic beasts with a size far above that. Iâve read about it before in the magic beast encyclopedia in the Adventurerâs Guild.
(Note: could be an author mistake? The name he used is definitely the Atlantic giant squid, but thatâs not the largest known invertebrate on Earth. That title belongs to a separate species of squid, the colossal squid. Google it if you wanna find out more.)
It can apparently drag large vessels straight into the depth of the sea with its legs, after all. And apparently thereâs even speculations that it could be a behemoth⊠I canât even imagine it.
The Kraken that I had summoned before are similar to the Tentakra, but also different in various ways.
âBut didnât Egret have the sea dragonâs protection?â
The Sea Serpent that could be called the guardian deity of Egret. Itâs a kind dragon that lives in the seas near Egret and had been protecting its people. Itâs also part of Ruliâs dependants, and Iâve met it once before as well.
If itâs that dragon, I donât think it would ignore the tyranny of the TentakraâŠ
âThe sea dragon fought with the Tentakra, but was beaten and disappeared somewhere. We donât think it has died, butâŠâ
Ara⊠The sea dragon lost, huh. To win against that guy, the Tentakra must be pretty big, I suppose.
âŠCan we eat it? If itâs that big, then it should be a substantial food source if we can. We could even make it into long-lasting food supplies like dried squid pieces or something.
When I muttered something like that, for some reason Iâm met with very displeased faces. Eh? You guys donât eat squid or something? Even though your main industry is fishing?
Maybe itâs just the difference in cultures. Well, I wonât force them; I donât even know if itâll taste nice anyway.
To be honest, I myself donât really like squid. That *gunyuri* texture is really not something I can handle well. The texture is roughly consistent whether you boil it or roast it, so the most I could eat is something like dried squid where the texture is hard.
Well, for the moment letâs head towards Egret Kingdom and take a look at the situation.
Iâd like to avoid having to fight a gigantic squid within the water if possibleâŠ
Using [Recall], I extracted the memories of the Egret Kingdomâs capital, Letrabanba, and was about to transfer there via [Gate] when suddenly Suu spoke up.
âItâs boring when Iâm the only one who stays at home every single time-no ja. You may bring me together with you this time. Itâs the job of a husband to listen to his wifeâs selfishness once in a while, no?â
Weâre not going there to play though⊠When they heard that, everyone else also raised their hands and expressed their intentions to follow along.
The others who lost requested for us to bring back souvenirs. No, like I said, weâre not going there to playâŠ
Itâs a tropical paradise, so if this was actually a vacation it would be perfect, really.
Letâs bring Sango and Kokuyou along just in case. I really donât want to fight an underwater battle, but thereâs always the possibility.
âBy the way, just how big is that Tentakra?â
âWe do not know. Weâve only ever seen its head and tentacles above the water before. However, there were witness reports that state itâs about as large as the sea dragon.â
Which means, itâs guaranteed to be at least above 50 meters long?
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How do we beat that⊠If I try to use [Gate] to teleport it onto land, I might get seawater mixed in together with the actual target, and in the worst case it may turn into another flood.
Using a Frame Gear to do squid fishing⊠Guess itâs impossible as expected? I donât even have a fitting rod and lines. Wait, canât I use [Modeling] on something like a piece of orichalcum and turn it into wiresâŠ
Ah, right, how do you fish for squids again?
Thinking I might get some hints, I opened my smartphone and started searching for squid fishing-related articles.