Undersea Exploration (2)
Two conveyor belts were extended from the bow.
The one on the right collected the remains, the one on the left stored the treasure.
The remains were nothing but bones. They had long since rotted away.
“We weren’t actually asked to recover the remains, but they’d be happier if we brought them back, right?”
“At the very least, they’d want to rest in a grave on land. Even the dead would find peace that way.”
Since the bones couldn’t be separated, we’d hand them over as one bundle. They’d probably build a memorial or something.
The real problem was the treasure.
Apparently, this area lay along a major maritime route of the Land of Tranquility, and the number of shipwrecks was far greater than what the Land of Tranquility had reported. It was probably mixed in with ships other than the gold transport vessel they’d requested us to retrieve. Actually, judging by the number of wrecks, the gold transport ship was only a tiny piece of the ship-hull Tetris pile.
Does the Land of Tranquility have some kind of culture of dumping things into the sea near their coasts?
The water spirits manipulated the water and placed gold ingots and the like onto the conveyor belt, but the ingots had formed an absurdly long line.
“This looks like it’s going to take a while. It’s getting a bit chilly—should we turn on the heater?”
“Alicia, what’s today’s snack?”
“As per Your Highness’s request, it’s ice cream.”
“Ice cream eaten in a warm room with the heater on is the best.”
Without heating, the deep sea was cold. And since this vessel ran on mana and produced almost no waste heat, the interior was chilly.
Ice cream tastes even better when you eat it in a heated room during a cold season, doesn’t it?
Especially this ice cream, it was made using vanilla imported from an allied nation. I’ll make sure commoners can get it someday. For now, production volume keeps the price high. I even send letters every month telling the exporting country to hurry up and increase production.
And making it something commoners can casually eat means demand will increase. Once demand increases, competition starts, and even higher-quality sweets will be made.
Mufu. I’m not satisfied with the sweets we have now. I’ll prepare the environment so they can refine themselves even further!
I ate my ice cream while waiting for the treasure to be stored. During that time, the water spirits kept bringing gemstones and all sorts of things in front of the external cameras, so we stored those too.
“This is more than ten times what we expected. The reward is deliciously huge.”
The supplies were far more than anticipated, but the surrounding water spirits were manipulating the water to form long processions of gold and silver treasure.
This was honestly too much. It lightly exceeded the capacity of the storage boxes prepared for collection.
However, since the storage boxes could be swapped from the inside, we dealt with it by having new storage boxes made inside the Treasury and replacing them.
The storage boxes were transport containers designed with large capacity, basically storage bags enchanted with spatial storage and preservation magic. Size-wise, they weren’t much different from coffins. Not flat, obviously.
Each one could store up to ten tons.
And yet, there were so many supplies that those boxes were piled up like mountains. Well, since it was enough to plunge a nation into a gold shortage, it couldn’t be helped. And this was only part of it.
“We should thank the spirits too.”
“Thank the spirits?”
“They’re happy if you share mana with them.”
Alicia tilted her head. Spirits have far higher affinity for mana than humans.
Spirits have ranks. First are newly born lesser spirits. They’re almost pure existences with barely any ego, just drifting around.
Once they accumulate some mana, they become low-ranking spirits. Still barely more than lesser spirits, but with a faint sense of self, just enough to have likes and dislikes.
Then come mid-ranking spirits, which possess clear egos. From this point on, they start making demands and setting conditions when forming contracts with humans, so the number of people who can contract with mid-ranking spirits drops drastically compared to lower ones.
Above them are the high-ranking spirits, also called great spirits. These are extremely strong. Humans basically can’t win against them. Even Father would struggle badly.
Spirits’ bodies are made of mana, so physical attacks are basically useless. You can only interfere with them using mana or a derivative of mana like battle aura. But battle aura isn’t as effective as magic, which makes them something of Father’s natural enemy.
With multiple Mage-level spellcasters, you might be able to fight one, but only barely. And if the battle turns unfavorable, they’ll flee. Great spirit–class magic is practically a natural disaster, so provoking them is considered the height of stupidity. In fact, even bullying lesser or low-ranking spirits can lead to retaliation by higher spirits, and there are many historical cases where disasters occurred as a result of picking fights with spirits.
A Spirit King’s Proxy is simply a great spirit with even more power. Classification-wise, it’s still a high-ranking spirit. It’s just a title.
So how do spirits raise their rank?
It’s determined by the amount of mana they possess.
Although spirits adapt to mana far better than humans, their ability to absorb natural mana is only about five times that of a human. And since they also use mana just to maintain their existence, and have the duty of adjusting the environment, the amount of mana they accumulate day by day is minuscule.
Even spirits can’t perfectly make natural mana their own. Only the Spirit King has that authority. Not even goddesses or Demon Kings can do it.
Like humans, spirits must slowly absorb mana over time by mixing natural mana with their own. But there is an exception.
The Spirit King’s race is, of course, spirits.
Using their authority, the Spirit King can forcibly assimilate natural mana into their own and then supply it to spirits, raising their rank. It’s a sort of cheat. Originally, it was power meant for emergencies, when the number of powerful spirits decreased, but in this world, the number of spirits is in a seriously dangerous state, at only a few hundredth of what it should be.
Well, there are many spirits numerically, but almost all of them are lesser or low-ranking. There are far too few mid-ranking or higher spirits.
Between the losses from the past war against the Evil God and the cleanup of mana disasters caused by humans repeatedly firing strategic-class magic in suicidal desperation, the surviving spirits probably never had the leeway to raise their own rank.
Incidentally, monster territories are often pools where mana stagnates. They have abnormally high mana density, making it easy for powerful monsters and magical beasts to be born. Normally, places like that should only exist in extremely limited areas such as dragon veins.
But because there are so few spirits managing the planet’s mana, and because the powerful great spirits are busy dealing with even more dangerous places, weaker spirits can’t do anything and those areas are left unattended.
“I-I see… We’ve been living our lives normally, but the world’s situation is actually pretty dire.”
“It is. Honestly, since I’m the current Spirit King, well, Spirit Queen, I have to do something about it.”
“What have those who inherited the power in the past been doing? If that’s the case, they should’ve acted immediately.”
“First of all, when I reincarnated, I reincarnated by integrating the Spirit King’s power into my soul. That’s not something that should be possible. Normally, a soul can’t withstand that power.”
On top of that, humans who inherited the Spirit King’s power in the past were often captured by the Holy Church and turned into lab rats.
As a result of those experiments, the Evil God’s power that had clung to the Spirit King’s power, power that should’ve been purified over time, went berserk, creating what people call a Demon King.
By the way, they’re only called Demon Kings by society. By this world’s standards, they aren’t true Demon Kings. A true Demon King is someone chosen by the Demon King, just as Heroes are chosen by the Spirit King or the goddess. They’re not necessarily evil. Compared to Heroes, their abilities are more destruction-oriented, but they don’t inherently command monsters or automatically become kings of the demon race. The demon race is… probably living normally on another continent.
Back to the point: because humans kept doing stupid things, even when the power was inherited, almost none of the knowledge was passed down. Arthur saw it as nothing more than a convenient power.
“Eh…! Y-Your Highness!”
“Alice!”
Not only Alicia, but even Takuto, who’d been silently playing statue, rushed toward me.
“A normal human soul would shatter under that power, but I was pretty much fine, so it’s okay.”
To be honest, I could probably absorb two or three more powers of the same level without issue. I wonder how that works. Well, maybe that’s exactly why Teto the idiot chose me.
Though it’s my soul that can endure it, physically, the Spirit King’s power is quite a burden. It’s awkward to use.
When I said that, the two of them finally calmed down.
——That’s everything!——
——Queen, we’re done!——
“Ohhh, thanks for helping out. I’ll share some mana with you as a reward.”
At my words, the spirits let out joyful cries and entered the submersible. Spirits can normally pass through objects unless they’re made of special materials.
Then I poured mana into the gathered spirits.
—Ahh! My rank’s going up!—
—Aim for great spirit!—
Go ahead and aim for it. There are far too few of you as things are. Still, I’m only giving you enough to raise your rank by one. I don’t have enough mana to push you to great spirit level, and according to the Spirit King’s knowledge, great spirits grown too rapidly this way aren’t that strong. It’s an emergency measure for filling manpower, after all, they can’t compare to great spirits who climbed up through their own strength.
Raising all their ranks by one pushed my mana right to the danger zone, but it wasn’t insufficient. From a Spirit King’s perspective, it was “just a bit of mana,” but from a human standpoint, it took an enormous amount. Any more and I’d run out of mana and get depressed, so I should hold back on magic for now. I’ll recover to Mage-level mana in about an hour.
“Alright, I’m heading out now. Please keep managing this area.”
—Got it!—
—Leave it to us, Queen!—
I said goodbye to the spirits. Since they manage this part of the sea, taking them to Arland would cause problems for the Land of Tranquility. There’s a dragon vein here, without caretakers, monsters would spawn in huge numbers. We can’t cause damage to an allied nation.
With their increased power, the spirits will hunt monsters, so damage from monsters should decrease a bit.
And so, our undersea exploration came to an end…
—or so it should have.
“Sonar contact detected. This mana output is… Kraken class. And not a normal kraken. It’s heading straight for us at 30 knots!”
“Blow the main tanks. Engines to maximum output. Emergency ascent! We can’t fight a boss-class monster down here!”
“Engines at maximum!”
“We’re being locked onto hard.”
We were almost home, and then we got noticed by the local boss monster. Go after the armed airships instead! Why are you coming here?!
I wrote a question on paper, Can we use torpedoes here?, and put it into the Treasury. A few seconds later, I pulled it out. The reply said:
“Not designed for deep sea, idiot! Operation below 2,500 meters is not guaranteed.”
Tch. Useless.
For now, I asked my contracted water spirit to manipulate the currents and boost our speed. The hull was screaming, but it wasn’t so fragile that this would break it.
The speedometer recorded 60 knots.
“The target’s speeding up too!”
“Looks like it’s manipulating water as well?”
“Can’t you do something?!”
—This isn’t my territory, so it’s hard… and it looks like a mutant—
“Should’ve had the spirits escort us to the surface…”
I got careless because the armed airships had been thinning aquatic monsters with depth-charge fishing. Go away already!
After that, we enjoyed a delightful game of tag with a mutant kraken.
“Phew… that was a thrilling voyage.”
I wiped sweat that I hadn’t even broken.
“That was close. If that torpedo hadn’t hit, it would’ve caught us.”
“It barely did any damage, just slowed it down. We need a redesign.”
“No, it was definitely using some kind of special ability. Otherwise that level of mana output makes no sense.
I’d guess it can enhance its defense. At that point, even depth charges wouldn’t finish it off easily.”
The clones were a bit flustered too. If it had caught up, we were planning to launch them from the torpedo tubes for interception. Still, underwater combat is a hard pass. Fighting on the enemy’s field is a losing proposition. Even if clones are expendable without hurting my conscience, wasting them isn’t good.
Damn it. If it were on land or the surface, I could’ve torn it to pieces, but the moment we got close to the surface, it fled. That thing is battle-hardened. It realized it’d be torn apart the instant it surfaced. Takuto was getting fired up, too. Me? Mana. I’ve got enough left for tactical magic, but fighting something at that level would be rough. I’d win, but I’d definitely end up depressed from mana depletion.
I hate monsters that immediately run when things turn against them. And the ones that do that always sell for high prices or yield rare materials, which makes it even more annoying.
Sigh.
Those frequent ship sinkings around here are probably its fault. We should warn the Land of Tranquility. Their communication tech is low, so they probably know there’s a monster, but they don’t realize it’s a mutant kraken. Even though the Land of Tranquility has the only half-decent navy in this world, their ships themselves aren’t that advanced. It’s more that their sailors are just ridiculously tough.
This needs some reinforcement. The Land of Tranquility has more national power than expected, and this visit made it clear they’re a valuable trade partner.
I never imagined they produced silk. The Arland side was shocked too. On the continent, it’s an Empire monopoly, and if another country touches it, the Empire crushes them with military force. In Arland, silk is an ultra-luxury item you almost never see.
Production is low, but we should invest and have them mass-produce it. I doubt they’d refuse. Even tech support only slightly better than Taisho-era Japan would be enough. As for cotton cultivation… that’s something I’ll leave to Big Brother to assign to other countries. I’ll talk to him later.
Both are technologies Arland can’t implement domestically, so we have to pass them to other nations. They make money, but Arland already has a severe labor shortage. With a limited population, we have to choose our industries.
In that case, it’s most rational to sell the technology at a high price to other countries and still keep control of the interests.
Alright. Let’s raise the Land of Tranquility into the Far Eastern watchdog, like old Japan. Big Brother wouldn’t make the mistake of turning them into a rabid dog. And the Land of Tranquility has no ambition for continental territory.
They understand perfectly well that while they have the power to take land, they don’t have the national strength to maintain it. That’s different from Japan, and unlike Japan, their ties to the continent are weak. Public opinion is almost like a Monroe Doctrine. They want as little to do with the continent as possible. Specifically, they hate the Empire’s faction. Can’t blame them, being regularly invaded and pressured diplomatically would do that. I hate them too.
With that in mind, I escaped the deep sea and arrived at the cove of a resort island we’d borrowed from the Land of Tranquility. The island was currently reserved exclusively for Arland. Due to an increase in sea monsters, it wasn’t being used for the time being, so we were able to borrow it easily.
Present here were Arland personnel, along with a guard samurai unit and diplomats from the Land of Tranquility.
We entered the cove, launched boats, and headed for the beach.
“Looks like they’re having fun.”
“Though no one’s swimming.”
“Arlanders can’t swim.”
I shook my head at Takuto’s words. In Arland, there’s no custom of swimming in the sea. Actually, that’s true of most of the continent. The sea is entirely monster territory, swimming there is basically suicide. Rivers aren’t safe either. In a world crawling with monsters, swimming is a luxury hobby.
The Arland knights we brought along had split into two groups as usual: those running at full speed across the water surface with battle aura wrapped around their legs, and those sprinting full tilt across the beach. In other words, the usual muscle-training faction, and the faction building a three-meter-tall Arland Castle out of sand.
The precision was so high that I honestly thought they could make a living as sculptors rather than knights. They even recreated the windows.
The only ones relaxing under parasols, lying on chairs and enjoying tropical juice on vacation, were the Arland diplomats.
What do you think about this chapter?
